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| Coming Sooner or Later (movie poster treatment by Kat Garcia) |
What is the point of writing anything, since the waves are crashing and the tide is turning and the ship is sinking and we are all DOOMED!?!
The New York Times was reporting that all the congress people are going to "huddle" with Obama but five minutes later the huddle fest was apparently off. Wall Street is bearing down on Pennsylvania Avenue. Ouch! Sounds like some real contractions in the economy, what with the GDP shrinkage and all. The Senators are yakking it up over Catfood Commission Two, which from all indications will be the fifth branch of government empowered to pass bills/cut "entitlements" in secret, without debate and best of all, without C-Span, once some unknown trigger is pulled. It is all quite mysterious and something we won't know for sure until it's a done deal done in a back room. But we're not going to like it.
In case you were wondering, the fourth branch of government is Standard & Poors, that reputable credit rating agency that gave the big A-OK to toxic subprime mortgage-backed securities. S&P is vowing to lower the national credit score unless old people are forced to stop selfishly eating and seeking medical attention. Oh no! Another subprime interest rate mess. Wall Street is now dancing on Pennsylvania Avenue's butt.
I have had enough. I am going to cheer myself up now and watch my "Grapes of Wrath" DVD from Netflix.
Update 10:45 p.m. The huddle cuddle muddle is back on at the White House. Dear Leader O told all the senators to wind it down for the night, so everybody go to bed while they negotiate in secret. And that goes for you, peasants!
17 comments:
Progressives seem pretty much uniformly demoralized. My deepest sympathy to you, Karen. Is the poster your own work? I particularly love the "Grover Norquist Production" part.
I wonder what will happen when these chickens really come home to roost. As they assuredly will over the coming weeks and months. Have Americans been sufficiently taught that they are powerless? Perhaps so.
Hi Karen.
1) Thanks for your compliment here a few days ago when I first announced my blog
2) Thanks for linking to my blog entry then
3) I've just posted a new, relatively large entry there. Hopefully it'll be of some interest to some people (beyond the government agencies that spy on us!)
4) Comments at my blog now work, and are welcome
5) Great comment that you've made at Marie Burns' "RealityChex" Blog on the July 31 Off Times Square comments thread
6) Regarding your post here that you are going to cheer yourself up and watch your "Grapes of Wrath" DVD: Consider following that up with "Dr. Strangelove" and "Soylent Green"!
Fred Drumlevitch
www.FredDrumlevitch.blogspot.com
@Ciara,
My daughter Kat and I collaborate on the graphics, me with the idea and she with the Photoshop technology.
@Fred,
Your latest post should show up on my blogroll. Thanks.
The poster is really excellent. Great work by both the idea- and the techno-lady. :-)
Regressives rejoice! The ship of state shall be sinking soon! Only wealth will float!
Had you noticed? There was a coup in the USA, an old fashioned takeover. The blow that felled the great democracy did not come from a disgruntled colonel or a gaggle of generals. It did not come out of the blue like suicide planes bent on revenge from abroad. It came from within, from a club of gamblers and cons Karen calls the Fourth Estate, the big money club of Wall Streeters and Corporate Job Exporters.
The violence of the coup against virtually the entire population of the United States was masked by actors in Washington, DC, who claim to speak for the nation. Despite what you've heard, they work around the clock with true bipartisan fervor using the mechanisms of the Constitution to serve, not the people, not the Commons, but the interests of the Top Two Percent (TTP) on the money scale, people who have been moving more and more rapidly up and away from the rest of us for decades.
“E Pluribus Unum” has been stretched to the breaking point. It will snap officially on August 2 no matter what "plan" Democrats and Republicans agree upon or let slide past the faux crisis deadline.
There is only one plan in many guises. Any of their deals – as well as no deal -- by August 2 will add up to the legal, long-term and continued impoverishment of the people by the TTP. That is a coup as crippling as any that might befall a nation. Soon after, the remainder of our storied civil liberties still in place will evaporate just like the money.
