Crocodile tears

Most bad drivers, like the American public in general have no concept of momentum or kinetic energy. Americans are the sort of people who will complain they're still falling after the parachute opens. Americans were the people who lapped up Fox News' "Democrats are pessimists trying to tear down the economy which is strong, strong, strong" and the Administration's "Debt doesn't matter" philosophy and are still the people who remain steadfastly unaware that the Republicans raised the Debt ceiling 7 times in the 8 years they held the White House and asked for a bigger bailout with no accountability or accounting. They're just shocked, shocked, shocked to see what that farleftliberalcommie president is doing and just look at the tears in Boehner's eyes.

Listening to Tim Geithner trying to be re-assuring on Meet the Press this morning didn't do much to dispel the idea that Republicans want nothing more than to allow default so as to give the illusion of Democratic guilt to their "look what Obama did" strategy. If he's right that the government will still pay it's bills after August 2nd, there will still be serious repercussions for all of us. If Geithner is right that a larger catastrophe than the Great Depression has been diverted it makes little impression on those who don't remember what caused the 1930's to be what they were and what brought about the rebound. They don't remember that every experiment in drastic upper bracket cuts has has the same negative result, that an extra few percent on the top bracket puts more back into the economy than cuts do or remember that paying off the debt on WWII brought steady expansion and job growth and infrastructure improvement. The kids in the back seat will continue to bitch until the money they imagined they had five years ago materializes again.

No, it's burn baby burn and the new Utopia will rise from the ashes and far better to let people who need Social Security and Medicare to stay alive die and reduce the surplus population than for hedge fund tycoons to pay an extra couple of grand more and send an extra couple of grand less to to offshore tax havens. If Medicare is indeed bankrupting us, it's by Republican design. If the debt is expanding, it's part of their plan to pay it off by reducing taxes and eliminating things they have opposed for 75 years on "moral" grounds. They look on economic tragedy as an opportunity and are probably quite aware at the Boehner and Koch Brothers and Murdoch level, that the 'lower the income to make the debt go away' strategy will, like pulling back on the stick and cutting the throttle, send us spinning downward instead of climbing. It's what they want.

I would be tempted to give a shit once again if there were any significant number of people who recognized that funny feeling in the rectum for what it is and weren't too easily seduced by the feeling of importance one gets by joining the Low-Brow Brotherhood of Trolls and Tea Smokers Marching Band, but there aren't enough and and no, I'm not tempted.

Foxed up

President Obama has made so many egregious mistakes that we're all in terrible danger. He's sending the "worst of the worst" from Guantanamo to your children's playgrounds. His appointments can't be trusted and most "shocking" of all, even though Mike Wallace all but forced Chief Justice Roberts to swear him in the second time, Obama isn't really the president because he didn't have his hand on "the Bible." No, I haven't gone completely insane, I'm quoting Fox News. If you watched The Daily Show Thursday night, you saw the following clip:




You see, I'm not making this stuff up. The same people who told you we have to, in the name of freedom and our safety obey the Führer president and the same people who supported each and every act that brought on our dire predicaments; who insisted that economic collapse was a liberal lie, that we were about to "win" in Iraq every day since we arrived, are telling you this one really can't be obeyed. Of course those with longer memories remember when Bill Clinton wasn't, for some Foxed up reason I no longer remember, really the president either and shouldn't be listened to.

So whether or not Fox lives up to its promise of revealing some hideous hidden "truth" behind every aspect of the Obama presidency once a day for the first hundred days, I won't be watching them. Unfortunately others will and for them the fiction will seem real and the fear will grow. I find it hard to feel any kind of optimism and those who think that we've "won" and that things are in good hands now may soon find that the process of losing started on November 20th.

The people who watch Fox usually don't watch anything else. They have no idea that the lies and distortions they've been hearing are often repudiated and disproved by all the other news services. They haven't a clue that one of the largest anti-American campaigns, indeed the most organized program of treason against truth, justice and democracy is broadcasting 24 hours a day. Fox is using and will use everything they can find to undermine confidence in our government and anything it does and as you can see is hoping our country will fall and our hopes will fail. To me, it constitutes as great a danger to our future as any foreign enemy or global economic collapse. Traitors, saboteurs, liars and purveyors of irrational hate, Fox News is the enemy and anyone who hopes not just for our survival, but our improvement owes it to the world to use every opportunity to expose them.