This is the way the world ends.

So it’s been over a year since I’ve been on the blog, but hey– whatever.

I saw something last night that didn’t just set dominoes falling in my head, it rage-flipped the table and hit me with a chair.  Concussive realization aside, it all comes down to one thing: World War Fucking Three.

…and then it all went dark.

Yes, this sounds a bit tinfoil hat at first, but stay with me.  A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across an article online that floored me.  Giovanni Gambino, yes one of those Gambinos, told NBC that “the rise of global terrorism gives the Mafia a chance to show its good side. … We make sure our friends and families are protected from extremists and terrorists, especially … the Islamic State.”

Well, historically speaking, the Mafia was supposed to protect their own from the abuses of others– among other things.   Hearing the son of the Teflon Don making a bold comment like that on a mainstream media source gave me a huge grin.  Yes, every last one of my great grandparents came from Italy, and no— I actually have no clue how to get in with La Cosa Nostra.  I know, I’m disappointed too.

Looking at it from the outside, a famously criminal organization is better suited to tackling another such organization.  Naturally, thanks to my heritage, I grinned and drank my wine thinking about how profound his commentary was.  Guy’s smart, and his points were valid.  There are certain kinds of things that no amount of surveillance can unearth.  You need to know how to look, and know people who know people.

Makes sense, right?

Yesterday, I came across a series of articles where El Chapo (the head of the notorious Sinaloa Cartel) had some choice words for Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi– and although they ended up being false… well here’s the thing: pit a ruthless cartel that gives fewer fucks about collateral damage than China (a nation ISIS has also managed to piss off) against a ragtag group of fanatical assholes… and well… I’m not the only one who would be positively throbbing to watch it go down.

Why?  Because fuck yeah, these guys play by the same lack of rules– which boil down to one premise.

— and everything you hold dear.  Really anything around your general vicinity.

That kind of no-Geneva Conventions firefight would be precisely what it would take to eradicate ISIS.  Right?  Right?

That’s when it dawned on me.  This is how World War 3 kicks off.

Think about it this way.

• ISIS has pissed off pretty much all of Western civilization (I’m including Russia in this lump sum).
• ISIS has also pissed off China.  Big Red doesn’t come into this equation just yet.
• ISIS has pissed off La Cosa Nostra.  The days of Capone may be long gone, but if you think the Mafia is out of cement overshoes– you’re just dumb.
• If ISIS fucks with the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations, or even has the ability to compete, I’m pretty sure El Chapo will react as the now-debunked reports depicted.
• ISIS lacks popular/global Muslim support because fuck those guys, they don’t speak for Islam.  They look at those Daeshbags the same way Christians look at the Westboro Baptist Church.  (Yes, I realize WBC doesn’t kill people, but they’re still sanctimonious fuckpiles of shit stew that would have served the world better as a stain on their parents’ mattress.)  In fact, ISIS kills more Muslims than anybody else.  Then again, considering their “home turf,” this should pose no surprise.

Now you’re saying, “Yeah, we get it, fuck those guys in particular. What’s the point?”

With the exception of Big Red, class, what religion is generally associated with the aforementioned nations/organizations?  If you said Christianity, you’ve just found the lynch pin I was going for.  Let’s say Daesh does piss off El Chapo… and the Sinaloa Cartel decides to hatefuck them with a steel pineapple.  The day Santa Muerte starts soaking sand with blood, the terrorists will make it out to be a Christian vs Muslim thing.

Ponder this for a few hours.

The common attitude towards this particular cadre of assjacks is pretty well known.  Let’s play a probable hypothetical situation here.  If a cartel decides to take a plane full of whoop ass overseas, it will take a token bribe at best to have law enforcement look the other way.  Why?  Because everyone is saying, “Fuck those guys in particular.”  See a pattern yet?  Good.

These guys have fewer fucks to give about a little thing called “collateral damage” than Big Red.  You get a war party of contract killers together, and now send them on a no-holds-barred fragfest somewhere far from home.  How many are going to know how to speak any of the languages over there?  If you answered “probably none,” you already see where this is going.  They’re not going to try and root out those Daeshbags with any sort of delicacy.  Nope.  They’re going to fight every bit as dirty as those Daeshbags– which is appallingly thrilling on a visceral level.  Because fuck those guys right?  Except this kind of insurrection is exactly what they want.

