Aw, Shut Up Wisconsin and Eat Your Mouldy Cheese

Bwa-hahahah.  So Wisconsin voters voted in a whole bunch of slash 'n burn Republicans who (surprise!) slashed 'n burned, so everyone went Waaaa, Waaaaa, and the unions got all pissy because they, particularly, were targeted for destruction, and they said, Boooooo!  Boooooo! and everyone stomped around and held huge, loud protests, then they organized a bunch of recalls to dump some of the Republican legislators who'd been slashing and burning them, and the election is now over and the voters only recalled two legislators (out of six)  which means the state government remains firmly in the hands of the slash 'n burning Republicans, so everyone's back to square one, and now folks are talking about recalling Chief Slasher, Governer Walker.

Are you kidding me???? Oh, Wisconsin, give it up.  You don't seem to understand.  We live in Battered Wife Nation.  Smack us around, cut us to the bone, create policies that begger us and kick us to the curb and we'll re-elect you again and again or we'll elect even worse batterers -- ones with knives, not just fists.  We're addicted to the abuse because, like battered wives, we've been brainwashed into thinking that we're not worth anything.  Sell our jobs down the river and move the profit upline to a small handful of wealthy?  Fine by us.  We don't deserve a living wage.  Leave us and our underwater homes underwater while spending our tax dollars to bail out the rich Wall Streeters?  That's o.k., too. We don't deserve a bail out.  Matter of fact, we don't deserve anything at all since we're expendable, unnecessary baggage dumped by the road to insure that only a very few will win the all American race to the top .

So, instead of your "On Wisconsin" fight song, it's time for all you cheesers to shut up and just eat the few scraps of Cheddar that's trickling down to you.  It's all you deserve and everybody knows you're not going to do anything about it. I mean, look at your recall results. Meh.  

And Now, The Question

Ah, the stock market is dropping like a stone.  Guess who makes money when the stock market drops like a stone?  Guess who makes money buying up tons of blue-chip stocks cheap when the market drops like a stone, then waits for the market to return and thereby makes pots more money?

Working people?  Poor people? Middle class people who are out of work and underwater on their mortgages, their 401K's shreds?  Why, Nooooo.  Not them. They lose their jobs as multi-national companies dump them and move those salary-savings (and the jobs) offshore.  Speculators?  Really, really rich speculators?  Like Wall Streeters? 

Ah, yes. Lots of quick money to be made when economies crash.  Lots of money to be made by, uh, helping economies to crash, too. So, let's all give a big shout-out to the Tea Party who were instrumental in getting this Wall Street party started in the first place. Yippee! Yo, Michelle Bachman, you were right.  Claiming defaults and downgrades would be harmful to our economy were all a big Democratic lie. Rich people, who are the only ones that count, are gonna get richer and if regular people get hurt?  Talk to the hand.  

In America, "regular" people don't matter any more. They're not the demographic American business is looking for.  Brazilians are.  Brazilians, for example, are in an expanding economy, having lots of babies, setting up households.  Lots of money to be made by American companies who move their operations (and jobs) offshore to focus on their new customers and grow their new business.  And those new customers aren't Americans. Who are broke and so not buying what American companies produce any more. So the hell with them.

Unless, of course, Americans can be turned into non-union, cheap-wage sweatshop workers hired by multi-national American companies to produce products for, say, Brazilians. Hey, maybe the tag "Made in America" will once again mean something.  O.K., maybe that wouldn't quite mean what it used to mean, but heck.  In a third-world country like America, a sweat shop job is better than nothing. 

Meantime, happy days are here for the big cash-boys.  Mo' money, mo' money.  Let the good times roll and God bless the child. . .

While Rome Fiddles

If you think the stakes aren’t high, please go to the Youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeXdv-uPaw&feature=share

It’s your home and its in trouble.

Your Sunday Poem

This by Jane Hirschfield from her book, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."

