Now in the center ring, for your amusement, eight performing elephants...

Despite the feisty and spirited republican presidential candidate debate last night, most of the participants reminded me of non-swimmers trying desperately to reach a proffered life ring in deep water; lots of splashing and gasping for breath but very little moving towards survival.  So while the nations eyes are turned hopefully towards Iowa – and when has that phrase ever been uttered – waiting and watching as the stout citizens of Ames gather under garishly decorated tents, scarf free ice cream and – incredibly – decide which of the current field of candidates can proceed to the next step, let’s have a quick review for those of you who chose to watch the finals of “So You Think You Can Dance” rather than the trumped up spectacle of the Faux News arranged and orchestrated performance.

And that, by the way, was the first sign that this was not going to be a serious event.  Anytime the barkers and carnies of the Faux network are involved it immediately becomes deeply suspect.   Drunk on the success of American Idol and shows about the morbidly obese struggling to lose weight, the Faux News production of this “debate” was predictably garish, superficial and over the top, rife with stage-managed controversy propagated by blockheads, Chris Wallace and Brett Baier.  These guys were clearly more interested in generating some kind of buzz and “pull-your-pants-down” publicity than seriously exploring the nuanced positions of the candidates…wait, did I just say that?  I forgot for a moment that this was a republican debate – detailed and serious exploration of nuanced positions isn’t allowed.  If they were to do that, a crowd of tri-cornered hat-wearing ruffians would likely appear in front of their homes or offices shouting and making farting sounds.

So it boiled down to, 1.) Obama is a chump who is bent on destroying the American way of life, 2.) a series of less than fully articulated but nonetheless multipoint plans for fixing the economy, most of which involved “cutting taxes” and “reducing regulation” and which, like a handful of magic beans, promised to immediately produce wondrous results for us all.  Call me a cynic, but, well…let’s just say, I doubt it.  But content aside – and there wasn’t a hell of lot to begin with – let’s get down the inevitable media game of “Who won?” 

Herman Cain, never a serious candidate to begin with, is pretty much done and his continuing in the race is really a function of how much of his pizza money he wants to piss away to prove the point that it is legitimate for an African American to run as a republican, a quixotic quest to be sure, as the day the republican party embraces African Americans is looming somewhere off in the far distance, like landing a man on Mars.  Sorry Herman but I’m just keepin’ it real.   A sizable percentage of the opposition to Obama is because he’s African American and it wouldn’t matter if he came around personally handing out hundred dollar bills.

Rick Santorum kept raising his hand like the obnoxious smart kid in the back of the class room and his old colleague and fellow Faux News shill, Chris Wallace, kept ignoring him.  When he does get a chance his obsession with moral issues trumps anything sensible he has to say about anything else and makes him seem more like your pastor than your president.  He’s also done.  Memo to Rick – railing about gay marriage may seem like a good idea to your closeted handlers but really, that ship has sailed.  Nobody gives a shit, probably not even most people in Iowa. 

Jon Huntsman, a normal, successful, intelligent guy who is, sadly, kind of little and also kind of Mormon, seems to still be a bit uncomfortable with the X’s and O’s of this whole candidacy thing and seems to shrink on stage every time the lights are focused on him.  The guy is intellectually capable of governing but it’s not clear if he has the stomach for the hyper-schizoid scrutiny involved in modern national campaigning and by Halloween he will be back in Utah on his dirt bike with Black Sabbath cranked to 11 on his iPod wondering why he thought this was a good idea.

Ron Paul is, in some ways, my favorite in his libertarian leanings. He also makes a lot of sense in his advocacy of reeling in our perceived foreign policy interests and obligations in favor of taking care of our own citizens before trying to teach goat-herding villagers in Afghanistan how to double down on a pair of sixes or order cheap jewelry from late-night cable TV.  Unfortunately for Paul, he is saddled with a prevailing media burden that he is some kind of semi-disturbed quack, so far outside the realistic boundaries of orthodoxy that no one takes him seriously.  Thus, he can’t win even though he has a cult following and a very intense constituency.  He will stick it out and should continue to try to get the field grounded in something substantial but he will fail in the end.  Maybe Rand can prevail at some point.