Those bastards are going to call it another fucking crusade… and they’re going to call for a plausible jihad that many otherwise-peaceful people will blindly follow.  Think about how many players are in town right now.  Big Red and Russia have oil interests, with Russia spanking the shit out of both rebels and Daeshbags.  Oh wait, Turkey just shot down a Russian jet, and apparently they’re on the same side as us– whatever the fuck that is. Pretty much anyone with a bomber is hammering Syria with anything they can get their hands on.  It’s already a fucking war zone, and everyone’s already scared, pissed off, or both.

All of the rules of engagement would go sideways at that point, because when you live in a shitty, bombed-out country… your life flat out sucks in ways neither you or I can comprehend.  Suddenly assholes from across the Atlantic show up, and prove that those crazy “fundamentalist” assholes that were killing your neighbors were right all along.  Boom.  You have a front that will rapidly rise, and will see both the whoop-ass squad and the foreign militaries in the same light: as crusaders.  You have to protect your own, right?

This is how war starts.  I’m not talking the kind of war that has been fought over the past 70 years.  That’s timid compared to what would happen… battlefields on a scale not seen since WW2.  Not to mention, a totality not seen since… oh… the last of The Crusades.  By the way, the F-35 can’t dogfight or much of anything else.

Tell me I’m wrong.  No, seriously, with the cards already on the table– and knowing what complete assholes people generally are these days…  It doesn’t take very much of a stretch of imagination to see how this could all get much, much uglier.

Right now, I am glad that I’m too old to draft… the The Force Awakens in less than a week.  Time’s on my side for this one…

Unplug.

I think I’ll run for Emperor…

… I was watching Colbert on Hulu last night after a rousing bout at the gym, and realized that I need to run for office.  I’m not talking some chintzy country comptroller position, oh no.  I’m talking a position high enough on the food chain, I can shoryuken a senator in the sack and get away with it because we all know that Washington criminals can pretty much get away with murder.  Ain’t that right, Ted Kennedy?  Wait, he’s dead?  Doesn’t matter, you get the point.

Hell, screw murder, the bigwigs can take a shit on the Constitution with things like PRISM and nobody bats an eye.  However, I digress, I got carried away with my metaphorical assault.  Honestly, anyone who can claim to vote upon a 1,990 page bill with the authority to put it into law because they read and understood the whole thing is probably too delusional to notice a proper dick punch (or cunt punt… gotta be fair to the womens).  That’s right, I haven’t read enough about it to even comment on the results— but I can bag on the fact that the vote/signing went down in the first place.  Care to remember that infamous Pelosi quote?  “But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it….”

That’s even dumber than making a binge run to Taco Bell and not being sure if you have TP for when you get home.

And you thought I was going to take the low road and make a retard joke. Fucking cretins.

Ahhhh, but this is what we get when– for years– most of our political choices are the equivalent of choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.  Unlike Trey and Matt’s witty metaphor, this shit is only funny to a misanthropic cynic for the delectable I-fucking-told-you-so moment.  Unsurprisingly, those same bastards and bitches are downright clairvoyant when it comes to anything Washington-related… which ties back to me being in office would be fantastically dangerous– and hilariously awesome.

Naturally (and firstly), it wouldn’t happen, because I exist in the real world.

People generally agree that healthcare is something you kinda sorta need to survive in this day and age.  Now, am I the only one who sees how stupid it is to put an hourly threshold for mandatory benefits?  Ladies and gentlemen, Perry Cox was right when he proclaimed that people are “bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.”  What do you think a bastard is going to do when you say that they must provide Harry Hourly and Mindy Minimum with healthcare if they work a certain amount of hours a week?

If you said, “cut their hours,” you are officially smarter than every brain dead suit in Washington, and their sycophantic stooges on the news.

… yes, these are the same people we are supposed to trust to “report” on our government’s plans for our future.

So, someone’s probably drumming their fingers while reading this and wondering what my self-impressed, narcissistic, insufferable, toned ass would do to fix the situation.  How would I get more universal healthcare to the masses, without utterly boning small business owners into oblivion?  Grab your calculator and roll some numbers with me.

