Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Strange bedfellows

Robert Reich and Andy Borowitz. Reality IS satire now.

Borowitz:

Perry Outlines Bold Proposal to Repeal Twentieth Century

Gov. Perry said that at an appointed time, he would ask every American to pray to God to send the country back to the nineteenth century: "Basically you just need to click your heels together and say ‘There's no place like home.'"
...

Shortly after his speech, rival candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) blasted Gov. Perry for borrowing from her own plan to take the country back to the Middle Ages.

But in a positive piece of news for the Texas Governor, a new poll shows him leading the pack among voters who describe themselves as delusional.

Reich:

Tonight's Republican Debate: The 19th Century or the Stone Age?

Nonetheless, listen tonight, if you can bear it, for anything other than standard Republican boilerplate since the 1920s — a wistful desire to return to the era of William McKinley, when the federal government was small, the Fed and the IRS had yet to be invented, state laws determined worker safety and hours, evolution was still considered contentious, immigrants were almost all European, big corporations and robber barons ran the government, the poor were desperate, and the rich were lived like old-world aristocrats.

But the Republican Party that emerged in the 1970s began its march back to the 19th century. By the time Newt Gingrich and his regressive followers took over the House of Representatives in 1995, social conservatives, isolationists, libertarians, and corporatists had taken over once again.

Some Democrats are quietly rooting for Perry or Bachmann, on the theory that they're so extreme that they'll bolster Obama's chances for a second term and make it easier for congressional Democrats to scare Independents into voting for a Democratic House and maybe even Senate.

I understand the logic but I'd rather not take the chance. A Perry or Bachmann wouldn't just take us back to the 19th century. They'd take us back to the stone age.

We are so screwed...

5 comments:

Fixer said...

They'd take us back to the stone age.

The good thing is, I got a lotta hammers. Heh ...

We're so fucked.

Gordon said...

We should compare our hammer assortments sometime. Still man's best tool in some hands, his worst in others.

BTW, this computer is nothing but a fancy hammer when ya think about it.

mandt said...

Back to the stone age? Cool, I think I still have that ole' chillum around here somewhere.

Spud said...

I'm known to be good with stone knives and axes...

Gordon said...

I'm not sure how well a wood-burning computer would work...