We're goin' down, down, down...

We're goin' down, down, down...

Every ten years or so of the last two thousand, we hear of the fulfillment of prophecy that proves the “end is nigh,” a.k.a. “end of days” or “OH MY GOD THE SKY IS FALLING!” Remember when Jesus himself kicked off the recurring doomsday theme by saying that the world would end in his lifetime (Mark 13:30)? Good times, but not the end of times. Because, yoohoo, it’s 2009 and we’re still here.

Yet, people continue to stick their fingers in their minds, ignore history, and apply failed prophecies to current events. Some are funny. Others are just sad. Scratch that, they’re all funny.

And it’s not only religious fundamentalists who whip out unwarranted and inaccurate accusations sans historical context to further their agenda. Our elected officials and political pundits do it, too.

Take the frantic and unrestrained declaration that our brand-spankin’ new President is a socialist and/or communist and is taking “cues from Lenin.” Been there, done that, with not one [pdf], but two, Roosevelts, a King, and a Clinton.

Oh and yesterday, despite evidence to the contrary, Tennessee’s own Congressman Marsha Blackburn joined the chorus of voices blaming the stock market slide on Mr. Obama’s candidacy, his election, and his whole 6 weeks in office. Little does she care – because I’m positive she knows – that her one-trick pony hopped on a ship that’s been launched to sail over and over again and over again.

Democrats have also ignored historical context. While attacking the leading voice of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, for saying that he wants President Obama, and by proxy the country, to fail, they neglected to mention all the times during the last eight years that high-profile Democratic mouthpieces have said they wanted President Bush to fail.

Let’s go to the videotape. Oh wait. We can’t? There is no videotape of a high-profile Democratic mouthpiece or elected representative saying he wants President Bush to fail?

What if we accept (for the length of this sentence) Limbaugh’s excuse – that he only wants President Obama’s policies to fail – and modify the request?

Still no?

  • Share/Bookmark

Can we throw the Tennessee Republican Party off the boat with the tea? Because this “protest” they’re organizing tomorrow is simply laughable. Not a peep out of these people about White House economic policy for the last eight years and now they find their voices?

“This is not about political parties or partisanship,” said TN GOP spokesperson Bill Hobbs, winner of the 2008 Liberadio(!) Jive Turkey Award. Not about partisanship? Really? So where was your organized protest when:

  • President George W. Bush was spending like a drunken sailor?
  • When our government’s discretionary spending – fueled by President Bush’s refusal to veto a spending bill, any spending bill – was increasing in 2001-2007 at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent?
  • When President Bush lied about his nasty little discretionary spending habits?
  • When a Republican-controlled congress enacted, and George Bush signed, a 2002 farm bill that caused agriculture spending to double its 1990s levels
  • When the same congress and president rammed through a $295 billion “porkulus” 2005 highway bill?
  • When Peggy Noonan wrote, “George W Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?”
  • When we found out about the pallets of cash?
  • When we found we were about to cross that “bridge to nowhere?”
  • When it became clear that Governor Bush’s campaign promise that income tax cuts would be “especially focused on low and moderate income families,” actually played out like this: the wealthiest Americans received an average tax cut of $123,000, the bottom one-fifth of households received an average tax cut of $27, the one-fifth of households received an average tax cut of $647.
  • When President Bush said he was “pleased with” the $170 billion economic stimulus package that he signed into law on February of 2008.
  • When we realized that George Bush’s “war, wealth, and oil” spending was, at its core, a crony capitalist’s redistribution of wealth?

So the question to Hobbs, Robin Smith, and the TNGOP is, wasn’t it “our money” from 2001-2008, too? Didn’t the government have their “hands in our pockets” when George W. Bush was president?

Excuse me, dude, but your partisan hackery is showing.

  • Share/Bookmark

Economists – Bearded or Not – So Totally Given the Shaft

Pay no attention to the man behind the beard.

Pay no attention to the man behind the beard.

No one yet has satisfactorily answered the question, why do all high-profile economists have beards? I know they’re hiding something under those whiskers. I just know it. There’s the nobel prize-winning Dr. Beardy. And Beardy, Jr.. And friend of the show, Dean Beardy. One of these days I’ll get to the bottom of all that facial hair but in the meantime, I’d be satisfied with simply hearing what these men have to say about our economy.

Too bad for me, because it seems that the beards are also keeping the fiscally erudite off the TV.

Maybe they can’t quite get the lighting right, but according to a new report by Media Matters for America economists have made scant appearances on television to talk about the economic recovery plan. Studying the Sunday talk shows as well as 12 cable news programs from January 25 through February 8, MMFA found that:

During 139 1/2 hours of programming in which the economic recovery legislation was discussed, economists made 25 guest appearances out of a total of 460 — only 5 percent.

There’s no doubt that opinion, whether follicly-gifted or not, has its place. But a healthier balance of ideologically-driven opinion and learned opinion would better serve the public’s interest. If you’re going to flood your congressperson’s office with calls, shouldn’t they be about something more than a manufactured story about the forbidden love of a house speaker and a harvest mouse?

  • Share/Bookmark

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...