Newt Gingrich continues to give off a vibe of someone who really isn’t very interested and he probably isn’t.  He is loaded, has a trophy wife and probably prefers sailing the Med with a good, dry Bombay Sapphire martini and a handful of cialis.  He’ll hang in a while, gathering enough material for another book, and then surface somewhere as an “expert commentator” or elder statesman, making provocative and delirious statements and throwing his opinion around like it’s god’s own truth and end up on a game show or something. 

Pawlenty seems like a decent guy, although a little too prone to go wherever the wind blows, but he can’t seem to get over the fact that the Red Queen is also running and it just seems to piss him off.  He is obsessed with trying to prove what a nut-cup she is, as if anyone who cares doesn’t already know that.   But other than that he seems like an empty suit.  Most of the time when he’s speaking I get the impression that his audience hears him like Charlie Brown’s teacher and is just waiting for him to finish so they can get to someone interesting.   If he can ever forget about Lady Macbeth and get some traction he has a puncher’s chance but if the money dries up he’s out by Labor Day.

This leaves the aforementioned Red Queen and Mitt “don’t I remind you of Reagan?” Romney.  I'm not sure what else I can say about Bachman - she is an attractive, dangerous, bible obsessed serial liar, deeply immersed in an almost psychedelic delusion with a frightening prescription for what she thinks this country is and what it should be.  She is a know-nothing with strong beliefs and as such continues a long line of prominent republicans, with a gestation in the reign of Ronald Reagan, that somehow still bedevils the cultural and political landscape of this country.  She is inexplicable.  She also can't win - she can be a very disturbing pain in the ass, but she can't win.

Romney himself was doing the rope-a-dope last night as he has been for months, a questionable strategy long term and one which reveals that he and his people either underestimate the opposition or are a bit too comfortable with his lead in the polls.  On the other hand, given the gravitas of the group running against him, playing prevent defense has its merits.  Until Perry announces he can hope that either the others fade away or Bachman’s head explodes or both and really nobody laid a glove on him last night so why should he get his hair mussed up if he doesn’t have to.   It will be interesting when Perry does announce to get them both on the same stage so we can judge who has the best hair.   Until then I am left with the existential question; Barack, how in the hell are you losing to these guys?

Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress...

In the most recent sign of the apocalypse, Larry Flint has offered big bucks to Casey Anthony to pose nude in Hustler Magazine, and I don’t think you’ll find a better snapshot of 21^st century America than that – a semi-attractive white trash accused baby killer as masturbatory fantasy.   All you’d need to do would be to put her in swastika panties and the deranged image would be complete.

Speaking of which, Ann Coulter, bitch-queen republican icon and pin-up girl for hunting lodges and militia headquarters across America, has accepted a seat on the board of GOProud, a gay republican organization, in a somewhat disorienting development that can only be explained by her overall fashion sense and fabulous pumps.  (That doesn't explain the inclusion on the same board of anti-tax crusader and tea party hero, Grover Norquist - as far as we know, that remains a mystery.)   Ann was last seen whining about how liberals were, not only godless communist terrorist appeasers, but mean and disrespectful as well, a perfect example of the standard republican strategy of lying, dissembling and twisting the truth shamelessly and brazenly in an attempt to get the media to report it, whereby for a significant portion of the population it turns into the truth.   What’s really kind of satisfying is her sniveling that Karl Rove can’t go out in public without people shouting nasty things at him, an entirely suitable fate for our favorite turd blossom and what he should take to be an ominous preview of his doomed afterlife.

