The Democrats in Washington are beginning to look like a tribe of volcano worshipers, living in the ever-present shadow of Mount Obama, which has been spewing federal spending into the American atmosphere nonstop for nearly two years. Its ash covers everything.
This ancient Democratic tribe, whose number is 255, live in a rambling, run-down temple called the House of Representatives. They share the House with a sporadically hostile tribe called the Republicans, whose population has dwindled to 178. Every few years the tribes engage in an arcane martial-arts contest known as "the elections." Some of the members do not survive.
The Democrats have long believed that Mount Obama's lava field of inert dollars is the staff of life and will save them from extinction. But recent field work by independent ethnographic analysts suggests that the Democrats' years of living off the land of the spending volcano is probably toxic, and could result in at least 50 of them dying in the forthcoming elections.
Still, there exists inside the Democratic tribe a powerful group of priests who practice an abstruse discipline known as Keynesian volcanism. Their belief, in sum, comes down to: The bigger the better. For them, the eruption of Mount Obama was the opportunity of a lifetime.
The February 2009 eruption of Mount Obama, called "The Stimulus" by the Keynesian volcanists, sent some $862 billion cascading across the American landmass. Then came a $1 trillion eruption, which an ecstatic Democratic tribe chanted would provide "health care for all." The volcano's eruptions spread far and eventually covered the fertile fields of the entire nation.
But contrary to what the Democrats had been led to believe by the parchments of the spending priests, very little grew out of Mount Obama's lava field of public dollars. Instead, it produced a virus known as "long-term unemployment."
The volcanic Keynesians screamed and scribbled that the spending eruptions and the 9.5% unemployment rate were a coincidence, and that what the barren and struggling fields needed was another, thicker layer of dollar lava.
As our fable ends, the Democratic tribespeople were heading out of their Beltway enclave to visit long-abandoned ancestral lands. But the most progressive volcano worshipers stayed behind, shrieking at the now-dormant Mount Obama to produce a spending plume with greater volume and mass, and begging the great mountain's god to bring forth one more "multi-trillion-dollar" eruption.
3 comments:
Cont...
But seriously, folks: What were they thinking?
It may be true that American politics in our time has begun to divide along tribal lines—Democrats, Republicans and Independents. But you don't need to be a partisan to see that the Beltway Democrats' nearly two-year mania of public spending has produced anxiety in the American electorate.
There are indeed matters of policy, substance and belief that can define one as a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. But I think more than this, voters are going to sweep Democrats out of office simply to make them stop spending.
Consider the context in which the average voter has experienced this unprecedented public spending. The September 2008 financial crisis—Lehman Brothers bankrupt, Merrill Lynch sold off, Fannie and Freddie seized—was followed by the collapse in value of 401(k) savings accounts. That steep dollar loss in life savings focused everyone, every day, on the big outlay numbers now in play.
The historic 2009 run-up in stock values ultimately has become the most stomach-churning equities roller coaster in anyone's experience. This is high anxiety. Anxiety is bad for incumbents.
But there's more. An alerted electorate is also aware of what spending did to the fiscal health of California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Not one person in a thousand knew what sovereign debt was; now everyone does.
This volcano of public spending and its smothering ash, by governments at every level, is what has upset people living in America's towns and villages. It's too much. It has depressed people.
Outside of San Francisco and other gerrymandered House seats, is any Democratic candidate trying to tell people what great future goods will flow from the new health-care entitlement? No, because even that political win was swamped and suffocated by the nonstop roar of the raw spending numbers.
The Democratic election narrative now is that the Republicans were "obstructionist." Obstructionist? What they stopped was next to nothing. Volcanoes can't be capped.
A serious school of thought holds that the U.S. spending volcano—fed by the three famous entitlements plus Mr. Obama's new one—can't be effectively capped. This suggests that the legacy of the Obama presidency is likely to be that it left U.S. voters in a state of permanent, structural anxiety. The new taxes Mr. Obama and others are intimating will reduce incomes and increase anxieties. That means voters are likely to punish elected politicians for years. Amid the clouds of ash, we have this silver lining.
Al R rants:
The man they call Obama does not give a shit what the American ;people think or want...he is on a mission of destruction, and nothing will get in his way..EXCEPT THIS NOVEMBER ELECTION, and if the Republicans/Conservatives do not bring back some balance in the house and senate we are screwed as a nation. But here is another real question...history has shown us all that no matter who is in congress the spending continues, so with (what we hope) new conservatives spouting they will change the spending, lower tax's etx etc etc does not happen...there will be a revolt in this country, and maybe that is what we need...lets hope not and lets hope the revolt that is taking place in a calm atmosphere today, called the Tea Party movement will get the job done and the new elected officials will finally get the message.
Al
PS Fixing the drug problem in this country, and the drugs coming into this country...legalize the goddamn stuff...tax the shit out of it, and if you are dumb enough to put it into your system you are on your own, and GFL baby
The Tea Party movement is actually the "I'm too busy to look at the budget and Identify solutions but never too busy to bitch" movement.
I - for one - would never advocate revolting against a government that the people elected. If you don't like who the people elect - tough sh** - thats the way democracy works. There will always be malcontents. Lets just call them what they are - sore losers. If they revolt with violence against our elected government we'll just put them in cages and leave them there.
By the way - thats how it works whether we have Democrats or Republicans (or Libertarians) in control. Power to the people and God bless America!
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