                              August Day

You work with what you are given --
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.

It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.

In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August Day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.

There are some who may think, "How pitiful, how lonely."
Others must murmur, "How lazy."

I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.

Millionaire America. Happy at last!

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for August 5, 2011

Whew! That was a close one. A band of crazed Democratic socialists in Congress were threatening to reduce the country’s massive debt by both making cuts in various government programs, including Medicare and Social Security, and – horrors! –by balancing those cuts with higher taxes on the rich and super rich, until the newly elected Tea Partiers saved the day, took the country hostage and threatened to take our economy over the cliff unless Congress promised that there would be No Taxes, not even on the ultra rich.

Not wishing to see the US economy ruined, which could have triggered a world-wide crash, the weenie Dems caved. Now, you’d think that such a meek capitulation would make the average working American furious, knowing that they alone would be the ones bearing all the pain of cuts to their safety net, but, no. They were jubilant because Americans, no matter what their station in life, truly believe that they are the millionaires and billionaires that the proposed tax hikes would have affected.

Which is why they elect and re-elect representatives who are rabid Norquistian No Taxers, staunch ideologues who believe in the theory that millionaires and billionaires (like the voters) are “job creators,” and that taxes are “job killers,” even though there is little historical evidence to support either claim.

And, believing themselves to be millionaires, the American voters also don’t need or want any social safety nets either, and vote accordingly. They’re apparently convinced that they’ll never lose their jobs (don’t need any of that socialistic unemployment insurance; that’s just another government give-away). They also believe that they’ll never lose their job-related health insurance or that their health will never fail (don’t need or want any kind of national health-care reform, and certainly not some awful socialized medicine like Medicare.) Being rich, they don’t’ need it. The private market will take care of their few needs. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s no problem. They have millions. They’ll just pay the doctor and hospital out of pocket.

And as for getting old and needing some kind of “social security?” Not needed. They’re rich and will pay their own way.

And so, in the middle of a near depression, they elected lots of new cut ‘n slash Tea Partiers and re-elected their staunch oath-signing No Tax Norquistian incumbents and sent them to Congress to slash the budget and cut government programs to the bone, and/or to try to kill them altogether. And keep taxes low or zero on millionaires and billionaires (and corporations who’ve skated out of paying taxes altogether) so all those non-tax-paying “job creators” can create jobs. And if you look around you, you’ll see how well it’s worked. The corporations that were awash with hoarded money, paying out obscene bonuses to their CEO’s, and/or getting tax breaks for moving jobs off shore, have, with this latest budget deal, started hiring again. Factories are humming. Every day I can hardly lift up the newspaper, so heavy is it with “help wanted” listings from all these “job creators.” Companies are desperately opening up hiring halls in towns across America just begging people to come work. And Millionaire America is once again filling the malls and shopping centers, buying everything in sight. I can only imagine the kind of sugar plum dream retailers will have this Christmas.

All of which is great news since the recently promised cuts-only to the federal budget will mean that hundreds of thousands of federal employees are about to lose their jobs and be added to the unemployment rolls. And those federal cuts will also trickle down to add to budget woes in the states, with state employees getting even more pink-slips as well. But, not to worry. Federal, state and city workers are all millionaires, too. And all those private sector, un-taxed, cash-hoarding job-creators are ready for them! Step right up. Here’s a job application blank. Name your salary! Happy days are here again.

Talk about a win-win for Millionaire America where every man thinks he’s King Croesus and votes accordingly. And if that wasn’t enough good news, Congress, always messy and often dysfunctional at best, has now decided to make itself irrelevant. It will create a tiny new Super Congress – the Gang of 12 – that will decide what to do about the budget. Talk about Grover Norquist’s wet-dream; make government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Grover’s never been able to drown the real Congress before – it was too big. He couldn’t fit them all into his house, let alone into his bathtub. But twelve unelected people?

Ah, piece of cake.