Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Today, in his weekly radio address, President Barack Obama said, “We cannot afford to continue these tax breaks for the wealthiest taxpayers – especially when we know that cutting the deficit is going to demand sacrifice from everyone.”

Hey, that sounds like the old Barack Obama! Has he finally got his mojo back? Has he decided to back out of his decision to help Republicans pass tax cuts for billionaires?

Nope. Right after Obama admitted that his plan to help Republicans pass tax cuts for the rich will put future generations in unacceptable debt, Obama declared that he’s going to go ahead with the plan anyway.

Why? Obama says he just doesn’t have any choice but to cave in to the Republicans’ demands. He says that George W. Bush’s old economic plan, the one that led to disaster, is just too important.

Obama says that he doesn’t have the strength to do anything but allow those unaffordable tax cuts for billionaires to become law.

It’s not like he has the power to veto the deal and force the Republicans to come back with something better.

Oh. Wait. He does.

They say that the economic recession has ended. When they say that, they’re talking about the reality of wealthy investors on Wall Street.

In the rest of America, the recession continues. That fact is illustrated by the following graph, recently released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office:

This graph shows the rate of long term unemployment – people who have been looking for work, but unable to find any, for over 26 weeks. In the last half century, the long term unemployment rate hasn’t been anywhere close to where it is now – not even under the economic disaster America suffered when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

Barry C. Black the government-appointed, tax-paid high priest of the United States Senate, spoke yesterday of the evils of self-sufficiency. Praying to his Christian deity, which he wrongly presumes is the deity of every American, he preached, “Deliver us from the self-sufficiency that will not recognize our need of You.”

In these times of record-braking budget defecits and general economic disarray, is a message against self-sufficiency really what our nation needs to hear? Has the problem with Wall Street been that it was too self-sufficient? Do we need more corporate dependence on taxpayer bailouts?

Is corporate welfare the message Barry C. Black intended to communicate, or does he merely want the United States to become dependent upon his religion?

In spite of the economic stimulus package, for people who don’t work on Wall Street, the economy has continued to get worse. Lately, they’ve moved from worse to… worserer. So, what are we to do?

We’ve tried working harder to keep our jobs, or to get a job, but we’ve been working harder for a long time now, and nothing’s getting better.

I say we turn to drink. I’ve just discovered a wonderful liquor that tastes absolutely fabulous: Disaronno. It’s an italian liquor with a kind of sweet bitterness to it.

I find it to be a remarkable stimulus during this time of economic troubles.

How about you? What’s your alcoholic coping mechanism of choice?

“New jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 667,000″ says the Associated Press.

What about huge unemployment isn’t expected? Who didn’t expect this kind of massive increase in joblessness? Who’s the idiot that still hasn’t gotten the memo that the economy is falling apart?

The Reuters headline reads:

Wall Street bets on stimulus after job cuts

and all of a sudden the worrying thought occurs to me: Are we rewarding job cuts? Is it that corporations are learning that, if they’ll go on and cut enough jobs so that people believe in the reality of an economic crisis, the government will then come along and then give them lots of money?

Are we encouraging corporations to kick people to the curb?

Sarah Palin is no friend of small towns in America.

How many small town main streets across the USA have died when Wal-Mart parked its trucks on the outskirts of town and built a big box store, stealing all the customers that small business relied upon? Those big box stores can offer low, low prices because they sell stuff made in sweatshop factories in countries like China and India, and because they have powerful lobbyists working for them in Washington D.C.

Big box stores ruin small towns.

So, what did Sarah Palin do as mayor of the village of Wasilla? She welcomed the big box stores to set up shop on the edge of town. Practically rolled out the red carpet for them.

Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny says of that when she was mayor, Sarah Palin, “turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.”

If you want America to turn into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots, then Sarah Palin is your kind of politician. If not, then you need to take a stand now and join with those Americans working to make sure that Sarah Palin is never placed within a heartbeat of being President of the United States.

Republican politics in Washington D.C. brings us this polluted equation:

40 billion dollars of profits for ExxonMobil in 2008 plus record oil prices plus ever escalating economic damage due to fossil-fuel-fueled climate change equals continued tax breaks for ExxonMobil

This is no joke. It’s what’s really going on. We’re getting another record-breaking federal budget next year, but ExxonMobil won’t be paying its share.

The Republicans in DC are nothing but an oil slick across America’s pocketbook.