Having a president who is intelligent, thoughtful, diplomatic, witty and open to debate is truly remarkable.
.... So is watching his detractors, waddling around squawking about everything from tax cuts to armed rebellion. It’s not that the repetitive Republicans or the mind-numbing minions of the MSM have suddenly lost 100 IQ points. It’s just that, without congenital mouth-breathers and idiotic ideologues in the White House to buffer the view, their pre-pubescent posturing is now in the spotlight for all to see.
It ain’t pretty.
The Republicans and their talk-show tools have really outdone themselves, of late, raising their status from mere caricatures to full-blown cartoons.
One of their finest moments came two weeks ago when, with great fanfare, the Repuppetans unveiled their “outline” for an alternative budget…that contained no numbers.
John “Bronzer” Boehner waved the wafer-thin blue folder in the air before the underwhelmed press, declaring, “Two nights ago, the president said, ‘We haven’t seen a budget yet out of Republicans.’ – Here it is, Mr. President.”
Noting that the nineteen-page handout was neatly printed but bereft of, uh, anything, the press pressed Boehner.
“Are you going to have any further details on this today?”
Boehner, with his best Edward G. Robinson squint, replied, “On what?”
“There’s no detail in here.”
Boehner, obviously not grasping the concept of “detail,” explained, “This is a blueprint for where we’re going. Are you asking for some other document?”
Said another reporter.“What about some numbers? What about the out-year deficit? What about balancing the budget? How are you going to do it?”
Minority Whipped Eric Can’tor jumped in to save the day. “We’ll have the alternative budget details next week.”
It was sort of like going to a magic show wherein a magician doesn’t pull a rabbit out of hat but describes the rabbit and describes the hat and promises to show up at a later date with the aforementioned props.
A week later, on April Fool’s Day, the Republicans unveiled their detailed budget which featured a lot of numbers – all of them having as much to do with America’s financial situation as the zip-codes of the folks unveiling it. It wasn’t so much a rabbit pulled out of a hat as a wild hair pulled out of an ass.
Projecting Democratic-ordained financial disaster through the year 2080 (!), the Republicans took two year old “worst case” Bush spending numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, put them in a science-fiction blender and said that they were the satanic spawn of Obama’s fiscal policy. The Republicans suggested dismantling social programs, slashing the tax burdens of the rich, freezing spending and wearing Reagan masks as an alternative.
When the detailed alternative budget proved as unimpressive to the public as the festive origami package put out the week before, the Republicans shrugged en masse and said Obama was a Marxist. (Although they were torn between whether the President was keen on Karl or Groucho.) Furthermore, the Democrats were guilty of fear-mongering. Eric Can’tor told “The Christian Science Monitor” that Democrats were “overreacting” to the fiscal crisis.
In a sterling demonstration of gobbledygook, Can’tor declared: “This country is looking for the ideas that will provide the solutions so they know their kids will be left with a better America. It is about the dream of those kids and what they can grow up to be. And the policies that we put in place today will directly impact that.”
It should be noted that, at the same time Can’tor was talking of the exaggerated fiscal crisis, new figures came out showing that 2 million jobs have been lost so far this year, national unemployment is now at 8.5 percent and national underemployment is at 15.5 percent. Suck it up, crybabies.
Not to be outdone by the major players, Rep. Michelle Bachman (Batshit Crazy, MN) has been promoting a major national debate between the voices in her head. The nicest thing that can be said of Bachman’s intellectual capabilities is that her two remaining brain cells will never have to worry about colliding. For Bachman, a tin-foil hat is considered a fashion essential.
Bachman, enabled by such Foxy sages as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, would love to see an armed insurrection against Obama’s forces of evil.
On one radio station, she labeled Obama’s “cap and trade” plan an “energy tax” and brayed, “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”
To Hannity, she declared: “We are headed down the lane of economic Marxism. More quickly, Sean, than anyone could have possibly imagined. It’s difficult for us to even keep up with it day to day.
