In our age of terror and fear the Obama Administration has a cloying, obnoxious habit of floating policy trial balloons, this time with Marc Ambinder and the National Journal over proposed 2012 federal budget cuts. I truly don’t like responding to anonymous trial balloons—it legitimizes the manipulation and professional capitulation of Ambinder while playing the reactive role of outraged liberal perfectly—but the floated balloons today are so sick and so demonstrative of how lost we have become as a country due diligence demands an analysis.
The United States is tragically, horrifically at war with one country formally (Afghanistan), in occupation of Iraq from yet another stupid useless war, and in an undeclared proxy border war with Pakistan. Our defense budget dwarfs the total of all the rest of globe combined every year. We just passed tax cut extensions for our rich right after rescuing felonious bankers. Now with next year’s federal budget being worked up the Democratic President’s people are floating budget cuts, heinous slashes to our most vulnerable little people. What on earth is going on, how did we get to such a cruel and insane place?
Bewildered citizens trying to understand must first as always whap into mental place that DC is in a awful, ironclad cultural bubble of babbling rationalizations and lies that makes sense only to the politicians, lobbyists, journalists and bureaucrats running in circles there. It’s baffling outrage to any normal citizen but perfectly rational psychosis to them.
One glaring symptom is the balanced budget game, a glaring farce since the time of that big spender Reagan. Nobody gave a shot about budget deficits under Bush either, hell, they still don’t care (obviously) right now with war and tax cuts, but DC bubble babblers still constantly rant about deficits and spending cuts. Our bought corporate journalism corps never calls them on it, so the glaring mental illness is happily accepted in DC as a feature, not a bug.
Why? Because of course the real reason for the offensive budget stupidity is to make cuts that critics don’t like, this time those filthy liberal welfare state giveaway programs, like making sure seniors have heat in winter.
Another shining facet of the DC bubble is its total loathing of liberals, 30 years of relentless Rush Limbaugh conservative bullying have created such an atmosphere of intimidation of fear for Democrats they can’t even accept their identification as liberals anymore, we’re all Progressives now. It makes sense to go after our old folks after tax cuts in DC because liberalism and liberal policy is hated and loathed in a way incomprehensible to outsiders.
That’s one reason the trial balloons go after sacred liberal spending, it placates and pleases by far the dominant political forces of the DC bubble. See how not liberal we are, how willing we are even to smash our own people?
Part of that ploy is the expected outraged from writers like yours truly, see how we got the liberals to hop and froth? Ambinder wrote it this way: Such complaints might satisfy the White House, which has a vested interest in convincing Americans that it is serious about budget discipline.
The Democratic and liberal community is being manipulated, in other words, to demonstrate to everyone else how righteous the Obama path must be, facilitating three appropriate observations.
John McCain unforgivably legitimized The Stupid in the DC bubble by nominating Sarah Palin, but the rest of the country still prizes intelligence and correct perception, these laughably transparent manipulation games through bought journalists is a profound disgrace, a sniveling, sneaking behavior so far below expectations of the American Executive. Grow up.
Somehow the Obama Administration got twisted into a place where knifing liberals and their sacred policies are good politics, the DC bubble pays it off for them. It’s a total disaster for the rest of the country, just take a look around at paradise, but since they pay no penalty and will get re-elected in a walk from an opposition more psychotic and lost than they (really) smashing our people and economy—we need the stimulatory spending—works short-term. Short term objectives for the next election is all the DC bubble knows.
The penalty in all this psychosis, as always, is to be borne by the little people and the horrible pain of their limited lives, be it in employment, housing, hunger, or heat in winter. We never penalize our liberal-knifing DC leadership by not voting for them because the evil Republicans are worse.
Here we are with our leadership sneaks throwing our seniors to a cold hell, when their "vested interest" used to be peace and jobs. How well has that worked out for us?