xocobra forwarded a chain e-mail to me as he knew I’d enjoy it enough to pick it apart.  We’ve played this game before and I always appreciate him thinking of me when he reads this stuff.  As I told him, I don’t mind people forwarding things to me so long as they know I get a lot of them.  Most of the garbage is old, meaningless nonsense unworthy of response.

Some of them, however, much like this one, beg for a response from someone with intelligence.  I generally filter through them and respond to anything deemed sensible or ludicrous.  So let’s get started.

The following is the e-mail he sent me after he received it from someone else.  Because it obviously was written by something less than a screeching rodent lacking even kindergarten knowledge of the English language, I have not included any inline editorial marks.  There are so many needed that it would render the text unreadable, so I’m leaving it as is with an enormous “[sic]” pasted over the entire thing like a watermark.  Yes, it’s that poorly written, so we’ll assume ahead of time that I’ve already bashed the author for not getting any kind of education before placing their empty head in an e-mail for the world to see.

Here’s the message.  My response is below the fold.

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE TV AND HEAR ANY U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN GIVE THE FOLLOWING SPEECH?

My Fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of Iraq regime has been completed.

Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.

This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American forces from Iraq This action will be complete within 30 days. It is now to begin the reckoning.

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short. The United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, Australia, and Poland are some of the countries listed there.

The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the world’s nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war.

The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world Hell-holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.

Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France

In the future, together with Congress, I will work to redirect this money toward solving the vexing social problems we still have at home. On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth.

Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France, or maybe China.

I am ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France , Germany, and Russia Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon chance, mes amis.

I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid parking tickets to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed. I don’t care about whatever treaty pertains to this. You creeps have tens of thousands of unpaid tickets. Pay those tickets tomorrow or watch your precious Benzes, Beamers and limos be turned over to some of the finest chop shops in the world. I love New York

A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we are likely to be seeing a lot more of each other, you folks might want to try not pissing us off for a change.

Mexico is also on List 2. President Fox and his entire corrupt government really need an attitude adjustment. I will have a couple extra tank and infantry divisions sitting around. Guess where I am going to put em? Yep, border security. So start doing something with your oil.

Oh, by the way, the United States is abrogating the NAFTA treaty – starting now.

We are tired of the one-way highway. Immediately, we’ll be drilling for oil in Alaska – which will take care of this country’s oil needs for decades to come. If you’re an environmentalist who opposes this decision, I refer you to List 2 above: pick a country and move there. They care.

It is time for America to focus on its own welfare and its own citizens. Some will accuse us of isolationism. I answer them by saying, “darn tootin.”

Nearly a century of trying to help folks live a decent life around the world has only earned us the undying enmity of just about everyone on the planet. It is time to eliminate hunger in America. It is time to eliminate homelessness in America . It is time to eliminate World Cup Soccer from America. To the nations on List 1, a final thought. Thanks guys. We owe you and we won’t forget. To the nations on List 2, a final thought: You might want to learn to speak Arabic. God bless America. Thank you and good night. If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a soldier.

(Please forward this to at least ten friends and see what happens! Let’s get this to every USA computer

It seems Dubya already declared the “Mission accomplished!” a few years ago, so this starts with a redundant rehashing of old news that was false then and is still false now.  Is régime change the “new” reason we are in Iraq?  I don’t recall that being in the false justification list the administration gave when they were itching for war but couldn’t find any facts to justify targeting Saddam Hussein and Iraq.  I wish people would just stick to one reason or another and stop changing them each time they are proven false and become unpopular.

Based on the two lists of nations, I believe the responses are reversed.  Should we not congratulate those who saw through our lies and deceit and chose not to engage in random, arbitrary violence at the state level?  Surely you know there were never any WMD in Iraq.  Equally, surely you know Iraq had absolutely no ties to the 9/11 attacks.  Governments who selected not to go to war because of those nonexistent weapons and nonexistent terrorist ties are the smart folks, are they not?  Rather than punish them because they did not blindly follow a bunch of warmongering liars, should they not be congratulated?

