Jornal.us

     Now the “Fiscal Cliff” charade has proven to be nothing more than a Fiscal Bungee Jump, what is the next Shock Doctrine scam being cooked up to scare the public witless and steal our national treasure?  It’s the “Debt Bomb”. The New WMD.  Be very afraid!  Tick! Tick! Boom!

     The question is:  will it be a “nuculer” (kudos GW Bush) bomb, a neutron bomb, a suicide bomb or just a stink bomb?

     President Pushover, as ever the world’s worst political negotiator (or perhaps the world’s best “fake” negotiator?), continued to stand on his quicksand principles during the recent Perils of Pauline escapade.  In his pantomime horse-trading over tax hikes and spending cuts with the perpetually pickled House GOP Majority Weeper John Boehner and the turtle-faced Senate GOP Minority Critter Mitch McChinless, he traded away more cake for the millionaires, billionaires and gazillionaires in exchange for crumbs for the middle and working (and out-of-work) classes.  There will now be piddling tax hikes for annual household incomes over $450,000 , stock dividends, hedge fund “carried interest” and the estates of dead millionaires and billionaires (which the usual accountants' alchemy will disappear into the Cayman Islands, Switzerland or any branch of HSBC).  All that and more, in exchange for a one-year extension of unemployment benefits (which is not to be confused with actual employment!) and some other superficial and fleeting tax breaks for the 99%.

     After some dancing in the end zone by the Obama alibiers that he didn’t sell out Social Security and Medicare in the Bungee Jump deal and some grumbling by the GOP zombies that he should have; and before the befuddled public could return to their default couch potato state, the Wall Street/Washington DC Axis of Evil sounded the debt bomb scare alert.

     Hitting the Debt Ceiling in the next few months, they screeched, is guaranteed to be the worst disaster ever to befall the American economy since, oh, the last worst economic disaster in American history. Way worse than falling off the Fiscal Cliff.  Eeek!

     Concocted by Congress in 1917 to help pay the bills for World War I, the so-called debt ceiling (no relation to Michelangelo's magnificent Sistine Chapel ceiling) authorizes the US Government to spend money up to a certain borrowing point.  It is, in fact, nothing more than a concoction and as government spending (and borrowing) has inevitably increased in the past 96 years, the debt ceiling has had to be raised over and over to provide a "cover" for Congressional budget appropriations.  Since 1962 it has been raised 74 times with almost no one noticing (18 times during the ham actor Reagan's presidency, 8 times under Clinton, 7 under W and every year so far by Pres. Pipsqueak).  So why the ticking bomb now?

     The current debt ceiling is about $16.4 trillion (coincidently just about the amount of free money Washington gave Wall Street to save the criminal banksters' bacon after they crashed the economy in 2008 - and who's even counting the $3-4 trillion that disappeared into Iraq and Afghanistan so far?).  The GOP zombies and teabaglicans acting as the cat's paw for the Shock Doctrine, have, since 2011, decided to use the debt ceiling "crisis" as the perfect improvised explosive device (IED) to blow up the American economy on behalf of Al-Qaeda of Wall Street and their Corporate Cannibal Cohorts, enabling them to finally loot the US Treasury of every last nickel they have not already stolen.

     Failure to raise the ceiling, their ransom note goes, will mean the end of the economic world as we know it (never heard that one before, have we?).  The US would have to default on its debt for the first time in history.  The bond rating agencies (who blissfully gave Wall Street's poisonous and fraudulently created derivatives triple-A ratings!) would lower the US credit rating.  The US Government would go into mini-shutdown.  The rest of the world would look at America as some sort of penniless vagrant never to be trusted again.  The rigged wheel of fortune that is the Stock Market would start spinning in reverse.  And the bellowing bond traders and stock swindlers of Al-Qaeda of Wall Street would have to take a cue ball haircut.  O-M-G.  Heaven Forbid.

     These economic terrorists would put the pin back in the grenade, if only BO, The Great Conciliator/Negotiator (who was de-bagged during the 2011 debt ceiling "crisis") would agree to begin the beheading of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (also public education, infrastructure repair, disaster relief, what's left of welfare and just about every government function with the exception of feeding the insatiable Pentagon Beast).  In essence, they would not kill the hostage (the Amurrrican people), if Obama would only do it for them.  The Grand Bargain. 

     But Whoa! Howdy...didn't President Pusillanimous forthrightly declare just after the Bungee Cord on the Fiscal Cliff had bounced back, “While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed.” (apparent translation: "I will not negotiate over the debt ceiling!").  If past is prologue, don't stop paying your flood insurance premium based on that sunny forecast.

    It seems the Wall Street/ Washington DC Axis of Evil, our homegrown economic terrorists, may have learned a thing or two from the Taliban and our former Iraqi enemies after all. The most devastating IED or suicide bomb is not always the first one that goes off.  The real catastrophe often occurs with the detonation of a second bomb buried amidst the crowd of rescuers and rubber-neckers, who have rushed to the scene of the first explosion.

     Ticking right along with the Debt Bomb is the "Sequestration" Bomb.  This clunkily-named device could only have been conceived by a feckless, wreckless and idiotic Congress such as ours.  Or maybe the Marx Brothers.  It is a kind of suicide bomb the Congress strapped to itself last year in order to hold itself hostage.  Hail! Hail! Freedonia!

     Congress designed the Sequestration Bomb in order to force itself to begin dismantling the social safety net of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and trigger an automatic funding cut on the Pentagon Beast.  It is a totally phony deficit reduction trick, supposedly a dud WMD, which, if there is any justice in this world, would blow up in their faces. 

      While the rest of us have barely heard of it and probably wouldn't comprehend it if we had, ironically, the Sequestration Bomb alert is the one that actually scares the pants off the Wall Street/Washington DC Axis of Evil. If it is allowed to detonate it could well blow a huge hole in the trough their greedy snouts have so long been burrowed in.

     In a twisted "Hurt Locker" moment, this is the money bomb our Dear Leader and great delusional post-partisan negotiator/conciliator will attempt to defuse.  Armored in the protective padding of his recent 52% re-election victory, Boom Boom Obama will stride forth at the last minute, unstrap that suicide bomb from the body of Congress, defuse the Pentagon explosive part and throw the rest of it, the so-called "entitlement" cuts, straight at the American people. Ka-Boom! Mission Accomplished. At least until the next end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scare alert...