As the Cookie Crumbles: Pretenders

I sher do wish Krugman and Reich and all the other MSEz (MainStream Economistz) would stop PRETENDING to be 1) surprised! or 2) shocked!, or 3) dismayed!, or 4) upset!, or 5) disturbed!, or 6) otherwise confused! when the GOPhux AGAIN refuse to act or negotiate or bargain in "good faith." There was a perfect example of the art in on Krugman's blog at the NYTimes, recently.

By NOW, this appallingly transparent duplicity CANNOT come as--or be represented as--some fucking "SOO-PRAHS!" anymore. It strains credulity to the snapping point. The GOPhux have NOT given ANY indication AT LEAST since 1981 that they have ANY intention, whatsoever, of EVER acting in "good faith" with the Dumocrats, as equal, co-governors, ever again.

The deal that once prevailed--where everybody at least pretended the other guys were just as able as they were to govern--was abrogated, consciously, by the GOPhux, beginning probably with Nixon; but it became official policy under the Raygunners. It was a coup d'etat, and it's over.

Krugman and Reich, and the rest of the MSEz still HAVE to pretend to NOT see the pretense they're paid to preserve, and maintain the necessary illusions. That's their job, for which they are handsomely remunerated.

But don't YOU be deceived, hippies...

Interestingly, and speaking of deceit...Jack Abramov, the uber-lobbyist whose eye for corruption finally o'er-spanned his ability to disguise it, and who subsequently spent some time in jail for his appetites (a fate which I'm sure others of his ilk--Luntz, Ralph Reid, Grover Norquist, among them, would find salubrious) has broken the omerta-like silence about the operating conditions and operant understandings and arrangements in your typical, well-financed, well-connected, right-wing K-Street bribery...I mean, "lobby" shop.

The trick, apparently, when you're a lobbyist trying to secure the sympathies of any given Congresscritter--was then (and presumably still is), to recruit a key members of the Critter's staff as FUTURE employees of the lobbyist's multi-billion-dollar-booking operation.

And NOT to exchange anything but telephone numbers, as long as the recruit was still in "public" service, along with the "understanding" that the career of the Congressional flunky who played along was secured when they went out the revolving door.

Deferred compensation, I guess you'd call it, by the lobbyist; an "investment in the future" for the staffers.

It was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), and an EVERYDAY occurrence in Abramov's shop, which was one of the most successful, and wealthiest, and therefore would have been a MODEL for all the other wannabes on K-Street.

How does one cleanse such Stygian filth? The Potomac doesn't run swift or full enough to flush away the accreted SHIT in Congress and the industries designed to control it.

Napalm?

Like Stokely said, the fire next time?

Whadda you think hippies. We can talk about it when I see you at the beach.

Oh, yeah: The so-called "giving season" is fast upon us. The WWH comp'ny store has cool stuff with which to assuage your potlatching impulses.