Tread carefully when calling other governments corrupt.  One need only look at Bush and his despotic team of criminals to understand precisely what a corrupt government looks like.  Is it not the GOP that faces continuing criminal investigations and charges stemming from their illegal financial ties and dealings with those vying to purchase a vote?  And was it not this administration that was found guilty of violating the US Constitution, US law, international law, and international treaties when the SCOTUS was forced to stop the very un-American approach to dealing with those labeled as enemy combatants?  Did not all of the major players in this government lie to us to get us to go to war in Iraq?  Do they not continue to lie to this day about WMD, terrorist ties, and other nonsense?  Is this government not breaking our own laws and constitutional protections at every turn?  Isn’t this the same president who has added signing notices to hundreds of laws passed by Congress stating he is not obligated to follow those laws?  Is this administration not trying to pass changes in our laws and treaty obligations in response to the SCOTUS decision so they can not be tried as war criminals, a sort of retroactive self-forgiveness for crimes that are unconscionable?

As the only remaining superpower, as the richest nation on the planet, and as the country based on human rights and morality, we are obligated to invest all manner of money in continuing development around world.  What you fail to comprehend, and I mean specifically since this shows you really don’t understand anything at all, is that America can not survive without the rest of the world.  Our financial markets are interlinked.  Our food supplies are interlinked.  Our shared defense and security are interlinked.  Our cultures are interlinked.  No, we could no more sever ties with the majority of the world than we could individually sever our own limbs just to spite someone else.  That entire thought demonstrates such profound ignorance and lack of understanding about global affairs that it shocks me anyone with such views would even attempt to sound authoritative.  It has quite the opposite effect, I’m afraid, and shows only that your ignorance of the English language and ignorance of how to write both represent just the tip of your illiterate iceberg.

That any American would possibly contemplate not responding to an epidemic, famine, or other catastrophe, even if such a cataclysm is facing our enemies, is at best a reprehensible thought.  Where is your moral superiority?  For that matter, where are your morals period?  Where is your adherence to the basic premise of the Golden Rule?  These are humane things to do, not political ploys to be wielded as weapons against those with whom we disagree.  It is a clear indication of your own selfish inhumanity that you might contemplate such a thing, let alone wish for it.  Let us hope those who disagree with you do not practice the same cold-hearted hatred when you are ill, broke, or otherwise in need of aid.  Of course, perhaps that is precisely the lesson you need to learn — to lie on your deathbed with not a single soul to share in your misery, to show you the compassion and humanity you wished to deny those voicing an opinion contrary to your own.

If that be the case, I will be the one standing at your hospital room door pointing and laughing and mocking you as you writhe in your own feces and urine and beg for someone, just one person, to be humane to you.  In the same spirit, I hope no one gives you that satisfaction.  It would be your cosmic lesson in what happens when you cast your own hatred and intolerance upon the water.  It will come back to you.  Let us hope by then you have gained the ability to engage at least a few brain cells so you might recognize the source of your suffering: you.

I tire of the rhetoric about hunting down terrorists and wiping them out.  What of Usama bin Laden?  Wasn’t it “dead or alive” with him?  And where is he now?  Oh, that’s right: we just disbanded the US intelligence group charged with finding him.  In fact, as a nation, we have essentially stopped looking for him because it’s such an embarrassment to us.  The one man responsible for the most significant terrorist attack on American soil, the enemy of all that is good and just, is still free, and it’s been almost five years since he kicked us in the teeth and we made the same empty promises to hunt him unto the ends of the Earth.  It hasn’t happened.

Essentially, that’s just so much blustering that is common with those who can’t think of a better response.  Talk brave instead of being brave.  Won’t it impress the people and keep them from seeing you are inept and unable to protect us?  Our nation has used those same words for decades.  Often, they result in nothing close to justice.  They instead serve to hold us up to further ridicule as the biggest bully on the block who can’t find the people throwing sand in our eyes.

