The Correct Understanding of What The Debt Crisis Crisis is All About

Via WSWS:

US budget deal sets stage for intensified assault on social programs

By Andrei Damon and Barry Grey
17 October 2013

The bill passed by Congress late Wednesday reopening the federal government and temporarily lifting the debt ceiling establishes the modus operandi for a bipartisan deal to deepen cuts in social spending and initiate an historic attack on the core social programs dating from the New Deal and Great Society periods—Social Security and Medicare.

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The outcome of the 16-day government shutdown and threat of a US default was entirely predictable, following the pattern set in previous artificially created budget and debt crises in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Once again, the most right-wing elements in the Republican Party took the initiative and set the tone for a shift further to the right by the entire political establishment.

Behind the appearance of partisan gridlock and mutual recrimination, the crisis provided the means for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to move ahead with their own agenda of savage cuts in social programs upon which tens of millions of working people depend. To the extent there was a conflict, it was over means and tactics, not goals. At issue was how best to escalate the onslaught against the working class.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 81 to 18 to accept a deal that raises the debt ceiling through February 7, 2014 and funds the operations of the federal government until January 15. The bill mandates the formation of a conference committee headed by the chairs of the budget committees in the Senate and House to forge a bipartisan budget agreement by mid-December that will reduce the deficit and the national debt. This is to be achieved by implementing long-term “reforms” in basic entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and extending cuts in “discretionary” social programs such as education, housing, nutrition, the environment, health and safety and infrastructure maintenance.

At the same time, both the White House and congressional Republicans are insisting that any budget agreement include sweeping cuts in corporate tax rates.

Later Wednesday evening, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 285 to 144, with 87 Republicans joining all 198 Democrats in voting to approve. President Obama signed the bill into law early Thursday morning.

Significantly, the bill extends the automatic across-the-board “sequester” cuts that began last March into the new year. This means the $85 billion in cuts enacted in 2013 will not be restored and the budget negotiations in the coming weeks will take as their starting point the $1 trillion in cuts over the next eight years mandated by the sequestration process. It is to be expected that the Democrats will, in the name of “ending” or “reforming” sequestration, seek to continue the cuts in discretionary social programs while restoring funding for the military, the intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department.

Obama has already made it clear that he favors unprecedented cuts in Medicare and Social Security, including raising the eligibility age and introducing means testing for Medicare and slashing cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

More at the link.

And so it goes. No matter what, We the Rabble get screwed.

Armageddon Delayed

Or so it seems. The Congress is still styling for the cameras, but for all intents and purposes, the latest Debt Crisis Crisis is put off for another few months, the government will limp along somehow on austerity rations thanks to the continuing sequester, and Football will once again become the highlight of the season.

The attempt to fund government services one by one depending on their notoriety or popularity didn't get very far, but I have no doubt the tactic will be revived sooner rather than later. And we'll see the "reorganization" of government that the Kochs and all the other plutocrats and mountebanks have been angling for.

Sigh.

We did see sandhill cranes wheeling in the sky a little north of our place today, so there is that.

On the Wreck of the US of A (2013-2014)

The Shutdown is proceeding apace, and it looks fair to be... accommodated, or rather hardly noticed, by the multitudes, much like the Sequester. Ah, glory!

Well, given the fact that the Shutdown was more important than even having another War! we have to give Our Rulers some credit here. If there is a semblance of Peace breaking out in the Middle East (let's not count on it) and for the moment the missiles aren't flying at Damascus from either the Mediterranean Fleet or that nasty little state of Israel, we can ponder the fact that Those In Charge have their Priorities.

First Things First.

And the first thing, right now, is the take down of the Federal Government. One assumes that there will be a subsequent "rebuilding" phase, as there have been some piece by piece restoration bills hammered out between the Congress That Says No and the White House over the last few days.

They say this is all over Obamacare and the necessity to get rid of it. If it were, I'd almost be a happy camper, but it's not. Obamacare is a pig in a poke as those of us in favor of Single Payer/Medicare for All have known since kick-off day to get 'er done back in 2009. Let's not fool ourselves; this semi-universal health insurance program is first and foremost a profit-guarantee for major insurance companies and major health care providers essentially in perpetuity. The radicals in Congress agitating the Shutdown don't want to stop that, not on a bet. What they want to stop is any requirement imposed on Health Care Insurance and the Industry to provide service in exchange for their guaranteed profits and to stop the subsidy payments to the Rabble to help cover the health insurance premiums they are compelled to pay.

