Thought I Had That I Just Had to Share ...

... since I'm all fired up and it's the weekend and I've had a few beers and oh crap, there goes Uncle Chris, you know how he gets at every family reunion after a few beers ... (and again, I would like to emphasize that my name is Chris, not Ed, and I'm not sure why people keep calling me Ed) ... the problem with this country is simple. Too many Mexicans. They keep taking our jobs. Cuz see, I've worked my whole life just to get the chance to clean the houses of wealthy Californians, and there those Mexicans go ... no wait, that wasn't it. What was it?

Oh yeah, the problem with this country ... the problem with this country is that we don't have good citizens. OK, I actually just heard Thomas Friedman say this on "Charlie Rose." But it's true. It's not the fault of the leaders. The leaders, some of them at least, are knowledgeable and well-educated. They know what will solve our problems. The problem is that we're not good enough citizens to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to solve our problems. We will vote the leaders out of office if they even threaten possibly thinking about making us make sacrifices for the good of the country. We are just that selfish. We talk a lot about loving America in this country, but we don't prove our love. Love means sacrifice, and Americans don't sacrifice. I love America, but goddammit, I hate Americans.

OK, now's when I go through all the solutions to all our problems. All of them require sacrifice of the part of Americans (usually monetary, but hey, that's what gets things done in this world).

Climate Change: The answer is electric cars and nuclear power. If power plants were run through nuclear power instead of coal, they wouldn't spew all those earth-killing greenhouse gases. And if all cars were electric, they'd just use that nuclear power instead of burning earth-killing gasoline.

I know, nuclear waste stinks, but finding some god-fosaken wasteland to bury it in (look in the Southwest -- from what I can tell it's nothing but God-forsaken wasteland) is a lot better than cooking ourselves to death through global warming. And I wish I could tell you that solar power and wind power and happiness power and love power and all the other alternative powers would do it just as well, but as far as I understand, they just don't add up. They wouldn't produce enough energy.

Why Won't We Do It? Electric cars cost money. And nuclear power plants cost tax money to create. And a long time ago, a few ridiculously antiquated nuclear power plants hurt people. So that's very scary. And plus, I forgot to mention that it costs money. And that's money we could be spending on iPhone apps that make fart noises!

The National Debt: Start a million-dollar income tax bracket. You know how there are those tax brackets, where you pay a higher percent of your income depending on how much you make? Here's the full chart for single adults, stolen from Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge:

If you make between $0 – $8,350, your marginal tax rate is 10%
If you make between $8,351– $33,950, your marginal tax rate is 15%
If you make between $33,951 – $82,250, your marginal tax rate is 25%
If you make between $82,251 – $171,550, your marginal tax rate is 28%
If you make between $171,551 – $372,950, you marginal tax rate is 33%
If you make above $372,951, your marginal tax rate is 35%

Hold on, what's that last one? If you make above $372,951, you pay 35%, no matter what? So after that point, you're home free? Why? So if you're Alex Rodriguez, and you make $33 million a year, you get paid at the same rate as some surgeon who makes $372,952? If the graduated, progressive tax bracket system is good enough for the first 90% of incomes (or whatever $0 to $372,951 constitutes), why doesn't it keep going? Especially since that once you get beyond $372,952, it's pretty much all gravy? How much gravy does a person need?

And don't give me that crap about higher tax rates stifling incentives to innovate or to get rich or whatever. I'm not talking about making everyone have the same take-home pay. I'm not even talking about a bracket above 50%. Let's keep things in perspective here. If you raised Alex Rodriguez's marginal tax rate to 40%, say, is he really going to be like, "Wait, man, I can't even pay for my toddler's tummy tuck on that shit! Forget it, I'm going to quit baseball and go fulfill my true dream of cleaning the houses of wealthy Californians." No, what he'll actually do is take home $19.8 million instead of $21.45 million, not really notice much difference, and the government will get an extra $1.65 million that it can use to feed poor children. Or, uh, pay off the debt. I forgot about that part. It's important, for some reason which I never admittedly entirely understood. (I think because the Chinese will stop buying or U.S. bonds or something if we default. And because we pay a huge chunk of the federal budget in interest that could go to better things. It's all very complicated. But I don't want complicated right now. I want overly simplistic solutions to immensely complex problems. It's got more punch that way.)

Why Won't We Do It? Wait, you want to raise taxes? HITLER!!!! I'm a good ol' boy who makes $20,000 a year down at the feed store, so therefore any thought of possibly raising some tax of any kind, even if it would not affect me at all and would actually bring great benefit to me and everyone I know, is fascism! I am teabagger, and I believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution clearly states in Amendment 25, and I quote, "Fuck everyone else. I like money. Plus, guns."

Gun control: You know what? I'm not even going to touch this one. Fuck it. Have your guns. Take all the goddamn guns you want and go shoot yourselves in the head. If that's really all you care about, enjoy. As long as you don't shoot them off in the cities, where rational people live, go ahead and have a big gun-fuck party. Maybe then you'll kill each other off and you won't breed another generation of dumb ignorant fucks that doesn't have the goddamn sense to vote for anything that matters because you're so fucking paranoid that someone's going to possibly come near to approaching in any way your only tiny miserable moments of illusory power in those fleeting seconds when you make a BIG NOISE and watch STUFF BLOW UP all AWESOME AND SHIT ...

Sorry. Maybe I went a bit far there. I just tend to get a tad frustrated when I hear that gun stores are running out of ammo because ignorant fuckers are paranoid that just because a Democrat's in office holy shit! They's gonna go afta' our guns! Guess what, dumb-ass, no one's talking about guns. No one cares any more about guns. There is a whole ocean of bigger fish to fry than your stupid guns. There's the adequate health care coverage that you don't have. There's the economy that is leaving you either unemployed or barely scratching together a living. There's the climate change that is going to quickly make your home, and yes, your hunting grounds, unliveable. But since you don't know enough to pick your ass off a burning stove, we're going to have to haul you kicking and screaming into a happier future for you and your family ...

Stupid Americans. America would be such a great country if it weren't for all the Americans. Grumble grumble grumble. I need another beer.