William Rivers Pitt's Requiem for 112th Congress and David Sirota on Congressional Kabuki Theater

William Rivers Pitt's requiem for the 112th Congress minces no words:

The sun will rise on Thursday morning to shine down upon the end of the 112th Congress, the single most useless do-nothing assembly of fools and failures in modern American political history. Boehner and his crew of cretins in the House majority are almost singlehandedly responsible for the anemic economic recovery to date, entirely because they decided to sit on their hands rather than do anything - anything! - that might come within a country mile of helping President Obama win re-election.

But as David Sirota notes, the Democrats have also had a decisive role to play in the Congressional kabuki theater of fools and failures: they have, for lo these many years now, permitted the Republicans to bully them into undoing the fiscal programs they've set into place to try to deal with the damage done by Reaganomics and the Bush era.

And they've done so, Sirota suggests, for one paramount reason: to protect corporate welfare at the expense of the poor and middle classes. Sirota points out that in the absurd "fiscal cliff" negotiations, no one ever mentioned the bloated Pentagon budget or the bloated budget of handouts to corporate agribusiness.

The moral measure of our political leadership can be taken by noting what our leaders refuse to discuss.  That's what they regard as sacrosanct, as off the table, as beyond consideration and discussion. 

And the kabuki theater in D.C. is, as Sirota maintains, precisely designed to make us forget these non-discussable, off-the-table issues that form the golden calf of our political and economic culture.

The graphic is the freshman class of the 112th Congress, from Wikimedia Commons.