That's all.

No, this isn't really about Obamacare at all, it is about gaining full control of the Federal Government and re-making it into what the Radicals think it should be: an invasive and controlling force on behalf of favored segments of the Powers That Be. Nothing more, nothing less.

And they are nearly there.

By taking down the discretionary portion of the Government (some 20% of the budget), then restoring it piece by piece over an extended period, they demonstrate their power as a minority to eventually control everything. That's what the Debt Ceiling battle will be about. The Debt Ceiling battle will involve mandatory spending like Social Security, etc., and it will likely be resolved much the same way: there will be a default on those portions of the debt the Radicals want repudiated, such as the SS Trust Fund, and there will be a restoration, piece by piece, of what they want to preserve.

Of course, it's obvious by now, or at least it should be, that despite all the huffing and puffing and bombast on both sides of the Congressional aisle and at the White House, and despite all the breathless "news" we get through the propaganda media (unfortunately now including almost all the so-called "New Media"), this sequence was laid out long ago, and it became all but inevitable shortly after Obama was re-elected. It has not been a mystery -- except to the Public, of course, who are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really going on and to what object this shit is happening.

Everything's going according to plan.

Evil though it may be...

Ian Welsh Explains It All For You

These are just the headlines of his bullet points. Read the whole thing for extra savory goodness:

What the Debt Limit Crisis Should Have Taught You

This is not primarily about the Tea Party

Where are you going to go?

The deals being offered will cause a second downleg of the Depression and a worse one

Representatives work for the people who pay them

This is a representative plutocracy

This “Crisis” is what Obama wanted

You should have been working on nothing but primarying Obama since the day after the midterms

There is no war but class war

Yes. Well. There you are then.

I'd only add that this has all been in the pipeline for a very long time, at least since the Collapse -- which was what, three, four years ago now? -- and the handwriting was on the wall well before that. Ian's last point, that this all part of an ongoing Class War [ed:that "they" the Overclass is winning hands down], is the fundamental realization that simply does not penetrate the minds of most of those who are in hysterics over the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal. They just don't get it.

The hysterics seem to make it impossible to comprehend what is in the Deal -- in fact, its initial phase seems to be kind of the opposite of what the hysterics would have you believe. It cuts defense spending right away and actually starts to shore up Social Security by allowing the FICA tax holiday to lapse at the end of the year (thus, in effect, "raising taxes on working and middle class families." So there is that.) This is so, regardless of whether it is only meant to lull us for the cuts to come, but even those cuts -- assuming they really do happen -- are not nearly as severe (and economically stupid) as previously believed.

The Class War is not won, in other words, with this measure, far from it. And yet nothing good for the masses can come from it. The best it can do is continue a semblance of a really craptastic Status Quo for most Americans, and put the screws to the Unemployed -- who have been taking hit after hit throughout this Period of Misery.

Krugman was literally quaking in Anger on Sunday over what is being done and not done to address the Economic Catastrophe we've been living in for years and years. The "solutions" are obvious and were easily available at the outset; they become less and less available as time goes on. And that's the policy being adopted over and over again. Do nothing at all to improve the economy for the masses. Take more and more from them.

But the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal is not the End of the Ongoing Process by any means, and the hysteria is, I think, masking that fact. The assault will continue indefinitely. And the suffering will become more and more visible.

Unfortunately, it may not be "seen", just as the media -- including much of New Media -- doesn't "see" the suffering already taking place. (For example, I've been reminding people that Medicaid cuts have been underway for years, and there is real suffering, right now and for years past, because of it. But that's "new information" that has not been processed yet, whereas "Ezra says" -- or whoever the Oracle of the Moment is -- that Medicaid cuts are "on the table" so you better get to working yourself up into a froth and frenzy over it. Uh. What about cuts already made??? Blank stare. "What cuts? We're frothing to prevent cuts. They haven't been made yet. Get with the program!") (Me, sotto voce: "Psst: yes they have.")

So. When the hysteria dies down, we may be able to sort this out and begin to piece together some kind of coherent "resistance" -- after all, "revolution", a word that could not even be breathed online during the Bush II Reign because the Stasi was watching everything -- is now a commonplace consideration, even on the haughtiest of Haute Gauche blogs.

