It’s really not nice to joke about an attempted bank robbery. Especially one where the robber comes in with a shotgun. Especially one where the alleged robber is a former Savannah Morning News employee.

I’m trying to control my sardonic tongue. It’s hard, because any number of jokes come to mind:

Such as: Well, that’s one way to get a decent Cost Of Living increase.

Or: Good thing he didn’t do that while he was still employed there, or he would have received a verbal reprimand.

Or: How will Gen. Lynch write about this in his next column as evidence of progress in Iraq?

I seriously doubt the former reporter in question, Mr. Lowery, is a hardcore criminal. It seems to me that more likely, he’s one of millions of people in this country who desperately need mental health care but have almost literally no place to receive it. One of the most underreported stories in America today is the almost total lack of even marginably affordable mental health treatment. It’s a big reason crime rates stay so high.

(Please note I’m not suggesting criminals should go unpunished. Mr. Lowery did the crime, and he should do the time. What I am saying is twofold: A) perhaps this incident would never have happened if he’d received adequate treatment; and B) it would be nice if in prison he could be treated for his obvious mental health problems so they don’t reappear if/when he gets out.)

I hate to make this all about politics, but there’s a clear and obvious political element. Hillary Clinton, as well as I think every other Democrat running for president, is putting mental health care on a parity with physical health care in her proposed reforms. This is long overdue, and I can’t stress enough how much such a move will positively impact crime statistics in this country.

Not that I think any of these candidates, if elected, will be able to change anything. Americans simply have too big a soft spot for getting screwed over by big corporations. We can’t get enough of it. It’s in our DNA.

In many quarters willingly letting yourself be abused by your employer is literally a hallmark of patriotism. Go ask some miners in West Virginia or Utah about the need for increased oversight and the need for their bosses to spend more money on increased mine safety. They’ll look at you like you’re crazy, reminisce about how much harder their daddy’s daddy had it, and go back into those mines to continue breaking their backs and destroying their lungs so the company they work for can make a few extra bucks to go toward a new Gulfstream.

I’ve learned much to my chagrin over the past couple of decades that the vast majority of Americans would rather that they and their families live in utter misery than deny a large multinational corporation even a penny of profit. No amount of evidence that every merger and every acquisition that’s ever been made results in higher costs and decreased service will convince them otherwise. Sure, they moan about it, but when they get an opportunity to actually do something about it — such as to vote — they go back to their old indentured servitude ways.

This ideological blind spot approaches the level of theological dogma. Our blind attachment to advancing corporate profit is on the same absurd level of the Byzantine Empire arguing for centuries over icons while the Ottoman Turks slowly encroached from all sides.

So anyway, all this means you’ll probably continue to see crazy guys with shotguns going into your corner bank. Oh, well — that’s got to be better than “socialized medicine,” right?

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Well, I girded my loins, as they said in the Old Testament, and watched a few minutes of the Republican debate last night on Fox. I’m sure anyone who’s interested either watched it themselves or read this morning’s batch of columns about it, so I won’t give a blow-by-blow description (sorry for the pun, Sen. Craig).

Anyway, besides the utter, total insanity of every single one of these shifty losers — with the exception of McCain, who ironically is the one usually thought of as literally insane — I was struck by how little these people have learned over the last few years.

Other than the always-contrarian Ron Paul, who is firmly against the war, every single Republican not only supports the war, the surge, and the current policy — they do so in glowing, almost romantic terms, eerily echoing the initial propaganda about the war five years ago. No lessons learned, no reflection, no if-I-were-president-I’d-do-such-and-such. Just, Iraq is teh kewl.

Only McCain seems to have weighed all the options in a rational manner. OK, he still thinks Iraq is teh kewl, and hence is totally unqualified for the White House, but I give him credit for at least being able to make a case. The other guys — again, Ron Paul excepted — are just parrots, without an original thought in their heads.

And Rudy? Don’t get me started. New York this, New York that, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. Wash, rinse, repeat. The most one-issue campaign I’ve ever seen.

How any of these jokers expect to win an election on a total pro-Iraq war policy in a country that’s 70 percent against the war is beyond me. But hey, I’m not a Republican anyway, so I say go for it!

The other thing that stuck out was their utterly barbaric, almost psychopathic love for torture, which they always discussed with a smile from ear to ear. Not only can they not do enough of it — to anyone, anywhere, regardless of actual guilt or innocence — I’m almost certain they’d also like to torture those who don’t believe America should torture.

(Interestingly, McCain — the only one without a torture fetish, maybe because, oh say, he was actually a torture victim — actually got quite a bit of applause when he said any gain we get from torturing suspected terrorists is outweighed by the damage to America’s reputation. Maybe the Republican rank-and-file isn’t as barbaric as I previously thought. Oh, wait a minute — this debate was in New Hampshire! Wait ‘til they get down South, McCain would have been tarred and feathered for that comment.)

The Colorado congressman and certified nutcase Tom Tancredo got quite detailed about torture, in the way that a writer of erotic fiction gets detailed about sex. This guy not only has devoted a lot of thought to the torture issue, but you can tell he really, really likes thinking about torture. Often.

