4 replies to this topic

[WorkingPoor]

Imagine if you will....Your reality has merely been an illusion. Barack is really W. Always has been. Photographic evidence does not lie. The truth is that, here in The Twilight Zone,  we are now experiencing The Third Term of The George W. Bush Presidency....

[Pulp_Cutter]

I understand the motivations of the big corporations and their bought politicians; base as they may be, they're simply acting in their own self-interest.  What I DON'T understand is the behavior of the American electorate.

From the polls I've seen, the majority of Americans favor this latest tax cut extension/stimulus deal "because it'll stimulate the economy, and get us back to normal".  In other words, the average American is still buying the illusion.  Are they really that blind....or are they afraid to face reality?

Easy to predict what the federal govt will do: whatever's best for the big corporations.  I don't see any big step change coming (Armageddon, revolution, or 4th Reich in America, etc.), just a gradual slide in:
  
   1)the dollar's reserve status,
   2) America's economic punch,
   3) Americans' standard of living, and
   4) laziness and gullibility of the American electorate.

So, no revolution IMO....but history will still group Bush and Obama with Louis the 16th.

[Lee Adler]

When facing reality is not an option, facing reality is not an option.

[analyste de Boston]

>From the polls I've seen, the majority of Americans favor this latest tax cut extension/stimulus deal "because it'll stimulate the economy, and get us back to normal". In other words, the average American is still buying the illusion. Are they really that blind....or are they afraid to face reality?<

Exactly this.  Americans DO BELIEVE we can go back to the 1980s (the later, richer part) once we get this gravy train back on track.  They truly understand nothing about what happened in 2007-8, 'time heals all wounds' or some such rubbish!  (Or maybe a more apt metaphor is the junkie in denial? We're addicted to debt but imagine we can keep writing bad checks...)

There's ZERO UNDERSTANDING this Great Unwind started with Johnson & Nixon closing the Gold window, that the Inflation of the 1970s was just the first in a number of stages of a collapsing economy, that Wall Street's hijacking was the end of the US industrial economy, but 2000-02 was the implosion of the Funny Money Spectacle, and that the desperate reflationary effort of 2002-5 was a penultimate chapter in the Dollar as we knew it (for 30 years.)

No: 99% of the people don't grasp this trajectory, at all.  Sure, some know the good jobs are gone (since the 1980s!) & not coming back; the USA is a gutted & hollowed out economy with a large service sector borrowing from the future for 20 years.  The degradation and eventual impoverishment of the so-called middle class is an all but foregone conclusion. If a few might figure it out, NO ONE wants to admit it. Juggalo Nation, we iz!

At last, we've turned into a mirror image of the Soviet Union. At the top, a paranoid police state desperately seeking short term financing for a rotten & discredited dream.  At the bottom, an angry, confused but ultimately docile masses seethe in rage, whoring for whatever they can get.  To pay for yet another War in Afghanistan? Haha, the irony shouldn't be lost on those who supported Obama.  He's no FDR nor demonstrated any will to confront the looming catastrophic reality with any vision or creativity.  Nevermind the enormous stimulus that would have been required - readily available to the banks, of course oh sorry, nothing left! - there's zero national commitment for such an undertaking now either.  Fact is, Obama had no vision & blew whatever chance he had in those first 10 months.

The other side offers Proposition 13 type solutions!  Republicans never bitch & moan about bridge-to-nowhere projects in their districts (the sprawling police-state of prisons is a veritable gulag system) but they sure can whine about FDR, Socialism, etc.  Fascism has a price: trillions for more imperialist wars as our bridges & schools collapse.  Brilliant!  there's no way out, but this is by design and for a purpose.  The bankster elite want to auction off public lands/the national patrimony at fire-sale prices (& purchased with tax-payer money!), just like they saw the kleptocrats do in Yeltsin's Russia.  

I'm not seeing any way out of this mess, or how it's set to "get better" soon. More hiring? We still haven't made up for jobs lost in 2000-2!  Maybe I'm just pessimistic ("un-American") but sovereign defaults and a debased worthless currency look inevitable, now. The illusion of endless unfunded mandates, military adventures across the globe, burgeoning Medicare & Medicaid costs, the prison-state expenses: all of it must end.  (It's ALL unaffordable in worth-less paper. Sorry.)

The only question is WHEN.  The Fed can & will juice the markets for the corporate shareholders benefit - don't doubt they won't - but for how much longer can this game continue?  At SOME POINT there must be a reckoning.  I suppose the system finally implodes around 2020, AFTER the entitlement programs are bankrupted and schools start shutting down (2014-16.)

If the system cannot be fixed, I doubt the Republic will survive either. Facing reality means admitting the unsustainable trajectory leads to the abysmal failure of the USA as we knew it these last 40 years.  Who wants to face that reality??

Another Sarah Palin reality teevee show, please. Ah, that's better: Willow's filling out, isn't she?

[Brugman]

So, the bottom line is the tax deal keeps the same tax cuts for everyone that we have had. Same tax situation as the last 2 years. Same tax situation prior to the last 2 years. So what are we CHANGING again? I keep scratching my head on that one. I guess Washington thinks the rich folk are going to start handing out money because they get to stay in the SAME tax situation. WTF???  "Hey honey...we get to pay the same tax next year that we did this year. What do you say we hire a full time employee to paint your toenails for you?"

I read the Yahoo article today that the Washington DC area is the most educated. Really?