The Smoke from Reagan's Army

[rain_gryphon]

Geez Louise. Somebody swiped the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from Auschwitz. I'm amazed to learn that was the original - all those times I've looked at the thing, I always figured it was a reproduction. The august Times, one of the very few newspapers on earth that I still respect, hyperbolically characterizes this as a 'Nazi raid'. I take that as a sad commentary on the diminished age in which we live. When I was in school, stealing someone's sign in the dead of night, with no witnesses, would have been considered an act of petty knavery more than anything. Anyone who did that and characterized it with such a bold word as 'raid' would have never lived it down.

My personal guess is it was nothing to do with Nazis to begin with. That thing's iconic, and steeped in evil, pain and fear as well. Someone's sitting right now in his secret art gallery, a few million poorer, but trembling with joy that he actually has a thing of such power all to himself, to touch and marvel over.

*****

The Feckless Leader returns from Copenhagen, proclaiming yet another unprecedented triumph. That'll bump his 'solid B+' up to an A, I'm sure. Now begins the fun part, as he tries to sell the Senate on the noble sacrifice of taxing the American people to help the Chinese become more efficient competitors.

Comments

[gremy.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that Democrats filibustered many of Bush the Younger's policies (probably due to being forever butthurt by the 2000 election), I'm not surprised Republicans are getting back at them.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

It wasn't really the party politics I was getting at. It was a system which makes filibustering quite so easy in the first place. I tend to think that the British system makes it too easy for a government to force things through, but that the US one makes it too hard. Michael Tomasky thinks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/13/america-broken-political-system-obama) that the big increase in the insistence on 60 votes in the last couple of decades, together with the bloc-like nature of opposition, has made the Senate close to dysfunctional.

[gremy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I imagine checks and balances are fewer in parliamentary government since the executive and legislative branches are essentially one.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

It depends. The House of Lords is far less predictable than the US Senate, for example. A lot of bad legislation has been improved by the Lords in a way it would not have been had the chamber split along party lines as the Senate generally does.