When Falls the Coliseum

Blame Bush

Posted on June 29th, 2011 by Ken Watson

Recent and blatant toying with the time stream has spun off other reality-bending side effects. These are revealed in phenomena that are reaching out far beyond the control of the Department of Corrections threatening to crush our world under the weight of replicating paradoxes. Paradox Poisoning, like most infectious diseases, strikes the very young, very old and those with pre-existing enfeeblements the hardest so, as always, it is wise to pay close attention to Chris Matthews as you would a canary in a coal mine. It is well for our own safety that we do not have to get too close. Modern crowd-sourcing techniques, like those arrayed against the tundra monster Palin allow us to keep a safe distance, crucial, as when the collapse comes the vortex will first whirl out of Matthews well-snugged cravat, engorged on his voluminous but empty melon. The latest evidence is a nationally transmitted spasm of erupting nonsequiturs and self-contradictions that seemed to indicate the Big Crunch was underway but Matthews survived this crisis, clearly due to a diet rich in riboflavin and gin. I provide the link for documentary reasons but no need to endanger your own existence as we will examine this specimen through the safe filter of text.

Why on God’s earth should we reward the people who got us into this financial mess? You can’t sell a house because you can’t get a decent price for it. You can’t buy a house today because people can’t believe what you’re offering for it.

This is his first assertion poorly disguised as a question. Now, we all know, and I know particularly well, that housing values have crumpled but our subject engages in hyperbolic exaggeration that contains a dangerous and malign presumption. The fact is, you certainly CAN buy or sell a house today. In fact the buyer is in the ascendant as prices fall. It is always a buyer’s or seller’s market; now the buyer rules. For years it was the seller. That imbalance, explicitly supported by Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac lending policies produced much of the distortion we are churning through today. Ordinarily the market is recognized as the implement to address this imbalance for; we have a low bid price and a high ask price…. what chaos is this?! Ignoring or subverting that market with government interventions that extended to buying overvalued and underperforming mortgage backed securities from the squealing banks certainly is a policy flub fairly laid at W’s door. Matthews is happy to do so. But one advantage of disaster spinning in ever tighter and faster circles is that even poor memories can reach back to the pertinent events and here those reveal a stumbling block to the Blame Bush stratagem. As you of course recall, the Democrats were fully FOR all that business!

Was Barack Obama? There it gets tricky, doesn’t it always? He was only in the US Senate for a long coffee break before taking on the full time job of campaigning for President and no, sadly, that coffee break was not notably productive. But we do know that the Senator from Illinois and the racial grievance poseurs at ACORN were hand in glove…. thick as thieves one might say, and tiny ACORN was the strong-arm of the push for “affordable housing”, the scam that ballooned home prices and even more ballooned the wallets of an army of cronies… all Democrats. And on the odd moments when Democrats did object, let us recall, it was because the project was too small! Or too strictly administered. Or, this one’s important…. too closely watched. But neither Matthews nor any of the Professional Left was ever known to let simple facts get in the way of a good rant. He is on Bush like Alvin Green on Jim DeMint!

Who created this political dung hill? Who created this financial horror show that has older people dying over their miniature 401(k)s, young people hopelessly out of work, certainly out of good work? It all started in a splurge of greed and deception and grab what you can before the building falls down that George W. Bush begot us late in the year 2007.

Details, as always, are not forthcoming but it seems he is talking about the Lehman Brothers non-bailout though this actually occurred (late in the year is the giveaway) in ’08 but that is a year too uncomfortably memorable. Except for the Brothers Lehman themselves this is on the accounts of Hank Paulson, W’s Tim Geithner which means it, too, can be blamed on Bush. Only Democrats get the luxury of blaming their own subordinates though and that is a benefit to be further restricted, not opportunistically expanded. W never played that game anyhow. But does “blame” really attach to the Lehman circus? Those against federal market interventions on musty-dusty principle saw some good news here. What was attempted was a smaller scale version of the financial industry bailouts that came but weeks later. It went south at the final moment due to an uncooperative attitude among Lehman stockholders. The presumption was that since Bush and the bipartisan financial industry caucus got burned so badly on Lehman that they would be slow to try such hijinx again soon. A horrid miscalculation! What indeed happened, as often does, is the exact polar opposite lesson was learned from Lehman which was DON’T involve the stockholders! Problem solved! Yes, this is a stern black mark against Bush, Paulson and the infant Bushie Geithner but again the only policy objection that distinguished Obama’s Democrats here is that Bush and his flunkies were dragging their feet! Simple lies are not indicative of any extra-normal physical events but there is evidence that there are two apparently identical Matthews out there, at least. You can tell when one immediately and inversely contradicts the other, ignorant themselves that any switcheroo has taken place.

That’s what we’re living right now. Okay, Obama hasn’t been able to get us out of it yet, but, no doubt on that front, but that’s what we’re suffering from, and there’s no sense blaming one Party or the other.

Sometimes the doppleganger’s neck can be broken by a rapid 180 like this but Matthews is a supple fraud in all dimensions. Blamebush blamebush blamebush blamebush and then blamebush; for a change blamebush but ultimately we must blamebushobama….. What? Wait, no. Let’s not play the blame game here!

