Tom Expresses My Deepest Feeings

Once Again Tom Degan has Hit the nail on the head!

I'm now having one of those "HUH?" moments that have occurred with more and more frequency in the last ten years. What should be happening at this point is a showing of unified national outrage. Instead it would seem that most of us could hardly care less. And the anger that is being expressed by the Tea party types is being directed in the wrong direction and for the wrong reasons. They actually believe that Barack Obama is some kind of left wing extremist when, in reality, he's as tepid a right-of-center moderate as we've had since Bill Clinton.

The policies of low taxation for the obscenely wealthy that have played so huge a part in our current economic catastrophe will be allowed to continue. The Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they plan to hold the government hostage unless the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to expire on the last day of this month, are allowed to be continued indefinitely. That means "forever". It also means a loss of four trillion dollars in revenue over the next decade; a lousy deal any way you dice it or slice it. The president of the United States, far from being the Progressive warrior his base was praying for when we sent him to the White House two years ago, appears hellbent on caving into their demands. As Theodore Roosevelt once privately said of President McKinley, "He has all the backbone of a chocolate eclair".

I never thought I would live to hear myself even think this, but the Democrats probably should have nominated Hilary Clinton two years ago. President Obama has let us down in every way imaginable. There is still a part of me that wants to believe that he still has a few cards up his sleeve and that he is within days of delivering an unexpected political counter-punch. Maybe. I really hope that's the case, but that hope is dwindling by the day. I know in his heart he is a good guy but his leadership style leaves much to be desired. Seriously, if this is the sort of change I'm expected to believe in, you can keep it.

FOR THE RECORD:
I still thank Heaven every day that John McCain is not at this moment sleeping in the White House. I am beside myself with joy that Fascist Barbie is not a seventy-four-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. If you were thinking for a minute that I'm sorry that Obama won on Election Day 2008 - think again. As disappointed as I may be in the current administration, a McCain/Palin White House would have been the apocalypse. Now let's move on, shall we?

Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is yet another stark reminder why I left the Democratic party nearly thirteen years ago. The fact that they're not half as bad as the Republicans doesn't make their very existence any easier to justify. It's getting clearer by the day that they don't really have our interests at heart. The overwhelming majority of the American people - unlike the small percentage of us perceptive enough to have seen the light - have their stakes tied up with either one of the two major political parties. They cannot see (or refuse to see) that both the Republicans and the Democrats are morally unfit to govern this country any longer. Unfortunately, as long as so many of us refuse to acknowledge this simple and undeniable truth, our slide into the abyss will only continue.

"And the dance band on the Titanic
Played 'Nearer My God To Thee'
The iceberg's on the starboard bough
Won't you dance with me?"

-Harry Chapin

And at this joyous time of the year, the GOP has delivered a holiday message to the people who are now suffering under the worse economic conditions since the 1930s, conditions that were largely brought on by them:

FUCK YOU, AMERICA!

They cannot bring themselves to relieve the burden of the unemployed at the risk of angering the handful of plutocrats they act as handmaidens for. They can't admit to themselves that the Bush tax cuts never made any feasible economic sense; that the policy of continuing a tax break for a class of people who already had more money than they knew what to do with was (to put it mildly) destructive to the interests of the vanishing middle class. And yet they continue on this destructive course. Why? What the hell is the matter with these people? If they seem just a tad crazy to you, it should be noted that they're crazy like a FOX News.

Make no mistake about it: Their ultimate goal is to bankrupt the nation to the point where mathematics will force for us to obliterate the social safety nets that have cushioned many an economic blow for regular working Americans for decades - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance. They want to see these programs obliterated. That's been their dream for nearly eight decades. And if the president of the United States refuses to stand up to these hideous bastards and bitches, their dream will be coming true a lot sooner than you might think. What needs to be understood is that the collapse of September 2008 was merely a harbinger of things to come.

WAIT! IT GETS WORSE!

They can't even bring themselves to provide for the care of the brave men and woman who responded to the disaster at the World Trade center nearly ten years ago - many of whom are sick and dying as a result of the noxious fumes they were forced to inhale into their lungs in the weeks that followed. Their reasoning? The nation simply can't afford it. And yet they can afford tax breaks for billionaires. Isn't life beautiful?

There's a part of me that finds it difficult - no, I find it impossible - to feel any degree of genuine sympathy for a lot of the people who will be affected by what is now transpiring. Most of them stupidly voted for the right wing in the last several election cycles. As far as I'm concerned they are going to get exactly what they deserve - screw 'em. It's the poor kids that I am saving my compassion for, not their idiotic parents. We've got to face the fact that this generation of children will be the first generation in American history whose opportunities and lifestyles will be far inferior to those that their moms and dads enjoyed. This generation of so-called "grownups" have left a debt so astronomical that our great grandchildren - who will never even know our names - will still be paying it off generations from now. What will they think of us? Fortunately we won't be around to have to look them in the eye.

Welcome to the United States of China. Enjoy your stay!

The nightmare that we are now experiencing at our southern border is nothing compared to the one Canada will be feeling within a decade. It will be a phenomenon never seen before: American refugees. Whoa! What a concept! In ten years this country won't be worth the paper that the maps of it are printed on. All because we in this generation refused to recognize our priorities. And here is the nasty little reality that no one has dared to mention. The damage that we've done to ourselves is more-than-likely insurmountable. Isn't that a sweet thought? The years between 1981 and 2011 will be remembered as the period when the United States committed a long and slow suicide. The damage is now complete. Get used to living in a country in ruins.

Wasn't the Reagan Revolution a blast?

Tom Degan
tomdegan@frontiernet.net