“At this point the American people - it’s like Thomas Jefferson said, ‘a revolution every now and then is a good thing.’ We are at the point, Sean, of revolution. And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution — where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch. It won’t be our children and grandchildren that are in debt. It is we who are in debt, we who will be bankrupting this country, inside of ten years, if we don’t get a grip. And we can’t let the Democrats achieve their ends any longer.”
As Bachman’s pair of brain cells passed by each other like two ships in the night, she went on, “Right now I’m a member of Congress. And I believe that my job here is to be a foreign correspondent, reporting from enemy lines. And people need to understand, this isn’t a game. This isn’t just a political talk show that’s happening right now. This is our very freedom, and we have 230 years, a continuous link of freedom that every generation has ceded to the next generation. This may be the time when that link breaks. And I’m going to do everything I can; I know you are, to make sure that we keep that link secure. We cannot allow that link to break, because as Reagan said, America is the last great hope of mankind.”
When Bachman mentions the word “link,” my mind conjures up the word “missing.”
Not just content to be a war correspondent, Bachman is also fighting to introduce a constitutional amendment to save the dollar from being replaced by a global currency, even though there is no threat of the dollar being replaced by a global currency and Obama, in his recent press conference, stated, “I don’t believe there’s a need for a global currency.”
In a recent interview with Glenn Beck, a true meeting of the minds took place.
Said Bachman, “As you know, Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, many nations have lined up now and have called for an international global currency, a One World currency and they want to get off of the dollar as the reserve currency.”
Fighting back tears, Beck replied, “Most people don’t understand, Michele, what that means.”
Fanaticized Bachman, “What that means is all of the countries in the world would have a single currency. We would give up the dollar as our currency and we would just go with a One World currency. … If we give up the dollar as our standard, and co-mingle the value of the dollar with the value of coinage in Zimbabwe, that dilutes our money supply. We lose control over our economy. And economic liberty is inextricably entwined with political liberty. Once you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom. And then we are no more, as an exceptional nation, as we always have been. So this is imperative.”
Now, bear in mind that the only threat of the dollar being replaced by, um, World Wampum exists in Bachman’s mind. Now, consider the fact that 30 Republican reps have co-sponsored her amendment so far and you have a portrait of a political party so untethered to reality that it makes helium seem leaden.
Also fighting for his share of the batshit crazy pie is everyone’s favorite gasbag, Newt Gingrich. After North Korea (mis) fired a missile last weekend, Newtie declared that if he were president, he would have taken out that missile. How would he have done that without sparking a world war? It’s a secret. Newt has also gone on record supporting Cheney in Biggus Dickus’ assessment that America is less safe with Obama at the helm.
Oh, yeah, he doesn’t think Obama should speak at Notre Dame, either. Why? Obama is anti-Catholic. It should be noted that Newt became a member of the Catholic Church LAST WEEK, at the behest of his third wife. Not his first wife, whom he cheated on and divorced when she was fighting for her life in a hospital. Not his second wife, whom he dropped like a bad habit after cheating on her during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. But his third. Who would Jesus diss?
And, of course, no bona fide Republican exercise in caterwauling would be complete without a bevy of talking head tools. Glenn Beck, who is beginning to look like a hedgehog doing an impression of Lewis Carroll’s Mock Turtle, wept openly about the state of this country today as opposed to the day after 9/11. Why? ‘Cause he loves America so darned much. He also recently flashed photos of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler across the airwaves and referred to Obama as both a “socialist” and a “fascist.” Why? ‘Cause he loves the sound of his own voice so darned much.
(It should be noted that Beck’s biggest claim to fame, before his recent tear-circle-jerking, was a near-death hospital experience. “I went into the hospital on a Thursday, feeling pretty good,” he said last year. “By Saturday night I was ready to kill myself. And not from pain but because I was absolutely void of all hope. There was no hope. Darkness surrounded me like it had never surrounded me before, from things that I swear to you are right out of the movie ‘Saw.’” Beck had hemorrhoid surgery. It hurt.)
While on the subject of ass pain, Rush Limbaugh has been crapping in his hand and flinging it at the White House regularly. One of his most incisive comments was directed at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the recent G-20 Summit. Limbaugh warned that if Brown kept “slobbering” over Obama, he’d “come down with anal poisoning and may die from it.”
