Pardon me while I laugh at the children

I don't know which one makes me laugh harder: George Bush or the new Republican congressional minority. It is almost painful to read what these all-powerful Wizards of Oz are reduced to saying now that their covers are blown and they have been exposed as lame ducks and relegated to minority status. They're a bunch of petulant children demanding that the adults clean up the mess they insisted of making over the top of their parents' objections.

In the last two days, both have shown either failure to comprehend the concept of irony, or craven cynicism of the first order under the assumption that the American public is dumber than a pile of rocks.

Exhibit "A" is George Bush's laugh-out-loud hilarious plan to balance the budget by 2012, and his irony-deaf calling out of Democrats to honor their promises to end the practice of earmarks. I know this has been well-covered in the blogosphere and press already, but I think it bears a little more attention. Said Bush at the Rose Garden:

"It's time to set aside politics and focus on the future"..."Congress has changed. "Our obligations to the country haven't changed."

Bush, you see, is calling out for a little help. An intervention, as it were, of the kind that supposedly helped him stop being a drunk, cocaine-addicted ne'er-do-well--except without the messianic, millennarian psychosis part. Since he and his buddies haven't been able to set aside politics and focus on the future to meet the country's obligations for the last six years, he's asking Democrats to pick up the slack and step in to do the job he couldn't. The nice man in emotional therapy is asking to help us help him.

And after all, why not? I agree, Mr. Bush--it's time the adults were put back in charge. Of course, that means getting some humility and letting your therapists/parents do their jobs. Now just step out the way, and we'll make it all better for you...

It gets better, though. In a hilarity-riddled op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal, Bush said, incredibly:

"One important message we all should take from the elections is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to get billions of dollars directed to projects-many of them pork-barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by the Congress."

Apparently, Bush just now learned this from the recent elections! The fact that the practice is morally wrong or bad for democracy didn't trouble him, apparently; it's just something he picked up in a helpful lesson his adult teachers taught him on November 8th.

But why stop there, Georgie? Why not go full-throttle and offer the God of Irony his greatest gift yet? As long as we're challenging Democrats to accomplish the things they campaigned on, why not demand that they honor their pledge to get American troops out of Iraq as soon as possible? That, too, was an important lesson to learn the elections, right? C'mon, George! Help us help you. Please.

But Bush's ridiculous deafness to the concept of irony is matched or exceeded by that of the Republicans in Congress. They have actually had the mind-blowing gall to, in a letter signed by Patrick McHenry, Eric Cantor, and Tom Price, demand that Democrats now honor the Minority Bill of Rights that Republicans stalled and scorned during their recent imperial rule. Yeah, you heard that right: the Republicans are now pushing for the Minority Bill of Rights, before the Dem Congress even takes the oath of office.

Again, the message here is more than the hypocritical "give us the respect we never gave you." It's even more simple, when you think about it: we weren't adult enough to actually govern responsibly or honorably--but now that the voters have kicked us out, we demand you clean up the mess.

In other words, it's intervention time for the surly teenagers. Again. It's their job to tell the "reality-based" adults to fuck off--and then to demand their due "respect" while they heckle us as we clean up their mess. And they apparently don't see the outrageous irony of it all--or else they believe that the American public has the memory and attention-span of a gnat.

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You know that old Gandhi maxim--"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win?" Well the Republicans are so incompetent, so irony-deaf, so corrupt and so clueless that they're working the process backwards. It's only a matter of time at this rate, I suppose, that their statements won't even be worthy of comment.

Honestly, this stuff isn't even worthy of outrage. Laughter will cover it plenty for these kiddies.