This week's poll from the Lester & Charlie Institute of Forward Thinking!
These days, in the wake of the Great Government Shutdown of 2013 -- surprise, surprise -- you actually have to be Anthony Weiner or the Ebola virus to be less liked than the United States Congress. Really. Compare them to dog poop, hemorrhoids or the DMV -- Congress loses to just about everything. Even cockroaches. We're sure you're shocked.
This is all thanks, of course, to a small handful of Republican lunatics who refused to listen to anything but the strange little devils whispering maniacally in their ears that they must de-fund Obamacare at any cost -- a goal rejected by saner Republicans as nothing more than a madman's "fantasy." Even John McCain had enough: "I knew that it was going to be a disaster," he said, "and it is a disaster."
It's hard for us to see that much of anything has been gained from the 16-day standoff -- unless you think that the emergence of an opportunity to agree with John McCain (not to mention the chance to resurrect the phrase "saner Republicans") is enough cause for celebration.
We're at least happy that we won't, for the moment, have to witness the spectacle of the same Republicans who goaded the GOP into shutting down the government make good on their threat to impeach Obama for... shutting down the government. (And here you'd thought it couldn't get more tedious than it was already.)
The people who got us into this mess aren't at all remorseful. "This battle will continue to provide real relief for the millions of Americans who are hurting, who right now still don't have a voice in the United States Senate," said Sen. Ted Cruz, with no apparent irony. (This battle has perhaps provided some relief to the writers of political comedy, though even they, probably, eventually tired of writing jokes about the Panda Cam.)
Sheesh. All this trouble, and for what? The GOP ended up getting just about nothing changed about Obamacare in the end. They just made fools of themselves, with John Boehner especially coming across as nothing more than a puppet of Tea Party extremists.
That got us thinking: Clearly, the wrong people are pulling the strings here. So what would happen if WE had the means to control one of these vile beings?
Lo and behold, that's when we found out that, thanks to a company in Michigan, you no longer have to be a billionaire to buy full control over the movements of some of the most hated creatures on earth. Now you can do it for as little as $99! And you can do it from your smartphone!
But before you get too excited about, say, controlling the dosages of medications for Utah Senator Mike Lee from your Blackberry or adjusting the frequencies on Rand Paul's tinfoil hat, allow us to clarify: the despised creatures it turns out you can control for $99 are... the cockroaches.
Well, that's a bit disappointing. But since we're not inherently technologically advanced enough to transfer this technology from insect to man -- or billionaires who happen to have the last name Koch -- we thought we should at least find out about the RoboRoach, "the world's first commercially available cyborg," as described by the website for the company behind the idea. According to Wired.com, this is how it works:
"The roaches' movements to the right or left are controlled by electrodes that feed into their antennae and receive signals by remote control -- via the Bluetooth signals emitted by smartphones. To attach the device to the insect, students are instructed to douse the insect in ice water to 'anesthetize' it, sand a patch of shell on its head so that the superglue and electrodes will stick, and then insert a groundwire into the insect's thorax. Next, they must carefully trim the insect's antennae, and insert silver electrodes into them. Ultimately, these wires receive electrical impulses from a circuit affixed to the insect's back."
Well, that certainly sounds to us at least as easy as becoming overnight billionaires and just buying up all the vile creatures we want. Yes, these instructions are for controlling a cockroach, but they should work for controlling a Congressperson just as well. Why not? Truly, if science can control the actions of a cockroach, why not a Republican Congressperson? After all. all you need is some superglue and sandpaper and the ability to find the hideous creature's thorax. It's not as if anyone gave us the impossible task of finding its brain or its heart.
So it's obvious that we're days or weeks or even minutes from mastering this technology. Soon, we'll be able to control ALL of the world's most hated living things. Once we have them under our power, what will be the first thing we should make them do?
What do YOU think?
Subscribe to the Lester & Charlie Weekly Newsletter
Follow Lester & Charlie on Facebook