Poor George Bush had to cancel an appearance in Europe because the population there hates the dim-witted bastard and promised to throw stones at him if he dared appear in public.  I’m sure this was a shock to George but I am also quite certain that he is surprised that his shoes are supposed to go on specific feet.   Ann, on the other hand is essentially a well spoken media whore who finds irresistible the opportunity to say something outrageous and hostile while crossing and uncrossing her legs, assuming with some accuracy that most simpletons interviewing her will be mesmerized and not really give a shit what kind of toxic, foul screed she is unleashing.  So many of her fellow republicans are sexually repressed closet queens, bed-wetters and prostitute chasers who try to spin being found in cheap motels by saying they were making sure that the rooms all had Gideon’s bibles, that flaunting her trailer park pheromones has made her filthy rich.  She somehow constitutes a sizable portion of the republican intelligencia, a situation as disconcerting as it is funny. 

Meanwhile in other news, temporary republican front runner, Mitt “I’m a regular guy” Romney, probably dealt his floundering campaign a death blow in Iowa when – clearly flummoxed – he attempted to disarm a heckler by stating forcefully that, “Hey, corporations are people too, you know…”, causing more of the stale air to squirt out of his presidential balloon and moving him ever more quickly towards irrelevancy.   Sadly for Mitt, lots of voters are likely to take his inadvertent advice- “If you don’t like my answers, vote for someone else.”  In spite of the staunch republican resistance to any attempt to get the ruling class to contribute more to the national well being – what Boner calls “the job creators” – I don’t think you’re going to get much traction with independent voters defending corporations.  Taxes might be a dirty word and using it to describe even the most carefully thought out and benign revenue increase has proven to be a winning strategy but even the dullest among us don’t have much sympathy for corporations as people. 

And if the democrats could somehow cut through the sludge and clamor of the cheerleaders on the right, they could make a case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans as part of a broad solution to whatever daunting problem the deficit presents.  Money Magazine published an article today pointing out that increasing taxes on individuals with adjusted gross incomes over $200,000 a year would affect 3% of Americans who earn 26% of total national income and would produce 750 billion dollars in extra revenue to throw at the deficit.   But this tiny minority has somehow convinced the average Joe that raising their taxes is an affront to him as an American and fighting against that is more in his best interest than trying to solve unemployment and shitty wages, unaffordable health care and education for his kids that’s obsessed with test scores rather than learning.  This borders on mystical sleight of hand.  It is easier to explain crop circles.  And even though polls show that well over 60% of voters surveyed hold the sensible view that there needs to be some additional revenue collected in order to solve the problem, the ruling class has kept the public debate on cutting “waste and fraud and inefficiency” and off the eminently reasonable compromise Obama proposed before getting shouted down by the rabble.   It is hard to understand; not as hard to understand as Ann Coulter as a gay icon, but close.

The chosen one cometh; or Rick" Hey, it was god's idea" Perry to declare for the presidency...

Now that he is feeling refreshed and revitalized from his weekend snake-handling dance with the devils of lunatic fringe religiosity, Rick Perry is set to announce he is entering the republican race for the presidency as an instant front runner along with Mitt “Wait, you said I was ahead” Romney and Michelle “I’m not crazy” Bachman; what I like to refer to as the “scares the shit out of me” trinity.  They all represent the anti-science, overtly conservative christian, anti-government, stealth-racist tea party wing of the new republican party, a wing grounded in a terrifying stew of biblical end-of-days fatalism and economic armageddon as a cure for what they perceive as the inordinate largess of semi-communist liberals in general and democrats in particular.

The tea party zeitgeist is fundamentally anti-government.  Not a mature two party system of compromise, congeniality, collaboration and common goals but a “tear this fucker down” contempt for the status quo that would make the Chicago Seven and the Weather Underground proud.  Their stated policy is to obstruct any such compromise and hold hostage any governmental initiative that ignores “what we were elected to do” – that is, reduce the size of government.  While this is clearly a position that rings true with the portion of the American electorate that feels disenfranchised by the mealy-mouthed political class of pseudo-elites wandering from J Street cocktail parties to No-Tell Motels, it doesn’t address the immediate issue of economic survival for the rest of us.  If you get trapped by a fallen boulder and your only choice is to saw off your arm with a nail file, you do what you have to do to survive.  You don’t make that your first reaction if you get your jacket caught in the car door.

