I’m hesitant to use the “sounding like a broken record analogy”. In this digital age it’s not likely that anyone born after 1986 will get it.

But it’s irresistible and apropos: In a move that is as transparent as it is outrageous, our Republican representatives are so desperate to take back the White House and the senate in 2012, they are within twenty-six days of sending the American economy – along with the American people – into the abyss.

They appear to be under the impression that the electorate is so pathetically stupid they’ll be able to get away with this. I think they might be on to something.

As the late, lamented Molly Ivins once cheerfully pointed out, putting people in who don’t believe in government in charge of government is generally not a particularly nifty idea. The Tea Party types who now pollute the halls of congress are practically giddy with anticipation at the very idea that the government of the United States of America could come crashing down in complete and utter destruction within months of defaulting on its international debts.

Not a particularly nifty idea indeed. I miss Molly Ivins like nobody’s business.

This is what they (or their ideological descendants) have been dreaming of since the dawn of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal seventy-eight years ago. We’re within weeks of seeing their dreams come into fruition. And you wanna hear the knee-slapper? When the mountain comes crashing down, the FOX Noise crowd will blame the liberals for the carnage! Isn’t that a scream?

Although it didn’t get a lot of coverage in the press, July 3 marked the fortieth anniversary of the passing of Jim Morrison. As he once sang: “People are strange”. They really are.

They are telling us that the second of August is D Day as far as America’s debt is concerned. If the debt ceiling is not raised by then – regardless of the validity of that date – America will be sending a signal to the rest of the world that is liable to bring on an economic catastrophe.

If that happens the “party of Abraham Lincoln” will be in the enviable position of being able to portray Barack Obama as the twenty-first century’s version of Herbert Hoover. What they are trying to do here is hold America hostage.

The only way they will agree to the raising of the debt ceiling will be for the president to cease any attempt at “job-killing tax hikes” on the very people and corporations who are responsible for the mess we are in to begin with. I think Obama ought to call their bluff and let the cow chips fall where they may as it were.

The right wing has been in serious denial throughout its long and weird history (You may recall the “peculiar institution” of slavery). Modern times are no different for these freaks.

Here’s what they need to (but won’t) understand: America’s financial affairs are in shambles. There is only one way out of the hole we have dug for ourselves – and it’s going to involve taxation: Decades of SERIOUS taxation.

The people who benefited the most from the thirty-year financial drunk – the Plutocracy – will be the ones who will have to bear the burden of the shovel. And that will mean bringing the tax rates for the richest two-percent back to where they during the Eisenhower era when many of them were in a ninety percent bracket. That is the only way out. Deal with it.

When the Bush Tax Cuts were granted a decade ago, they told us that it would create oodles of jobs. That didn’t happen. In fact, instead of “trickling down” to the rest of us, the uber rich hoarded money that should have been reinvested into America’s infrastructure. “Trickle down”? “Pissed on” would be a better way of describing it. The middle class is being obliterated. Schools are closing in certain parts of the nation. The government of the state of Minnesota has shut down – a nasty harbinger of things to come. We have one of two choices: Either make a hard turn to the left, or get used to living in a country in ruins.

Tom Degan

The Rant

