the US is broke, the big banks are insolvent. the former "bails out" the latter, driving debt to the stratosphere. if you've wondered for years why a country like china would loan money it will never get back to a basket case like us, well, join the club.
it's amusing to see the GOPpers in the US house scrambling to come up with $100 billion in budget cuts -- a number that the tea party partisans have latched onto with renewed vigor, after the leadership got stuck at $40 billion. the fanatics are demanding their pound of flesh, while the guys driving the bus know that politically they're set to go off a cliff.
there was some anguish on the left about obambi cutting home heating assistance to low income people -- with the administration's appeasers gaming the situation for political points: screw the base. but that's nothing: the GOPpers are not playing namby pamby with these deadbeats. it's a dog-eat-dog world, and the palinists are looking to rip a big chunk out of programs that help the unworthy parasites feeding on the federal teat.
there are certainly federal programs that are niceties rather than necessities, but the simple fact is, you can eviscerate those programs, defund them to the last dime, and it wouldn't put a nick in the federal budget, the deficit or the debt. domestic and foreign aid programs that aim to help people may seem like the exit wound from a hollow-point bullet -- gushing red ink in the deficit debacle.
but that's not where the money is.
if you want to get serious about staunching the flow of red, then go to the fountainhead: the pentagon and it's subsidiary culture of leeches, subsidies to big business, bailouts to insolvent mega banks, and debt service on the profligacy of all the above. no one who's sincere about getting the nation's fiscal house in order can ignore the elephant in the room...
but ignore it, they will.
our communities across this great cauldron of seething self interest and mindless consumption are as dependent on the military tooth fairy as the maggot is a rotting carcass. red-blooded american patriots hate our government on one hand, for doling handouts to lazy, no-account people they happen not to like, while mindlessly boosterising for military domination of the world, while calling it benevolence. in effect, it's a stew of resentments at home and abroad, and it drives a schizoid attitude toward government spending.
in my beloved commonwealth of virginia, we're high up on the list of recipients of the government pork, and as is normal for states in the south, the more we suck off the feds, the more vociferous the anti-government rhetoric becomes. but talk about taking a nick off of that -- as was proposed for the norfolk navy base -- and the cry of treason goes up, and all the howler monkeys don tri-corner hats and stream into capitol square with their pitchforks.
GOP and tea party be damned: federal spending will inevitably increase, military expenditures will inevitably increase, bailouts for the big, insolvent banks will inevitably increase. the tea party will get madder and madder about their $100 billion in cuts, but they don't matter, what they want doesn't count. in the larger view of things, they're simply a bit of political theater put on at the expense of the oligarchy to keep the nation distracted and entertained, while business as usual is carried out.
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