Madness. Our ongoing political dialogue is mired in madness.
It's one thing when Fox News and Rick Perry argue that Obama has engaged in a war against Christmas. It's quite another when CBS' 60 Minutes makes Obama defend himself against charges of wanting to redistribute wealth.
In a sense, it's a fair cop: Over the past few years, wealth has indeed been shifted, from the have-nots to the haves. Obama has simply allowed the continuance of a trend that began with Reagan.
But that's not the charge against him. CBS actually seems to think that the money has gone the other way -- that Obama has robbed the deserving rich to feed the undeserving poor. They want the president to defend himself on that score.
Just look around you: If wealth redistribution were, like, a thing, then why aren't you and and I doing better? Wouldn't the pay gap between management and workers be shrinking instead of growing?
Half the country believes that Obama is a socialist, even though his government has handed out more pink slips than any other in modern memory. Even sillier: Fox News and a whole army of right-wing conspiracy wackos have actually convinced millions of people that the biggest problem facing us now is inflation.
Inflation will be a serious issue when both your wages and the price of your home go up. Has that happened?
We have scads of serious problems, yet we continue to fight hallucinations.
I'm told that the military cooperated with the makers of Battle: Los Angeles because films like that serve as a recruitment tool. Apparently, there are ill-educated kids in the audience who think that we may actually have to do battle against invading aliens.
Yeah. Right. We need to keep the military budget high because of the alien threat. Also, you never know when Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil or Chessie (the Chesapeake Bay monster) are going to get out of line. And the big problem with Obama is that he's a Marxist who has spent the past few years robbing the rich and paying the poor. He's part of the great Bolshevik conspiracy -- along with the Muppets.
This country has gone mad.
8 comments:
Mothman works for the CIA. You heard it here first.
This goes back a while 1980 or thereabouts. The reason I stopped watching 60 Minutes and began to distrust TV news in general. They did a report on Jeep CJ's rolling over at low speeds when attempting maneuvers like turning into a parking lot or avoiding debris on the road. That report has been thoroughly debunked because they did things like hang weights inside the body to raise the center of gravity on the test vehicles and used a mechanism to turn the steering wheel at a rate twice that a human can achieve.
Anyway I figured if they were lying about something I'm familiar with what about the stuff I don't know?
I watched the interview. At 74 I'm still naive. I expected a relatively reasonable interview. Kroft tried to do a frigging hit job on Obama. Now I remember why I don't watch mainstream media. I have to give it to the President. I couldn't have smiled and corrected those repuglican talking points.
Wow, interesting, Mr. Mike, thanks.
Still, what Joseph's talking about is the ABSURDITY, the completely obvious absurdity that's being absorbed into the mainstream. It takes no expertise whatsoever to see it, yet people buy the bs.
The blind leading the blind.
As a person involved with the local Occupy movement, it astounds me every time someone waltzes in and pukes out misinfo without the slightest fact-checking. eg, "why isn't occupy in DC protesting congress?"
1. It sprang up in NYC to protest Wall St for obvious reasons, but
2. once it spread it of course went to DC, has been there, and has been a site for converging for multiple specific actions.
3. duh.
You really can't over-emphasize the "duh."
And yet, other sites ::coughPUMAPACcough:: which tolerated for far too long the nitwits who claimed Obama was a "socialist" just finally fell, completely fell, to rightwing mental illness.
Not to end on a depressing note, I offer this cartoon which neatly nails the best thing about OWS...
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s320x320/390706_2605182641555_1014567100_2759154_1262501812_n.jpg
1) You have more chance of persuading me that Obama is a white republican Muslim than he is redistributing money towards the poor. The numbers show that that is not happening. The policies show that that is not happening. What is wrong with this muppet media?
2) Perhaps the US army is right. Perhaps the aliens they are refering to are the resident aliens. Maybe they will get bored living off of $1 tips agricultural wages and eventually claim back their continent. At that point it will be really handy to have a solid grasp of the Israeli or South African handbook for maintaining military control against an unfriendly native population.
My guess is that this isnt a serious problem for the next 20 years. I would assume your immigrants will not really cause trouble till they are actually the numerical majority.
Harry
The disinformation is astounding. But hardly new. I just wrote a brief post about the White Ribbon protests in Russia [this past Saturday]. The new middle class there is opposed to Putin's endless rule, election fraud and massive, systemic corruption.
What did the State do? Tried to ignore them, concentrated on a few small Putin-supporter groups and spread rumors that young men at the rallies would be rounded up and conscripted into the army. Health officials claimed there was a virulent flu bug and/or the danger of contracting Sars. Message? Stay home for the good of your health.
Propaganda is propaganda, regardless of where we find it. And it frequently works. In Russia, 35,000 demonstrators still showed up. Here in the States, we have people hooked into the right-wing noise machine, Glenn Beck history classes, OWS protesters are a bunch of louts harangues and oh yes, Obama is a socialist meme.
It would funny if it was so sad, even grim.
To give 60 minutes credit, they have run several shows on corruption and lobbying in DC, homelessness and most recently the insider trading scandal [which Eric Cantor decided 'needs more study' and blocked the subsequent ban]. What a weasel!
I only saw the last half of the Kroft interview but Obama was on the defensive. But then. why shouldn't he be? No, he's neither a socialist nor Marxist. But he's no Teddy Roosevelt either, despite the Kansas speech.
Obama is beholden to Wall St. So if he squirmed during the interview? Boo-hoo.
Peggy Sue
A lesson for the next Democrat elected to the WH (if there is one) -- actually carry out tax, budget and regulatory policies that redistribute wealth. The right and MSM will blame you for it anyway.
So, what did Obama do to Wall Street/Corporate America that one of their shills is going after him?
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