The End is Nigh! (well..... Nigh-ish, anyway)

So, with another Armageddon past us, and still no end in sight of Christians of various stripes making the rest of the religious and non-religious world feel kind of uncomfortable, we set our sights on October 21st, when the next Rupture is due to take place. Yeah, I said Rupture - whaddyagonnadoaboutit???

What this particular brand of Christianity hasn't noticed is that the real Rupture comes in 2012, in November. That's when we decide, yet again, to elect or re-elect someone who doesn't listen, doesn't care (while professing to care very, very much), and who frankly hasn't a clue of what to do, except play politics as usual with the same motley crew of weirdos and whackjobs that comprise our Congress and Supreme Court.

Was there ever a time when these people could be considered normal or caring or something resembling human?

Obviously, on the Dem side, we have Obama. I don't think there's much I can say about this fellow that hasn't been said by a lot of better writers. I have a theory, but I'm not willing to fully explore it yet. I will say that the killing of Osama bin Laden was the first time I felt that Obama was acting Presidential. Unfortunately, not in a good way.

On the Repugnican side, we have Mittens, T-Paw, the Godfather, Rand Paul's Hair's Dad, Newtered, and at least one other whom I can't remember. Flirting with the idea of jumping on the "I wanna be leader of the Free-market World" bandwagon are Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin. Known, respectively, as "I'm Stupid" and "I'm Married To Stupider". You'll know when they're running for office when Faux News stops paying them for criticizing Obama's every breath.

The folks who definitely aren't running this time include Huckleberry, who is apparently making too much money at Faux to want to quite just now, and Hailey "never met a Negro I didn't want to own" Barbour, who has apparently terminated his hobby of fire-eating. Mitch Daniels of Indiana (whom George Will thought would be "perfect" to run against Obama), appears to have finally realized that having your wife leave you, and then come back years later, is perhaps a little weird, a little too much inexplicable baggage to be carrying around when you're trying kiss every baby within a thousand-mile radius.

For the others, there are some simple issues-based, well, issues that they will not be able to explain away easily. Mitt Romney owns Massachusetts' health care system, which is very similar to Obama's Health Care (hah!) Reform Thing, which Mittens thinks is very, very bad. He's opposed to the thing he promoted and passed, but opposes. I've gone cross-eyed again. Tim Pawlenty is about as boring as a human being has any right to be and still breathe. Herman "Godfather's Pizza" Cain knows so little about foreign policy that he might actually get everyone killed. And I mean everyone. Ron Paul will never be nominated on a Republican ticket, so long as he keeps saying how much he really wants to shrink the military and how much he really, really wants to legalize every known controlled substance. I think if he ran for governor of California on the Legalize Dope Party ticket, he'd be a shoo-in.

But for true, heavyweight, impossible to maintain one's composure baggage, though, Newt Gingrich takes the prize. After divorcing two wives in the most bizarre circumstances (do I need to explain these to you people?), he is now married to a woman who appears to have been frozen in liquid nitrogen, her smile is so fixedly wide and toothy. I'd smile like that, too, if I had a half-million dollar revolving credit line at Tiffany's. Plus, Newt has become a Catholic. How does his new church reconcile his multiple divorces and philanderings? The worst part about reading about Newt, or thinking about Newt, or seeing Newt, is that I can't for a minute imagine what it's like for someone to have sex with Newt.

And then I can. And then I want to die.

At that point, I start wishing for the Rupture, because maybe, just maybe, Newt will be carried off this mortal coil to live out infinity with his former wives tormenting him with a constant stream of nagging.

Now that would be justice.