State of the Outrage
Because Barbara Bush taught him to "use your words, George," her son the president, rather than actually mooning some Senate Democrats at the joint session of Congress on Monday night as he would like to do, will instead call them terrorist-lovers for refusing to give retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms in the FISA bill, and he will call them partisan obstructionists for wanting to extend unemployment benefits in the economic stimulus bill now pending.
Because the political media's machismo depends on admiring cynicism as realpolitik, when the Clintons claim victory in the Florida primary this Tuesday, the mandarins will pronounce it a brilliant chess move, rather than revealing it as a desperation-borne contempt for the rules of the nomination game they had previously agreed to, and as condescension toward those who still naively care about playing by them.
Because there is no accountability in punditry -- outside, that is, of Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann -- Rudy Giuliani's flameout in Florida, like Fred Thompson's before him in South Carolina, will occasion no reminders and no regrets for the jock-sniffing musk-addled crushes once harbored toward them by the Chris Matthewses and Bill Kristols of the political locker room.
Because there is nothing like necrophilia and hagiography to prolong our national addiction to historical amnesia, this week's Republican debate at the Reagan Library will prompt no admission that the sub-prime meltdown now dragging Americans into a painful recession, except for the nouveau gazillionaires insulated from it, is the godchild of the Reagan religion of faith-based deregulation, fundamentalist market worship, and a massive government-engineered transfer of wealth from the middle to the top.
Because "the surge is working" -- because, that is, of the indefinitely long presence of more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq, paid for by trillions of dollars that even the Bush administration no longer has the nerve to put in its budget, combined with the absence of any meaningful progress toward the administration's own benchmarks for political success, coupled with the media's inability to cover the war as anything except the kind of occasional traffic fatality story found on local TV news -- a presidential campaign that might have been a referendum on Republican deceit and incompetence, and a frank conversation about America's real security interests in the world, will instead be a moronic barrage of empty slogans about change.
And because the Framers were unable to anticipate the genius at gaming the Constitution possessed by the power-mad viceroys of a future King George named Cheney and Rove, nor could the Founders conceive of a corporate press hooked on revenue-generating junk and intimidated into abandoning its role as Fourth Estate, the year of onanistic Legacy coverage and good-poodle bipartisanship that will be kicked off this week by the State of the Union address will be left unspoiled by erased emails, unmarred by unenforced contempt citations, unsullied by unacknowledged high crimes and demeanors, and unblemished by disgraces that cannot be rectified by pardons for the past and pay packages for the future.
But hey, it's gonna be a great Super Bowl, Romney sure is good-looking, I wonder what kind of cake Jenna and Henry pick, Joe Lieberman really understands how to reach across the aisle, and did you know Obama's middle name is Saddam?
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
The Hague is waiting. It's too late for impeachment. Also, American's are too uneducated to accomplish this, we must rely on other country's. Non-terrorist nations.
Just like the people of 20th century Germany.
We knew they were criminals, who else would rig Florida (& Ohio) elections?
Who else would sue all the way to The Supreme Court? TO STOP COUNTING OUR VOTES!!
Only criminals do this.
They cannnot be allowed to re-write history.
"No Child Left Behind" is the vehicle they put in place to re-write history and keep American's too stupid to prosecute the crooks.
AND gov't funded religion will help!
Who really benefitted from Sept. 11th? It was a great opportunity to seize more power.
Think "Patriot Act", and Warratless wiretaps.
Not to mention this permanent Iraq war.
Now we have secret prison's, secret trials & secret executions, plus, we torture! AND we are the worlds largest weapons manufactur
EDUCATE YOURSELF, and all those you love.
Marty Kaplan is a wise man, love your writings.
Yes..Marty
Now..from Keith Olberman..
The arrogance and sociopathic mendacity of the retarded chimpanzee and commander-in-THIEF Bush is evident in his beady little orbs and furrowed puzzled brow as he struggles to make his LAST(Thank God) worthless prattle from his vile maw and spout meaningless drivel, wasting network air time on television, which should have from the very beginning not given Bush even a nanosecond of coverage and should instead have shunned and ignored him completely, rendering his flagrant lies impotent and reducing his bully pulpit to rubble! Bush will get either the Devil or the Deep Blue Sea, criminal prosecution for his illegal lawless activities, or be forgotten as a cancerous anamoly in the pages of history!
Way to go, Marty. Just. . .one. . .little. . .thing. I believe his Obama's middle name is "Hussein" -- which, I know, I know, freaks people out too.