Historians may quibble about the date of the coup. Some will say August 2 marked the date all knives flashed openly to finish off the New Deal and Great Society programs. Those programs will have their guts slit one after another like bags of rice, their contents spilling to the ground, never to be recovered. Others might say the coup should be dated back to President Obama’s First Inauguration, when he began to play out his strange magic of converting hope into ashes, when within a week he appointed Summers and Geithner to seal the deal without strings made by Paulson: the greatest heist in history. Millions of Americans were made to empty their pockets to save the big bankers who had brought the economy to the brink of collapse. The banks have not collapsed. Middle class savings were hollowed out, jobs disappeared and millions of lives are now collapsing like spent balloons.
One of the saddest aspects of this coup is that very few Americans grasp what is taking place before their eyes. It is a quiet coup: no tanks in the streets. The soft hands of the privileged class meet little resistance. The class war ends with a whimper confirming the success of The Velvet Coup.
Dear Karen, we old punsters down in the Keys much appreciate both your wicked wordplay and swordplay. As agenda addenda, you should know that when your fool-filled big boat sailed this morning, crowds along the docks cheered and shouted "Bye Bye Bipartisanship!" Amid the gaiety, Michele Bachmann's husband orally offered to treat and convert any partisans who are still "bi". As well as all "bi" cyclists and "bi" polar bears.
For some reason this Standard and Poor threat really ticks me off. Who the hell are they to lower the credit rating score of the U.S? It is not like they are a reputable organisation with a proven record for accurately rating in the past. Heck! They are part of the reason we needed to bail out the banks and are in this debt. The temerity of these bankers who crashed our economy and an organisation like S&P putting pressure on the Federal Government!
And let’s start threatening to cut payments to the military contractors - not the military - the contractors, if the debt ceiling isn't met and leave Social Security and Medicare alone!
The Bipartisan Ship of Fools and the Bipartisan Shipwreck and Paul Krugman, Very Serious Suckers
[Cross-posted on Realitychex.com]
Chait writes, “The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it…”
Poppycock!
It was flim-flam flummery from the start. The original intent of Our “Incredible Folding President” (OIFP) was to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid into the Washington bathtub and drown them rather than rescue them. He and “the Loon Squad” are using this phony debt ceiling crisis to herd those of us in the bottom 99 percentile to our watery grave in that bathtub.
OIFP’s “Grand Bargain” flim-flams that dismantling Social Security is a “very serious” effort to solve the deficit problem, knowing full well that Social Security is solvent for many decades to come.
As Chait says, “The first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs.”
Our “Incredible Folding President” is actually a conservative, Republican Wall Street imposter in Democrat clothing and he is gutting FDR’s New Deal and the core principles of the Democratic Party. Socialism for OIFP’s masters on Wall Street and free enterprise for the rest of us serfs.
We are all DOOMED!
Where is the shit storm?
Yesterday I read a comment at Truth-Out that said that Obama was never a Democrat, but was actually a stealth Republican candidate all along. I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but at this point it would be very hard to argue against that idea. Anyone here agree? disagree?
@ Jay
Your'e dead on.
@ Ciara
You're more right than wrong. But, if it could be called a conspiracy, it would be a conspiracy of one. I think Obama was infected by a mutant strain of the Ayn Rand virus through his association with Chicago politics, the University of Chicago and admiration of the Clintons' political successes.
Standard & Poors' arrogance is, I think, an indication that the coup, as Jay calls it, is pretty much a fait accompli. And they know it.
What to do? There's very little we can do. At this point, violence would serve the right better than it would serve us. And it would serve the public worse. Violence will come eventually as the top ten become even more arrogant. They will employ right wing sadists and zealots in the police, FBI and CIA to control dissent as it becomes more demonstrative. And they won't have to recruit - such individuals are already available in these organisations, if not in place within them. It's the universal nature of the beast.
When that time comes violence will be the only course left and a good portion of the public will come to see that. That's when we will see the American version of Tahir Square. I believe that when that time comes the strategies of Michael Collins, the Irish nationalist, will be the way to go.
Until that time we can only hope that Jay and I are wrong and that we can still work within the system. Indications don't augur well.
