The House Speakership Circus and the GOP’s Deformation of Reality
And the Crooked, Warped Worm in the Bright Red Apple that the Tea Party will Give the Speaker of the House
By
David Gottfried
SUITABLY SARCASTIC INTRODUCTION (Don’t take this intro personally):
I have neither the time nor the desire to give you an image to accompany my prose. So try to put your big boy pants on and try to read like an adult. If reading is too much of an imposition for your delicate, little brains, drop some groovy acid and you may see pictures galore.
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The Unfunny Clowns of the GOP cannot agree on a House Speaker. A rabid and rancid collection of GOP Congressmen find that Mc Carthy is not sufficiently right wing. In this regard, they remind me of Islamic radicals who have a propensity for rebelling against their leaders for not being sufficiently strident in their politics. Like Islamic radicals, they have a disagreeable and ultimately self-annihilating yen for fiercer and fiercer distillations of pure, unadulterated radical rage.
Of course, these nit wits can’t admit that they just want to raise hell and get on TV acting like the newscaster who went bonkers in the movie “Network.” They have to fabricate an issue.
Among other things, they are spreading fabrications about Federal Deficits. During the pathetic squall regarding the House Speakership, several GOP congressmen have bemoaned the allegedly huge deficits that have accompanied President Biden’s tenure.
In fact, Republicans always attack Democrats for allegedly high deficits and always look the other way when Republicans rack up even higher deficits.
Actually, Republicans and Democrats both know something that the “liberal” media won’t tell you, and the “liberal” media proves that it favors Republicans because of the manifold omissions in its biased coverage.
Republicans and Democrats both know that the most reliable means of stimulating the economy and increasing employment is by giving us Federal budget deficits. (It can cause inflation – more about that in a moment) Therefore, Republicans, who years ago hated deficits, often give us deficits. However, Republicans hush up the deficits they are bestowing upon America because the American people, by and large, have equated deficits with original sin. When Democrats are in power, Republicans bemoan Democratic deficits, obstruct the ability of Democrats to give us deficits and economic renewal, the economy flounders and Republicans win.
A brief review of some salient examples of the GOP lying their way to victory by bullshitting about deficits:
How Richard Nixon lied about deficits and got re-elected:
In the 1968 election he castigated Democrats, alleging that inflation had gotten out of hand (It was about 3.3 percent) because of soaring deficits.
To get re-elected he gave us stratospheric deficits. To counter the risk that such deficits would cause inflation, he got on television, in July 1971, and announced that all wages and prices would be FROZEN at midnight, a few hours away. The stock markets galloped to unprecedented highs, jobs were plentiful, and the Democrats were slaughtered in November 1972.
How Ronald Reagan duped the dumbed down American dolts by bullshitting about deficits:
When President Reagan seized the Presidency in 1980, he complained that Carter was an abominable President because deficits were too high (I think the Federal Budget deficit was 45 billion dollars in Carter’s last year in office.) Reagan gave us deficits that exceeded 200 billion dollars a year, by 1984 the economy was expanding at a handsome clip, and in 1984, Reagan won every state in the nation save Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Reagan fought against inflation, that could have been engendered by the deficits, with killer interest rates. These killer interest rates made the price of the dollar soar, which made imports into this country soar (because the dollar was so strong, foreign goods became cheap) and make our exports collapse (Because the dollar had risen in value, our products became more expensive to foreigners.) The very strong dollar, which was created by Reagan’s economic policies, dealt an enormously destructive blow to almost everyone in America who worked in manufacturing. And because of the liberal media’s persistent refusal to discuss this dynamic, blue-collar America became the base of the “Reagan Democrats.”
In the 2008 economic debacle, the country faced a credit crunch and a liquidity crisis that threw millions out of work faster than a red like me could say, “The revolution is coming.”
Of course, whatever was revolutionary in that era was soon snuffed out. Among other things, although Obama increased the deficit, the consensus among leading economists was that he did not increase the deficit enough. His failure to give us the sort of stimulative punch we really needed made the Great Recession linger in the Industrial Midwest. This made Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania go for Trump in 2016.
Of course, Republicans, especially those in the intellectually challenged Tea Party, which was the immediate antecedent of the Trumpers, railed against Obama about the deficit. And these very same tea partiers, who were apoplectic about Obama’s deficits, were wholly sanguine and disinterested in the infinitely larger deficits imposed by their Fuhrer, Herr Trump. But now that Biden is President, they have rediscovered their psychotic phobia of deficits.
Of course, the very name of the organization, The Tea Party, betrays the stupidity of those amazingly assholish intellectual midgets.
Contrary to the musings of Marjorie Taylor Green, the Tea Party of Boston did not consist of people who wanted to dump tea in the harbor because they allegedly thought that tea was an effete, British beverage. Rather, they were trying to help John Hancock maintain his monopoly on the sale of tea in the city of Boston. The Brits, in an effort to help the American colonists afford tea, had tea in reserve, in Boston Harbor, which they had hoped to sell to Bostonians to undercut Hancock’s monopoly. The tea partiers dumped the tea in the Harbor to enable Hancock to continue to sell tea at exorbitantly high prices.
Of course, we Democrats are just as stupid as Republicans because we are the consummate anti Houdinis. Just as Houdini was celebrated for his brilliant ability to get out of locked spaces and all manner of murderous, torturous devices, we Democrats are second to none in our ability to become ensnared by whatever traps Republicans contrive.
When the tea partiers attacked Obama for his allegedly excessive deficits, Obama apologized to the nation. The led Americans to believe that he was inept because he was unable to curb the deficit, and he helped Republicans slaughter Democrats in the 2010 election.
Instead, of apologizing to America for allowing deficits to rise, Obama should have told America that the deficit was intentional, that it was a deliberate means of stimulating the economy.
Of course, there was a time when Democratic Presidents were not weaklings and masochists and actually explained their policies to the America people. There was a time when President Roosevelt gave us fireside chats and actually came close to giving the American people courses in high school economics. But Obama, for whatever reason, could not or would not address the nation and attempt to explain his position. For we live in an era in which politicians repeatedly use phrases which have been approved by focus groups and never consider giving us a meaningful narrative which explains a program or policy.