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"In the case of the current race, both candidates are pro-war and the military industrial complex that thirsts insatiably for it. Both are pro-Federal Reserve and the vampire banksters who feast on the bloodletting of would-be savers. Both are pro-bailouts. Both are pro-big government, whether at home (Obama...followed closely by Romney) and abroad (where the roles are ever so slightly reversed).
"One gets the feeling that anyone who actually musters enough delusion to carry them to the ballot box will be doing so only because, in the words of Thomas Sowell, they prefer “disaster to catastrophe.”
"But when you strip away the veneer, the varnish...and the deafening vacuity...there’s really nothing to inspire the trip. The suits are there, lapel pins affixed just so...the mouths are moving...the teeth are flashing...but there is...nothing.
"President Obama, for his part, appeared tired, perhaps vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of defending a four-year record of near-unmitigated failure. Forty-plus months of above 8% unemployment. Trillion dollar budget deficits projected out as far as the decade is long...and beyond. Additional debt equal to that added by no fewer than forty previous presidents, combined. And a not-insignificant twenty million Americans added to the food stamp lines (the “bread” to the debate’s “circus”) since he first set foot in the White House.
"So enervated was Obama’s performance that Governor Romney, a man who dedicated much of his own campaign to earning the description “pretend human,” appeared almost lifelike beside him. Almost. Sensing weakness in his opponent, the Romneybot honed in on the president’s key soft spots...only to betray his own affinity for many of those same positions. Romney is not against the Dodd-Frank Act, for example, only some parts of it. A free market needs regulation, he proclaimed, evidently unaware of the exclusive and contradictory nature of the terms. (You know, it’s free up until...uh, it’s not?) He is not against Obamacare per se, only some parts of it...the parts that may or may not be common to his own state’s enormously costly program, Romneycare, by many measures the most expensive in the entire nation.
"If these issues were highlighted, as was supposed to be the case, to cut a great philosophical divide between the two parties, one is left to wonder about the conspicuous absence of other issues such as, oh... extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens abroad, the exponentially increasing scope of America’s deathly drone operations both on foreign soil and in “The Homeland,” the relentless mission creep of Orwellian agencies like the TSA, FDA, DHS (etc.) or the fact that, with less than 5% of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of the global prison population, the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” is now unquestionably deserved of its new tag line, “Land of the Fee, Home of the Slave.” And on... and on... and on...
"Anything on those “dividing” issues? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
"There are, of course, some key differences between these two suits. One chose for the evening to wear a solid blue tie; the other a faintly striped red number. Look for a flip-flop in the next debate.
"Gradually, the non-voter class is wizening up to the fact that the act of voting is more akin to kissing one or the other cheek on the same bloated derrière than exercising any quaint, propagandized notion of “civic duty.” After all, a buttock smooch will not change the chief function of that end of the political anatomy. No, Fellow Reckoner, the soft seat of the body politick is built for expelling one thing and one thing only...as the candidates dutifully and effortlessly displayed."
- Joel Bowman, The Daily Reckoning
"One gets the feeling that anyone who actually musters enough delusion to carry them to the ballot box will be doing so only because, in the words of Thomas Sowell, they prefer “disaster to catastrophe.”
"But when you strip away the veneer, the varnish...and the deafening vacuity...there’s really nothing to inspire the trip. The suits are there, lapel pins affixed just so...the mouths are moving...the teeth are flashing...but there is...nothing.
"President Obama, for his part, appeared tired, perhaps vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of defending a four-year record of near-unmitigated failure. Forty-plus months of above 8% unemployment. Trillion dollar budget deficits projected out as far as the decade is long...and beyond. Additional debt equal to that added by no fewer than forty previous presidents, combined. And a not-insignificant twenty million Americans added to the food stamp lines (the “bread” to the debate’s “circus”) since he first set foot in the White House.
"So enervated was Obama’s performance that Governor Romney, a man who dedicated much of his own campaign to earning the description “pretend human,” appeared almost lifelike beside him. Almost. Sensing weakness in his opponent, the Romneybot honed in on the president’s key soft spots...only to betray his own affinity for many of those same positions. Romney is not against the Dodd-Frank Act, for example, only some parts of it. A free market needs regulation, he proclaimed, evidently unaware of the exclusive and contradictory nature of the terms. (You know, it’s free up until...uh, it’s not?) He is not against Obamacare per se, only some parts of it...the parts that may or may not be common to his own state’s enormously costly program, Romneycare, by many measures the most expensive in the entire nation.
"If these issues were highlighted, as was supposed to be the case, to cut a great philosophical divide between the two parties, one is left to wonder about the conspicuous absence of other issues such as, oh... extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens abroad, the exponentially increasing scope of America’s deathly drone operations both on foreign soil and in “The Homeland,” the relentless mission creep of Orwellian agencies like the TSA, FDA, DHS (etc.) or the fact that, with less than 5% of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of the global prison population, the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” is now unquestionably deserved of its new tag line, “Land of the Fee, Home of the Slave.” And on... and on... and on...
"Anything on those “dividing” issues? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
"There are, of course, some key differences between these two suits. One chose for the evening to wear a solid blue tie; the other a faintly striped red number. Look for a flip-flop in the next debate.
"Gradually, the non-voter class is wizening up to the fact that the act of voting is more akin to kissing one or the other cheek on the same bloated derrière than exercising any quaint, propagandized notion of “civic duty.” After all, a buttock smooch will not change the chief function of that end of the political anatomy. No, Fellow Reckoner, the soft seat of the body politick is built for expelling one thing and one thing only...as the candidates dutifully and effortlessly displayed."
- Joel Bowman, The Daily Reckoning
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