The fetid zombie Matthews is not alone. He never is. None of them ever are. Obama’s Star of Czars, one Cass Sunstein is also mining deeply the well of Bush Blame. To complaints that he is ruthlessly and recklessly encumbering the financial sector with ruinous regulations, of course he Blames Bush. Does he Blame Bush because, as we all know, he comprehensively DEregulated the industry so his frat brothers could empty your gran’s mattress? Ah, hell naw! He claims that whatever burdens Obama regulations cause they are nothing compared to the intrusions from the Bush Regime! Like Matthews, Sunstein demonstrates himself to be as beyond conventional laws of physics as he is above the rules of public discourse or even the rigid demands of mathematics. Of course he has not forgotten yesterday’s line that “Bush deregulation” is at fault for nearly all our fiscal problems. He just ignores it. And no one has the temerity to recall that, for good or ill, whatever deregulation of financials came from the Clinton Administration. The Clintons maintain a tactical distance, as is their wont.

But these are pawns. The pinnacle of Bush Blamery comes daily from the Blamer in Chief, the intentionally and intellectually obscure Barack Hussein Obama; the half-black Jesus who would calm the waters of the ocean even as he calms the nation’s unworthy soul. This guy takes BlameBush and self-contradiction to a high art. He contradicts his words with deeds but then also with words and every possible combination. The policy prescriptions from the campaign are cast aside without a blink of recognition and it is well that they are for when he DOES try to make good on some wan, ignorant promise or another, like closing Gitmo and trying its residents in open courts, they blow up in his face like a cheap firecracker. A dozen examples of such disaster can be gleaned from the world of foreign affairs, this even as he trundles forward in the groove worn by Bush, not merely without public acknowledgement of this plain state of affairs, but while he continues to rubbish Bush at every opportunity! Riddle me this, genius….. If Bushism was so horrendous why in bloody hell did you retain his Secretary of Defense? Why do you prosecute “his” wars that yesterday were illegal, immoral and ruinously expensive? And does anyone recall the basis for that “illegal” accusation? Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were allegedly illegal because they were not accompanied by a Declaration of War from the Congress, except they DID have Authorization for the Use of Force. Oh, that’s claptrap; those aren’t Declarations of War…. it needs to say Declaration of War! There was also an even less substantive objection that the UN was not on board for these wars, although they were and are. The complainants assert that open votes aside, the UN and international community really DID and DO oppose Bush’s wars. Libyan friendalities were not necessary to show the lie of this, but they help. Blaming Bush is opportunistic indeed. Justification for the Afghan Surge was also premised on Blaming Bush for his incompetence there. The solution? Why, nothing but a Bushian surge of troops, copied from the bitterly contested Iraqi surge and constructed by yesterday’s traitor; General David Petraeus, a Bush creation of the lowest sort.

On the domestic/economic front it is much the same. A fully Democratic Congress endorsed the Bush Tax Cuts that moments before were destroying the nation, but hey! That was Christmas! Does anyone recall now that Obama and the other Democrats, including those who took Legislative seats in 2007 actually ran against Bush deficits? It’s true but don’t examine your memory too closely. You risk a temporal event that could consume your block. Much as the elevation of Petraeus demonstrates the vapidity of Blame Bush on the international stage, the promotion of Secretary Tim Geithner to a role of unConstitutional grandeur and monarchical power shows that while Blaming Bush on the one hand they embrace Bushism behind their backs. The Compassionate Conservative summed up the conscious ejection of all we know with his candid but crapulent statement, “I have abandoned my free market principles to save the free market system”. Fans of Bush, if they exist, can only pray that this was a scripted line. At the least Bush, in his final days, set precedent after precedent of intervention designed in secret, executed in obscurity and fully understood precisely no where and by no one; himself and his successor least of all. Does any of this haunt Bush’s dreams? Does he regret the unprincipled but princely expansion of Medicare? Does he squirm over the results of No Child Left Behind? Does he ever feel disgust at Obama’s actions and then rebuke his own roll in their genesis? Whatever he thinks the old armadillo is as silent on his own culpability as he is on Obama’s and Obama can thank god that Bush has proven to be a better man than he on that front, despite sore provocation.

Do not look for any change in this state of affairs. Like the race card, the BlameBush card will be played until it fails, then it will be permanently retired, but that day is not this day. Nor will it be tomorrow. It seems that blank, staring desperation will demand the liberal use of both for the foreseeable. But neither friend nor foe of Obama or Bush should shy away. The usual kabuki scene goes something like this:

Blame Bush!

Oh, you are just Blaming Bush!

and that is the end of it, a stalemate in the squirmish. Do not let it stand there, friends. Stagnant water breeds malaria. Go ahead and indict Bush where warranted and defend him as well. Do so on your principles, if any, and abandon those not. Clearly the same goes for Obama. If he is acting in concert with your principles or against them, say so. Believe me, all attending will be glad to hear it. It is not the men, it is not the politics. It is the policies that must be examined, tortured to reveal their truths even though they will also reveal lies and it is our place then to choose. Be the better Matthews from another, as yet unseen dimension. Cast blame on the blameworthy and shield that which is not. It may not make a damn bit of difference today; in fact it probably will not. But tomorrow, you will remember. You will know. And those who are not here now will know you know. Don’t ask me how.