Anybody else sick of those drama queens on Capitol Hill hamming it up on the whole debt limit thing? Jeezus. Sir Orange Boner is chewing up more scenery than a hoard of Oompa Loompas high on sugar cookies. Then there's the rest of the Capitol Hill gang doing their best to hog as many cameras as the King of Oompa Loompas does.
It's as if they don't realize that, uhm, there's some real problems that are going to happen if they don't get their asses back to work and fix this shit for another few years. Like, checks are gonna stop going out on August 2. Like, Social Security checks won't go out. Medicaid and Medicare checks won't go out to providers. The entire Federal Government pretty much shuts down, because there's only enough money coming in for around 40% of what the government does -- there isn't even enough money in that pot to fully fund the military, the only thing the right-wingers admit is acceptable for government to do. Do these drama queens really think they're gonna come out smellin' like roses when Granny doesn't get her check and hoards of prunes with plenty of time on their hands descend on Capitol Hill and start clogging the halls with their Hoverrounds? WTF?
-- Badtux the Baffled Penguin
It's more than just ignoring other important business. There's the matter of making the United States look like an unreliable financial entity in the eyes of the world.
ReplyDeleteThe Clenis brouhahas in the 90s made the U.S. political system look like a farce. The Bushevik murder-and-Constitution-shredding period made the U.S. look scary. Now this latest shit combines the two, so the U.S. political system comes off as a bunch of drunken clowns with fully-loaded machine guns lurching around in an auditorium full of spectators where the doors are locked so no one can get out.
I regard this whole debt ceiling charade as kabuki. I haven't been paying attention to the tick-tock of it, and neither have the financial markets, judging from the headline numbers. Everybody with any sense of cynicism sees through the spectacle.
It's just cover for what both sides (which are the SAME corporate side, really) have decided -- welsh on the already-paid-for promises of Social Security and Medicare. The end game is to let old, sick and disabled people die. Eliminate the useless eaters. If you don't work, you don't eat. This crap gives cover for the creeping classocide of American society. It's the plan for how the U.S. upper class is going to position itself during the next two decades when Peak Oil, global overheating and resource depletion start to bite hard.
The thing is, this kabuki is another step toward dethroning the U.S. as the #1 player. Who wants a reserve currency controlled by a political system that threatens to crash and burn that currency, even if the "threat" is a con game? It makes the U.S, look unreliable, and gives more impetus for the creation of a new reserve currency, the SDR or what-have-you. The elites might know this and be happy with it -- they're not tied to any particular nation-state, after all -- but I wonder how many of the goofballs in Congrifts are aware that they're writing the epitaph of their own ultimate irrelevancy as they act out their scripts?
Hordes of prunes with time on their hands? How sensitive of you, Badtux.
ReplyDeleteI think it's called snark, Jerome.
ReplyDeletePolitical correctness aren't I :).
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Bukko, they're betting that with the crash of the Euro proving that the Euro isn't a reliable reserve currency, they can play these games and not have it affect the dollar's status as a reserve currency. Maybe they're right, but it's like standing an inch from the edge of a cliff and daring the other side to stand half an inch from the edge of a cliff. All it takes is one strong wind to blow the whole affair over the edge.
ReplyDeleteWell! In the opinion of this old prune, the U.S. is NOT reliable and hasn't been for a long time. Now that I've gotten that off my chest...
ReplyDeleteIt is just my opinion that all congressional salaries, including those of staffs and aides, should be the first thing to get the old non-payment stamp and their medical insurance should be stopped along with their salaries. Pay only active duty military and let everybody else go to hell. It makes sense to me and I think it's a fine plan but then I'm a bloody-minded old cow (crazy old woman) and like a good show occasionally.
Actually, I secretly harbor the wish that the feds would stop medicare, social security, and medicaid, along with all education, hospital, airport, and highway funds for one calendar year. At the end of the year, some tenuous grasp on reality should be restored to the survivors.
Jill
Totally sick of the drama. I've been saying for weeks that they will raise the debt limit, but I doubt that the Dems have the balls to raise taxes or let the Bush tax cuts really expire. I'm nauseous when I think about the Rethug finger puppets for the rich.
ReplyDeleteI see a grass roots effort essentially whipped up by Fox News that put a lot of people into office. People who now have a base with no understanding of basic economics who don't understand that while it is a good idea to cut spending, not all spending is the same. They also don't understand that raising taxes is going to have to be a part of any realistic solution. In the short term, they don't understand how if this isn't resolved in time, at the very least it will cause the US government to pay more interest on the money it borrows and that is going to cost taxpayers more in the future for essentially nothing.
ReplyDelete