Monday, January 12, 2015

I Had Really Hoped That 2015 Would Be



The year op-ed writers stopped addressing Indignant Open Letters to People Who Have No Intention Of Listening To Them Now Or Ever.

But I guess that will have to wait for 2016.

From the Daily Beast:
The GOP Should Stop Lying About Obama’s Economy

For years Republicans have been spewing doomsday rhetoric, but the stock market is booming, the deficit shrinking, and the economy is adding lots of jobs.


Friday’s boffo jobs report—the 58th straight month of jobs growth in an expansion that has now entered its 67th month—was only the latest in a long string of positive economic data.



This recovery, which started in July 2009, has been the most politicized, partisan expansion I can recall. Indeed, for the last six years, monthly data like the employment report –as well as new initiatives and proposals to get the economy rolling—have been greeted by critics with apocalyptic declarations. For the last six years, we’ve seen a continuing response from Republicans: Under the set of policies pursued by President Obama (some of them continuations of policies enacted by President Bush) and of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (a Bush appointee) and Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, the U.S. economic ship is like the Titanic—rudderless in dangerous seas, bound for doom, about to sink.



Let’s review some of the greatest hits...
No.

Let's not.

Instead, Daniel -- may I call you Daniel? -- let's get back to your headline.

Why exactly should the GOP "Stop Lying About Obama’s Economy" or about anything else?  Sure it's destructive and immoral and maddening, but that's the plan, right?  Just keep right on lying, setting fires and denying facts...until they break the place beyond our ability to fix...and then feast on the misery and rubble.

So in what way, specifically, Daniel, has continuously lying about, well, everything been an unsuccessful strategy for them?

Because even a nobody blogger like me can see hella plenty downsides that would come crashing down on the head of anyone inside the 2015 GOP who dares to honestly confront the thoroughly unpleasant verities underpinning their party and movement, but what are the upsides?

Or, conversely, ssincebaldfaced lying/objective reality denial are Conservatism's Coke Classic -- time-tested, beloved by it's loyal consumers and perfect just the way it is -- why in the world would anyone screw with it?
Virtually everything GOP critics have told us would follow from the policies put in place has not come to pass. You would think that this would occasion a few mea culpas, some rethinking, an admission of poor prognostication.
Maybe you would think that, Daniel, but I genuinely can't think of anyone else who would.

We are divided now, and we will stay divided until one side wins.

So please quit writing pleading letters into the abyss where Reasonable Republicans used to be.

Because nobody lives there anymore.

3...2...1...
There's a house on my block
That's abandoned and cold.
Folks moved out of it a
Long time ago.
And they took all their things
And they never came back.
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked.
And everyone calls it
The house, the house where
Nobody lives

Once it held laughter.
Once it held dreams.
Did they throw it away?
Did they know what it means?
...

3 comments:

Yastreblyansky said...

What if he said--since they're mostly supposed to be literal-minded kind of Christians--that they should stop lying about it because God will punish them and they'll die in pain and fear and go to Hell? They will be suspended for all eternity in a lake of fire and demons will pull out their tongues and stuff like that, and good people who don't tell lies will look down from Paradise and laugh at them? Has anybody ever tried telling them that?

Potomacker said...

Mr. Gross demonstrates that it's very much possible to be part of a machine without knowing what the machine does.
Or else the lesson is that it is a complete waste of time to compel/persuade anybody what to do with the formula: 'you should...'

Frank said...

We are divided now, and we will stay divided until one side wins.

I tend to agree with you, which is a problem since they are the ones with all the guns and the ones working themselves up into a killing rage.

Got any ideas?