But the tea party is obviously the flavor of the month among short attention span media types anxious to find any angle, even if it’s bent over at the waist.   So to the extent that they are given credit for the almost default and subsequent economic chaos, it feeds their hubris and gives them the feeling that hostage taking will always result in ransom being paid, something you should never do and something anyone who ever watched a cop show on TV would understand.   In this they are becoming dangerous to the very powerful interests who created them, as freakish monsters often do.  Wall Street wanted something around which to galvanize opposition to Obama, who they obviously consider persona non grata of the highest order, but in a new and satisfying example of “be careful what you wish for”, they have created a cult of economic doom to rival the delusional Heaven’s Gate cult tossing back Jello shots laced with rat poison while waiting for the flying saucers to land.  

It’s this kind of “Oh, fuck it” fatalism that makes their screeds more disturbing than a typical political rant.  Michele Bachman is alternately called “crazy” and “a real person”, a disturbing confluence of character traits that may go a long way towards explaining her popular appeal.   At some point the democrats may have to face the fact that much of the electorate is just as crazy as she is.  This doesn’t mean they have to get on board the space ship with them but it does call for an acknowledgement that cow-towing and pandering to these bastards just makes them more determined to burn down your house.  

But for now it might also be a good idea if they could uncouple the Book of Revelation from the Macro-economics text book and point out with some urgency that policies that result in 1,000 point drops in the stock market over two days are no more helpful to the economy than leaches are for treating a brain tumor.   Tea party republicans not only gleefully take credit for causing this disruption but promise to replicate it every time they have the chance, an ominous pledge that might make the smart guys at Goldman Sachs, who thought that turning loose a bunch of inexperienced one trick ponies in Washington was a good idea, spend some long nights in the conference room taking turns pointing fingers, spinning the chamber and deciding who takes the margin calls. 

Meanwhile, progressives are wringing their hands over soy lattes and gluten free scones trying to figure out a coherent argument to put forth in opposition to the blare of “the government sucks”  shouts they keep hearing in their nightmares, and can’t come up with anything remotely sexy enough to get the attention of a mob of voters who can taste blood and feel empowered by the sight of the mastodon of DC corruption staggering and about to fall.  The last thing they want to do is continue talking about shit like global warming, immigration reform, gay marriage and other traditional concerns of gentrified liberals – the mob doesn’t care, the media doesn’t care and continuing to try win the hearts and minds of a electoral majority this way is doomed to failure. 

Unless, of course, you find the idea of doom inspirational…

Run Off the Road by a Clown Car...

After weeks of listening to multimillionaires like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi argue about how many bread crusts the rest of us should be allowed to keep to dip in our gruel, I’ve come to the conclusion that it almost doesn’t matter what the content of a particular fountain of political oratory is because the public has turned off large sections of their brains in self defense and the tiny piece they are using regularly isn’t geared for anything more complicated than Snooki’s new diet or which whippet-thin starlet is getting a tattoo on her butt.   There has been a pile of data produced in the last year or so to illustrate this sad fact and now, with 1 in 3 persons still not sure that Obama is a Christian, 38% unable to pass a standard citizenship test and 70% incapable of explaining what the Cold War was or why we were involved in it, it becomes clear why our political discourse in the country has devolved into two varieties of clowns shouting, honking and hitting each other in the head with big, rubber hammers.

Witness the incredible cacophony of blather coming out of Washington since the hyped-up deal was struck to raise the debt ceiling and the subsequent down grade of US debt by Standard & Poors, (a result you could see coming from a mile away).   Democrats and republicans have been tossing grenades across the aisle ever since, each accusation louder and more ludicrous than the last.  The dems are hammering away with their “eat the rich” accusations, accusing the republicans of behavior more in line with Louis the 16^th and his gal-pal, Marie Antoinette.   Republicans fire back with a veritable chorus of voices that it was Obama’s fault – a particularly heinous accusation given that he basically handed them the keys and said, Fuck it” at the end. 

