They Fooled Us With Springtime

-
You say it like you are surprised?



What were you realistically expecting?

Remember this?

Or this?

What time is it in Washington?





Springtime

(Hope)
What time is it my heart?
What time is it my heart?
(Mr President?)
What time is it my heart?
What time is it my heart?
What time is it my heart?

What time is it in England?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it in Gibraltar?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it over there in Fisterra?
(What time is it in Gibraltar?)
What time is it hey byebyebom?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it the whole life?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it in Japan?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it in Mozambique?
(What time is it my heart?)
What time is it in Washington?
(What time is it my heart?)

They fooled us byebyebom
They fooled us with springtime
They fooled us byebyebom

bombala bombala bombala bombala bombala
(What time is it my heart?)
bombala bombala bombala bombala bombala
(What time is it my heart?)
bombala bombala bombala bombala bombala

What time is it my heart?
MORE >

Striptease

-

How very Goyaesque.
I hear what you are saying, Robert, but no one else can—or wants to.

Or not enough people, in any case. And not the ones that matter. None of the decision-makers. And not enough of the decision-takers (those who have to take it, in the end, and wind up living with the decisions made for them by the ®deciders that they voted—or not—into office). It looks like people are jut swallowing it all, hook, line, and sinker. What else did you expect, when all the decision-makers, the representatives of the people, left or right, are practically all on the same page?

Regardless of how many Nobel prizes of economics Paul Krugman is awarded, it doesn't seem like anything of what he or you might be saying about this Orwellian dystopia is going to make one iota of a difference in the end.

And this is why:



In Striptease, a play by Polish dramatist and writer Sławomir Mrożek, two characters - one an intellectual, the other an activist - find themselves inside a room where a gigantic hand instructs them to remove their clothes until both act out an elaborate dance of rationalized submission.



I've often wondered if this is what it must be like to be a "New" Democrat.



Rationalized submission is basically what has been happening to dissent in this country, over the last two decades. Most of the people who were indignant under the presidency of George W. Bush, have now just simply become resigned under the presidency of Obama.

This is what happens when hope is no more.

Is this stage 4 of the Kübler-Ross model, or have we entered stage 5 already?

I wish I could say it is a local phenomenon. But things are just about the same—and worse—on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.



MORE >

The Words to Say it

Kudos to Jonathan Chait for this befitting indictment of the collusion of the Beltway elite of the so-called left, right and center.

MORE >

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow...

-
They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. ~ Ayn Rand When the Inner Party believes the prolefeed

MORE >

It's a sin

-

That's right...



Is it bad that I have made plans and will be one of the first kids on the block to go see the movie tonight?





MORE >

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

But it doesn't really matter.

Not really.

Because in the end, a droid is still a droid...



And a talking point is still a talking point... no matter how many carbon copies of it are spawned on the internet or the corporate news media.

Propaganda is as propaganda does.



And mediocrity is as mediocrity does—and is recognizable as such.

While, on the other hand...ideas...

Well...ideas are bullet-proof, Mr. Creedy.



And great ideas are infectious, no matter how hard some may work at suppressing them.



Isn't it so, Mr. Sunstein?
-
MORE >

Breaking News: Super Congress To Appoint Super-Duper Congress

Because why even bother putting up a modicum of a pretense any longer?




MORE >

Orwellian Reality

-


That's because he doesn't have too, Paul. Not when the odds are stacked in favor of the "house."



Guys like you, Paul, you live in what they call "the reality-based community," which they define as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

But, they will tell you "that's not the way the world really works anymore."

Remember this?



You didn't think this philosophy just applied to the Bush doctrine or was exclusively limited to the field of war and foreign policies, did you?

Economic wars are by far the most devastating of them all, their casualties highly unreported, and their violence hidden. Examples abound in the Majority World of the poorer and less developed countries, where the effects are more overt than they are in Western Europe and the USA. But the violence is the same: Reality is whatever they say it is.

And there is nothing you, or anyone, can do about it—this is what makes it violence.

You are either with the program or you are not, Paul. There is no middle ground, here (and, ironically, perhaps even most especially so for the so-called centrists or new-democrats, à la Obama.) You are either for the banksters or you are against them—and you're not going to make it very far in this game if the house hasn't got your back. Obama understood that from day one. As did G. W. Bush before him.

Dubya's rise to the highest office in the land has been to that regard a most perfect example of what "house advantage" means, if any such a demonstration was ever needed. So has the impotence and ongoing belittlement of the Left made irrelevant under the Obama presidency—this, at the very same time Astroturf wars were building up what was eventually to grow into the current Tea Party movement.

Shock and awe! What a demonstration of strength! The rest is history, and history is written by the victors... Enters Robert Barro...
-
MORE >

Is that all there is?

And...uh...?



Er...

Thanks, but no thanks?

-

MORE >

This just in:

But seriously, now...

Who ever gave a wet fart what the public wanted?

Ever?



About anything?




Who cares what "a majority of Americans" want? That would be mob rule---don't you know?

Can't have that!



Unless, of course, by "a majority of Americans," you mean this nation's "best informed and most engaged citizens".



Two hundred is a crowd!


MORE >

Not a partisan issue

-
MORE >

A More Perfect Union

Worked last time.
-
MORE >

Quaint Moralism

You heard the man.



Buck-up and shut-up.

Know your place. And mind what you say.

Where do you think you are?

England?



MORE >

Feudalism by any other name

– I don't think a woman of your talents should be in public service.



– Oh? And where should I be?

– Consider this - Massive Dynamic is one of the ten largest economic entities in the world. Our weapons technologies shape the Defense Department's strategies. Our investments sway the markets and make or break presidential elections. Overseas, we have responsibilities traditionally sacred to the state. The right to direct private armies, to manage global affairs into stable equilibrium.

MORE >

Suits my mood

SOURCE


André Franquin passed away on January 5, 1997, so he didn't get to see the beginning of the third millennium.



I wonder what he would have made of our times?


MORE >

Quinty's Koan

"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.

"Nor I," said the March Hare.




MORE >

BP: Beyond Prosecution?

"In the last three years, according to the Center for Public Integrity, BP accounted for '97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors' — including 760 citations for 'egregious, willful' violations (compared with only eight at the two oil companies that tied for s...econd place). Hayward’s predecessor at BP, ousted in a sex-and-blackmail scandal in 2007, had placed cost-cutting (and ever more obscene profits) over safety, culminating in the BP Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 and injured 170 in 2005. Last October The Times uncovered documents revealing that BP had still failed to address hundreds of safety hazards at that refinery in the four years after the explosion, prompting the largest fine in the history of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (The fine, $87 million, was no doubt regarded as petty cash by a company whose profit reached nearly $17 billion last year.)"

Op-Ed Columnist - Don’t Get Mad, Mr. President. Get Even. - NYTimes.com

"If Obama is to have a truly transformative presidency, there could be no better catalyst than oil."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/opinion/06rich.html
MORE >