June 3, 2011, Tragedies, farces, falls of empires, etc.
In the legal career I spend much of my life-energy exchanging for money, one of my (all-too-numerous) pet-expressions is "I can defend against clever and dishonest. I can defend against evil. I can even defend against crazy. But neither I, nor anyone, can defend against stupid." And this, boys and girls, is why I am so bearish on our collective future as Americans (though, as individuals, if you and I watch out for ourselves and ignore the idiocy of those around us, we might just make it through).
Case in point: the endless Anthony "Eponymous" Weiner story. Congressman Weiner is a LOSER. If he weren't a chicken-sh** LOSER, he would be Mayor of New York, right now, instead of cowering in fear of Mike Bloomberg's money, the same way he and the rest of his party cower in fear of losing corporate money from political donors, fully 100% enabling the corporate-kleptocracy to run this country (and planet) for their own benefit. That's the only Anthony Weiner story I'm willing to talk about.
Honestly-- the man (and his party) lack the integrity, let alone the entertainment value, of Sarah Palin, who has devoted her life to performance art.
Meanwhile, of all people, John Boehner is making sense on Libya, even if the President don't need no stinkin' War Powers Act resolution. Operation Indepedent Libya is working beautifully: long-time friend of Big Oil Moammar Qaddafi gets to hold on to those parts of Libya he likes, and dumps those ingrate a**holes in Benghazi and those parts of Libya he's just as happy to be rid of, and the American taxpayer gets to pay for this arrangement... as usual. It's win-win-- for Qaddafi, Exxon, Halliburton and Goldman Sachs... we the taxpayers lose... but what else is new?
But don't just assume that just because he makes some sense on Libya, John Boehner isn't willing to play chicken with the rest of us... he is. I've said this one before: the Obama Administration's simultaneous extension of the Bush-era tax cuts without a simultaneous increase of the debt ceiling was a blatant act of political malpractice.
It's all a distraction from, oh, the fact that the last ten years have seen worse real-terms wage "growth" (and, taking out the tippy top wage earners and leaving the other 98, 99% of us, real wages have presumably seriously declined) ever... well, at least worse than the Great Depression. Of course... we're in a "recovery." Just keep clicking your heals together and say "there's no place like... something or other..." Because if you actually focused on things like that (and the environmental and energy and moral and legal and fiscal and food and water and health and education and infrastructure and imperial crises we are simultaneously staring right at)... you might miss out on some Congressman's next lewd tweet. I'm telling you: grow your food- and learn how to cook it, fix that bicycle, get to work without your car, etc... ignore the rest of this inanity... I mean it, man...
This has been... "Tragedies, farces, falls of empires, etc."