Friday, July 29, 2011

Palin Crowds Into Lawmaker Lampoon

In Washington, they are reenacting a famous magazine cover, the National Lampoon of January 1973 with a gun pointed at a dog’s head and the caption, “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.”

The dog is the American economy, and Sarah Palin is urging her Tea Party friends to pull the trigger, with a Facebook post to “remember us ‘little people’ who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this.”

With Palin on the scene, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, David Letterman et al should be donating their salaries to lower the deficit. These days Tea Party parody practically writes itself.

Take freshman Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois jumping on John McCain for criticizing his House brethren: "Folks like him...have no clue as to the troubles Americans are going through right now. They don't understand this crisis anymore."

He may have a point. McCain, who has been in Congress 28 years, has a wife who owns eight houses while Walsh, with six months in Washington, was elected to the House after his home was foreclosed, and the Chicago Sun-Times reports that he owes over $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife.

Now, after reducing the Illinois unemployment rate by one, Walsh is all over cable TV, telling Americans how to manage their money and bad-mouthing McCain for trying to talk sense about a balanced budget amendment.

As John Boehner goes into overtime to strong-arm his Tea Party cadre to pass a bill that will be immediately shelved in the Senate, the Alice-in-Wonderland scene keeps get zanier by the hour and no one knows what the final punch line will be. However it turns out, there won't be much laughing.

1 comment:

J. Michael Heilig said...

The childish graphic of the Lampoon cover is idioracy at its worst. The issue in Washington is that we have finally reached the breaking point, either we raise the debt ceiling or we default. Now lets look at this from a home life prospective. If you can't pay your $30,000 credit card debt, the bills are all due, you're three months behind ont he rent and about to default on your student loans, the solution is not to open more credit cards and go back to school in the hope of deferring your student loans while you come up with another plan. That would be considered desperate and irresponsible... Unless you did it in Washington! This is exactly what has happened. However, our government feels little responsibility for the unfathomable debt or for the consequences because all they see is the signature plate on a little piece of paper they think can stave off the problem. The reallity though, is that the nation is in over her head. Sarah understands exactly how this works. Take a solid look at her record as a mayor who turned a no where snow village into Alaska's Boom town, attracted business, and created infrastructure. As governor she not only cut spending, as she did in Wasilla, but she also created a tax plan that caused the oil companies to benefit the people and cut the property taxes. You are talking about a woman who has balanced a budget on a family, municipal, and state level. She is famous for her line item vetos to the Alaska budget and her head on collision with the legislators working with the status quo. Your article presumes that she is somehow trying to destroy our economy, but when was the last time you balanced a multi-billion dollar budget? As far as the situation is considered, any average Joe can tell that Sarah has the experience and knowledge to be heard on this issue. Its interesting that people bash her but do not bother to actually defend the bill. Conspiracy?