John “Sure I wear pink ties even though they look ridiculous” Boner – in a typical burst of garbled hyperbole – accused the democrats of being "unwilling to make the tough choices required to put Americans on solid ground”, a phrase so meaningless and out of touch with reality that he had to have been into the pharmaceuticals again.  Naturally he refrained from mentioning S&P calling for increased tax revenues.   For their part, democrats conveniently omit S&P calling for entitlement reform as well.   But it was the republican presidential candidates who ramped up the convoluted logic meter to eleven as they fell over themselves trying to pin the blame on Obama in a comical series of partisan blasts.  Pawlenty, a man still searching for someone to tell him running is a good idea, called him inept.  Bachman – senior economist of Christian counseling quack-a-torium, Bachman & Associates, where her husband and their staff are feverishly praying for some kind of Freudian hypno-therapy to un-gay gays, says Obama is “destroying the foundations of the US economy” in a spectacularly over the top rant. 

When you think about it, it is like one of those cheesy dream sequences in a bad sci-fi movie, where evil voices are all talking at once in a perverted version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat on acid.  There is so much bullshit flying around from both candidates and various commentators, experts and senior correspondents,  it’s a miracle we can keep track of what day it is.  Lies, obfuscation, delusion, hallucinations, petty partisan recriminations – it’s all reported all day, every day.   When you have a nation of voters with the attention span of four-year olds it should be no surprise that they prove susceptible to believing whoever lies the loudest and is most often reported doing so, even if it’s in a story about liars.  Any publicity is good publicity, as the saying goes, so when the cameras are rolling and they are always rolling - there is no longer anyone filtering candidates’ speeches for accuracy.

To complicate the effort needed to sort through the incessant hail of bombast, hysteria and general lunacy, all of the republican candidates have spent the summer cloaking themselves in look-at-me-pray hair-shirts of religiosity, lending a certain perverse authenticity to their otherwise questionable ideas of governance in general.   Leading that particular crusade – and smearing on religiosity like sun tan lotion -  is almost-candidate, Rick “god’s going to get back to me about it” Perry, who yesterday, in a spectacularly inappropriate perversion of a Burning Man tribal gathering, spent 7 hours praying and cavorting with various bible obsessed and, in some cases, demented “ministers” in a Texas football stadium, all of whom share common cause in opposing abortion rights, gay rights, and the freedom of religion laid out in the First Amendment for anyone but christians and who believe in every fiber of their being that hellfire and damnation surely await most of the rest of the country, especially the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, otherwise known as the East and West coasts.   As Rick himself put it, “we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us” and he is happy to be the one to remind us; at least those of us turning out for republican caucuses in Iowa and South Carolina.

But relying on religion in the noxious and treacherous political climate we inhabit now in this country is like clinging to a floating piece of wreckage after the Titanic went down; it provides a temporary feeling of relief and well being but it’s going to turn out to be pretty disappointing  as a long term strategy.  Eventually someone is going to have to turn up in a boat or your ass is going down.   And if it was me driving the boat, potential voters who think that we spend 25% of our federal budget on foreign aid and cling to other assorted absurd beliefs could just keep hanging on to that floating deck chair.  I’m not picking you up; I can’t stand the racket.

Tell the truth, tell me who's been foolin' you...

Let’s see if we can figure out which of these things is the good news to take away from the ransoming of the economy to the tri-corner hat-wearing demagogues and self-satisfied dismantlers of the abiding social compact in place since the New Deal, shall we? 

·         The republicans are declared the winner in the prolonged and highly questionable debt ceiling fight by the media in general and the entire staff of Faux News, who are literally red-faced with enthusiasm and bursting with hyper-active fervor.   I think I could actually see that Sean Hannity had an erection when he talked about how Obama’s spending has “gotten out of control” over and over again.

·         A clear majority of economic observers – governmental, academic, and, oh by the way, Wall Street - predict that the “solution” included in the settlement - to cut spending to reduce the budget deficit - will make the economy worse in the absence of any additional revenue generation.   As government spending is currently 40% of GDP – and has been over 30% since 1960 – this unfettered and unfocused slashing of spending at a time when consumers are dazed and disheartened is bound to reduce overall GDP growth to levels even worse that the barely-breathing 1.3% in the first quarter.

