Scene: a crowded street in a big city. Burdened with packages, a woman makes her way along the sidewalk. She begins to stagger, then slumps toward the pavement, dropping her bags. "Help me," she says, as she crumples akimbo.
From among the passers-by emerge four or five people, men and women, who immediately kneel around the lady. One of them removes his coat and covers her; another takes his sweater off, folds it, and places it under the lady's head.
Of the five helpers, one takes charge: he's a black man, thin, deliberate, gentle. He questions the lady, asks the others if any is a doctor, looks at the gathering throng, inquiring if any of them is. He instructs another to call 911.
Meanwhile, from the crowd emerges a very overweight man dressed in black, shirt open too far; sweating, taking some sort of pills. Rather than offer assistance or suggestions, he begins running up and down the sidewalk, variously shouting, "This is a scam. She's not sick. They're faking. The black guy is trying to steal her purse. He's gonna kill her." The more the group around the fallen lady try to assist her, the more the fat guy hollers. "Stop him. Can't you see he's making her worse? He's evil. He's not really helping. He's pretending to help but he just wants to abuse her. Look!! He just touched her!! I'm right!!!..."
The black man has sent someone from the crowd into a nearby cafe, where she gets a glass of water and offers it to the lady, who by now is sitting up. "It's not working," shouts the fat man. "She's getting worse." The lady is regaining some color in her cheeks, smiling and looking around. The fat man, now screaming, says, "This is horrible. They're killing her. Everything they're doing is failing, except the part where they're taking advantage of her for their own purposes. Look, look, he touched her again."
As the lady gets to her feet, the fat guy says, "See, I was right! I told you so. They didn't know what they were doing, they made her worse. Listen to me."
The black man picks up the woman's packages, walks along side her as she makes her way to the corner, where an ambulance has arrived.
The crowd turns toward the fat guy, babbling in delight, reaching toward him, wanting to hear more of what he's saying. He leads them off in the other direction, as they cheer him, wildly.
.
When the "fat man" was on CPAC, dressed the way he was, I half expected to see a coke spoon dangling from a chain.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot the part where the fat man makes the lady faint and tells everyone she's okay while the black man asks for a doctor.
ReplyDeleteThe way I heard it:
ReplyDeleteThe black man comes up, smelling of cigarette smoke and work-out funk, sets up his teleprompter, and tells the woman, "I am the one you've been waiting for! Now the seas will go back down and the earth will heal!"
Funny thing--the more he spoke, the worse she got. The crowd kept waiting for him to notice this, but he didn't. When he would pause, she would get a little better; but then he would start up again and she would get worse and worse.
Then he made everyone in the crowd contribute all of their money, while he dined on steak and waited for the ambulance to arrive.
We're still waiting for the ambulance.
You also forgot the part where the crowd begins to act, whipped into a frenzy by the fat man and by now too irrational to see that that:
ReplyDelete1) the lady is grateful for the black man's help, and
2) she's GETTING BETTER, not worse, and
3) the people gathered around the black man and the lady are doing useful and productive things to help, under the black man's direction.
In the crowd's insanity, they begin to throw things at the black man and the lady: tin cans, cups of coffee, the bottle openers they use for their beers, their coke spoons, their empty oxycontin bottles. These missiles, while annoying, do not deter the black man, his helpers, and the lady.
Anonymous, here's your beer bottle opener. I saw you throw it just now, and you may need it later.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a name, even an invented one? We like to tell our opponents apart.
Anonymous: "Then he made everyone in the crowd contribute all of their money"
ReplyDeleteDo you mean to tell me you make more than $250,000/yr? Glory be. Your taxes may go up HUGELY, even as much as 4.5%! Iniquitous!
As for me, my taxes will go down. Sucker. You should immediately cut your income so that you'll get a break instead of an increase.
No, I'm in the class promised a tax cut. I didn't believe it, and it's a good thing. When my gas taxes and energy taxes all go up, and the price of everything I buy goes up because everyone who makes the goods taxes go up and my clients' taxes go up and they decide to squeeze my rate or just work less...
ReplyDeleteAnd my big tax break of $8 a month...mostly figured through altering the withholding tables, not changing the tax tables...that's not going to go very far.
And the non-profits I work for--their contributions will go down, as the tax benefit for the evil rich people goes down--there goes more income.
It's possible your taxes will go down--though I doubt it. But your wealth will go way down. Your buying power will go way down. Good luck to us all.
