The Game Is Rigged

Townhall.com ^ | December 31, 2012 | Dan Holler

[Kaslin]

Matt Damon, the actor who once gave $2,000 to Dennis Kucinich, is giving up on politics. He told Playboy, “It’s easier now more than ever in my life to feel the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter.”

Liberal Hollywood elites are not the only ones disappointed with failure of President Obama to deliver on his 2008 promise to change Washington. Heck, even left-leaning newspapers are blaming – albeit inadvertently – his Washington for the fiscal cliff fallout. When consumer confidence took a sharper than expected dive last week, the New York Times attributed it to the “looming fiscal impasse in Washington.”

Amazingly, the Times is on to something. This so-called fiscal cliff is nothing more than congressionally designed geography with a presidential signature.

Let’s review. In August 2011, President Obama signed a bill that arbitrarily cut defense spending. In December 2010, President Obama signed a bill to extend the current tax rates for two years. And in March 2010, President Obama signed $500 billion in tax hikes into law as part of Obamacare.

Americans will get the bill for all of this starting in 2013.

Blame for the forthcoming economic pain should be placed squarely on President Obama’s shoulders. Sure, he had bipartisan help for some of his cliff creation, but as President and the guy who promised to change Washington, he owns the outcome.

President Obama’s reckless approach to the cliff negotiations should make that much clearer. In the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel explained, “Mr. Obama won't willingly agree to any serious cuts, to any meaningful entitlement reform, ever. He will risk everything—the ‘middle class’ he claims to want to protect, his economic legacy—to continue growing government.”

The word risk is appropriate, because President Obama’s strategy is creating uncertainty over the future. RBS Securities economist Guy Berger told the New York Times, “So far consumers are worried about the future. Once they start worrying about the present, we’re in trouble.”

In August, the House – Republicans and some Democrats – attempted to head off the uncertainty by passing H.R.8, the Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act of 2012. It was straightforward – extend the current tax rates for everyone. It was a position many Democrats held in December 2010.

But, like Matt Damon said, the game is rigged. Harry Reid will not even bring H.R.8 up for a full debate. For five months, the leader of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” has stonewalled any effort to avert Barack’s Bluff.

Charles Krauthammer believes the explanation is as simple as it is cynical: “Obama was never interested in solving the fiscal issue. He wanted to break the Republicans…”

Rather than allow Harry Reid and President Obama to divide them, Republicans could put up a united front, which they are finally doing by refocusing on H.R.8. Again, as Strassel said:

“They can continue the folly of believing this president will compromise. Or they can realize that he will never be reasonable on taxes—and so they can't give anything away. They can realize that he won't hold hands with them on entitlement reform—and so they'll have to state their own big demands and force him to explain his lack of leadership. They can realize that backroom talks are a sucker's game.”

In short, don’t play an away game. As Heritage Action’s CEO Michael A. Needham said, “It will never be enough for the political left.” He continued:

“Conservatives should rally around ideas and principles that unite them, not tactics that create exploitable divisions. As we move to the next phase of the fiscal cliff debate, conservatives, especially those elected to represent the American people, must recommit to explaining and fighting for pro-growth policies that advance freedom and create opportunity.”

That may not be good enough for Matt Damon, but it’d be good for the country.

[bgill]

Of course it’s fixed. It’s always been fixed.

[Happy Rain]

Matt Damon plays a lot of intelligent men in his movies...

...best damn actor that ever lived.

[LadyBuck]

Just another Hollywood brat with too much time on his hands.

Didn’t help that he was raised to think his diapers didn’t stink.

[Cyber Liberty]

{snicker} Took me a moment or two....

[Capt. Tom]

and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter.”

Where has he been the last 4 years??- tom

[lurk]

Let’s be glad Mr Damon’s political wishes are not coming true. He leans a little to the left of Fidel Castro.

[Perkalong]

“Blame for the forthcoming economic pain should be placed squarely on President Obama’s shoulders. Sure, he had bipartisan help for some of his cliff creation, but as President and the guy who promised to change Washington, he owns the outcome.”

But, guess what?

