December 15, 2011: The American Nightmare, American Paradox, Gullible's Travels.

"The “American Dream” is becoming an American nightmare”
                                               ---from"The Quotations of Chairman Joe'

The news services today led with stories concerning the nature of the American economy. One in two Americans, according to newly released census data can now be classified as either being impoverished or as “low income” giving further evidence of the decline of the middle class, and further impetus to the political polarization of the country. Meanwhile it was reported that six of the Walton’s, owners of Wal-Mart, are worth as much as the lowest 30% of the population. This is not without consequence. Over half of the schools, as reported on Yahoo yesterday, fail to meet federal education standards as the nation stands powerless to act.

It was also reported today that the Obama Administration is about to back off it’s efforts to levy a surtax on millionaires to pay for cuts in payroll withholdings on the working class. Once again the great unwashed--the ‘tea-baggers’ and the libertarians--have served the interests of the wealthy by holding hostage the crumbs from the table in the interests of protecting the wealthiest among us. Nothing, it appears, will stand in the way of the headlong drive to concentrate wealth into the fewest hands in the shortest time possible.

The paradox is that the American people, duly assembled, elected this divided government virtually guaranteeing ‘gridlock’. It was clear going into the election booth a year ago that the Rescumlicans would, following like sheep their unofficial icons of ignorance--Beck and Limbaugh, do nothing but grind the wheels of governance to a stop. And so they have. It is said the ‘Politics is the art of the possible”; that any political figure or any administration is constrained by what are, in reality, a set of limit of possibilities at any given time. In a republic these possibilities are imposed by the electorate by periodic elections if elections are to mean anything. Exercising their constitutional, if not their god-given, right to err, the great unwashed stampeded by the hysteria ginned up by the idiot wrong acted to nearly eliminate any further possibilities. As a consequence Obama has been further restrained by the modern Lilliputians in an ongoing farce known as “Gullible’s Travels”.