Rigged
Yes, the entire game is rigged.
Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) figured that out and let his feelings get caught by an open CSPAN microphone. “I mean, the whole conversation is rigged,” he said. “The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck, is just rigged. This stuff’s rigged.”
And we, as usual, are getting bamboozled and sucker-punched by all the lying scumbags in Congress. But the question, where does one begin? It’s like trying to clean up a hoarders home with a single trash bag: you know it’s impossible but something needs to be done and you have to start now.
The Republicans have managed to convince a lot of voters that government spending is out of control and that the deficit is the specter haunting the American landscape and every and anything must be done to stop it from growing. And who shall be the sacrifice? Well, the poor and the middle class, of course. This is why we must permanently extend tax cuts for the wealthy. We hear the President say that he wants to extend tax cuts to the middle class alone and let the top 2 percent’s obligation rise to 39 percent from its current rate of 35 percent. But then we hear GOP leaders delightfully gumming up the works with their petulant demands.
Why are we shocked? Why are we bothering to listen to the media drum this nonsensical drama? The game is rigged: the GOP will get want it wants, the President will continue playing Hamlet, and both parties will keep getting the skids greased. There’s money to be made on both sides.
This country’s sudden fixation with the deficit has well entered farce territory. Republicans can’t really explain “out of control government spending” so they’ve managed to pull out another distracting bogeyman: red ink. Lots of worry and hand-wringing, but the game is rigged, so the way to solve this problem is to make rich people richer. This has always been the goal from the get go. Democrats have no spine and are easily bullied, so they’ve gotten sucked into the narrative and admit that yes, the deficit is the clear and present danger to the economic security of the country. Thus the President offers to hand over federal employees up for sacrifice, which must delight some members of the right-wing because they like the prospect of a smaller government workforce. Rigged, rigged, rigged and regular people get the shaft. And here’s the kicker: this will save only $5 billion over several years. How is this a start? It’s reactionary nonsense.
Now the latest scare tactic is insisting that Social Security–long the bane of the right wing’s tortured existence–needs to be fixed. It’s going to be insolvent. The baby boomers (who have the longest threatened retirement in history) will start exiting the workforce and suck up all the money. It’s the biggest threat this country has faced.
That’s the story. But the game is rigged and how do we screw the regular folks? Demand that Social Security be tied to fixing the deficit right now, right now, because insolvency is coming and we will be forced to eat our children. And the only viable way we can avoid this is to have tax cuts. So says part of the Bowles/Simpson Commission, attacking a “problem” that was outside of its purview.
That the President has bought into all of this remains the biggest disappointment. Now he wants to talk about the deficit, now he wants to say he’s heard what the voters meant by their “shellacking,” as elucidated to him by the human worm John Boehner. Now the President believes we should start tightening out belts. This farce is beyond words, it’s beyond belief. But as we said, the game is rigged, and the vipers have made their homes within striking distance of the American voter. The game is rigged and we’re all going to suffer for it.
Interesting that the Tea Baggers have been rather quiet lately. They wanted to slash their way to “fiscal sanity” but you don’t hear much of their blathering now. Maybe they’re confused, but that was already true before any of this sad act began. They want everything slashed, so deeply ignorant of the fact that you don’t create growth or jobs by cutting off the hands of your workers and demanding more and more. These are the people we’d like to see suffer the most because they richly deserve to be screwed. If there’s anything we’ve picked up from the last election, it’s a deep contempt for our fellow countrymen. They like being lied to and they insist the game is now going to be fair. Vapid fools.
If you believe that you are untouched by economic problems, wait until you see what’s coming. The Republicans will get their way, they will get their tax cuts because the President is weak and directionless. If his party had any temerity, they’d start shopping around for another candidate because he is a slow-moving train wreck. Then we need to remember that the game is totally rigged: Democrat bosses will not allow another candidate to challenge this man at all. Progressives will continue their bratty whining about their pet ideological causes getting short shrift and deny Obama a vote. Like their Tea Bagger counterparts, they’re blinded by their own set of religious beliefs while insisting everyone else is wrong.
And in a rigged political game, this petty stupidity is exactly what is needed to continue the corruption, the cowardice and the malice. So we’re all going to suffer, as the liars create diversions and take more of your money. We’ve done nothing about it, of course, so we’re merely beggars to our own demise.
Just wait and see.