Arise, ye slaves! To the barricades!

Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

Ahkenaten

I've used the Ahkenaten image above to represent Obama pretty much since he ascended the Throne. (BTW, I use the imagery of an Imperial Palace, Throne, Emperor, etc. all the time to describe The President and Our Government and their many Courtiers for the simple reason that that is what Our Government on the whole has become, especially since the advent of Bush II -- and I say that as someone who was on the Inside during part of the Clinton administration, through the entire Bush Reign, and into the first year of the Obama Reign.) I use it because I think there is a startling physical resemblance (Oh, my! Reincarnation?) and because Ahkenaten was a "Transformational/Transcendent" Pharaoh, unique in many ways, revolutionary in others, and -- at least according to History -- a tragic failure. Which is what I sensed Mr. Obama might well become.

Yes. Well.

The Presidency may be the post-modern analogy to the Emperor and his Court when time was, but in the fulness of time, the Presidency has not adopted the titles and styles, powers, or the divinity of the Pharaohs. Consequently, whoever occupies the Throne cannot simply declare a revolutionary revision of the Government and see it implemented by command from the Throne (though, truth to tell, Bush/Cheney came very close to doing just that, and got away with almost all of it, too, by both browbeating and irrelevating Congress and the Courts into submission.)

Pharaoh Obama has sought to restore Congress to something of its Constitutional and historical role, with mixed results to say the least. I get the impression that Congress really prefers to be ordered around, and instead of doing that, Pharaoh Obama has told them to come up with plans and legislation on their own and get as far as they can toward enacting it before he will step in to "mediate" disputes on the way to eventual passage.

Pharaoh as Mediator is an interesting -- and highly unusual -- tactic, one that doesn't sit well with much of anyone, especially not in Congress, where most of the training and belief of those in office has been that the President/Emperor is supposed to lead the Congressional Flock, much as a minister might lead his congregation, not follow-on to sort out difficulties between disputing factions.

Uh. They don't know what to do under the circumstances, so they go hog-wild, as they have done over the Debt Limit Crisis Crisis, one that the Throne actually decided to instigate and continue in order to achieve a transcendent goal, not simply a transactional goal of getting a piece of needed legislation passed.

No, the Throne decided that This Is The Time to overhaul the entire debt-related budget process, top to bottom, and set in place a budgetary formula that would reduce government expenditures as a share of the economy over time, in a structured and enduring framework.

A framework that would, first of all, be appealing to the Government's Owners and Sponsors -- ie: the Financial Sector. Which meant, from the outset, cutting social program expenditures, and refusing, under any circumstances, to consider appropriate tax levels on the richest among us.

There could be no consideration of appropriate tax levels on the Highest and the Mightiest since Our Nobles and Our Betters have been on a tax strike for years, and they refuse to pay a dime more into the Treasury, but continue to insist on withdrawing cash from it instead, both to line their own ample pockets, and to reduce even further the proportional amount of money the Government has to work with.

It's diabolical, but there you are.

Taxation, to them, is punishment, and only the unworthy and the parasites should be forced to pay.

So, with that starting point on Negotiations over the Debt Limit, the tragic drama got under way -- in the midst of the most severe economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Oh crap. This could not end well.

Simply put, the points of argument and dispute that the Pharaoh was intent on mediating had nothing to do with responding to the economic difficulties of the masses, yet would, if implemented, result in further calamity piled on the many, for the express benefit of the few.

Not a good outcome at all.

But that's where we are.

Pharaoh has fucked up.

For all intents and purposes, his reign is done. His attempt at brilliant transcendence has resulted in a couple of truly grotesque monstrosities: the Health Insurance Racket Protection Program, and the still being cobbled together Budget Fix for Debt Limit Increase and Killing the Economy Measure.

I don't think he's going to get a third chance.

Grumble.

This is really good -- from C&L

The Debt Orgy In Pictures

Capitulator!!! Destroyer!!!! LIAR!!!!!

Good God. The hysteric reporting is almost overwhelming.

Yes. Well. Apparently the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal is just about done, and assuming it gets through the House and the Senate in some form, it is likely the President will sign it, and the screwage of the People will recommence in earnest this time, as if the monumental spikes in poverty, hunger and homelessness aren't already payment enough from the People for the titanic economic catastrophe engineered by Their Betters.