Americans received the exceedingly corrupt and incompetent George W. Bush & the very evil Dick Cheney, primarily because of the deceitful & socially insulting actions of Pres. Bill Clinton. If Hillary is elected to the presidency, we will again see rampant corruption, influenced in no small degree, by Bill Clinton. Eventionally their corrupt actiions will usher in another republlican congress that would stonewall any type of necessary reforms in government. This era will then be followed by another narrow minded, fascist republican president, bent on further lowering the standards of life for working Americans. Triditionally the republican party, and now some entrenched democrats, have capitalized on the misery of the American public. If this present course is allowed to continue, ANARCHY will eventually occur, which I believe is exactly what republicans like Dick Cheney desire. This would then allow them to declare marshall law and eventually forced labor camps.
As a 57 year old American,I have never been more disappointed in our government than the past 7 years.We have a President who finds no fault in breaking the laws he can't bend,and a congress who won't hold him accountabl
If you have the stomach to watch that grinning moron tonight, let's hope he self destructs on national tv. A re-run would be OK too.
"Barbara Bush taught him to "use your words, George,""
Apparently, she forget to tell him to use his brain beforehand.
Oh, that's right, I forgot.
What brain?
:
The State of the Union is
SAD
But Bush is Not.
Therein lies the Problem.
:
I wish the Democrats would have the guts to deny entrance to the Capitol to the quasi-dictator, not attend, turn their backs, put a "you are not welcome" sign or all of the above.
If I see or hear any Democrat aplauding or standing in ovation, I will campaign for people to send nasty notes to them. This man only deserves repudation, beign scorned and eventually judged by the World Court.
The Democrats have a microphone also - Pelosi and Reid can say "No" - and actually stick to it - rather than say "No" - and then a week or two later meekly sneak in and pass whatever Bush wants and then the funny part - they say "Not again".
How many times have we heard "No more blank checks" - LOL - well that is true they aren't blank - Pelosi is filling in the dollar figures and signing it herself.
Resilient is the word instead of recession. The state of Euphemism behind huge problems of inaction of the American Public. As soon as the government sends you money they do not have, A war that is not in the budget and a pile of IOUs in the social security vault. The inflation worries are wiped from Chairman B. What is the value of your salary when all prices go up and they take the energy sector out of the equation because the numbers don't comply with the Presidents vision. How many steps are we from collapse? The White House knew about Enron beforehand. Then the Shell CEO said that oil production will max out in seven years, the sea starts boiling and we will be cooked in a few decades, but the Union is strong. The coalition in Iraq, the surge is working, because we pay the Sunnis off and give them weapons, sounds familiar, it is because that got us into the mess in Afghanistan and we helped create Al'Quaida. The disasters of this Presidency line up from the White House till Congress. Success is actually measured by results. If the Bush voters would have looked at the soldier and business man Bush, we wouldn't have to hear the bullshit tonight.
Unfortunately whatever Bush calls congress (in effect Democrats) will be true because the Dems will as usual cave in to whatever he wants. To some extent they will cave because of us(the public). Americans are too easily manipulated. The one thing that I had been led to believe was most important about being an American was that we were individuals who could not be led around by the nose. That we were the kind of people who could think for ourselves and took pride in the fact that we Stood up to be counted. I think of late that Americans have become not much different than the German people of the Nazi era. Easily manipulated by such things as false nationalistic pride confused with real patriotism. Abject fear, which flies in the face of the fact that we have a nation of people who own guns, some more than one or two. How do people armed to the teeth feel such ridiculous fear. And then allow idiots who run our nation to manipulate us with that fear. Manipulate us into making stupid decisions such as selling away our most basic freedoms. Is it that easy to throw away everything that was won by tooth and nail over two hundred some years.
The Media is also to blame, but what they do isn't something that just started happening in recent years. It was a Hearst who through the use of his Newspaper was able to Motivate America into the Spanish-American war by misrepresenting a structural failure into an intentional sinkingby the Spanish.
We as Americans need to stop letting others do our thinking for us. We have to if we intend to last another century.
935 LIES and counting!!!
This is truly a momentous occasion. Tonight the House votes on the FiSA bill which as drafted gives corporations and government free reign over the rights of citizens to speak freely without feeling intimidation by their elected officials. Barring a filibuster on this bill this is the step over the line. If the bill passes Bush will ceretainly use it to declare his supremacy. Perhaps not quite asking for another term as president - you know - naitonal emergency and all that - but as how good government works when everyone cooperates. What a bunch of bull shit - We've got a freaking chimpanzee incharge of trillions of dollars and whoh knows how many mega tons of explosives at this fingertips.
By the way all you bloggers who are quoting statistics and what's gone wrong and what should be the focus - Remember - In this day ethics is no longer in play. Its baout money and world domination. I'm livid that this president has been allowed to undo this nation as he has done and not have a to deal at all with the consequences of his lunacy. Boston cheers all around for Bush.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
