In the history of economics these are “interesting times”, times when the great deceit that is “Free Market Reaganomics” was exposed for what it really is – a lie covering up a thieving game in which exorbitantly paid gamblers play high risk games with other people’s money – a game in which winnings are privatized and losses are subsidized by the taxpayer. Is there no end to the bovine forbearance of the American taxpayer? In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a foreigner, living in Bend and I’ve had the benefit of several years of entertainment in which the American populace has been skillfully divided against itself by trivialities like gay marriage, gun ownership and the Oath of Allegiance while the aristocracy laughs all the way to the bank in their $750,000 cars.
The sight of an ultra-right, Neo-Con junta fervently nationalizing financial institutions Cuban style is high comedy indeed. Hey Ronald, what happened to “trickle-down” economics?
On a more serious note…. the selection of Palin exposes McCain’s irresponsibility. Clearly his handlers compiled a list of his “missing attributes;” qualities necessary to garner some of the “women’s” vote, to persuade the Fundamentalist Evangelical Conservative American Loonies (FECAL’s as I call them), gun-toters and who knows what other wackos – they then fed the data into SPEW 3.3 the Republican Computerized Candidate Generator (SPEW 1:1 came up with Dan the Potaytoe Quail) and out she slid like the fetal alien in…. well, er, Alien, and off she went screeching and squawking across the country and the Republican crowds lowed and bellowed on cue.
McCain is irresponsible because in order to get into the Oval Office, he is happy to select as his running mate someone who is unprepared, politically, intellectually and morally for a high office that will potentially put the codes for the most destructive arsenal in history in her grasping and pretty little hands. When a movie of this gaffe is made, it will be a combination of Deliverance, Being There, Dr. Strangelove and Clueless. Hopefully when Americans “abstain” from voting for this ticket it will be more effective than “abstinence” sex-education which is the logical equivalent of trying to solve the problem of breeching levees in New Orleans by trying to stop the rain.
That her candidacy was greeted not with howls of derision and demonstrations in the streets but with nauseatingly unctuous speeches and maniacal applause is yet more proof that the combination of the American education system and your television media is the most effective means of mass mind control known to man. If Republicans can accept, for the second most powerful executive position on Earth, a cross between Tank Girl, Gidget and the Stepford Wives then not only is the bar lowered – there is no bar. Can you imagine any scenario in which the mayor of Yanrakynnot is proposed as the Vice President of the Russian Federation? No, me neither. Americans, it seems, cannot differentiate between the fatuous and the serious.
Come back Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, all is forgiven!
R Shortall, Bend
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2008.
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This country is so backwards yet you’re here profiting from it. Eh, Shortall?
Our free market economy, and in particular Reagan’s visionary policy of cutting taxes on the very people who have money to start small businesses, fund innovation and employ people are exactly what makes this country better and more prosperous than whatever one you come from.
Nanner-nanner-nanner, our country is more fucked up than yours. We’re number one, woo-hoo.
The Stupid, it just hurts.
What Churchill said about democracy also applies to capitalism: It’s the worst system ever invented, except for all the others. I’m a firm believer in capitalism; it’s the only economic system yet invented that works. But capitalism without regulation and without accountability does NOT work; it simply is a license to steal. And if you give people a license to steal, human nature being what it is, some of them WILL steal.
It also struck me as very ironic that many of the same people who want the strongest possible laws and the harshest possible penalties for crimes like robbery and rape want no regulation at all of the behavior of corporations and those who run them. I guess that makes sense if you buy into the right-wing dogma that Bidness Can Do No Wrong. But as history has shown again and again — most recently last week — that dogma is full of crap.
HBM: Good Comments. Their are crooks and thieves in all parties.
I have to laugh when I read some of these comments. I agree with the writer who points out that Shortall IS still here in the USA. Having lived in what I suspect is his home country–Britian–I can understand why he continues to live here. England is drowning in their YOB culture (football houlagans, drunken louts) drowning in their “free” medical care system which is not even second rate; it is third rate! Drowning in their bumbling water mismanagement (the only county in the world that continually has a water shortage though it rains sometimes for 3 months without letup-may, june, july 200–for instance). Of course he is here. But it is the USA and he has the right to spew!