Bush Presents Another False Dichotomy To Compliant Press
"We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem," Bush told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Social Security experts.
No reporter dared question this, for fear of being forever banned from future press conferences. They did, however, exchange knowing glances upon recognition of the President’s use of his trademark false dichotomy technique. “There is, of course, no problem," they communicated to each other silently with the secret eyebrow code they developed to prove to themselves, at least, that they are still critical and informed members of the fourth estate and not merely members of the easily brainwashed proletariat.
Elvin Brown, whose Des Moines News refuses to publish any commentary critical of The President because the editorial staff believes in supporting the troops, had the most vocal eyebrows initially. “What the fuck?” they appeared to say, “He’s presenting this as though the only option to raising taxes is to gut Social Security. Any halfwit knows that Greenspan, before he became chairman of the Fed, devised a plan during the first Reagan Administration that raised payroll taxes then, to be put into a trust fund that could be utilized when the baby boomers retired.”
Tom “Madcat” Cathart, who was recently required to take re-education leave from The Pittsburgh Tribune for suggesting that Condi Rice probably could have done more to prevent 9/11, allowed his graying eyebrows to signal understated agreement. “Yeah,” they said, and then pausing between syllables for effect, “the criticism has been that his privatization plan would increase the deficit and cause further pressure on the already weakened dollar, not that it would require payroll tax increases. The money has already been paid in according to the original 1983 agreement. The real problem is that the deficits have raided the slush fund and forced it to be converted into Treasury Notes owed to Social Security recipients, those massive deficits run up by Reagan, Bush I, and now Bush II…” His sad and furrowed brow trailed off.
“It’s all a scam!” screamed the entire forehead of some young Turk nobody recognized. “It’s a payoff to the Wall Street brokers who supported his campaign, so they can suck billions of dollars in management fees from the government teat. These are the same guys who thought Enron could defy the laws of economic gravity forever, the ones who bilked millions of investors with false assurances even as the stock market bubble was bursting in 2000! Does he really think we’re so stupid as to ever trust them again?”
All the eyebrows in the room fell silent at this sudden Marxist brashness. All the faces froze into the fixed expression of parishioners receiving communion. But then, one lonely eyebrow, back in the corner where nobody ever looks, whispered, “Too bad we can’t tell anyone.”
5:06:33 PM 
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