People, do you want your f*cking dots connected or not?

[Miss Authoritiva]

People, do you want your f*cking dots connected or not?

If I had known I was still capable of being appalled by Bush, I would have skipped his press conference. As it was, I was still reeling from the gibberish of this http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0901/12/ltm.03.html">CNN segment, which obviously had been inspired by this AP story, “In Obama, Many See an End to Boomer Era.”

The upshot was this: The Baby Boom era is over because soon-to-be President Barack Obama uses a BlackBerry. Or something.

CNN also wondered about the prospect of intergenerational warfare. Obama, who is technically a Baby Boomer, is spiritually more aligned with Cuspers or Generation Jonesers and, well, f*ck Social Security and Medicare and all that.

It also was confidently declared that “boomers have never been known for a whole lot of self-sacrifice” and they “have not and will not ever leave, ever go quietly into the night.” Post inauguration, it seems, the ready-response euthanasia squads get the green light should the Boomers bitch too much about their squandered entitlements.

Then Bush was on the TeeVee giving a press conference, apparently just to ground his heels in the wreckage. God he was appalling. This little gem of a diatribe was in response to a question about America’s lost moral standing over torture and harsh interrogation techniques.

Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? … And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?

Sad to think that although more than 75 million Americans were born during the post-WWII baby boom, the Boomers have produced only two presidents. One was impeached and the other should have been.

What a waste.

Grace Nearing @ Scriptoids

[leveymg]

1. Written with style and verve. But, not sure what you're saying here.

Is this a general social commentary about the Boomer Generation? Are you suggesting that Obama is going to cut SS and Medicare? That Bush is smarter than he looks, and was hinting at something about 9/11 and American intelligence methods and sources?

All of the above/none?

Intriguing stuff.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. Not me. That was CNN.

That was CNN suggesting that Obama, because he is not really a Baby Boomer but a BlackBerry-using Cusper or Joneser, does not have strong attachments to the idea of Social Security and Medicare. Why? Because allegedly the younger Cuspers and Jonesers never believed that the entitlement programs would be there when they retired.

There's been a glut of stories about power passing from Boomer politicians to the next generation, and it occurred to me that despite their enormous numbers, the Boomers (so far) had control of the presidency for only 16 years. What did they achieve besides one bogus impeachment, two bogus wars, and a very real financial crisis.

[leveymg]

3. I had thought that we won the Cold War and had grabbed the Caspian Basin, but it looks like Bush may

have blown that too.

We've gone from the World's Greatest Lender to its Bigger Debtor in 8 years. Maybe, that wasn't real, either.

The Bush family, Cheney and the GOP spooks have been ultimately successful in shifting headquarters operations to Dubai, along with most of the Company's assets. Mission Accomplished.

[Peace Patriot]

4. That's an interesting stat, only 2 Boomer presidents...

My first president (I was 16, he was 43)--JFK--was assassinated.*

My second president--RFK--was assassinated five years later.

In between, I voted for the "peace candidate"--LBJ--who then slaughtered one million people in Southeast Asia for no good reason. We got rid of him, but then they shot who we wanted for president--RFK--and we got...

Nixon was the old folks' and the war profiteers' president. While slaughtering another million people in Southeast Asia, the Cuban mafia connection to JFK's assassination got him in trouble. (I've wondered recently if the Watergate hearings--and I was a junkie, then--weren't actually a coverup of something far worse, and the theory that the DNC office/anti-war McGovern campaign in the Watergate had some photos that gave the lie to the 'lone gunman' theory has begun to make sense*.)

Ford was part of the coverup (member of the Warren Commission).

Jimmy Carter was my president, until the Reagan henchmen committed treason--colluding with the Iranians--and got him out. (Also, oil corps withheld oil, resulting in long lines at the gas pumps.)

Reagan funded/instigated the slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala, and tens of thousands of other innocent people in Nicaragua, El Salvador and points south, with complete impunity. The corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies were, by then, in total control of imagery and issues, is the best explanation I can come up with for how a throwback to the 1950s "red-baiting" McCarthy era got to be president. The tax code was re-written to favor the Rich and the Corporate; also the era of the corporatization of the Democratic Party leadership (only millionaires get to be Congress members, etc.).

Daddy Bush wasn't my president either.

Clinton--corporatized; prepped current economic crash with "free trade' outsourcing of jobs; prepped Bush Jr's war by pummeling Iraq for eight years; "bubble" created some liberal millionaires; stage set for our current horrors. "Baby boomer" as co-opted left.

Bush Jr. Age right for a "baby boomer" but nothing else right. Didn't benefit from education, the way many Boomers did. Brain-damaged, mean-spirited puppet for the forces that took over our government back in the '80s (and, if the truth were known, the '60s) to turn back the tide of the youth rebellion against war.

And, along the way, some more of my presidents were, a) assassinated (Paul Wellstone), b) "Swiftboated"/Diebolded (Kerry)--or otherwise prevented from gaining presidential power, stopping the Forever War, or stopping the mind-boggling looting of our government coffers and our country unto the 7th generation.

Obama has accommodated himself to the forces that prevented the Boomer generation (my generation) from ever having the presidents that we really wanted. He probably had no choice in doing so. I feel for the man. I really do. I think he's very intelligent and has a good heart. But I have no illusions about how the emperor gets crowned in this former democracy.

Anyway, that's how I feel about things. I and my generation were violently, and by dirty tricks, deprived of the presidents we should have had leading us. There has been a cloud over this country, from 11/22/63 to the present day, never lifted, still there.

--------------------------

*(Recommended reading: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died, and why it matters," by James Douglass--just published by the Maryknoll fathers.)

[demigoddess]

5. are any of you nuts baby-boomers??? I am and I do not have the horrible

opinion of us that CNN and others have. We have been the excuse for quite a while and you want to know why??? Because it was our babyboomers who went into the streets to fight to end the vietnam war. It was also the babyboomers who paid in unprecedented amounts into the Social security and medicare systems but all they can talk about is how much we will take out!!!!! Just think what it would have been if they had invested it or saved it instead of squandering it on covering the deficits caused by the Vietnam war, and all those stupid tax cuts. It is our generation which will probably have more people work to the age of 70 and more. We are the generation who put more of our children through college on our own dime not the GI Bill. We also are still contributing to our children's welfare years after they moved out and married. And Clinton was the first babyboomer president w was the second, Barack Obama is the third. Two out of three, not bad. W was so stupid because he bought into the ideology of his parents generation. That is my two cents worth!!!!!

[Stinger2]

6. Clinton should not have been such a male slut

Clinton should not have been such a male slut but the
republicans used it to take power, that wasn’t so bad but
after taking power they didn’t give a darn what happened to
the county as they robbed it blind. 

The War of lies, then allowing the markets to run wild
stealing from the world and Americans, then blame the poor,
disgraceful. 

The baby boomer thing is to get the youth to hate them over
Social Security to steal the only thing that has worked and
rob the SS Coffers Blind…….. Bush traveled the country
preaching trying to get his hands on that SS money for his
friends in Wall Street and would have disappeared with guys
like Madoff.