·   On August 4, the Dow Jones industrial average falls over 500 points, the largest one day decline in nearly three years and the 9^th largest on record.  It seems pretty clear that the flinty-eyed investment community – with not a bleeding heart among them – doesn’t think this is a good thing.

·  In a profoundly unsettling report the same day, it was reported that sales at thrift and second hand stores have gone sky high, with Goodwill Industries opening a 19^th store in the Bay Area to handle the increased demand for everyday goods. 

· Meantime it was also reported that sales of luxury goods by retailers such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany’s and Mercedes grew 12% in the last reporting period.  Mercedes reported sales of its SUV model increased by over 22%.

· Perhaps not coincidentally, 46 million Americans are now on food stamps.

· 37,000 public positions were reported lost in the jobs report today as a result of a drastic reduction in government spending with more to come and no end in sight.   577,000 public sector jobs have been lost since 2008, 224,000 of them teachers.   

· Other economists noted that corporations remain highly profitable, stocked with cash, and can hire when needed. They're waiting for customer demand to come back in force.

· The economy is still too weak to produce the 250,000 new jobs a month that it takes to bring down the unemployment rate quickly. 

So let’s break it down; consumers who have lost jobs, all the equity in their houses, most of the value of their 401k’s and college savings plans, and have had no real increase in wages since the 80’s, are supposed to continue to spend what money they do have left to support the economy .  If they don’t, the political reaction might well be additional calls to cut the budget deficit more by limiting spending even more until they are caught in a vicious and remorseless death spiral that can only end in a Hindenburg-like crash and burn.  Oh, the humanity…

The most inexplicable part of this is how it is being sold politically to the very people who are most likely to be strapped into the seats, screaming in terror as it goes down.   It’s some kind of strange brew of religion, patriotism, fear, racism and contempt for authority tossed in the blender of the almost frantic and incessant media and information barrage that hammers at the psyche until all that’s left to do is let out a primal scream, curl into a ball and pull the covers over your head hoping it goes away. 

 Yet it seems to me that organizations like Moveon.com and other progressives have made about as much progress winning the hearts and minds of these people as we’ve made doing the same in Afghanistan.  The word “Liberal” has become a powerful pejorative – like nigger.  To most of the “Reagan” generation that word has come to characterize powerless, ineffectual, anti-American immigrant sympathizers who want to take their money and give it to shiftless, welfare mothers who don’t speak English, yet sit around all day watching TV.   

They'd rather embrace some mythic version of America sold incessantly by the popular culture - a version increasingly out of their reach.  And of course the intelligencia of the right are all too happy to exploit these feelings, particularly in light of a black president – a democrat - trying to deal with a profound and historic economic crisis by using the power of government.   This is anathema to everything the republican party has been fighting against since LBJ.  And somehow they’re winning the philosophical battle in spite of their clear culpability in creating the very situation that they have tried relentlessly to pin on Obama. 

 It just doesn't make sense.  It's akin to that helpless feeling you get in a dream of falling; you know what needs to happen but are powerless to do anything but fall, tensed up and waiting to hit the ground. 

Coup d’etat – “the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government”

China in 1911, Bulgaria in 1944, Egypt in 1952, Turkey in 1960, Greece in 1967, Libya in 1969, Portugal in 1974 and Liberia in 1980. USA in 2011.

As we wander away dazed from the plane crash that was the debt ceiling debacle and subsequent passage, it begins to look more and more like the aim of the tea party rabble is the first coup d’etat since the 2000 election Florida recount, when a skinny tie and penny loafer wearing mob of christian immigrant-hating, anti-tax patriots conspired with The Supremes to install George the Younger in the White House in an unruly and chaotic corruption of the democratic process more in keeping with a banana republic than the mighty United States of America.  Now this week, drunk on the hopped up hard cider of a Pyrrhic victory, tea party cabals all over the country are busily tossing sticks in the spokes of government, hoping to force their will on a body politic that’s frankly sick of them but who can’t seem to figure out how to exorcise this particular infestation. 

