Stupid, Venal, Crackpot Politics

This from another blog -- "As Time Goes By -- what it's really like to get older." A blog that has the "Another Old Woman's" total seal of approval.

Written by "Crabby Old Lady", the following does a very good job of presenting the issues and the reality: (as usual -- please follow link to original -- then BOOKMARK the site)


Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Stupid, Venal, Crackpot Politics

Crabby Old Lady is appalled, frightened and snarling mad. You should be too.

The United States is on a crazy train to doom and no one with a bigger platform than Crabby will say so. There is only one thing that matters right now. Only one. JOBS. But you wouldn't know that from the news nor from elected officials who are the only people who have the power to effect change on the large scale the country needs.

Instead, they are dealing in stupid, venal, crackpot politics that is harming our country and destroying the lives of the people.

To those same politicians and candidates who want to replace them: stop telling the country that rich people's tax cuts create jobs. It is a lie. They've had those tax cuts for eight years and look where it got us – millions of permanently lost jobs and 10 percent “official” unemployment that is actually much higher.

To rich people and their sycophant politicians: stop attacking Social Security. No cutting benefits. No privatization. No raising the age of eligibility without an exclusion for people who do heavy labor. And Joe Miller in Alaska? Social Security is not unconstitutional. It is a lie to say that.

To politicians, candidates and rich people: stop attacking Medicare. Expand it to everyone in the U.S. which Congress and President Obama should have done the first time around. A smart 11-year-old can see that would make health care affordable for everyone.

Politicians and corporations: stop sending jobs overseas. It started long before the recession and has not stopped. Just yesterday, the Senate GOP shot down a bill that would end tax credits to corporations that outsource jobs to other countries. Huh? Why did they have tax credits for that in the first place?

To rich people and political parties: stop funding sleazy, nutter candidates. The country does not need a man who repeatedly emails pornography. It doesn't need a senator who is ignorant of evolution voting on science-related legislation. It doesn't need anyone at all in office who believes the president is a Muslim or not born in the U.S.

To cable news media: stop filling 90 percent of your air time with fact-free talking heads flapping their gums in total ignorance of everything. Crabby Old Lady has never learned one useful thing from them. Pay some trained reporters, instead, to do some real journalism. A whole lot of them are out of work and they'll do the job for less money than your “star” bloviators.

To the American public, you're not off the hook either: stop wearing tricorn hats; you look like idiots in them. Stop listening to Sarah Palin; she's an opportunistic quitter who can't speak in intelligible sentences. Turn off Glenn Beck; he's an ignorant, raving lunatic.

And to rank-and-file tea partiers: you are batshit crazy to believe you are not being manipulated by the Koch brothers and other rich tyrants who want to steal your Social Security, cancel your Medicare and leave you to eat cat food until you die from lack of medical care.

If Crabby can slow down enough for a moment to take a breath, here is what mystifies her: all the existing and proposed policies of right wingers, their candidates and followers lead inexorably to impoverishment of 95 percent of the population. When fewer and fewer people are employed at subsistence wages, no one will be left to buy the widgets companies make. And if they can't sell their merchandise, their companies will go under and they will become poorer.

Even Henry Ford, hardly a paragon of political virtue, knew that. A hundred years ago, he took a lot of grief from other rich corporatists for paying his auto workers the then-magnificent salary of $5 a day. He did so, he said, because he wanted to sell more Model Ts and to do that, more people had to be able to afford them.

It worked so well, his naysayers followed his lead. What has happened to their sense of self-preservation since then?

Crabby is letting fly because she is deeply frightened for her country. Politicians have always been corrupt, but in the past – even in Crabby's lifetime – many also cared about the well-being of their constituents and their country, were well educated enough to discuss the Constitution and the ideals of liberty with intelligence, and managed to cooperate with one another to get important legislation done to improve the country.

There was a time when most Republicans and Democrats identified with the middle of the political spectrum, left or right a bit from the center point, because they knew that extremism is dangerous. Now, the few existent centrists are all pretty much behind in the polls for this election.

Our country is in serious trouble on all fronts, but nothing will begin to improve until the people can get back to work.

Never in Crabby Old Lady's memory have we needed intelligent leadership more. But what do we have? Candidates who are porn distributors, tax cheats, barely concealed racists, panderers, religious zealots, liars, nihilists and handmaidens to corporations.

No good will come of this.