I was at a red light yesterday morning, sitting behind a car with a bumper sticker that read “These Colors Don’t Run.” I kind of symbolically rolled my eyes but then gave it a closer look, because it wan’t on a Hummer or a Ford F-150 with a gun rack, but instead on some little Earth-muffin car plastered with a bunch of lefty-type bumper stickers (one thing the lefties have in common with the Jesus people – they love them some bumper stickers; back in my day, we mostly just used ’em – the stickers, not the lefties – to cover up the holes and hold the fenders together), and I saw that there was an additional line that read, “The World.” So I thought that was pretty good. Of course, whether you’d like that sentiment to really apply all depends on who’s President, and what the circumstances are.

For instance, right now, there are a lot of people who think Obama should be running Egypt (hell, he’s the right color for it – kind of a “Sadat Brown” – and he’s one of them, being an undercover A-rab mooslam from Kenya and all) – or at least loudly and publicly dictating terms to Egypt as to who ought to be running their show. Personally, I’m not exactly sure what Obama ought to be doing – I only know what he is doing (assuming he’s actually doing something) isn’t enough.

He should forcefully and unequivocally tell Murbarak that he has to leave the country or we’ll be engaging in a little regime change. Except that might turn out to be kinda messy, and not everybody around the world is overjoyed at us sticking our noses into other people’s business (not that we haven’t been all along, of course). I mean, I wasn’t too crazy about Bush, but if Belgium had come along and told him he had to resign, I’d have told Belgium to go Cheney themselves.

We could refuse to trade with Egypt until there’s a new, democratically-elected government (assuming it’s not the Muslim Brotherhood or somebody else that we don’t approve of – probably we ought to give them a list of our terms and who would be acceptable. Let’s face it, them brown people really can’t be trusted to do the right thing; it’s not their fault, there’s an awful lot of sun over there – kinda like Texas – and it tends to addle your brain. And don’t give me this crap about they built the pyramids, either, ‘cuz everybody knows that was space aliens).

But, being winter and all, it might not be a good time to upset the apple cart, seeing as Egypt’s #1 export to the US is natural gas and then there’s the whole oil thing (we really should have gotten off oil during President Carter’s second term, but, well, that didn’t quite work out), and also it’s not really a great time – economically speaking – to stop selling shit to anybody that’s willing to buy it from us (I mean, fercrissakes, we can only use so much ethanol and high fructose corn syrup, so what the hell would we do with all that corn that Egypt takes off our hands?).

Then again, we provide a lot of military shit to Egypt as compensation for them not being mean to Israel, so we could cut that off. Except the military – so far, anyway – seems to be standing behind the people (or at least not running them over with tanks, the way some of our other trading partners might do).

And, speaking of Israel, don’t forget we’re Constitutionally bound to kiss their asses (I think it’s the 28th Amendment) and they aren’t too crazy about this whole “democracy” thing over there in Egypt. All they know is Murbarak has been deep in our pocket all these years, and it’s tough to stage an attack on Israel from that particular vantage point (about the worst they could do is kick Uncle Sam in the nuts trying to crawl their way out).

And then of course there’s the affect that a “people’s” revolt in Egypt might have on other places in that region. Like, say, Syria, whose government might decide they need to do something to stem the rising tide of revolution. And what better way to distract “the people” than to start some shit with Israel? I mean, Israel’s pretty easy to provoke (hell, all you need to do is send some humanitarian aid to Palestine), and who (over there, at least) doesn’t hate Israel?

So, anyhow, I don’t know what he ought to do, but whatever it is Obama is (or isn’t) doing (publicly or privately), I know it’s not the right thing.

It would be a lot easier to trust in him, had he not sold out on every major campaign promise and pretty much on every issue of major importance (and by that I of course mean of major importance to me) in his two years in office (holy crap! Has he only been in for two years – does it seem like a lot longer, or is it just me?). But, unlike his treatment from the teabaggers and wingnuts, he’s pretty much earned the distain of the left – even if a lot of it may stem from unreasonable expectations of some (too many years of teevee where the black dude is always cool – it’s the Cosby effect, I think, or maybe the “Lincoln Hayes” – have set us up; and of course the teabaggers have only been watching the shows where the black guy is the criminal).

To be fair, though, I haven’t really been paying close attention to all of this. More attention than I paid to the Super Bowl, but not a whole lot more. I know I should care, because it’s all about democracy and the people rising up to oust a dictator (even though he’s our dictator) and we’ll never see that in this country – mostly because a minimum of 30% of the people here would march in lock step with a rightwing dictator, and no matter how poor they are, would demand tax cuts for the wealthy.

Why is it the mouthbreathing masses are so supportive of tax cuts for rich people (presumably on the .000008% chance that they’ll win the lottery), while clamoring for cuts to programs that might actually help them out should they much more likely become one of the 1% of Americans who will experience homelessness this year, or the 14% of American who will live in poverty? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Because they’re fat, stupid, and lazy.

I think that’s the basis for Larry the Cable Guy’s show on the History Channel.

But, anyhow, as for Egypt, the last time the young folks over in that part of the world rose up to overthrow one of our dictators, they wound up with the Ayatollah, and I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind. But, hey, it was better than living under the thumb of a US controlled despot.

Which I guess is where “these colors don’t run the world” comes in.