I now will take the time and trouble
To regale you with some slick Talk-Double.
Pretend we're climbing from the rubble.
Now here's some rank hilarity,
Designed for my posterity --
I'll serve up cruel Austerity
And call it shared Prosperity!
My cuts to social safety net
Will please the folks at Fix the Debt
The plutocrats I will abet,
No matter how you fume and fret.
But I'll pretend to love your kids
I'll sell Pre-K to corporate bids
Republicans can flip their lids
Democracy can hit the skids.
And how about that minimum wage
To foment up some Teabag rage?
My liberal base I will assuage
As they give three bleats from their ovine cage.
By scoffing at the Bill of Rights
I'll take my power to new heights
I'll send my drones on endless flights
We've got the whole world in our sights.
We'll do free trade with far-off lands
And bow to corporate demands.
Climate change is in my hands --
So let's frack for more gas and flow those tar sands.
My gun control ending dazzles with luster
But thanks to the Dems, it'll never pass muster.
There's no reform of the filibuster,
So my call for a vote is so much bluster.
God Bless America and keep her free,
Give up your rights, call it liberty,
Give up your wealth to Plutocracy,
God Bless America, and God Bless Me.
Most excellent. Here is my slight variation:
ReplyDeleteGod Bless America and keep her free,
Give up your rights, call it liberty,
In exchange, greatest nation on earth
I'll give you cheap flattery.
God Bless America, and God Bless Me-- especially me.
Very Good. :)
ReplyDelete@Karen--
ReplyDeleteI salute you! There's still someone left out there who takes the time to produce a poem with meaning, and also has what I regard--in my small-minded, technocratic way--as the two other essential elements of true poetry: a rhyme scheme, and meter.
Brilliant!
Republican Reps seldom represent to any degree
ReplyDeleteBut John Boehner's look says it all -- for me.
I think that I shall never see
ReplyDeleteA poem lovely as a tree
--Unless it's written by Karen G
Thanks everyone. I was too lazy to parse the whole damn speech. I did catch up on Rubio's bizarro performance. Is he on drugs, with the face-flicking and water-slurping? Anyway, here is my responce to PK's column:
ReplyDeleteWatching Rubio's speech, it was apparent that something was eating at his brain. Before the water gulp heard round the world, he kept flicking something away from his eye and swiping at his chin. He was showing all the signs of delusional parasitosis. He reminded me of the character in Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" who is addicted to something called Substance D, and imagines that bugs are attacking his face. Fake reality has consumed his whole life. And just like Rubio and his gang, he spreads his fake reality to others, causing a national epidemic of delusion.
Rubio is not only spreading the myth that government forced people to buy homes they could not afford, he also hilariously spews the lie that the President is a big government spend-thrift.The trouble with that notion is that Mr. Obama himself is a deficit hawk beholden to Wall Street -- the great stuff he promoted during his SOTU speech was predicated on cutting the deficit and even "reforming entitlements." The GOPers, of course, only pretend to be thrifty when it involves helping ordinary people. When it comes to defense spending and the security state and shielding the rich and the corporations, the sky is the limit for both corporate parties.
Meanwhile, the president remains ominously silent about overturning Citizens United, which he endorsed doing in his first SOTU speech.
Whether it's from zombie ideas or whether it's from the influence of limitless money, the political brain is eminently corruptible.
Economic zombies on parade – “eminently corruptible political brains”
ReplyDeleteOur economy has gone from free-fall to stagnation.
The question is not why has the economy failed to reach a full recovery yet, but why would full recovery be expected at all, given the policy course that Obama has charted for the nation?
While everyone is focused on Marco Rubio and his guzzling Poland Springs, the stealth deficit hawk, Wall Street beholden Obama continues about the business of his puppet corporate masters.
How about the disturbing aspects of Obama’s nomination of Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary?
At this week’s Senate Finance hearing, Lew was pushing Wall Street’s agenda of deficit reduction and "entitlement" reform, elite policies that will guarantee an even more Gilded Age. Where was the defense of the New Deal and safety net programs? There was none.
Our austerian policymaking elites, led by the thinly-cloaked neoliberal Neocon Obama, are bound and determined to bring continued stagnation, unemployment, and economic stress on American families and a second lost decade of deteriorating living standards for lower- and middle-income households.
The public image of Obama is of a "man who never was." Obama has been worse than Bush because not only did he embrace all the worst of Bush’s policies, he expanded on them and gave them bipartisan legitimacy. Obama continues to speak as if he has not presided over the most significant expansion of income redistribution upward. Inequality has accelerated with the biggest transfer of wealth in history.
Karen’s replies to Krugman and commenter David were, as always, right on.
