THE CRAZIES ... THE OBAMA HATER VERSION

In the movie The Crazies a small Iowa town is suddenly plagued by insanity (and death) after a mysterious toxin contaminates the water supply. The infected crazies are listless and engage in repetitive speech before going after the healthy members of the population. Those who are not infected are forced to defend themselves by killing their toxic neighbors and friends. It's a pretty grisly movie, but it conveys the idea of what happens when a segment of the population is contaminated, can't think straight, and then go crazy on the normal people who are left to defend the gates of civilization.

I'm inspired to bring up The Crazies because unhinged Obama haters seem to have become infected with the market virus called trickle down theory. And it has made them crazy. Worse, they are hell bent on coming after and infecting the rest of us with their failed but toxic reality. 

The fact that thirty years of trickle down economics has crashed and burned - and brought us nothing but record debt and a collapsed economy - doesn't matter to those who drink the toxic Kool-Aid created by Ronald Reagan. Living in a political bedlam only they understand, they continue to believe that the super rich need more deficit funded tax cuts, and even more deregulation.

Lately, fearful of another four years with President Obama, several of my conservative friends on Facebook seem to have taken a second dose of the trickle down toxin and gone completely bat shit crazy. Like the repetitive crazies in the movie, in drone-like fashion they repeat the same Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al. inspired story lines over and over. 

From placing the blame on President Obama for the budget mess, to saying he has raised taxes to record levels, to arguing that he has accomplished nothing while in office, the arguments are the same. Apart from accusing President Obama of being a "liar" because of how he broke his campaign promises, like the crazies in the movie these guys don't rest. 


It doesn't matter - as I have repeatedly pointed out to these people - that the same unfunded spending policies that President Bush put in place are still with us, dragging our economy down ... 

Seriously, it doesn't matter how much evidence that I point to, they continue to believe that the unfunded spending programs that were initiated under President Bush are President Obama's programs. Ergo, President Obama is to blame for spending more than we take in when the data tells us otherwise ...

The primary justification for blaming President Obama is pretty simple. Essentially the crazies argue that President Obama has been in office long enough, and even once had both houses of Congress under Democratic control. Because he has not fixed our economy they argue that he is to blame for the budget and financial mess left by President Bush.

This is powerful stuff. But only if you're crazy.

They don't understand that President Obama never really had both houses in Congress. Lukewarm and turncoat Democrats in the Senate (Nelson, Lieberman, etc.) regularly voted with the GOP. They also don't understand that his faux majority in the Senate was effectively lost when Senator Kennedy passed in 2009. And they sure like to ignore, in crazy-like fashion, that the GOP has pursued record breaking filibuster threats whenever President Obama proposes anything of substance. 

For the crazies in crazy land none of this matters because, well, they're crazy.

It also doesn't matter - as I predicted in January of 2009 - that the GOP effectively promised that they would not work with President Obama in 2009, and then deliberately stalled and failed to work with him after winning the House in 2010. And the proof is in the pudding. The GOP controlled house has not found the time to vote once on the president's jobs bill. But they sure have found the time to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act 33 times, even though they know it won't pass in the Senate and that President Obama would veto the bill.

It doesn't even matter that our nation has suffered because of their crazy games. As long as President Obama looks bad the Republicans believe their immediate goal of turning him into a one term president (which is part of a larger GOP strategy) will become a reality. Deliberately going out of the way to undermine the health of our nation by going after one guy is seriously crazy (you could also make the case for sedition and treason, but that's another story for another day).

This probably explains why one of my FB friends who says that he is not a Birther went out of his way to present an entirely made up story where President Obama supposedly claimed (and then took his time taking back) that he was born in Kenya. Tell me, who does this kind of stuff?

But wait, we're not done yet. There's even more crazy out there.

The GOP likes to argue that taxes are at record high levels. They are not. In fact, corporate taxes as a percentage of revenue and GDP are lower today then at any time since the end of World War II. Seriously, they are. And, for the record, individual tax rates are at their lowest levels in 60 years. I've presented this information to the crazies many times. But like the crazies in the movie, they apparently don't read.

Since they do not read, as you can imagine, they are not even trying to do the math when it comes to the budget. One person, responding to one my op-eds in our local paper, claimed that President Bush only raised the deficit by $2 trillion dollars! Now that's some serious crazy. 

Blame shifting, congressional games, math dystopia, and deliberately sabotaging the president's agenda are all in a days work for the crazies. They don't even care to discuss the merits of President Obama's accomplishments. For them, there are none.

The only thing that's important for our Obama hating political crazies is that President Obama is discredited and made a one term president ... and that we become infected with their virus. 

- Mark