Divorce Agreement from the Conservatives and My Amendments

I received the following e-mail forward today that really got under my skin; my reply is below.


DIVORCE AGREEMENT


Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our irearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael
Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be
happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete.

In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will
need whose help in 15 years..


Sincerely,

John J. Wall
Law Student (and a Loyal and Proud American )

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

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Dear American conservatives, right-wingers, elitists, McCarthy-ists, and Bush supporters, et. al:

It's true that we have stuck together since the 1950's, and we, too, see many of the schisms you mention in your letter. It's a shame we are unable to find means to surpass our ideologies for the common good of our country and future generations, but your proposal might be for the best.

I feel, however, that your model separation agreement, while sound in principle, needs a bit of amending:

You are not a fan of the "redistibutive tax", so we will keep that; you get the almost 11 trillion dollar deficit (since $8.6 TRILLION of it was amassed during Republican presidencies since the 1950's, including 8 trillion during President Bush's 8-years in office). We do hate guns and war; since you seem to feel that should deny us access to police and military, do you also feel that your love of guns and war should deny you peace and tranquility? If you decide to trade, we'll be here waiting. You DO, however, get the military draft to feed the war machine your industrial complex craves. We'll take Rosie, Oprah and Michael Moore along with David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Bruce Springsteen; you get Rush, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter. Oh yeah, take Reuben Studdard, The Gatlin Brothers, and Ricky Martin, too.

With your taking the corporations and Wall Street, do you intend to give back all of the money in the pension funds of millions of American workers lost to to deceit and theft? What about responsibility for the collapse of the banking industry through poorly regulated trading of securitized mortgages and other discretized risky investment bundles. And with our acceptance of the homeless, the homeboys, and the illegal aliens, whom do you plan to take care of the day-to-day jobs that these groups of citizens labor in day after day in the hospitality and food service industries and the civil services? You can SURELY keep the hot Alaskan Hockey Moms and rednecks; we'll keep Hollywood, NBC, and the rest of the entertainment sector, including all those damn video games you KNOW are corrupting your youth (and all of that revenue, thank you very much).

While you are giving us the Middle East, we'll take Europe, Asia, South America, and pretty much everywhere else since your folks are not so appreciated outside of our borders. And you will likely need your "rights" to hammer those who present a threat since you will likely be perceived as a threat to most of the above-mentioned countries. And when we are flourishing as part of the emerging global economy, we'll send you a road map so you might be able to find your way out of the isolationism dead since Washington.

Are the Judeo-Christian values you intend to keep the ones including divorce, teen pregnancy, and violent crime? Because, if so, I'm not sure you are entitled to sole custody. The national divorce rate average is 4.1% (according to 2002 data provided via the CDC); the top ten states: Nevada, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi. ALL are above the national average. I would guess that most, if not all, of those states would end up in "your half". What about teen pregnancy? I'm glad you asked; top ten states (highest percentage of pregnancy girls between the ages of 15 & 19, inclusive) as of 2000: Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, California, Georgie, North Carolina, and Arkansas. Again, most of these states would belong to "your half" of the country. Violent crimes: California, Florida, and Texas in that order. We will, of course, keep the U.N. and you can apply for inclusion once you explain Guantanamo Bay and your flouting of the Geneva Convention.

Along with the SUV and over-sized pick-up trucks, you get the air and water pollution generated by the carbon emissions from those vehicles; we'll bill you for the clean-up costs in our places. And since your stewardship of the environment is sketchy at best, we'll take the national parks; you can go vacation at the Mall of America driving there in your Hummer. You DO get the Superfund Sites, however. We'll take the hybrid cars and reduce our reliance on foreign oil; I don't know which part of that is funnier - the fact that Canada is our number one supplier of foreign oil or if the solution the right-wing attempted to implement was to take over the oil fields and turn it into domestic oil; we can ask Dick Cheney later.

You can have all of the doctors trained in YOUR schools; this would exclude Harvard, Yale, all of the California Schools (Stanford, UCSF, UCLA) and probably Johns Hopkins. You DO get Baylor and Duke, so (if you can afford them) you should be fine. We'll take public health care and turn it into the right it was meant to be. We'll also take The Olympics (since foreign affairs are soooo much trouble) and the trade agreements that go with foreign relations. I don't think you'll need the embassies much, so we'll take that as well as The State Department.

As for History, you should keep it. After all, you made so much of it: the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, the Viet Nam war, the Cold War, the Cuban Embargo, resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, Reganomics, and this little economic hick-up we have right here. And, since you really don't seem to need it much, we'll go ahead and take that pesky Constitution while we are at it - I don't think you'll miss it much. But, of course, you DO get to keep your KKK and your religious right to keep the blacks, the gays, and the abortion doctors in their places (or dead, assuming you think there is a real difference).

Let's see who likes the terms now...