Saturday - November 06, 2010

america for sale?  this guy says yes it is.  I suspect he may be a liberal of some kind. although ..

Mr Hari thinks America is now officially up for sale.
I guess he doesn’t like the election results? Just a wild guess.
To be fair and honest about it as well, I don’t know the facts or truth of what he says about Boehner.  He doesn’t have entirely kind words for the Democrats either I want you to know.

I think after last night’s radio panel show, I’ve become overly sensitive and perhaps thin skinned re. the T.P. It feels like we’re being ganged up on.  And to make matters even worse, some idiot commenter online in the Mail said my favorite president (Reagan) wasn’t a good president. How the hell would he know? The commenter wasn’t even one of us.  Just gets to me sometimes. Critiques by foreigners who think they know all about us. nuts!

Johann Hari: America is now officially for sale

It’s the Tea Party spirit distilled: pose as the champion of Joe America, while actually ripping him off

The laws and policies of the legislature of the United States of America are now effectively on e-Bay, for sale to the highest bidder. Are you a Wall Street boss who wants to party like it’s 2007? Are you a Big Coal baron who wants to burn, baby, burn? Are you an insurance company that wants to be able to kick sick people off your rolls? Meet John Boehner, the most powerful Republican and soon-to-be Speaker of the House. But – of course! – you already have.

Here’s an example of how you have worked together. In 1995, the House was going to finally repeal subsidies for growing tobacco, because an addictive cancer-causing drug didn’t seem like the most deserving recipient of tax-payers’ cash – until Boehner walked the floor of the House handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow elected representatives. They changed their minds. The subsidy stayed. Explaining his check-dispensing, Boehner says: “It’s gone on here for a long time.” So get your bids in: the House is open for business.

Cancer or no cancer the product is legal.  And there are other ‘addictive’ products out there also. How about a total ban on everything Hari doesn’t approve of?

As for Ins. companies kicking ppl off their rolls, well, um ... that is probably true. I say that cos it happened to me long ago.
okay now ...  here come some more Tea Party slams. Get ready.

To understand what has happened in the mid-term elections, the best guide lies in an unexpected place – the dusty vaults of Hollywood. In 1957, Elia Kazan directed a film called ‘A Face In The Crowd’ that read the tea-leaves of the Tea Party back when Sarah Palin was merely a frosty zygote.
One morning a poor wandering Arkansas chancer named Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes is lying passed out on a jail cell where the local sheriff has detained him overnight.

Lonesome Rhodes becomes one of the biggest stars on US television, he starts receiving offers. Advertisers say that if he endorses their lousy products, they’ll shower him with millions. He knows how to sell to ordinary people – and he is pushed to go further. They ask him to sell the political causes that will make them richer too. He starts railing against social security and the old age pension and anything that taxes the rich to help the rest. He uses the tunes and slanguage of working class Americans to get them to emotionally identify with the people who are screwing them over. He’s brilliant at it – a gurning hyperactive huckster, saying that support and security for ordinary Americans is a betrayal of America. He makes himself rich by lying to the people he came from.

Fast-forward to 2010. John Boehner came from a poor family of twelve children, and heroically worked three jobs (including as a janitor) to put himself through business school. But when he got to elected office, it turned out that there was alot more money to be reaped from serving the interests of rich people than serving the people he came from. He took money from the insurance companies, and voted to deny healthcare coverage to sick children and to the people who hurried to the World Trade Centre on 9/11 to try to dig people from the wreckage, exposing them to deadly toxins. He took money from defense contractors, and supported every war going. He tirelessly champions the overdog, while hoovering up their cash and flying on their private jets to some of the most luxury resorts in the world.

Beck and other on-air promoters “are either the worst financial advisors around or knowingly lying to their loyal viewers.” It’s the Tea Party spirit distilled: pose as the champion of Joe America, while ripping him off.

There is, however, one significant difference from ‘A Face In The Crowd’. At the end of the film – spoiler alert – Lonesome Rhodes is finishing a show and, as the end credits roll and the music swells, he rants against his viewers, believing they can’t hear him. But in the control box, a producer deliberately flips a switch. Suddenly millions hear him say: “Those morons out there. I’d give ‘em dog food and make ‘em think it’s steak. Good night you stupid idiots. Good night you miserable slobs. They’re like a bunch of trained seals – I toss ‘em a fish and they lap it up.” John Boehner and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are ridiculing their followers just as crudely. Can’t somebody at Fox flip the switch?

Above all very much edited so you might want to go here for the whole editorial comment.

Posted by peiper     on 11/06/2010 at 09:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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