Monday, September 08, 2008

War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. And more....

In my several decades of following the political scene (I got an early start on that one) I have never been moved to rage quite as quickly as has been the case over the last week or so. And I mean rage -- unbridled, vocabulary limiting, screaming rage. The abject lies and mischaracterizations that have been flowing from the newly anointed St. Paul duo have been just astounding. "Change!" they bellow. "Change!" What kind of change are they proposing?

We have an economy that's rapidly declining. Why? How could this possibly be the case when we continue to hear stories of how the productivity of the American worker keeps rising? Wouldn't that "rising tide raise all boats," as the three decade Republican mantra says? Well, no. Think of what "productivity" really means. It means that goods and services are delivered with less labor cost. Hmmm. "Less labor cost." In other words, people are getting paid less to do more. the increased number of overall dollars are being funnelled to fewer and fewer pockets. And we wonder why "the consumer" is tapped out?

Of course, at the same time, we've experienced a time when exactly the kinds of monies that are flowing into the fewer pockets are taxed at a lower rate than regular income.

Have they said word one about how they're going to change that? Well, no. Of course not. That's exactly the kind of thing they believe in. There will be much talk about "earmarks", with easy candidates like basic science ("three million dollars for studying the DNA of bears.....") -- and making the assumption that all earmarks are things like that.

One more point: In a speech by Gov. Palin, she says something along the lines of: "Our opponents say they will fight for you. Well, of the four of us, only one has truly fought for the American people...." alluding to Sen. McCain's military record. Fine. We respect his service. But "fought for me"? Dropping bombs from great height, many of which fell on innocents? All in the name of fighting a nationalist movement halfway around the world? No. I'm not buying that one either.

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