[HoneyBadger]

The Republicans remind me a bit of the Dahomey. The Dahomey got an enormous amount of money by selling their fellow countrymen to Europeans as slaves-an unfortunate business that the US was involved in. They then turned around and used that money to buy cheap guns (which did help them secure their position in the short-term), and cheap liquor (which had all the benefits on society that cheap liquor traditionally imparts), and they kept on down that garden path of joy until the nations around them rose up, united in disgust and hatred and outrage, and thus ended the Dahomey Empire.

I, unlike many, have never been as bothered by the arrogance, insensitivity, and immorality displayed by the current regime, as I have been extremely bothered by their incompetence, short-sightedness, and unwillingness to give the American people a reason *not* to vote them out of power. If you're going to take advantage of power, then I can accept that-I even have learned to expect it. But do it in a way that atleast inspires *some* level of confidence-It's not that they're evil, it's that they can't handle power-Nixon could handle power, and J Edgar Hoover, to give you an example. Not what most people would call saints, but definitely competent and in control. Ultimately, they ended their careers ignominiously, but they were admirable power-keepers. The current regine is just sloppy and clumsy, and like the Dahomey, they're making of themselves a target, for no really good reason, because they can't handle being in charge.

The American people-honestly, we don't need our leaders to be heroes, or moral-look at the presidential careers of Ulysses S. Grant and Jimmi Carter-we just need them to give the *impression* that they are, publically, and to keep the trains running on time. If they happen to *be* heroes, or good looking, or both, we'll worship them (JFK)-but we still need to know that the country's in strong hands, sure hands, if not always *good* hands-and George W, and Cheney don't even compete in the looks department, and they're laughable as heroes, so their incompetence and shoddy handling of disasters-that they honestly might have taken steps to prevent before they happened, just cannot be excused away.