NATO.  You obviously don’t realize that organization was our idea to begin with.  I suppose that is yet another example of your lack of education.  Your statement also makes clear you fail to comprehend NATO serves to protect us.  Who, after all, provided the AWACS planes flown over America following the September 11 attacks and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the planes charged with helping us secure our own country?  Oh, that would be NATO.  But let’s sever ties with them anyway.  It’s just one more really stupid idea in a long list of them.

I’ll skip being specific on the pettiness of traffic tickets and the like.  What a childish thing to bring up.  Ludicrous, in fact, but that’s redundant at this point.

I strongly suggest you look up the specifics on that little issue.  You’ll find our own government owes state and local governments a whole lot of money for the very same thing, except they have spread it across the entire country rather than isolating it to New York.  Besides, to even suggest a president should endorse, encourage, and incite illegal activity is to make clear how malicious and immoral you truly are.  Bush has already done all of that and damaged our nation in the process.  Was that not enough to help you understand why that’s a bad idea, or must you continue to tell us precisely how malevolent you really are, not to mention clueless?  And how often do you smell of criminal intent?  This e-mail reeks of it.

Jingoism is often the purview of radical, unthinking elements in society.  You have shown us as much by rattling your saber at Canada and Mexico for reasons which are apparently both personal and shallow.  How dare sovereign states disagree with us.  How dare they show independent thought and decision making abilities.  Any country not automatically doing as we say must surely be an enemy, n’est-ce pas?  Using the same logic, of course, why have you not already been arrested for disagreeing with your neighbors or friends or family members?  Can we not apply the same logic in those cases?  Or, and I suspect it’s this, does your approach only apply when used against those who disagree with you?

Just as I thought.  There’s still not a single synaptic spark in your head, is there?

Let me interject on the preposterous notion that we place federal troops on the border with this little snippet of fact: our own law prohibits their enforcement of border security.  They can not be involved in such activity as it violates treaties and laws on both sides of the border.

Oh, but wait!  We’re already doing that and you’re endorsing even more of it.  Don’t let insignificant facts and laws get in the way, right?

Considering the majority of the world disagrees with America right now, can your un-evolved brain grasp for even a brief moment the possibility that we might not be right?  I mean, how often has any person or country been right all the time?  The answer is NEVER!  Cobwebs and dust notwithstanding, see if you can fit that in your empty noggin.

Ooh, threatening to abrogate a treaty that America wrote and forced down the throats of its neighbors.  There’s a sign of brilliance heretofore unseen.  Next we’ll threaten them with abrogation of treaties we didn’t write.  After that, we’ll hit the treaties to which we aren’t even a party.  That’ll teach ’em.  While we’re at it, and certainly using the same logic, let’s move our borders inward toward America’s heartland so we have more room for illegal immigrants to cover and wherein they might be caught.  That’s the level of dull-wittedness you just put in writing.  You’re entertaining, you know, but not in a flattering way.

Drilling in ANWR and calling it the end to our foreign oil dependency is like fishing in Lake Ontario and calling it the end to our reliance on the oceans.  You really are a daft one, aren’t you, my wee-brained idiot?

Allow me primarily to address the notion that any “environmentalist who opposes this decision” should move to another country as being precisely the same flippant attitude that has carried us to the current global warming crisis.  It is the same mantra that has devastated the environment and now threatens the survival of our species.  Too many like you believe we should use and use and use without regard for the world we have to live on.  Your idea about drilling in ANWR is yet another example of the damnable actions responsible for leading us to the brink of natural disaster, if not for pushing us over the edge already.

That said, Alaska contains only a few billion barrels of oil.  It would take at least ten years to locate and tap those resources, and to get them flowing in significant quantities.  Until then, drilling there would have absolutely no impact on our consumption of foreign oil.

