Maybe Bush’s Great Society rhetoric can be sold to the ideological heirs of George Wallace, if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are willing to run it through the stupidity filter and spend a hell of a lot of air time recasting it as a clever way to stick it to the liberals. But I think the Rovians are taking a real risk of splitting their base in a way it hasn’t been split before, ..
Back to Main
September 18, 2005
WB: Big Spender
Comments
Me, I’m reminded of Ceaucescu and his big projects.
Somewhere, there is a wall begging for the Bush family to be put against.
Posted by: Lupin | Sep 18 2005 6:38 utc | 1
why are they suddenly lunging towards the center?
It seems reasonable that the office of the Presidency changes men. It was especially difficult to edit George Bush, because he is so small inside, but I think the loss of life and devastation in New Orleans took him by surprise.
Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Sep 18 2005 11:54 utc | 2
If the Cheney administration, on behalf of the American taxpayer, is going to “write checks until our fingers are down to bloody stumps”, as Billmon imagined Shrub pledging, I’d like to see some big bucks thrown at getting ready to deal with the pending (bird flu, most likely) pandemic. Katrina ought to show us, if anything does, that one should not stint on prevention and effect mitigation. In the lexicon of public health there are three degrees of prevention – primary – to keep it from happening; secondary – to minimize the effects; tertiary – rehabilitation. For New Orleans, the primary prevention, water management, and secondary prevention, evacuation, relief, etc. clearly failed; now all that is spent is in the “tertiary prevention” column. For the bird flu, there’s still time for some of the earlier steps – but not very much time. Maybe not very much time at all.
Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 18 2005 11:55 utc | 3
Easy answer: The guy lies. Read his lips.
“Those people” won’t see a dime. Right now he just needs the public to think that he is compassionate. Meanwhile, Halliburton is smiling.
Posted by: gylangirl | Sep 18 2005 12:06 utc | 4
I think everyone is shocked and confused. Katrina threw them a big curve. Things are out of control. There were six countries that were deemed necessary to attack, but now I’m afraid that will have to be put on hold. The people are increasingly resentful of the expense in Iraq. The regime might not have any empathy, but Katrina has affected most people profoundly. It was spooky. They want to appear as powerful as the illusion was, but this seems impossible. The weakness Katrina revealed can’t be quickly shoved back under the rug. I think the illusion of the evil doing terror creatures waiting to get us is also knocked out of the game. It’s no longer post 9/11. Many illusions have been shattered. The reconstruction is going to be long, slow and filled with miserable problems.
They know not what they do.
Posted by: jm | Sep 18 2005 12:13 utc | 5
I am curious about two sets of rove’s results from the God Poll on the issue of Republican allegiance. Have the numbers of Confederate Republican Southern Fuck You whites changed after a Southern disaster?
Have the numbers on the fellow travelers, typified by the black and gay Republican, changed?
I don’t think any thinking is going on and the fact there is another internal contradiction of the Rovians exposed is news like its 1999.
Posted by: razor | Sep 18 2005 15:05 utc | 6
Nothing Bush has ever done has ever worked. All he has done as president is run up debt for naught. We don’t have ‘Home Land Defense’. All the money’s been pissed away. All the money in Iraq? Pissed away. Afghanistan? Pissed away. And every cent of it is owed. Unless the Senate or Demos take over, any the aid for Katrina will go to fat assed white southerners republicans.
If you think, or if Bush thinks that his political base will allow him to spend money on poor blacks …. of course he doesn’t think that, so what is he up to? For the last hundred-forty years the southern economy has been based on exploiting cheap labor. It is the social structure. The Economy doesn’t mean jobs to this lot, it’s about profits. Eight years of wealth transfer where that being transferred up is borrowed from the working class, now. That’ll teach their dumb asses. Be damned sure no poor person will come out of this ahead or even. Fat assed white republicans, … different matter. Let’s call it Southern Renewal. Biggest mistake was raising minimum wage and welfare, I say.
All the Panic is about the reappearance of the disappeared. Disappeared lo these many years, non existent, as non existent as blacks in Cleveland and Detroit, poor working whites throughout the nation, the recently disappeared union workers and the quickly disappearing white collar worker. What the nation saw when the curtain was drawn back exists across America. People working for less than subsistant wages. Quick, get that goddamned curtain closed. Now! Economy’s doing great.
