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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Safe Bet

Ahahahaha. CNN commentator and noted handicapper Sportin' Life Bill Bennett takes a break from the slots to tell us all just why Teh Kneegrow is a bad bet:

Since Obama took office, median household income has declined more than $4,000. More people are on food stamps than ever before -- 46.7 million. The poverty rate is around 15%, the highest since 1993. The average retail price of gasoline has more than doubled under Obama, rising from $1.84 per gallon to more than $3.80 per gallon. In spite of this, he stopped the approval of the Keystone pipeline for further review.

First of all, the Keystone pipeline is explicitly designed to move oil to the Gulf for export. True story. It was in all the papers and everything. Building the Keystone tomorrow would not alter gasoline prices by a single red cent. Nor, for that matter, would another tax sop to the oil companies. You'd think a guy with a career firmly ensconced between the buttcheeks of predatory capitalism would understand intuitively how pricing works in a captive market.

Then again, I'm quite sure that he understands it perfectly well. He's just counting on you not to.

Obama inherited a bad economy, but his policies have made it even worse.

As we always say, any time a "news'" person attempts to provide quantitative economic analysis, to posit that something is doing "better" or "worse", the question is always:  for whom?  Cui bono? So in an economic climate where robber barons and banksters -- who are Sportin' Life's bread and butter, after all -- are doing just fine and/or dandy, what's with this sudden Hero of the Workin' Class, Joe the Columnist shit? Seriously, is there actually someone, an average schmuck of average means and circumstances, out there who reads this guff and concludes, "Yeah, Bill Bennett is on my side"? If so then perhaps, as always, such folks deserve exactly such as they end up getting, which is a swift kick in the balls.

This, though, is the (as they say in the 'hood) money shot:

Apart from the killing of Osama bin Laden, the death of Moammar Gaddafi and and [sic] the successful expansion of drone strikes, the foreign policy record of this administration has largely been one of capitulation, indecision and weakness.

Why, because he hasn't nuked Damascus and Tehran just yet? Pussy. Yeah, sure, other than getting the most-hunted terrorist on the entire planet for the past decade, what the hell has Hussein Obammy done for me lately? Really, after the colossal monkeyfuck of the Cheney regime, there should be a formal moratorium on any Republican saying anything about foreign policy matters for, I dunno, at least the next ten years. To very loosely paraphrase Jack Nicholson, you'd be better off just saying "thank you", and going on about your way, Fatboy.

As the say, read the whole thing, if for some reason you can't predict it word-for word ahead of time, and you need the entertainment value. It just goes on like that.

Ultimately, the takeaway from Bennett's tedious jabber is something he understands all too well.

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