Beer bottle: first, thanks for identifying. It just makes it easier to keep track when responding. (I assume you're the anonymous from above.) It's appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, as a result of the Bush years my wealth ALREADY has gone way down, by over 50%. The country faces huge economic problems, and deficits and debt that have been added to immeasurably for the past eight years. You seem to be laboring under the delusion foisted upon us that we can keep behaving that way with no penalty. The entire country is in danger, and the entire country has to pay to get us out of it. The bill has come due. There's no longer a way to pretend or to lie, the way Bush did. There's no way to get better without pain along the way. Contrary to what we've been told for eight disastrous years.
So Obama is giving us a dose of reality. I wish he weren't doing any tax cuts, because we all need to pitch in. But the problem with Rush and, from what I can tell, you, is that he believes we can continue the way we have, to his benefit and to that of his fellow multimillionaires, with no concern for the damage that's been done. That by doing what was done for another eight years, we can, in some inexplicable way, suddenly get better.
We can't. Not any more than you could if you'd run up tens of thousands of credit card debt while someone encouraged you to keep buying stuff, and now you need to pay up. Someone needs to be a grownup.
I don't know if Obama will succeed or not. The damage may have been too great. But he's trying; and the Congressional Republicans are adding nothing but negativity. In a time like this you'd think everyone would be willing to pitch in. Not them. Not Rush. Not, evidently, you. Unless you think the whole "crisis" is a lie, it's impossible for me to understand.
The point of my post, in case you missed it, was that I think (barring people like you and Rush and Sean and John and Ann and Bill and Roger....) Obama will succeed. The economy WILL improve (it's too soon to know, and too soon, like you, to claim it's failing. After five weeks!!), and then people who did nothing but obstruct and lie will need to hope the voters, by some miracle and only in a wet dream, will follow them anyway.
Get it?
Oh, I never said we shouldn't do anything. But raising taxes on the people who can create jobs (which means giving me some money) is not the way to go. People with money will hide it, hoard it, save it. I'll drive on a broken car, give up my pool service, not go out to eat. That's the recession right there. I know everything will cost me more this year, so I feel I have to stop spending now and conserve. I'm part of the recession, but that's how it works.
ReplyDeleteObama is making things worse, not better. Whatever your fascination with Rush, et. al., I also hope Obama fails at making things worse. When I picks a path that looks like it could make things better, I'll hope he succeeds then. In the meantime, I hope he gets a clue. And stops talking the economy down.
Well, that's at least a bit of reasonableness. But I don't think it's at all accurate, or even possible, to say Obama is making things worse. That is, of course, the Republican meme. Rather than provide any actual ideas. But after five weeks, during which none of his plans have really been put into place, much less have had time to act, it's only wishful thinking to say he's making things worse. Or is the market your only barometer? If so, is it going down because of Obama, or GM? Obama, or AIG? Obama, or GE? Obama, or the unemployment numbers? Those continuing disasters are the result of what's been going on for eight years. No one can credibly argue (although there are many saying it, absent facts) that Obama could have turned any of that around in five weeks.
ReplyDeleteNor can a market, which goes up and down 500 points in a day and has done so many times on practically no news at all, be considered a credible short-term measure of anything except idiocy.
I don't think that the market is the only measure of success, but is it too much to ask that we see some kind of success somewhere? Instead, we find that Obama can't staff a cabinet; the Sec of State can't pronounce the names of people she's speaking to; the State Dept can't translate Russian; Obama is "too tired" to properly receive our strongest ally (though we hear about parties in the White House all the time) and insults Britain with an office party-level gift. There is no confidence in Obama anywhere in the world, as far as I can see.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for his promise of "no more politics as usual"--his staff seems to spend a lot of time trying to demonize his opponents. You can rail against Rush all you want--but when will Obama start to get something going?
"There is no confidence in Obama anywhere in the world, as far as I can see."
ReplyDeleteThanks for that caveat at the end, there. It says that you are more self-aware than almost all wingnut trolls. The part that precedes it, though, says that you have no familiarity with opinion polling "anywhere in the world." None. Nada. Your worldview is actively counterfactual.
Oh Beer Bottle, if only we had elected McCain/Palin instead! My house would have regained it's value, my 401K would have been restored, my job would now be secure, and my health insurance premiums would not be increasing 30% at renewal. 12.5 million people would be back at work, the banks would be solvent again, the market would be a snorting bull, the construction industy would be hammering away, and 4,000+ dead GI's would come back to life. Oh if ONLY the Republicans were back in power, if ONLY the religious right was in charge, if ONLY the rich,contemptuous, white men were back in power! Then we'd be on the road to recovery.
ReplyDeleteBeer Bottle: "You can rail against Rush all you want--but when will Obama start to get something going?"
ReplyDeleteAfter FIVE FRIGGING WEEKS? I know some on our side think Obama's a superman, but you're putting us to shame on irrational optimism. Really, don't you think declaring failure after five weeks is just an itsy-bitsy premature?