Obama’s State of the Corporate Union (so well captured by Karen’s "Shorter SOTU") leads the parade of economic zombies.
What is needed are endless parades teeming with people carrying torches and pitchforks.
Karen,
ReplyDeleteThis David Underwood seems to exhibit the same capacity to create new facts to maintain a narrative that another David (Brooks) did the other day.
Your response to him was excellent. I'm not sure what exactly was "anecdotal" about your links.
Check out Tom Toles' Rubio cartoon. It's priceless. Right up with Karen's response to Krugman.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/2013/02/14
I am sharing this with my friends!
ReplyDeleteand I would love to see this go viral - Kids, dogs and Karen Garcia RULE!!!
Karen,
ReplyDeleteHow the hell to you find the time - never mind the energy? I think I'm prejudiced towards the XX chromosome pair. I once referred, in class and in frustration, to the Y chromosome as a broken X. It went over well with both XX and XY students, but not with the faculty (I was an adjunct ,which explains a lot).
Jay, you'll love this. After reading Blow's article, The Real Obama, I was
ReplyDeleteso infuriated by his visions of our President as well as all the amazing
comments following, extolling the virtues of the new, electrified man who will now lead us out of the desert that I wrote a carefully worded comment outlining all the issues he has not dealt with and the reasons why he never will. Of course it got all of 5 votes (today up to 6) along with other comments from poor souls in that lowly recommendations category trying to tell the truth. In going over the answers I found a number of new comments from people responding to what others had written, among them the following:
lotusflower0
Chicago
.Some of your conclusions don't seem to concur with reality of both what
happened in the U.S. over the last few years, and the reality of how our
government works regarding separation of powers. Perhaps you have been in
Ontario for too long.
In reply to pvolkov
Feb. 14, 2013 at 10:57 a.m.
Recommended2
Unfortunately, comments had been closed by the time I saw this as I would have had a reply to his reply that would have knocked his socks off. So you see, Jay, why we are in the pickle we are in - we are sour pickles as a result of living in Canada too long!
And James, males as well as females can and do respond to political threat. The fight or flight response
states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the
sympathetic nervous system, priming the animal for fighting or fleeing. The U.S. is divided, unevenly, between those who fight and those who flee depending involving different issues and not between the sexes so much. I have always disagreed with the Feminist view that men (in general) are the enemy instead of the system enslaving us both.
Could lotusflower0 from Chicago be a woman???!!!
Pearl,
ReplyDeleteTimes commenters anonymously posting from Chicago always set off my radar detector. I suspect a bot from Organizing for Action, O's new grassroots slush fund.
Pearl, Karen says her radar perks up suspiciously whenever she comes across the word “Chicago” in a blogosphere comment. To quote Richard Gere from “Chicago,” the musical: “Understandable, understandable.” Especially when found in the Times following yet another fawning tribute to our great leader, The Illusionist.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, my eyelids close reflexively and my nose flares as it registers the smell of bad fish whenever I see the names of David Brooks, Charles Blow or someone self-afflicted with a moniker like “lotusflowerO.” O[bama?] As already mentioned, the “Chicago” byline doesn’t help either.
Krugman is in the same boat with Blow as far as I’m concerned: full of criticism for the Republicans and … wait, wait … and …. No, that’s it: Period. Seldom is heard a discouraging word about our two-term, two-timing Illusionist. Is there a rule in the Nobel Laureate pact where they’re obligated to watch each other’s backs?
When I read Krugman’s half stories now, it’s mainly to get the rest of the story from Karen’s follow-on comment. Does Krugman bother to read the top comments? Or are commenters like Karen condemned to a No Exit existence forever with media gods who are judiciously half deaf, half blind, half mute? At least she helps the rest of us ease up on our gnashing of molars for what Krugman never says.
The problem with the Obama administration has never been the obstructive Republicans. The problem with the Obama administration is Obama. Our champion, The Illusionist, takes a dive in every fight and then protests the Republican contender tripped him, or gouged him, even when his designated opponent has yet to enter the ring. His cutman never sees a drop of blood from his cheek. It’s the crowd that bleeds.
Back to lotusflowerO. Seems like the word ‘Ontario’ – “Loyal she began, loyal she remains” – makes lotusflower reflexively look down her nose at benighted ex-pats in Ontario who understand so little of recent US history as told by Blow. Sour-pickle ex-pats under the rule of Queen and Parliament are so deprived, unlike sweet-pickle Americans, secure within the wholesome tension of their co-equal executive, legislative and judicial branches. Can’t you see, Pearl? Democracy in Canada is so, so, so pitifully inferior – full of foreigners and loyalist turncoats escaping the land of the free.
Too bad the Times Comment Section shut down before you could admit to your errors about Obama and apologize for yourself and the rest of Ontario.