Anyway, here’s my question: When Tancredo says he doesn’t think waterboarding should be considered torture, does he also think that if an American soldier is waterboarded by a foreign group, they’re not being tortured either?

I pose that question to any of you war-liking, Jack Bauer Republican types out there. Have at it. I won’t hold my breath for an answer.

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OK, I’ll take a break from talking about the weird hidden sex lives of “family values” conservatives to call your attention to this very interesting link to a story written by Ga. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon) about his recent trip to Afghanistan.

I offer this not as any kind of political statement or endorsement of Marshall or any of his policies, but just because his diary is actually quite informative about how things are going on the ground there. Marshall is a Vietnam-era former Army Ranger, and spent his time in Afghanistan with Special Forces troops. His writing, though untutored, is direct and to the point and largely apolitical.

The money quote:

“Our world is growing smaller while the technology of violence develops at warp speed. Robert Wright calls it the growing lethality of hatred. Much or most of the globe survives on less than two dollars a day. The global economy is essentially unregulated and apt to cause momentous disruptions. Many worry daily of global pandemics, climate change and other forces. We evidently have not reached Fukuyama’s The End of History. Angry young men (mostly) will continue to passionately pursue righting wrongs or advancing some zealous cause, often religious. Some portion of them will war against the developed world. It won’t take many to do tremendous damage unless the world is well organized to stop them. We aren’t now. A conventional defense approach simply won’t do.”

Marshall has a good grasp of history. He cites Alexander the Great’s army as the only one meeting success in occupying the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. Marshall says that the only way for invading armies to get this kind of success is to be utterly ruthless, as Alexander was. As Marshall says, obviously in a modern world it’s neither practical nor morally sound for the United States to indulge in that kind of ruthlessness. Therefore, we need to retool.

Marshall doesn’t say it, but I will: Nothing will change until Bush and Cheney are gone. That’s the first step for anything good to happen for our country.

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OK, the time for subtlety is over. It’s time to get real here. I’m tired of talking around this issue.

So come clean, Republicans. Reveal your true selves. Stop living the lie. Fly and be free.

Come out of the damn closet already!

I say this because if we extrapolate the trend based on current evidence, pretty much every single Republican in America is either gay or a sexual deviant of some sort. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before they all out themselves on national TV.

And I don’t mean the fun kind of gay, “Will & Grace” gay, show-tune gay. I’m talking cruising-the-men’s-bathroom gay. Glory-hole gay. Not-fun gay. Ug-lay gay.

Everyone knows by now about the most recent “family values” hypocrite to out himself, Sen. Larry Craig (R-I the Ho). But Craig is just the latest in a very long line of bogus Christian marriage-sanctity protectors who turned out to be disgusting pervs:

Glenn Murphy Jr., president of the Young Republicans, charged with trying to have oral sex with another guy while the dude was sleeping;

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who apparently likes his hookers to powder his bottom and put him in diapers (not making that up);

Fla. State Rep. Bill Allen (R-Merrit Island), arrested for offering oral sex to an undercover police officer (he later said black people panicked him into doing it);

Rev. Ted Haggard, conservative Christian youth minister and crystal meth and gay sex addict;

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), child molester who likely cost Republicans the house last year;

And…. who’s next?

Jack Kingston, are you doing some soul-searching at this very moment?

Governor Perdue? With a name like “Sonny,” well….

Maybe a Republican member of Savannah City Council? Oh, wait….

If Vegas laid odds on this stuff, they wouldn’t get much action (pardon the pun). The odds would be about 1-1, because every Republican is apparently gay. No payoff in that bet!

One of the leading conservative voices in the local media, a quite well-known guy around town, used to troll my high school gym trying to pick us up — all of us, of all ages. I know because he tried it with me, as well as with all my friends. Now he’s a local Republican media star. Most of you probably know him by name and by face. A disgusting perv, that’s what.

I used to think he was an anomaly, just an isolated weirdo. I don’t think that now. It seems to be more the norm. I’m sure that same scenario has played itself out all across the country. It’s ridiculous, it’s soul-destroying, it’s a waste of time and energy, it’s a lie, and it needs to stop.

From here on out, I’m just going to be on the safe side and assume that every male Republican I meet wants to have sex with me. I think that’s a conservative estimate (again, pardon the pun). Numbers don’t lie.

This is all very sad, really. It’s pathetic more than anything. Ordinarily these people would deserve all our utmost compassion for having to waste their lives hiding their true natures in this homophobic society we live in.

But the thing is — they’re the ones that make it a homophobic society. If these Republicans would stop making with the “family values” crap, maybe this country could begin to address some of the many genuine problems we face. They need to stop all the preaching, and just be as gay as they wanna be — you know, like gay Democrats are.

And most importantly, they can stop messing with people while they’re sleeping or trying to take a dump at an airport bathroom.

Is that really too much to ask?

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I think we all pretty much already knew Tybee was pretty cool, but the Sierra Club will make it official by naming Tybee Island a “Cool City” for Mayor Jason Buelterman doing his part to reduce the town’s greenhouse emissions. They’ll award him at the regular City Council meeting tomorrow night.

While there’s little Tybee can actually do with its relatively small municipal fleet, and it really has little industry to regulate, Buelterman was one of 600 mayors nationwide who signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection agreement.

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