Monday, August 4, 2008

OFG XV: They really expect us to swallow this nonsense?

Today, I'd like to break from the format I've used the last few times and comment at greater length on a single item rather than writing pithy little comments on lots of stuff.

[Editor's note: if you are averse to politics or to common sense, please skip ahead to the next blog you read in your RSS consolidator]

Recently, I saw in the Denver Post a quote from a conservative-think-tank policy wonk that might constitute the largest single exhibition of gall and fully unfurled disrespect for the American voter and the intelligence of same I have ever seen. That's saying something, given the absurdity of what has come from the current administration for over seven years now.

So, the pandering to big oil companies which has resulted in the current situation, where Exxon is making a profit amounting to five million dollars per hour (read that again...PER HOUR. This is not a typo) is, according to Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute, not the issue at all with American voters. We don't want to rehash how we got to this point, right? Right?? WHAT?!?

Here's the direct quote:
"Americans just want something done about this problem...They don't want to go back over what's already happened, whether the Bush administration screwed things up."

So, in this election year, we should not be holding accountable those who have so badly served the American people, not to mention so deeply estranged us from friends around the globe, but we should, instead, elect someone from the same party because his campaign promises are bound to be fulfilled, and his are better than his opponent's. Oh. My bad for misunderestimating the reason we hold elections.

In this specific case, the debate is quite familiar in tactic to ones used for over a decade by the Republican con artists (oops...neo-con. Freudian non-accident) where George Orwell's predictions for Newspeak have come true in spades in the doublespeaking mouths of administration spokesbots.

No Child Left Behind? It is as useful a government program as is the bad-actor husband who insists he is reformed, and says, "So I got drunk and hit you again, now's not the time to play the blame game, it's time to move on...And pour me a shot, woman!"

Give me a Michelle Obama terrorist fist-bump any day. At least I know she's one of the good guys. It is easy to tell: the good guys have lies told about them by the hundreds. In that regard, the folks trying to stay in power in the White House have gravely miscalculated. We, the American voting public, really can tell elephant crap in the middle of our living rooms from donkey's. You will defecate in my house no more, folks. Be gone.

2 comments:

Angela said...

I'm with you, Rick. No Child Left Behind is about as sensible as Abstinence Only - and to think, those have become the least of our worries over the past 7 1/2 years. What shocks me is that the polls remain so close. If the pubs somehow manage to take this one again, I think I will have to move farther north - like into Canada.

Rick Hamrick said...

Angela--happy to hear from you!

It is a complete mystery to me, but I do know enough about how people operate to understand one thing: people will believe what they want to believe and will refuse to be swayed by the facts.

If you do go so far north that all the people are nice, gentle, and have small smiles on their faces most of the time, you have either crossed into Canada, or you took a wrong turn and ended up, somehow, in Iowa. I may be the only person on the planet who espouses the theory that Iowa is actually "Canada, South".

The key is to note how many extra "u"s the people employ.

If they write "favourite" you are in Canada.