Monday, July 12, 2010

"Keep Your Big Government Hands Off My Medicare" and other "Zombie Lies" of the American Right! (By Gene Lyons, award-winning editorial writer for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette) "One of the enduring mysteries of American life is how Republicans keep succeeding by failing. The presidency of George W. Bush ought to have inoculated American voters against GOP economic theories for a generation. Tax cuts for the wealthy led not to greater prosperity, but runaway budget deficits, a doubled national debt and the weakest job creation since World War II. See-no-evil financial deregulation damn near destroyed the world banking system. "By the time President Obama was inaugurated last January, the economy was bleeding 750,000 lost jobs a month; the Congressional Budget Office had already projected the FY 2009 deficit at $1.3 trillion -- a budget written by the Bush White House. After taking over in 2001 with a healthy budget surplus and some economists warning against paying down the debt too fast, Bush doubled it to over $10 trillion in eight short years. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/06/30/economy_fail_right/index.html

11 comments:

  1. But, given the luck (or the lack of any good luck) and the vitriolic right wing chattering classes, Obama is likely to be a one term president and the whole world will be a poorer place if that happens.

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  2. It simply amazes me how Republicans can abuse the middle class and then convince many of them to vote Republican.
    Hell Republicans are even stonewalling unemployment benefits for the unemployed!!! Do these poor unfortunate folks
    think more of the Republican Party than their own kids??

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  3. I'm sad to say you are right Jim. But don't count the guy out yet. The GOP leadership is pretty fractured thanks to the Tea Party Movement. How those flakes would hold up successfully in a general election in 2012 is not a given, not by a long shot.

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  4. A total mystery Mike. I grind my teeth at night over the illogic of what you just stated quite well.

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  5. It seems to me to be a simple matter of blind faith and indoctrination Doug that creates this anti-welfare mindset.. the well known turkeys voting for Christmas syndrome, but its not just the GOP is it?.....its the Democrats too....it is the entire system that is at fault. The last vestiges of democracy are so much in the hands of the corporate lobbyists that there is nothing that can be done within the existing federal structure, nothing that isn't tainted by corruption and therefore in need of a total overhaul. The media, the military-industrial complex, the corporate sponsorship the entire shooting match it seems to me is irredeemably corrupt whoever the president is. Obama is just the latest 'Aunt Sally' appointed to take the flack and meanwhile the whole can of worms continues to reproduce itself with the same unelected corporate governance perpetually in control.

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  6. I'm afraid this is what has come to pass over here, AA. It has been remarked we have the best Congress money can by, and the need for monetary reform of the Presidential elections is long over due.

    Obama is indeed taking a lot of heat for thirty years of deregulation, much less his own errors. It's tough for anyone to lead a country where it takes a super majority in the Upper House to pass a bill and forty-five percent of the public have the memory banks of a pack of gerbils.

    It's hard enough to put up with people who can't see their own interests, much less deal with the money machine between Wall Street and Washington.

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  7. Unfortunately it's the way things have been of recent. Some I do believe see it but waiver from it all now as it's really became a drama, yet it's interesting to see how things are going.

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  8. Yes, a lot of waivering is going on because the recovery is so slow, Jack. We will have a recovery I'm pretty sure--who will get the most credit for the leadership behind that recoverly may be more a matter of propaganda than facts.

    Luckily for Canada, the deregulation mania did take hold up there in the last decade.

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  9. Literally Doug I really didn't know all this was happening but well one would hope that it does come into place and that it all works out. I made a mention the other day that even within Canada it's not perfect as Canada does not have a perfect system but for the most part nearly every province now is a two tier system so there are things that are within changes here as well. And I think this recovery people do wish for it to go very fast but it all does take time. And there is always much more propaganda certainly that so often does take away for the facts.

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  10. As a tax raising state the US, just like any other state can have EITHER a militarised foreign policy, illegal invasions and full spectrum dominance...OR .....adequate health care, education, housing and social security at home, it cannot have both.
    I think that the tragedy is that both GOP and Democrats want to have this imperial (oil snatching) cake and eat it.

    They are all in the pay of the military industrial complex and so long as that situation pertains there is really no hope of a more equitable and less warlike America.

    Irrespective of party affiliations there are no honourable, clean or uncorrupted politicians in Washington (or London for that matter) their exitence is a myth.... and therefore there are no macro-political solutions to these massive problems either.

    I believe future 'solutions' will have to be micro-political but hopefully federated across not just North America, but the entire world, so by mutually rational self interest..... they link up into a global macro-structure.

    Now that's what I call globalisation Doug!

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  11. Again I am truly amazed not that I am the smartest but man you are a very smart lad!

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