Bombs and Monsters

Sorry about the lack of posts this week. The year may be new, but it's already getting old. I can't remember ever feeling so overwhelmed. At least the last Congress is history, the lame duck session particularly having been overrun by the one of the most bizarre bunch of political quacks in recent memory. Some of them are back, their feathers ruffled, for another paddle in the scummy Washington pond. F-bomb boy Boehner with cheek of tan is still around, though having barely squeaked through for a new stint as the Weeper Speaker.

The new year promises more of the same old, same old with a vengeance. We are being inundated with one episode of Shock Doctrine Theater after another. The Feckless Cliff Aversion Act was just signed by long distance presidential robo-pen, giving us a clue of how utterly contrived the crisis was in the first place. Now we're getting previews of Sequestration Saga and Debt Ceiling Drama Redux. Will Obama cave again, or will he stand firm for the principles he really, truly, deep down inside believes in? is already on the pseudoliberal marquees. Unbelievably, the narrative still revolves around this being a Democratic vs. Republican battle, rather than the Class War it truly is. Here's how I responded to Paul Krugman's column today, about the coming Battle of the Budget:

The trick to using disaster capitalism tactics is to use them sparingly, in order to keep us from noticing how our leaders are shafting us. But here we are, the targets of a marathon assault of clumsily epic proportions. We're just now finding out how narrowly we dodged the initial barrage of New Deal-destroying dummy bullets, with the news that Harry Reid tossed the president's most recent Bargain for the Grandees into his fireplace. 

But like a demented phoenix, the austerity monster keeps rising from the ashes. The president said he still wants to "improve" Medicare, calling it our greatest deficit driver. He still seems perfectly willing to cast himself as the great appeaser in the pursuit of an awesome deal that Wall Street will cheer about. He said nothing, of course, about such deficit cures as dismantling our trillion-dollar war machine, or phasing out private insurance to bring health care costs down, or raising the FICA cap to protect Social Security, or a living wage law, or a financial transaction tax. But the Chained CPI monster is still on the loose, with various and sundry allied threats of less food, less heat, less housing assistance, and less medical care.

Meanwhile, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, the top 100 plutocrats added a combined $241 bn to their kitty last year, for a total aggregate net worth of $1.9 trillion.

The new anthem of the oligarchs is playing loud and clear: They can never be too rich, or the lesser people too thin.