The poverty line in America for one person is a damn-near unlivable $11,490.  At that point, you qualify for Medicaid anyway– so moot point.  So let’s bump it up a bit, but not get crazy here–  let’s say our earner is making $18,000.  That’s still a beyond-shit wage, but you can make ends meet if you’re smart about it.  Instead of fucking the worker by providing an out for the corporation– we institute the 10-1 rule.  If the highest paid member/owner of your organization makes more than ten times the lowest paid member– guess what, you have to provide healthcare.   Most small business owners don’t make more than ten times what they pay their employees, so guess what– they’re going to continue business as usual, and not get screwed over by having part time employees…  but if one person is making a penny over $180k (for this example, at least)…

In short, companies would have incentive to hire on full time (may as well have a full-time workforce if you’re gonna have to pay for them, right?), and small business would still have the advantage of being able to hire part-timers without getting saddled with insurance mandates.  Now, to really drive the nail home– allow insurance companies to compete across state lines so competition (and a larger premium base) will drive the average costs down.

In short, having a job would mean having healthcare (and most likely working full time to boot)– and if you’re unemployed, you’re either retired (Medicare) or covered by Medicaid.   More people covered (which everyone seems to agree is a good thing), and zero opportunity for large corporations to continue dry fucking the working stiffs.

— snark and jokes included, I pretty much handled the issue in under 900 words.

So, someone run me for a major office.  I promise not to show up drunk.

Yeah, that was a lie.

Unplug.

Hey Florida! Here’s another reason your state sucks!

I thought, in the middle of this political fecal typhoon called “election year,” I had seen the epitome of stupid.  We’ve got window-licking assjacks trying to assert that rape is a gift from God, or that a woman can’t get pregnant from rape.  We’ve got other cadres of idiots trying to equate Romney (and his supporters) to Hitler and those people constantly waving “hi” to him.  Oh yeah, those were Nazis.  Apparently the aura of stupid surrounding every media outlet is rubbing off on even me.  Couldn’t remember they were Nazis.  Anyway, they couldn’t possibly be Nazis, because those guys knew how to organize and motivate.  Feel me?

However, just when I thought I couldn’t be exposed to any more stupid, Florida reared its cancer-riddled head and decided to step up its game.  Florida, you should have just stuck to what you’re good at– reeking of formaldehyde.

NO! NO! Bad state! Bad! Bring Daytona Beach back to its former glory and MAYBE we’ll talk.

That’s right, Florida– the land of recounts and hanging chads– has done it again and proven why we should have let the Spanish keep it.   Let me be one of the many to say this, “Governor Scott, please find the nearest fire and feel free to die in it.”  For those of you unaware– read this.  I’ll wait.

Now don’t try and scream out, “But it’s the task force that said it, not the governor!”  Who do you think appointed the damn task force?  That’s right, it was Scott.  If you don’t think that he hasn’t appointed those with like opinions/views– you’re probably a fan of Rick Santorum.  In fact, close this right now– because it’ll probably be above your intellectual level.

Now that we’ve cleared out the idiots– this kind of thinking may seem fiscally responsible on the surface.  But yeah, let’s see where this leads.  Penalize students that want to learn about history, the arts, psychology, or anthropology.  You think that YOLO is some seriously annoying bullshit now?  Yeah let’s see what happens a few years down the road.

These will be considered “highbrow” entertainment– instead of being pointed out for the mind-numbing piles of fail that they are. Go ahead, minimize history, art, and thought. See what happens, assjacks.

If you lack the brains to realize what this is, let me stop right here and tell you to shoot yourself in the face. Flooding the workforce with “desired” professions is going to give you a lot of unemployed scientists.  Are you guys in Florida complete jacktards?  Supply and demand.  You don’t have an even balance of jobs, wow… that’s precious, what state does?  However, to have a student pay more to get a degree in a field that has fewer opportunities is… well reactionary and stupid.  Yes, let’s profit from someone who will have less of a chance of putting money back in the system.  That makes sense.

If you want more scientists, mathematicians, teachers, and doctors– how about incentives instead of penalties?  Do you really want more technically-educated dipshits who can’t string together a coherent sentence?  Do we really want to facilitate our society’s progress towards textspeak?

They do in Florida– you know, where you can kill your kid and get away with it.

Flood the market, kill the opportunities.  Strangle the humanities, and welcome in a new definition of cultural backslide.  Here’s to hoping their recommendations end up like a homeless man on a bypass– chewed up by a tweaker on bath salts.

Idiots.

Unplug.