Iago Embodied

UPDATE 24-JUN-11: Budget Talks Near Collapse as G.O.P. Leader Quits, NY Times

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The press reports that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) spontaneously "quit," or "walked out" of budget negotiations in exchange for an extension of the debt ceiling. The extension is required to prevent a government default August 2. Ostensibly, Cantor walked out after Biden and other Democrats insisted that tax loopholes for oil companies be eliminated. Cantor called terminating these loopholes a tax increase, and like the good corporate lapdog he is, he abandoned the country in favor of his back room shareholders.

Cantor is a crass, smirking, frat boy weasel. No one should  take him seriously. Yet the press does...while the country burns to ashes. These "budget negotiations" are nothing more than extortion by avaricious corporations who smell blood in the fetid lagoon of Congress; blood spilled during the staged melee over the debt ceiling extension. (Which by the way has been extended every year since 2001 when we started, once again, running deficits under yet another profligate Republican administration intent on creating a crisis they can exploit in the interest of their Starve the Beast tactic.)

Cantor's melodramatic prancing about is the sorriest, saddest, most duplicitous, and ridiculous illusion of leadership theatre I have seen since...I don't know...say, Richard Nixon. Tricky Dick. The schmuck should be recalled. And President Obama should tell Boehner and Cantor to go to hell, which if such a place exists, sooner or later they surely will anyway.

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If you read Shakespeare's Othello, and wonder what Iago, the perfect evil antagonist would look like, I give you Iago embodied:



Here is Iago describing himself...and Paul Ryan, and John Boehner, and Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, James Inhofe...

O, sir, content you;
I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined
their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Here is the President's speech Representative Ryan refers to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgJiHxRv2M0 

Here is  an OMB assessment of Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity: Congressional Budget Office. Letter to Rep. Paul Ryan. 5 Apr 2011.

And, here is an assessment of President Obama's speech by factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/factchecking-obamas-budget-speech/