Witness the shutdown of the FAA, an entirely uncontroversial federal agency whose sleepy governance usually attracts about as much attention as a drag queen in The Castro.  Now all of a sudden due to a tea party intoxicated on its own sustained belligerence, construction projects are shut down all across the country because they refuse to provide funding as long as it contains provisions supporting rural airports and allows workers to unionize.  Senator Orin “Wait, what day is it…?” Hatch is using parliamentary sleight of hand to prevent a vote in the senate because he’s concerned about the labor provisions.  In other words, he is advancing the union busting strategy at the heart of the republican agenda.  Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Ooooooohklahoma insists on eliminating the subsidies that allow smaller airports to be able to function and, although his position is not even supported by committee member Kay Bailey Hutchinson – a republican colleague from Texas – he promises to tie it up to prevent it from coming to a vote, thus “saving” the $200,000,000 a year the subsidy costs.  Never mind that this brilliant plan of systematic obstruction has this result;

The FAA has been forced to furlough nearly 4,000 employees and issue stop-work orders on more than 200 construction and other projects paid for with trust fund monies. Work on another $2.5 billion in airport construction grants has stopped because employees who handle the grants have been furloughed. Tens of thousands of private sector workers have been affected.

Sure sounds like a good way to get America working again and create jobs to me.

Attacking from another direction, republicans have attached multiple riders and amendments to a spending bill that funds the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, favorite targets of oil soaked gas-bag politicians for years but now squarely in the cross hairs of opportunistic anti-environment, global warming deniers and other assorted industry shills riding the waist-coat tails of the tea party government demolition momentum before stunned and godsmacked democrats can organize a coherent plan to stop them, all in the name of reducing the size of government or helping the economy or some other transparent fairy tale meant to continue the mass hypnosis of discouraged and frightened American voters. 

Opposition to these two agencies also plays right into the tea party mythology inherent in the republican zeitgeist; “Don’t Tread on Me”, you can’t tell me what to do, pardon me while I briefly get my hands dirty mending a fence or something.  The only thing genuinely frontier-ish about it is the whiff of horse shit that accompanies it.  Hell, every time George Bush went out back for a “Let’s do some chores” photo op, they had to point him in the direction of the fence he was supposed to be fixing; “Over there, Mr. Havecamp…” 

The only thing amusing about this whole ignominious spectacle is watching the republican presidential candidates trying to out-tea party each other during campaign stops. 

 “I think the Department of Education should be eliminated…”

“Oh yeah?  Well I think the Department of Education and the Interior Department should be eliminated…so there!”

“Yeah, but I was against these things before you were…”

Hilarious.  They all want to be in the big chair when the dust from this tedious exercise settles at Christmas time in 2012 so they’re falling all over themselves courting the one-trick ponies of the tea party but they should be careful what they wish for.  In spite of the sea of pitchforks and torches massing at the far end of Pennsylvania Ave., most of the country has spent the last few days either scratching their heads or changing their party affiliation to Independent. 

Finally, in the news yesterday, my boy Rick “If my wife and god say it’s OK” Perry appears to be very close to being hoisted on the deeply questionable petard of his “Day of Prayer” in Houston, organized as some kind of idiotic publicity stunt back in December when he was still groggy from the spiked egg-nog.  Now as the date approaches, gays are getting married with impunity in New York and it looks as if the only people coming to this ridiculous extravaganza are going to be the kind of fringe elements of the American religious landscape that scare the shit out of people, not inspire them.  Only 8,000 or so have sent an RSVP for a stadium that holds over 70,000 and among them are the worst kinds of knuckleheads, including Mike Bickle, (no relation to Travis Bickle), a missionary from Kansas City who thinks Oprah Winfrey is a sign of the apocalypse.    ( I always thought missionaries went to places like New Guinea and ended up in a giant cook pot – what the hell is he doing in Kansas City? )  In any case, Rick’s peeps are furiously spinning this, saying it’s not really a political event; merely a generous show of spiritual and moral leadership and a cry out for god’s help.  Yeah, like that makes me more comfortable about it, Rick. 

