We are currently knee deep in another monstrous Wall Street/Washington DC Axis of Evil farcedy. We are the mugs in this mugging. The gullible fools in this deceptive and dishonest pre-scripted trickeration and shameless charade. This double-whammy puppet theater of cooked up crises. The government shutdown and the debt ceiling deadline. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Pure Shock Doctrine. OMG! Not again!
The interlocking criminal enterprise of finance fraudsters and political poltroons has been successfully running variations of this pernicious public hoodwinking over and over for years. This is the 3rd time since 2011 this particular double-whammy con has been played on us. It is psychological terrorism. Bamboozle and scare the wits out of the public with the noisy and hysterical threat of a ticking financial or political time bomb that will end the world as we know it. Unless we cough up our rights, our freedom, liberty, property, privacy and, most important, our hard-earned money to these greedy and malevolent crooks and scoundrels.
The original script for this sort of Shock Doctrine lawlessness was written by the Hunchback of San Clemente, Richard Nixon, and his partner in crime, the odious Henry Kissinger. It was first performed successfully in Chile in 1973. Make the economy scream and democracy will surrender to dictatorship and oligarchy.
To paraphrase a certain philosopher/chimp: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...he he he...we CAN be fooled again. And again. And again.
In the current con, the first ticking time bomb is the government shutdown showdown. By the start of every fiscal year (October 1st), Congress must pass appropriation legislation to continue funding government obligations, or else the government will not have the means to operate and pay its bills. Over the years this has been subject to a certain amount of monkey business by conniving congressmen.
In 1995, the reptilian Speaker Newt Gingrich, under some egotistical pretext, forced a government shutdown for 21 days (during which time, as an unintended consequence, Pres. Horn Dog with time on his hands began his Oval Office canoodling with Monica Lewinsky).
This year, the Tea Party knotheads (the twisted tail that now wags the GOP mangy dog) refused to vote for the funding legislation unless the Affordable Care Act (aka: Obamacare) was defunded, that is to say killed in the cradle. ((Putting aside the fact Obamacare is a lousy law, it is the law and the Teabaggers were using it merely to obstruct and make as much noise as possible)). In a media manufactured High Noon moment, there was no vote and the "shutdown" began. OMG! The sky is falling! It is the end of the world as we know it!
So far, though, the shutdown itself is a devious con trick. In a real government shutdown, you would think our overextended troops in Afghanistan would be loaded up on transport planes and flown straight home. No money. No war. Our countless overseas military bases and diplomatic missions would be closed. The Pentagon would be a ghost town. The military/industrial complex would grind to a halt. The NSA, CIA and their private contractor co-conspirators, would have to stop spying on everyone in the world. Wall Street would not be receiving its $85 billion of free money every month. Slave plantations like Wal Mart would not get their IRS tax breaks. Police and firefighters would all be at home watching daytime TV. But noooo!
It seems the only people being shutdown and not getting paid are (drum roll, here) poor people, sick people, hungry people, unemployed and barely employed people, old people and, of course, children. National parks are also closed (have mercy!) Mission Accomplished (so far). On to Act Two, the next ticking time bomb.
It has taken about one news cycle for the shutdown hysteria to morph into the debt ceiling drop deadline. The debt ceiling, of course, is another legislative mechanism (dating from 1917!) that has been recently phonied up into a political and financial WMD (remember the dreaded "Fiscal Cliff" and the "Sequestration" of just 8 months ago?).
Unlike the government shutdown, failing to raise the debt ceiling (currently topping out at $16.699 trillion) is really serious. So they say. The sky will really fall! It is really the end of the world as we know it. Really! No kidding! OMG! Proof of the dead seriousness of the debt ceiling drop deadline is the sudden chorus of yelping, caterwauling and doom-crying by the world's biggest get-out-jail-free unindicted criminal conspirators, the banksters. Every GotBucks CEO from Deutsche Bank to BNP Parisbas to Chase to the IMF has declared the Eve of Destruction is nigh if the ceiling isn't raised.
Of course, they would say that. The operative word in debt ceiling is debt. These are the immoral and unscrupulous villains who have buried the whole world in debt over the last 3 decades. Worse than the worst street corner loan sharks, if these thugs don't get paid back by the biggest debtor on the planet, the USA of IOU, they will kneecap the entire world. Again.
What is to be done? Who will save us from this fate worse than debt?
Why, it's Captain Catastrophe, waiting in the West Wing to leap onto center stage and save the day for the banksters and politicians with his signature magic trick. The Grand Bargain. Again. Whodda thunk it?
Deceptively named to suggest some majestically purposed endeavor, The Grand Bargain should more aptly be called The Grand Guignol. A graphic amoral horror entertainment. It is designed to begin the sell-out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Shock Doctrine's Final Solution for America. Wall Street's 80-year-long wet dream come true. And perhaps the real reason a certain obscure, inexperienced, but silver-tongued Illinois State Senator was recruited for the White House by these Masters of the Universe and malefactors of great wealth.
This smart, cocky and ambitious (not to mention bi-racial) political novice, they figured, could perform "the trick wot nobody cannot do." Step on and defuse the 3rd rail of American politics. The sock puppet George W. tried to do it but even his goofy constituency of true believers wouldn't go along. The GOP's own Saint, the popular and amiable ham actor Ronald Reagan, wouldn't even dream of doing it. "Are you crazy?" he allegedly replied to his handlers, "these are the people who vote for us!" A Democrat would not dare to do it. It is the cardinal sin of the Democratic Party. Yet Obama seems almost too eager to commit it.
He has been blithely dancing with this devil since the days when he auditioned for the part of Prez before the big bankrollers in the corporate inner sanctums of New York and Chicago. He slyly revealed his heretical intentions during the 2008 campaign but nobody much noticed in the bright blinding (false?) glow of his Hope & Change candidacy. During the 2011 double whammy showdown he eagerly offered up this human sacrifice of Social Security and Medicare to the loopy GOP in exchange for virtually nothing of value. But the GOP turned out to be so howling-at-the-moon nuts, they actually rejected the gift. He has been angling to give the kiss of life to his Grand Betrayal...er..um...Bargain at every opportunity since then. Always referring to it in the crazy party's false lingo as "entitlement reform".
The current Perils of Pauline end-of-the-world-as we-know-it spellbinder provides the best chance so far to commit this unforgivable political sin disguised as a brilliant negotiating gesture. Just a teeeeny tiiiiny cost of living "adjustment" (lower forever) to your Social Security check and the chump change (multi-billion$) redirection of some Medicare moolah. In exchange for a pack of empty promises from the GOP outlaws. No big deal for such a BIG deal. Stop the clock! Stop the presses! Peace is at hand!
It is, of course, a dangerous and unsettled game all these bad actors are playing. The crazy chorus with its combustible mix of treason, sedition, rampant racism and pig ignorance may actually be pushing the farther shores of political insanity even more than they already appear to be and refuse, again, to take Yes! for an answer. On the other hand, the corrupted but perhaps not yet morally corroded Democrats may suddenly relocate their historic FDR, JFK, LBJ and Give 'em hell Harry guts and stand up for the rest of us instead of wussying at the last moment yet again. Or President Obamacare may miraculously in the nick of time drop his treacherous gambit, realizing that pursuing his Grand Bargain heresy will not establish his legacy as the new Lincoln but instead destroy the Democratic Party along with his presidency and his name will be Mudd.
Don't bank on it. That really would be the end of the world, as we know it! OMG!
