Friday, April 17, 2009

Sing-Along with Fox -OR- We Will Get Fooled Again

Sociopathic Munchhausen-by-proxy anyone?

It's 1994 all over again. Now With MORE Cowbell.
We're presently living with/through how well THAT worked out, but that doesn't seem
to be remembered.

Covered by a sheer populism veneer, we handed the keys over to the designated-drivers-from-hell who've spent the last 15 years saying one thing and doing the opposite.

Them was some heady times. The promise of a post-cold war's swords being beaten back into plowshares. Balanced, zero-based budgets, smaller government... yada yada yada.

Let's take a look at the features on the vintage 1994 model.

"After years of partisan bomb throwing, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was convinced his party should run on its own ability rather than Democratic failures. Gingrich told The Washington Post before the election in 1994, “We thought a positive party, standing on the Capitol steps, offering a positive set of things people actually want … would be a healthy antidote to the level of anger at [then-President] Clinton and the level of negativism."

Contract With ON America
Government reform

On the first day of their majority, the Republicans promised to hold floor votes on eight reforms of government operations:

* require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
* select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
* cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
* limit the terms of all committee chairs;
* ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
* require committee meetings to be open to the public;
* require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
* and implement a zero base-line budgeting process for the annual Federal Budget.

On the second day? Tinker with the day one shit some more and begin the redefining of terms like CUT, WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE, INDEPENDENT, OPEN, LIMIT, PROXY,...
to conform to the Day ONE failures and new found power. They started leaving blamers in their express elevator to the penthouse and relished pointing the finger at the Clenis as the flatuent one.

The truth of the matter was that these Champions of the people got so drunk doing belly shots at the post election victory soiree that they decided to party on, making it up as they went along and since America so desperately needed to believe their lies, they opted to continue that policy as well. Keep on LYING.

They triumphantly announced "Mission Accomplished" to draw attention away from the toxic fallout spewing from their mangled reforms. One distraction followed another
as one failure after another piled up. Each colorfully festooned with an American Flag and phony certificate of authenticity.

Now they're back. Selling the same shit to an equally gullible, -but better accustomed to eating swill as caviar- public desperate and longing for the good old days.

There's nothing promising a wholesale rejection of the sham this time either.
The stage is being set for a good old fashioned buggering of the works. Unless it's hammered into submission or, preferably, splayed on display in the public square to show it's ugly, hollow, destructive innards.

2 comments:

Phil said...

There are some very VERY stupid people in this country.

Cirze said...

And all you've got to do to see them, BN, is turn on the TV or read a major newspaper (until they all go belly up because no one trusts them anymore).

Until citizens decide to call out the liars every time they lie, the lying will continue until the next liar's bubble begins (at which time, the lying will get worse).

We live in a time of few true people's advocates on the national stage. I recommend reading economic historians (to make up an encompassing title for all) like Nouriel Roubini, Mike "Mish" Shedlock, John Mauldin, Paul Krugman, Sheila Bair, Mike Whitney, Michael Hudson, Robert Reich, Brooksley Born, Dean Baker, James Howard Kunstler, Joe Nocera, Juan Cole, Mark Crispin Miller, Thomas Frank, Tom Engelhardt, William Greider, and the incredible Bad Tux the Snarky Penguin (one of my personal favorite blog sources) for the best economics reporting and explication. You may not agree with them, but I haven't caught any of them in a lie yet.