People who actually lived through and remember the depression of the thirties and the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt are dying off at the rate of thousands a day.
As the old adage says, those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it,
We're doomed.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Karen's comment (#68) to Frank Bruni's article in today's N Y Times correctly identifies various actions taken by politicians that have severely damaged the nation's economy and its form of democracy. Her blog today adds the peculiar brand of bipartisanship now being pandered, to the list.
Another concern is the existence of legislative 'triggers', like the debt ceiling limit, that grant too much power to one side, thus allowing that side, or a minority of that side, to hold hostage the country on its entire budget. Senator Charles Schumer said on today's tv program "Face the Nation" that he and other Democrats are insisting that any future trigger must equally empower both sides by stipulating that inaction will result in cuts to programs that are critical to both sides.
This would be progress, if enacted. However, it should be kept in mind that the automatic expiration of the Bush tax cuts, unless affirmative action is taken, functions also as a trigger, this one benefiting Democrats. The status of this trigger is unclear.
Without the debt limit trigger, the Tea Party adherents in Congress wouldn't have the power they have. Thus defeating Tea Party candidates and doing something about legislative triggers are important tasks for the future.
Great movie poster, that sadly, speaks to the truth, Karen.
@jay-ottawa
I've read, and reread your comment. Reluctantly, I have to agree with you. I'm an immigrant, and came to the US from the UK, to pursue my career as a clinical social worker. This was more than 30 years ago. Even taking my youthfulness into account, it was a very different landscape back then.
Each morning I wake up and, for an instant, forget why I have this terrible sense of foreboding. Then I remember.
When I talk to members of my family in Europe, it is so hard to make them understand just how desperate the state of the nation is here.
We're handicapped by a system of government that doesn't allow the electorate the necessary means to force elections, or apparently have much say in day to day 'governance' at all.
But, at least for now, we still have outlets for free speech. And, for that I'm thankful.
@mac gordon re: 'free' speech
I know we have many outlets for speech, but I wonder about our really having outlets for 'free' speech. Many people I have met are hesitant to openly express their true feelings about what is going on. The Patriot Act has had a seriously chilling effect on some ordinary Americans.
I have heard some admit that they won't Google or use certain words anymore because they are afraid it will be misinterpreted and get them 'listed'. They assume the government, or one of its thousands of DHS private contractors, is paying attention.
A man I recently met reported that he sent a message to his New Mexico congressman on the government website, expressing his belief that the b*mbing in Libya be stopped. His message was refused and a message box appeared, stating that he had used a term not appropriate to be sent to a congressmen. He admitted that it had a seriously chilling effect on him.
George Carlin, bless his heart, would have to create a new list of words not allowed to be spoken on tv, or written in emails or blogs, or anywhere else if you want to feel 'free' in America these days.
Anyway, 'f*ck' those clowns in Washington! Maybe we should start a word b*mb and flood the media with forbidden words. That should get their attention.
This is a comment I left on Reality Chex but I think it fits into this discussion as well.
On raising the debt ceiling –
I want to know if the big banks and the big corporations will benefit from the debt ceiling being raised. If so, it will be done as both parties are working in the best interests of the big money in the U.S. However, if there is more profit to be had by defaulting on our debt - I have heard that interest rates will rise so does this benefit the banks who will continue to get 0% loans from the fed? - it is a very real possibility that there will be no compromise. I had assumed that it would be in the best interests of American based Mult-National Corporations and banks for the U.S. to honour its debt obligations. Consequently, unlike many, I haven't bought into the Debt Ceiling Armageddon and have assumed it is ALL about biting away at Social Security and Medicare.
And Karen left another great comment as well on Maureen Dowd if anyone missed it!
My last comment hasn't posted yet, but thought I'd weigh in on the passage of the "Great Compromise".
I am just NUMB. Not even sure I care anymore. The bright spot of the day was getting notification from Planned Parenthood that women will get birth control without co pays. After feeling the joy of that small victory, I find out that it doesn't take effect until sometime in 2013!
Excuse me, I'm going to go put my head in the oven--too bad it's electric.
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