"There is no confidence in Obama anywhere in the world, as far as I can see."
Your vision is bad; see an optometrist as quickly as possible.
If the World Could Vote
A New Beginning for America
Obama Clear Winner in World Opinion
A new face for American diplomacy
Great Britain:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4953523/Barack-Obama-too-tired-to-give-proper-welcome-to-Gordon-Brown.html
France:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/sources-say-sar.html
Russia:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3385988/Russia-welcomes-Barack-Obama-with-deployment-of-nuclear-capable-missiles.html
Spynster--
While McCain/Palin was my vote, did I say they'd have it all straightened out now? No--but I doubt they would have made it worse.
Leigh--got any links that are current...and maybe, well-known?
Five friggin' weeks? I'm not asking for all solutions in place. But it's much worse. And getting worse...every time Obama opens his mouth.
Please...barack Obama...if you're reading this...shut up. My money is almost gone.
Or is that your goal?
Sid--I see the market goes up and down. But this is not really short term any more. It's gone down 6,000 points since Obama overtook McCain. That's a lot. does Obama know what he's doing? Remember, he's never made a payroll, never run a business, never overseen a large (or even medium) operation. And now he's making trillion dollar budgets.
ReplyDeleteHe can't form a cabinet. He obviously doesn't understand the importance of receiving foreign heads of state. He's amateur hour. But many of us saw this coming months ago.
Oops--sorry! I found Obama is popular is some parts of the world...like...with the Taliban
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/03/08/patrol_kills_2_afghan_police_who_opened_fire/
BB: you're right about the market going down since Obama was running. While we're at it, let's point out Australia had its hottest summer ever, after Obama promised to address global warming. In fact, global warming has been increasing since he was born, and the ice caps have diminished significantly since the time he was in the Illinois legislature.
ReplyDeleteCoincidence? I think not!!!
What goals do the Obama administration have in Afghanistan?
ReplyDeleteI too was perplexed by the outreach to the Taliban. The Obama administration has not spoken to Karzai. Hillary is on the record for saying that he is ineffectual and clearly does not like him. Karzai is on the record for saying that what Afghanis need is infrastructure rather than more troops, and yet it's looking Obama wants to send more troops?
Is the Obama administration trying to destabilize a democratically elected leader by refusing to speak to Karzai and offering to negotiate with his enemies instead? What's up?
Hasn't met with Karzai? News to me. Holbrooke was just there.
ReplyDeleteAs to talking: it's what he said he'd do, with anyone. I have no problem with it. Talk is cheap. And it's what Petraeus did with the Sunnis, which was the reason behind the "success" of the "surge."
But I share your concern. Afghanistan brought down the Soviet Union, not Ronnie. It's probably ungovernable. But I happen to agree that if there's an answer, it's infrastructure help. Three Cups of Tea. That sort of thing.
The fact is that in all the things Obama is tackling, nothing has worked before, so trying new things, here and abroad, makes sense. To me, anyway. So far.
Flarin' Karen: there's also this.
ReplyDeleteBeer Bottle, like so many folks, confuses correlation with causation. This error in reasoning causes a lot of problems, as people wildly swing at the supposed bogeyman while the real causes of problems go unaddressed. Some of that wild swinging is going on here, and it looks pretty silly.
ReplyDeleteThe stock market's going down because our financial system has been broken for a long time, certainly years and maybe a couple of decades. Blaming Obama makes no real sense, but it's easy. In the real world, outside our ideologies, things are rarely so simple.
Most of us who support the president's plan are not trusting our emotions, but looking at evidence. We know, for example, that he's following the lead of FDR, and we know what the outcome in the first Great Depression was. Our data from the 30's aren't perfect by any means; we don't have good quarterly data, for example. But the judgment of historians is, in the main, that FDR's methods of addressing the economy's implosion helped.
In any case, what is the Republicans' alternative plan . . . other than "When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout"? The only thing I've heard from them is "NO" and "tax cuts". And bitching about the deficit, which sounds pretty damn hypocritical to most of us.
This is a pretty stupid response, given what history tells us about the R's political fate after the Depression. One can only hope they'll stick to their guns now and further marginalize themselves, thus demonstrating that their ideology is as bankrupt as as the rest of us are due to their mistakes in governance.
Sid, your prose reminds me of a drug....to bad its Ambien...Really, you should treat words like they were precious OPEC petroleum... Your stuffs like a Steven King novel with no Satanic Dog or Possessed Plymouth...
ReplyDeleteBrevity's the soul of wit,
Frank
Frank: thanks.
ReplyDelete