No sir, when one of your key note speakers is of the opinion that god sent Hitler down to rid the planet of Jews, I think you have one crazy bastard too many.  Now if you could just get Michelle Bachman to come too…

Send in the clowns...

I had to take a couple of days off from the BL blog because I was so pissed off and disappointed at Obama and the democrats for their sackless capitulation to John Boner and his tea party clowns that I didn’t trust myself – I thought for sure I’d say something mean, nasty or politically incorrect.  But then, after thinking about it for a while, I decided that I had no choice but to do that anyway and any impulse I had towards accommodation, reconciliation and good fellowship was a complete waste of time and if I did that I’d probably turn into a pillar of salt or something. 

Today all of the news analysis is about how the democrats did a great job because they were able to secure “concessions” from Boner in the crafting of the final bill.  To me that’s like talking the executioner into giving you a blind fold and a smoke before he lines you up in front of the rifles.  Memo to Harry, Nancy and Barack; you got played.   The whole thing was nothing but political theater and you ended up looking like hapless dupes – the skinny kid on the playground trying in vain to not get pantsed.  How this could possibly be spun into something positive is a mystery, even though you “protected” medi-care and social security.   Because for all the media blather and reactionary partisan spiel for the perpetual news programs on TV, those aren’t the problem. 

Social Security has, until this year, had a surplus and actually contributed to the general fund.  Whatever intractable problems attributable to it in the future could be fixed with one simple change; raise the income level at which social security deductions end to $200,000 and the problem is solved.  But of course that might anger the sleepy-eyed dilettantes sending in the campaign contributions so it never even comes up.   Medi-care issues are a bit more tangled but the first steps to fix it are in place with health care reform and that is yet to fully play out.   And no, the budget deficit problems aren’t the result of the stimulus programs or the bail outs, as distasteful as those were.   As a matter of fact, the deficit isn’t really a problem at all in the sense of being what ails the economy right now and this is where the democrats’ cowardly retreat is most vexing.   Here’s what one of the chief investment officers of PIMCO said about this just-in-the-nick-of-time deal;

"Because of the very public and intense squabbles in D.C., already-anemic economic growth will be weaker, the unemployment crisis will worsen, income and wealth inequality will deteriorate further and, ironically, the fiscal dynamics will be more challenging.”

Hmmmm…yep, sounds like everything is going to be OK now that random and obscure discretionary spending programs have been cut down to size.  And this is coming from one of the leaders of a gigantic bond fund, not the brain trust of Moveon.com.   The truth is, this sad and disheartening episode is prelude to disaster, both economically and politically for the democrats.  They had a chance to draw a line and dare the republicans to cross it and they didn’t do it.  Sure, they are spending a lot of time whistling past the graveyard in front of microphones and cameras but at night when they are half way through the bottle of vodka, they know they screwed this up.   When they folded and took any revenue enhancements off the table it was essentially over.

The deficit – to the extent that it’s a problem at all – is the result of the Bush tax cuts, (which Obama would have let expire if he had any balls), and ten years of two wars accompanied by utterly clueless and incoherent exercises in nation building in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  That accounts for about 4 trillion, give or take, and is far more to blame for the economy running on empty than medi-care or after school programs.  How in god’s name did you all let the tea party steal the high ground in this debate?  Because you’re a bunch of pussies, basically.  You blinked.  You flinched.  You let the Clanton Boys beat you to the draw.  You saw the riled up new kids coming and you hid in the closet.  Pick an insulting metaphor…Now only did you not address the true economic issues causing such pain, fear and loathing in the country, you probably doomed us more of the same by putting the pillow over your heads during the scary part... letting the big kids steal your lunch…pick a metaphor…

Wait, I found one that really sums it up nicely, I think - compliments of the Huffington Post:

The review of 20 studies published over the last 10 years shows that there is little evidence that colon cleansing improves health or promotes weight loss, while there is much evidence that shows it is associated with bloating, vomiting, cramping, renal failure and even death.

Yesir, I believe that says all you need to say about it...