Not tying what's already happened into what is to come has become one of the blogospheric conventions during the Crisis Crisis Negotiations, and it has been infuriating. It's not just insisting that "there could be cuts" -- without the least recognition that there already have been cuts, in some cases massive cuts -- to social programs, it is also the failure to tie the Crisis Crisis Negotiations to the post-modern style of Governing Contrary -- in almost all things -- to the People's Will and the Public Interest.

Instead, the Crisis Crisis Negotiations are, by convention, seen as independent of anything else, seemingly sui generis of Congress and the President, and by convention, these Negotiations have been deliberately whipped to a frenzy out of Nothing At All, and Everything Was Going Just Fine before the Crisis was made manifest Out of Nothing.

Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.

Those who are able to make connections typically see the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiations as an application of the Shock Doctrine to our peaceful and bountiful land, which is true enough, but by convention, it is widely thought that only NOW is the Shock Doctrine is being applied, whereas alert observers have seen a continuation of the Shock Doctrine through the entire economic catastrophe, with previous periodic applications of the Shock devices beginning well before the Collapse.

Enron, anyone?

And of course by convention, all responsibility for the Debt Crisis Crisis is put on the Shoulders of the Throne, occupied by the Capitulator in Chief, who simply gives away the store to those mean old nasty hostage takers, booooo! When he could have done something else.

Yes, he could have, but he didn't. And he said he wasn't going to do anything different. He said quite clearly what he wanted to do, and he laid out the parameters of an agreement on the Debt Crisis Crisis, and it was clear from the Get Go that the Deal, once it came, would be essentially what is being finalized now: the few High and the Mighty will not be assessed any more income taxes than they already pay; soon enough, those tax rates will be reduced. Government services, social programs, and income support provisions for the many will be cut, in some cases substantially, in order to reduce the Federal Budget's share of the economy to an arbitrary percentage set by... well, now, that's the question, isn't it?

Who is actually running this pop stand, anyway?

Focus.

Isn't it actually the same handful of International Financiers who have been cheerfully ordering the looting and trashing economies all over the Western World to satisfy the pecuniary interests of an even tinier handful of grossly bloated Global Oligarchs and Plutocrats?

This is not to absolve the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiators of their own culpability. They have plenty of it. After all, they are supposed to represent the People, and they do not do so, they seem utterly incapable of doing so. But that has been their institutional failure for many a long year; it did not "suddenly" appear in consequence of the current backstage Deal Making. Not at all.

The post-modern ethos of Governing Contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest goes back a long way in this country; it's just been sharpened to a fine point in the last ten or fifteen years or so. Which all by itself is quite a while.

So the fact that the negotiators of this Debt Crisis Crisis Deal have pretty much ignored the Public in their high minded contest of wills (ha) is simply par for the course. It is what they do. It is what they have done for a long, long wearying time.

Hello?

Another of the conventions of our post-modern age is to see everything in isolation. Each and every thing is just "starting" in other words, and any connection with anything else is tenuous at best and subject to endless nitpicking and dispute. The notion of "continuation" is all but absent. The connections, such as they are, become the focus of endless and typically circular Argument. What's actually going on is seen through a foggy lens indeed, and it is often ignored in pursuit of whatever is new and shiny -- and of course, the Argument.

So.

We're going to get screwed by Our Betters some more than we already have been, and this time it will be relatively mild at first, getting harsher and harsher as time wears on, until by the end of what looks like a ten year process, fading into a longer thirty year process, which in turn is faded into a 75 year process (these people think long term, don't they?) we won't recognize either our nation or the kind of productive economy we once knew. It's not coming back. Ever.

Our Betters have decided what they want done, entirely at our expense, and that is what will be. Period.

The Imperial Wars of Aggression will continue without surcease, possibly automated for convenience and requiring far fewer personnel than currently. The insolvent financial sector will continue to be propped up indefinitely. Unemployment will continue inordinately high, and quite likely is going to go considerably higher. Social Security will continue to be drained of resources, at a faster and faster clip, while benefits already earned will be expropriated for other purposes -- such as Imperial Wars of Aggression and propping up the insolvent financial sector. "Health Care Reform" will become a bad joke, as will "Democracy." Ha ha. Foreclosures and impoverishment will accelerate.