The Republicans (and Bush) are going to get the blame for the economy! Most Americans believe that Bush and Republican policies led to the 2008 economic crisis that was the worst since the Great Depression, and in November 2008, most Americans chose not to return to those policies.

Just like the blame for the Great Depression was hung on the Republican Party for two generations, so too will blame for the current economic situation.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Almost too subtle...

[ILS21R]

>>“It’s easier now more than ever in my life to feel the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter.”<<

It’s not your fault.

[TArcher]

Here's a lead role for ya Matster - you'd be perfect for the part:

"The "idiot," I have said, is at times close to that boundary line where every idea and its opposite are recognized as true. That is, he has an intuition that no idea, no law, no character or order exists that is true and right except as seen from one pole – and for every pole there is an opposite pole. Settling upon a pole, adopting a position from which the world is viewed and arranged, this is the first principle of every order, every culture, every society and morality. Whoever feels, if only for an instant, that spirit and nature, good and evil are interchangeable is the most dangerous enemy of all forms of order. For that is where the opposite order is, and there chaos begins.

A way of thought that leads back to the unconscious, to chaos, destroys all forms of human organization. In conversation someone says to the "idiot" that he only speaks the truth, nothing more, and that this is deplorable. So it is. Everything is true, "Yes" can be said to anything. To bring order into the world, to attain goals, to make possible law, society, organization, culture, morality, "No" must be added to the "Yes," the world must be separated into opposites, into good and evil. However arbitrary the first establishment of each "No," each prohibition, may be, it becomes sacrosanct the instant it becomes law, produces results, becomes the foundation for a point of view and system of order.

The highest reality in the eyes of human culture lies in this dividing up of the world into bright and dark, good and evil, permissible and forbidden.

For Myshkin the highest reality, however, is the magical experience of the reversibility of all fixed rules, of the equal justification for the existence of both poles.

The Idiot, thought to its logical conclusion, leads to a matriarchy of the unconscious and annihilates culture. It does not break the tables of the law, it reverses them and shows their opposites written on the back."

--Thoughts on The Idiot, by Dostoevsky
--Hermann Hesse, 1919
http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/projects/hesse/works/idiot.pdf

 

 

[VideoDoctor]

"If things don't change, they'll stay the same." /s

[READINABLUESTATE]

“...best damn actor that ever lived.”

:)

[SunkenCiv]

Partisan Media Shills ping. Thanks Kaslin.

[Darksheare]

“Damning with faint praise”?

[thackney]

Matt Damon plays a lot of intelligent men in his movies...

...best damn actor that ever lived.

I will never understand the people who take the opinions of professional deceivers as meaningful information.

Actor's greatest skill is making you believe a false situation is true.

[APatientMan]

LOL!

[Kaslin]

Most Americans believe that Bush and Republican policies led to the 2008 economic crisis that was the worst since the Great Depression, and in November 2008, most Americans chose not to return to those policies.

Most Ignorant Americans believe that Bush and Republican policies led to the 2008 economic crisis that was the worst since the Great Depression, and in November 2008, most Americans chose not to return to those policies.

I fixed it

Study Confirms That Democrats Destroyed the Economy

Home - by BigFurHat - December 28, 2012 - 11:30 America/New_York - 20 Comments

The reason you hear Obama repeat over and over the stupid refrain ” why go back to the policies that got us in this mess?” is because he is employing typical progtardian behavior – projection.

Examiner -

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left’s race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act–enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

Again, let’s review:

-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.

more

[ballplayer]

Most People Here on this site already know That Obama had No intentions of Cooperating on Sensible Reforms other than Transforming the United States into a Marxist Paradise.
The surprising thing is that Republicans as a whole REFUSE to make a Case,and as this article states,no one challenges Obama on anything,He makes statements on issues that Hours or days or weeks ago he made the exact opposite of.
The Rinos in the party are destroying the Hope of any opposition,they are cowards and only want to perpetuate the Country club down there. Unfortunately unless the Conservatives gain some sort of Power we are all screwed.

[fightu4it]

Damon has arrived at his Epiphany a little late in the dance. Could it be possible that he is not a student of history?

___