Based on our current use of about 20 million barrels per day, what is in Alaska would not last a single decade, let alone decades as you declare.  At maximum production, it would address significantly less than 5% of our total and continued use.  Is that the sudden energy freedom of which you speak?  Because I don’t see it, and I actually looked before I wrote this.

Here’s the research you didn’t do.

America “owns” only 3% of the world’s oil supply.  We use much more than that.  To think drilling in Alaska would be a magic bullet shows only how uneducated and unprepared you are for the reality that exists around you.  Even pumping out all of ANWR’s oil in a single step and making the entire supply available for immediate use would accomplish nothing.  I will be generous and say Alaska has 10 billion barrels (when, in fact, it more likely has about 3.2 billion).  America consumes 20 million barrels each day.  Having all of Alaska’s supply available to us on the first day of drilling will address our consumption for only 500 days.  That’s significantly less than two years, and I would say it falls well short of your “decades” assurance.  And remember, my math is based solely on assuming we could extract all of the oil at once for immediate use, and that there are 10 billion barrels where experts believe there to be less than 4 billion.

Sadly, once again you’ve shown us how stupidity is really the high card in your hand.

So, once we’ve royally pissed off our foreign suppliers and declared ourselves energy independent, what do you suggest we do at one year and five months (again, I’m being generous) when that supply runs out completely?  We will have consumed everything that ANWR might have, and that is again assuming that it has 10 billion barrels, a very generous guestimate if ever there was one.

To address the isolationism issue, I have already spoken to the undeniable and unalterable interdependency of our ties with other countries.  Failing to participate in the global marketplace of finances, security and defense, food, information, and other resources will serve only to kill Americans and destroy our way of life.  What kind of a git must you be even to propose such a thing?  I ask only because never in my life have I seen a better example of homegrown ignorance that rivals that of mud.

It is not a century of trying to help people that has made us the world’s greatest enemy.  It is our poorly planned and poorly executed interactions with the world.  Just during the most recent Israel/Hezb’Allah altercation, we managed to isolate ourselves from everyone.  All of our allies turned their backs on us.  All of our friends wholeheartedly and publicly disagreed with us.  All of our enemies pointed and laughed as they were given further proof that we truly area the Great Satan, or at least a very good Satan.  And that is from a single conflict in a single region between a country we blindly support and the terrorist organization they feebly tried to hurt.  We essentially stood and supported the slaughter of hundreds and dislocation of hundreds of thousands.  Yet you open your mouth and allow such a diarrheic diatribe to come forth as to suggest there could be no other reason for the level of hate aimed at us other than the simple fact that we try to help others.

I pity anyone involved in your upbringing for having to deal with this level of obliviousness.  I would never have thought it possible that any single person could be so obtuse as to be entirely out of touch with reality, thought, logic and reason, and humane behavior.

Thankfully, the only redeeming value in this entire mess stems from the list of national priorities near the bottom.  It is indeed time to eliminate homelessness and hunger in this country.  It has been time for quite a while.  Surely we must all be thankful, however, that a nitwit such as yourself could verbalize such things, or even have such considerations, despite everything you’ve already said that could only lead others to conclude you reached a level of witlessness that even road kill can not fathom.

You’re the unfortunate result of too much crack and alcohol during pregnancy, aren’t you?  I suspect additionally at least a dozen drops on the head after birth, if not a significant physical impact while in the womb.

In closing, I will happily point out that you demonstrated at least the IQ of snail slime when you added at the bottom of your message the requirement that others forward it to anyone they can.  The admission that your arguments can not even stand on their own merits and must therefore be forced on others is at least a small step in the right direction.  I mean, if what you wrote was of any worth, people would happily forward it to others without being so directed.  Unfortunately, as you discovered, providing an empty reservoir of nonsense often requires additional energy to spread, so ordering all clueless people to follow the instructions and lather your gibberish all over the internet is at least an indication that you were aware of how hollow this mess really is.  That’s a start.

Do us all a favor.  Shut the fuck up!