Thursday, December 03, 2009

Damaged


A brief interlude from the complaints about myself to complain about the soiled, damaged hobo that America has become.

First, I'd like to dwell on the fact that the "stock market" it up, all the banking Executives on Wall Street are gleefully looking forward to record-breaking bonuses measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the current White House administration is claiming: the worst is over, the recession is over, and happy days are here again.

In the meanwhile, US unemployment, no matter how you measure it, U3, U6 or SGS, has gone up about 100% in the last 20 months, and 60% in the past year alone.One in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed. One in eight families are on food stamps. Over one hundred thousand households are filing for bankruptcy every month. And one in eight families can not afford to pay their mortgage this month.

And yet, our leaders, our President, and everyone in the financial system is telling us the recession is over? And they're able to say it with a straight face?

Second, I'd like to elaborate on the current administration's false notion that we can achieve and maintain some kind of "recovery." Recover to a society that spends 110% of its annual income? Recover to a society that spends $600/ft on a flimsy McHouse that's made as cheaply and quickly as possible? Recover to a system where a painter making $30,000 per year can buy a half million dollar house, fill it with 60" plasma screens, and park three Escalades out front that he uses to buy cheeseburgers, glazed donuts, and 90oz Super Sized jugs of Coke for each meal?

For the record, we've depleted all of our cheap, clean, easy-to-reach natural resources. We've all-but-destroyed our manufacturing base. Our national infrastructure is on life support. We continue to reward Big Business for out-sourcing our Knowledge Based Businesses. We continue to encourage Big Business to avoid paying taxes that our local and federal governments desperately need just to stay afloat.

So please, explain to me in simple, easy-to-follow terms, what our recovered society is going to look like, and how can we possible get there, from here? Get sock puppets if you have them, because I don't see how anything short of the Second Coming is going to do anything other keep our heads above the dark waters.

Third, I'm curious to know why our national media outlets continue to distract us from the real issues. Tiger Woods wrecking his Cadillac doesn't affect the national debt that has a rocket on its ass and is diving straight up into the stratosphere where only our children will be able to find it. Two reality TV shysters sneaking into a White House dinner (where they could have BOUGHT a ticket) does nothing to bring our tired troops home or reconcile the two TRILLION dollars we've airlifted over to Iraq in order to find some sneaky WMD that have elluded us since 2004. And why are do we blindly accept the idea that a new "surge" of 30,000 troops (at a cost of close to $1M/year per person, or $30,000,000,000/year for the "surge,") in A'Stan will work when every report says that we should empower the local tribes, enlist Afghans eager to fight the bad guys, don't force them to support a corrupt central government or bow to foreign forces - and keep picking off Al Qaeda with Special Operations troops and drones.

We're all damaged. Mentally. Physically. Spiritually. Our nation teeters on the edge of the abyss. But our leaders tell us the recession is over. Our President says we trust him, we can all get better cars, better houses, free health care, and a free college education. And our corporate-controlled media companies tell us to smile and ignore the men behind the curtain.

Wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!

No comments: