Tom Toles for October 09, 2014

Obama says that he has to run the country as best he can on his own because the Republicans refuse to do their job. This simply makes it clear that he doesn’t understand what the Republican’s job is. The Republicans in congress are doing their job very well. If they can’t accomplish anything that Obama won’t veto, then they can stall so that the Democrats can’t accomplish anything either. Their intention is to keep everything just as it is, unless they can manage to return to the “good old days” of the 19th century, before there was a middle class and when only the landed gentry were voters. And, they have a great strategy for accomplishing this. 1. Disenfranchise everyone you possibly can, unless they are dependable Republican voters.2. Produce ads and media emphasis which emphasizes those politicians who are corrupt and incompetent. Paint all Democrats with the same slime. Lacking sufficient actual slime, simply make some up. This undermines the people’s trust in their government and makes them feel like helpless pawns, so they tune out the whole process and accept the status quo. 3. Support the “job creators”, who are the recipients of a huge portion of the GNP, although that GNP was produced by working people, who are receiving less benefit from it every day. This gives them the money to accomplish the other two goals, and leaves everyone except the “job creators” with increasingly less money to mount a counter campaign. So, this is the way we are going lose the middle class and become a country inhabited only by the very rich 1%, and a 99% who are too busy working two jobs to survive to notice.