A Lazy Breeze

Right wing fails to learn some bitter truths

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Election2008/lazybreeze.htm
04/16/08

The Scots have a benign sounding term for what is actually a rather nasty thing. “A lazy breeze.” A lazy breeze is a wind so cold and bitter that it goes through you, rather than around you.

About now Republicans, CEOs, and Hillary Clinton must be shivering and cursing the way the wind is blowing.

For the second time in three weeks, right wingers exalted that something had happened in the Barack Obama campaign that would destroy his run for the Presidency. The first was the Reverend Wright and his incendiary remarks about relations between America and her black population. The second was Obama’s “bitter” remark last week.

Faux and right wing talk radio tried pile-driving it, of course, but not many people outside of their little circle of friends pay much attention to what they have to say these days, and that means about 2% of all Americans.

The mainstream media, dutiful whores to the GOP, don’t even bother trying to hide their Republican servitude these days. Even Dana Milibank, no friend to liberal politicians, was taken aback, writing, “So much for the liberal media. John McCain and Barack Obama both appeared before the nation's newspaper editors yesterday. The putative Republican presidential nominee was given a box of doughnuts and a standing ovation. The likely Democratic nominee was likened to a terrorist. At a luncheon for the editors hosted by the Associated Press, AP Chairman Dean Singleton quizzed Obama about whether he would send more troops to Afghanistan, where ‘Obama bin Laden is still at large?”’

No harm done, Dean. About all I trust from the AP is the baseball scores. Fortunately Putsch doesn’t own the Rangers any more, or AP would never report it when they lost. Oh, and by the way, Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan, where we can’t touch him, because Putsch didn’t want to upset Musharraf. “The ends of the earth” are apparently at the borders of any nation strong enough to deter Putsch.

Last night, I poked my nose in on the PBS News Hour, a show I seldom watch any more. The discussions are usually three white right wingers calling themselves “conservatives” and one white conservative calling himself a liberal agreeing that Wall Street knows what’s best for America. Sure enough, they were prattling on about Obama’s terrible faux-pas in calling decent, hard-working Americans “bitter.” I switched to the cartoon channel, where at least the commentary is honest.

Matt Drudge, who isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, headlined the editor’s story, apparently in the serene belief that having the nation’s media turn into a cheering section for the Republican candidate was all good. He didn’t have the sense to realize that the story left a six-inch exit wound in the right wing’s favorite shibboleth that the media is biased towards liberals.

Right wingers on the web serenely assured us that Obama was taking a catastrophic tumble in the polls as a result of all this. Hillary and McCain, smelling blood, moved in for the cliche.

They should have waited for the polls to actually come out. They have, and guess what?

Obama isn’t falling in the polls. Not in Pennsylvania (where, we were assured, white voters would never forgive him for his insult), and not in the rest of the country.

Hillary tried making an issue out of it last night, and the crowd booed her. McCain tried playing a little football with it, and even his Republican audience (AP, American “journalism” at large) looked unimpressed.

Even though some people were rankled by Obama’s use of the phrase “cling to” in relation to God and guns (and Obama himself admitted that was badly put), nobody among the regular voters seemed to disagree with the term “bitter.”

One Usenet user, “Gandalf Grey,” remarked, “That's rich. I'm happy I lived to see the day when people would call a black presidential candidate ‘an elitist.’”

One cartoonist, Darkow of the Daily Tribune, had a cartoon of a small-town Pennsylvania voter saying, “Am I -bitter-? Endless wars, foreclosures, gas prices, climate change, burgeoning deficits, canceled flights, no immigration policy, falling bridges, China making everything, recession, Wall Street bailouts, lead in toys, Iran, taxes, food prices, no health insurance, steroids in baseball, terrorists, lying politicians, college tuition, Britney Spears. What’s to be bitter about?”

Putsch, with his usual smirk, has announced that the promised draw-down in Iraq wasn’t going to happen. The NY Times announced that thousands of retail stores would be closing in the near future. Two major airlines announced a merger, the first of quite a few we’ll see in the airline industry as it struggles to stay alive. Mergers mean less choice and higher prices. That’s what the “free market” does when it isn’t regulated. Well, think about it: have you ever met a businessman who welcomed competition? And the medical system is now simply imploding. Insurance carriers have raised copays on prescriptions from $10 to $30 to about a third of the cost of the drug. Given that drug prices have tripled in the past four years, that means the average patient is both paying for insurance AND paying exactly the same for his meds as he was in 2004. Which, incidently, is exactly what I forecast would happen when Congress passed Putsch’s medicare reform bill. Producer prices jumped 1.1% last month, suggesting that double-digit inflation is here. A story broke that Putsch was directly involved in the decision to make torture an instrument of American policy.

Only 8% of Americans think they are better off than they were five years ago. Only 18% even think the country is on the right track. Three out of four want change.

And the out-of-touch clowns in the GOP, in Hillary’s camp, and in the media think they can get mileage out of castigating Obama for saying working people are bitter?

The economy is going to implode. At best, we’re looking at a depression. At worst, a Great Depression.

Remember that Scottish “lazy breeze” I mentioned? It’s going to become a hurricane.

And not only will the media miss the biggest domestic story of the century, but AP will be front and center, explaining that consumers aren’t buying stuff and depressing the economy, not because they are destitute and using everything they have to feed their kids, but because they are lazy ingrates who simply don’t appreciate what the rich have done for them.

And they’ll be honestly surprised when this argument doesn’t give McKook a boost in the polls.