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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004Greenspan, Krugman and Starve the BeastersPaul Krugman is looking prophetic right now, in light of Alan Greenspan's testimony to Congress urging them to cut Social Security benefits because we just can't pay for them, given the projected budget shortfalls. What I mean by that is Krugman's assertion that supply siders, who claim that tax cuts will produce increased tax revenues because of crazy economic growth (something that flies in the face of all empirical evidence), are the happy face of "starve the beasters," more traditional, small government conservatives who see budget deficits as a happy necessity, because they'll force the government to get rid of the so-called entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and return us to pre-FDR New Deal days when the elderly were mostly poor and the poor were mostly sick all the time. I do declare. Aren't they such nice people? Greenspan testified that we ought to cut Social Security benefits rather than raise taxes, the other way ought of this problem. Greenspan added that his testimony should be taken with a grain of salt, because he'd taken a couple Viagras the night before while dallying with a Playboy model and his brain still wasn't getting enough blood, if you catch his drift. Bush cracks wise Some of you may have read Bush's joke yesterday where he said: "The other party's nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions. They're for tax cuts and against them. They're for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They're for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They're in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts." That knock against Kerry seems like a good one when you read it in the paper. Touche, Mister Pussycat! Then I saw the footage on the Daily Show last night. Bush's delivery is so awful. And when he delivers the last line, as the Republican governors guffaw ("Dur, that was a good one, wasn't it, Arnold?"), he doesn't even smile, but his lips kind of twitch and move around inexplicably in a manner reminiscent of former Dallas Cowboys coach and current Fox analyst Jimmy Johnson, who smacks his lips tourettically after everything he says. Speaking of Jon Stewart, I was disappointed that, when he had GOP hack John Podhoretz on the same show to hawk his new book lauding George W. Bush, Stewart once again upbraided his audience for snickering at a GOP fool's pronouncements. You can have neoconservative mad scientists like Richard Perle on the program, Jon, to maintain the balance of the show, but your audience doesn't have to like it. And you can make your guest feel better about it without clumsily, half-ironically telling his audience to behave. Hey, that's what the most inane of your conservative guests will have to face. A polite and sometimes overly deferential host and a skeptical, but not hostile, audience. They can deal with it. .: posted by hornswaggler 11:25 AM| |
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