All of this and more was "written" well before the current Negotiations got under way. There has been no lack of telegraphing of Our Betters intentions here.

What has been odd, really odd, is that there has been general acquiescence by the proles and the near-proles throughout. Yes, there have been objections raised, but even in Wisconsin, scene of the most protracted demonstrations against the New Austerity Overlords this year, there was prior agreement by the workers' representatives to almost all the demands of their governmental employer for reduced pay and benefits. In other words, the workers had already acquiesced to the major economic demands and the struggle was over "rights." Further, that struggle was lost, utterly, and there is little sign that the current effort to recall a number of state senators will result in any fundamental restoration of the status quo ante or in the institution of any better public policies.

It's simply not in the cards. Our Betters are winning every battle in a rout, while Russ Feingold and his ilk consider their next move -- or whether to "move" at all.

The hysterical accusations being thrown around against Obama and all the other Negotiators of The People's Plunder remind me a lot of the hysteria and wild accusations being thrown around about President Clinton and his dalliances with various women. It was all just insane of course, but I came to the conclusion that the hysteria and the insanity was the point of the exercise. It served as a wonderful distraction while other -- far more important -- matters were dealt with, such as financial dereg and various new forms of warring on undisciplined nations and peoples and so forth.

Ah well, it isn't completely resolved. We must await events. Sometime today, perhaps? Or will there have to be one more round of the contest to play out?

About That All-Important Deficit Crisis

[click image to embiggen]

I wanted to post this handy graph from the New York Times so that it wouldn't get lost in all the yammering about Debt and Crisis that will continue indefinitely. It shows you where the bulk of the deficit has come from (the Bushevik Wars and tax cuts combined with recessionary forces and massive unemployment) and who actually holds the debt Our Rulers are trying to default on (the People of the United States of America, either directly as bondholders, in their pension plans, or indirectly in the Social Security Agency.)

It's pretty clear.

And it's pretty clear who will be hurt if there is a default or downgrade (which, btw, there will be with regard to Social Security almost certainly).

That's what it is.

The Attacks on Social Security and Medicare (and Medicaid, which is something else) are Relentless

As I've been pointing out in other fora, Social Security has already been effectively cut for most seniors through the administrative refusal to allow any COLA this year or last year, and by proposing a tiny COLA for next year that would be immediately gobbled up by higher Medicare premiums.

Social Security administrators insist that no COLA is due to recipients because "there has been no inflation," which is absurd. In fact, costs for basics and necessities -- like food, shelter, heat, transportation, non-prescription drugs and other off-Medicare health care, and so forth have been going up exponentially during this period of Endless Recession. The purchasing power of Social Security benefits have declined substantially in the last two years, as they will continue to do so long as COLAs are denied.

A trial balloon was floated by Our Rulers to see how changing the COLA inflation formula would fly. The idea was to reduce COLAs even further by assuming that as costs for one basic or necessary good or service go up, seniors will substitute cheaper goods or services (even though many are already at the rock bottom price point) and therefore they won't "need" such a generous COLA. Fucking genius! Why wasn't this plan instituted long ago?

The idea was to save a few hundred billion dollars in Social Security payouts -- so as to have the wherewithal to conduct more and ever more imperial wars of aggression while continuing to provide handsome emoluments and tax breaks to the High and the Mighty.

Supposedly, this idea has been shot down -- for now -- but we can bet (and win) that it will come back with a vengeance.

Today there comes news that His Serenity is proposing to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Not immediately. He'd wait till after the election next year, but still. And to think, it wasn't that long ago many of us thought, gee, eligibility for Medicare might just be lowered to 55.

I'm so old, I remember when it was taken for granted that "by the year 2000" (what a milestone that was intended to be!) the usual retirement age would be 55, if not actually 50. Now it is 66 for people of my cohort, and it is going up to 67 for those coming after -- this "reform" agreed-to in the 1983 overhaul of Social Security, along with doubling the OASDI tax rate. Obviously, that's not old enough though because people who will never have to worry about their own retirement security are now proposing to raise the retirement age to 70 for those now in the 40's. This is insane.