Playing its part in the slapstick shenanigans, the MSM has put its clown car into hyper-drive. Long content with parroting Republican talking points and passing them off as facts, the Obama Era press has decided to furrow its brow, pause thoughtfully and parrot Republican talking points and pass them off as facts.
Unfortunately, since there is a news poll taken every seven and a half minutes concerning the current administration, all these talking points are immediately ignored by the American populace.This does not stop the pressers. Isn’t Obama suffering from overexposure? Survey says ‘no.’ Okay. So, isn’t Obama the cause of this recession? No. Okay. So, surely he owns the bear market? Uh-uh. How about foreign policy? Isn’t he weakening America? Nope. Don’t you hate that he uses a teleprompter? Naaah. Fox even went so far as to ask viewers to pick a better economic policy, Reaganomics or Obamanomics. Obama beat Reagan. Ooops.
You know things are crazy when Obama participates in an amazing interview on “60 Minutes,” expressing some wry gallows humor and Steve Kroft walks away with the headline after asking the friggin’ president of the United States, “Are you punch-drunk?”
(Please note: had Kroft asked Bush that question, the only place you’d be seeing Steve these days would be on the sides of milk cartons.)
At Obama’s last press conference the newshounds were chasing their tails, trying to get a handle on the fact that they were facing a president who could not only speak but think, as well.
Questions ranged from “How can we trust the government to handle the current crisis?” to “What do you say to these families, especially children, who are sleeping under bridges and in tents across the country?”
The press corpse showed great restraint by not lobbing such brainteasers as “Why is the sky blue?” and “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
Fox’s Major Garrett wondered aloud about the concern over Obama’s economic policies expressed by “the Chinese government, run by communists” and “European governments…some of them socialist.” There was an audible gasp from the crowd as it dawned on all attendees that China had been taken over by communists! Get me re-write!
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd dropped a papier-mâché Acme anvil with this query. “Some have compared this financial crisis to a war. And in times of war, past presidents have called for some form of sacrifice…
“Why, given this new era of responsibility that you’re asking for, why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?”
Todd awaited the answer, oblivious to the fact that people were losing their homes, their jobs, their savings, their retirement benefits and their sanity in the current crisis. Obama caught his jaw before it dropped to the floor. “With respect to the American people, I think folks are sacrificing left and right.”
Taa-daa.
Undoubtedly the brightest low beam was flashed by CNN’s Ed Henry who went after the recent AIG bonus brouhaha with, “But on AIG, why did you wait – why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the attorney general’s office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, ‘Look, we’re outraged.’ Why did it take so long?”
Obama replied: “It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”
Now, the interesting thing about a dumb question getting a slightly snarky answer was that Ed Henry seriously thought he was having an Edward R. Murrow moment.
He actually wrote a column for CNN describing his pivotal epiphany in prose so purple that grapes have been identifying themselves as albino in its wake.
After telling his readers that “I had several provocative questions in my pocket,” he cut to the chase. “The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it’s scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.”
(Note: I’m pausing, here, to have a shot. And a cigarette. Must not sweat. Must not show fear.)
“So, I waited patiently and then decided to pounce with a sharp follow-up. From just a few feet away, I could see in his body language that the normally calm and cool president was perturbed.”
Helen Thomas sidled up to me. “Is that a provocative question in your pocket or are you glad to see me?” I took out my gat and waved her back. “Not now, doll face.” By that time, the president had called in his goons. Geithner hit me from behind. I saw stars. Bogart. Bacall. Even Henny Youngman. Before I hit the floor, Wolf Blitzer swung in on a vine and pulled me out of that snake pit. It was a close call. Too close.
I made that last part up. Could you tell?
And so it goes.
A bona fide leader resides in the White House calmly juggling the chainsaws thrown his way.
The Republicans ignore the crisis and attempt to replay their Greatest Hits, not realizing that they were One-Hit Wonders all along and the music’s long gone.
The press continues to parrot and preen, beating the simplistic “winner and loser” scenario to a pulp 24/7 in a world so complex, they ignore it.
Squawk. Birds of a feather. Polly wants a crack-up. _______
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