AN INTERESTING ARTICLE

Here is an interesting article that everyone should read, especially some radical conservatives who, I fear, live in an alternative universe.  Unfortunately, they are exactly the ones who will not read it, and if they do, they will  not understand it.  They're not too bright, you know.

Chuckwagon Journal

Tom Teepen: Alternate reality confronts Obama and his yes-we-canners

By Tom Teepen

Posted: September 18, 2009 - 2:00 AM

In CrazyWorld, Barack Obama is a foreigner who has unconstitutionally usurped the presidency of the United States.

In Actual America, Hawaii-born Obama was elected president by his fellow citizens.

And so it goes on both sides of the mystic curtain.

In CrazyWorld, that recent Tea Party rally in Washington drew 2 million people and the failure of the ever-despised mainstream media to admit as much was one more example of their perfidiousness. An aerial photo, eagerly circulated on the political right, indeed did show a monster crowd, surely a million and more.

In Actual America, the photo turned out to be of the 1997 Promise Keepers rally. Old hands at guesstimating crowd sizes figure the Tea Party turnout at about 75,000. Most media skipped the numbers game, put the crowd in the "tens of thousands" and characterized it as "impressive" or words to that effect, hardly a negation.

In CrazyWorld, the federal government is being insidiously infused with "czars" and in the academies of right-wing arcana, the movement's scholars argue over whether there are just 32 or maybe as many as 140-plus, a parody of medieval monks bickering over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

In Actual America, the president has assigned various appointees to oversee a number of projects or programs — nuclear nonproliferation, the bank bailout, faith-based activities and so on. All modern presidents have done much the same. The appointees have standard-issue bureaucratic titles. "Czar" is the invention of fairway barkers at the right-wing carnival like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.

In CrazyWorld, Obama is surrendering to terrorism.

In Actual America, he has sent 21,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, home turf of terrorism and wellspring of 9/11, and seems likely to send more. He has increased the military budget.

In CrazyWorld, Obama is bankrupting taxpayers and the nation.

In Actual America, he proposed and Congress enacted a tax cut good for up to $400 per person for 95 percent of taxpayers and a $2,500 tax credit to offset college tuition costs. The Treasury calculates it will save 5 million families a total of about $9 billion.

The record deficit that he's presiding over is overwhelmingly a projection of previously committed entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and so on), of leftover Bush debt and of revenue losses from the recession, which recovery will largely make up.

In CrazyWorld, Obama — when he's not a fascist — is a communist, recently morphed from Marxist to Stalinist, pursuing an alien agenda.

In Actual America, Obama is a moderate-to-liberal Democrat carrying through on the platform he openly espoused to win election just 10 months ago.

In CrazyWorld, the fact that the House health care reform bill is 1,018 pages long somehow shows its hopelessness.

In Actual America, the format for congressional bills is about a third or more white space — 25 double-spaced lines per page, about six or seven words per line. President Bush's 1997 budget bill was 1,482 pages. So?

You know, we would be able to hear one another a lot better here on Earth if it weren't for all the static coming from outer space.

Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. E-mail: teepencolumn@earthlink.net.