Meanwhile the assault on public employee pensions continues unabated as well; private sector defined benefit pensions were largely done away with long ago -- except, of course, for the top executives, many of whom leave with super-generous pensions of almost unbelievable amounts. Because ordinary workers in the private sector may not have any pension provisions at all, and they may not have enough income to set aside money for retirement, the thinking among the Ruling Class is that public sector workers -- who have bargained for and have contracts ensuring certain defined benefit pension provisions -- should be forced to sacrifice their pensions "because workers in the private sector don't get pensions..."

Well, some private sector workers do. If they're on the top of the heap, that is.

Meanwhile, savage cuts to Medicaid have been underway since the Endless Recession began, yet even now, this simply fact is widely unrecognized. Of course, most people don't use Medicaid (and most will never be eligible for it) so they don't know -- and for the most part, they don't care -- what's been happening to those on Medicaid. They don't know that eligibility is more and more restricted, that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have been pushed off the Medicaid rolls, even as poverty has skyrocketed in this country. They don't know that fee reimbursements have been repeatedly cut for providers. They don't know that the people who are still able to access Medicaid services have to pay more and more out of pocket for the services they receive. They don't know that the services provided by Medicaid have been reduced, that mental health and dental services are as rare and unavailable to Medicaid recipients as hidden diamonds. On and on and on.

These are things that most Americans have no conception of.

Meanwhile, unemployment benefits are being time restricted in state after state -- even though there are no jobs -- and unemployment benefit amounts are being reduced (even as costs for basics and necessities continue to climb.) This as more and more people wind up not only out of a job, but ineligible for any unemployment compensation at all.

This is what is going on, what has been going on for years, and this is part of what is ensuring that more and more millions of Americans are forced into poverty every year.

It's almost as if it is planned to be that way. Gee. Ya think?

How Fares Teh Revolution?

The Raiders and Reactionaries are sure throwing one titanic hissy fit over the Debt Ceiling "issue." The Rs have dug in their heels and asserted that there will be no lifting of the debt ceiling on their watch (ie: in the House), no sir, no way, not unless there are massive cuts in the 2012 budget -- approximately cutting a third of total expenditures, with no cuts to the military, in fact, increases to the military.

The only way to do that, of course, is to eliminate Federal programs, shut down agencies, bureaus and whole departments, and have a "Closing, Going Out of Business" sale. The Raiders and Reactionaries would actually require cuts in the neighborhood of 50% to 100% in domestic non-military spending.

THAT is Revolutionary. Even talking about it is wildly Revolutionary. The Markets are threatening dire consequences if there is a Default on Debt obligations, or even if there is consideration of defaulting. The Raiders and Reactionaries are saying there will be no default. But if they get their way, of course there will be a default on Treasuries, just not the ones that bond coupon clippers hold. The default, apparently long planned, is to be on the Social Security and Medicare Treasuries, thus forcing cuts in funding of those programs and forcing additional costs (with no additional income) onto seniors, the disabled and the poor.

Sounds like a plan, eh?

The Democrats, liberals and "progressives" simply wring their hankies and say, "Oh dear, no!" as one draconian Rightist Revolutionary proposal after another is enacted. "Oh dear, no!" is considered a brave and bold (and deeply Realistic) approach to the Revolutionary Demands of the Raiders and Reactionaries, the purpose of which is to preserve what can be preserved of the Status Quo while the Revolution reverts the nation's government to some kind of fantasy of what it was supposed to be had there been no Civil War.

Radical, reactionary, and Revolutionary, all wrapped up into one. And in the Modern World, it's a grossly anachronistic vision.

It's as if there were a revival of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The world has moved on, yet there are former Soviets who pine for the days of Stalin just as there are Americans who pine for the Antebellum Era when Everything Was Beautiful.

Except it wasn't, of course.

The key here is that the world has moved on, and the reversionaries, the reactionaries, the raiders and the (actual) Revolutionaries in our midst -- not from the Left -- don't want to move on because they can't keep up. They see the Past -- or at least their little version of it -- as a fine and permanent space to be in.

If they can only get rid of the devilish 'programs' that force us Forward, what a Paradise it would be! Except it wouldn't be any such thing.

Meanwhile, The Man in the Chair, Mister Brother Harold Camping, Loon, has declared the End of Time to occur tomorrow (well, actually, it begins today in New Zealand with earthquakes and rending the Earth asunder, just you wait).



So what's to worry?

"And shall we take Our Next Call Please, WELcome to Open Forum."

That's all for now!