Wasn’t an epiphany Bush had, it was a panic attack.
Posted by: ken melvin | Sep 18 2005 15:10 utc | 7
Even 40 years ago Michael Harrington and others pointed out the invisibility of poverty in the US. Every so often poor people make a cameo appearance on the news, usually after some natural disaster, and then they disappear once again.
Don’t you think it’s finally dawning on people that Bush’s rhetoric and Rovian stagecraft is 100% phony posturing?
Posted by: puffin | Sep 18 2005 15:44 utc | 8
No New Deficits – A Primer on How Government Spends
For those just returning from the dark side of the moon,
BushCo is spending nearly ONE TRILLION of your taxes
on the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland
Security, War in Iraq and now the Katrina Reconstruction.
As everyone with eyes and ears can tell you, we have all
seen how hopelessly incompetent DHS, and its daughter
agency FEMA is. $26 BILLION of your taxes were alloted
to emergency disaster preparations before a single penny
in supplemental funding requests was made to Congress.
Where were those $26 BILLION were being spent!!!
With $110 BILLION pledged to Katrina, $126 BILLION of
your taxes is sitting in some general fund, waiting to be
misspent, IDIQ Cost(+) to a few select defense contractors,
under a reconstruction program where the ordinary labor
doing that reconstruction **won’t** receive prevailing wages!
President Bush, in his feckless way, declared a national
emergency in 41 states, and suspended prevailing wage.
That means, for example, if a carpenter wanted to leave
Wyoming and work in New Orleans, s(he) could expect to
receive only a fraction of the wages s(he)’s normally paid.
It’s a formula guaranteed to increase illegal immigration.
President Bush, in his devious way, hamstrung labor, and
is adding $200 BILLION to our deficit, at a time when the two
Departments of Defense / Homeland Security are spending
more of your taxes than **all other** defense departments
in **all the other countries of the world**, rolled up together.
But G-d forbid we pay a fair, prevailing wage to US labor!!
First, for those who don’t know how it works, the budget
for DoD and DHS are set as a percentage of our GDP.
*It’s not based on need*. Operation and maintenance of
our national defense only takes a %age of the monies we
are asked to spend from our life savings. Troop salaries,
support operations in peacetime, take only a small share.
Our troops, after all, are paid nearly minimum wages.
The single biggest defense line items are veterans
benefits, which we are glad to pay, and new weapons
research and development. ?Like we need a smarter
bomb, a space-based laser, full spectrum dominance,
or Air Force 2025? Go ahead, Google “AF2025”, and if
you can still find these insane Defense R&D proposals
on the Net, if they haven’t been scrubbed and classified,
you’ll find, say, a hypersonic cruise missile, capable of
delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world
within 17 minutes. Oh great! Rapid pre-emptive war!
Here’s how it works.
See, the Defense Department and Homeland Security
sit down every two years, and say, How can we spend
some % of GDP? Remember, this is not real GDP, it’s
a newer, sexier GDP on steroids. It includes the faux
runup in the value of real estate. It includes even the
war in Iraq! If they can’t spend above their spending
cap, well, then let’s just sex up the value of the GDP!!
DoD and DHS actually pay for research contractor’s
six-figure salaries to sit around and flip slide-rules
and come up with budget gap spending programs.
Programs like AF2025, like Brilliant Pebbles that
never saw the light of day, like Joint Strike Force
Fighter none of the services want, like the Patriot
ABM system that hasn’t even passed simulated
intercept testing before fully deployment!
GOBoys, how can we fill the spending gap!? Give me
some sexy idea to take up the Hill. We need to spend
another $250 BILLION to make our GDP spending cap!
So we have the absolutely **insane** scenario in
the United States of not one, but **two** defense
departments trying to outspend each other, and
outspend all the other defense departments in the
world combined, to create science-fiction, white labcoat
Dr. Strangelovian “AF2025” porkbarrels, paying defense
contractors six-figure incomes and steak and lobster,
all expenses paid, hotels, golf and spa memberships,
and incredibly padded expense accounts.
For what?! Just to spend up over a GDP spending cap!
The War is Iraq is supplemental spending on **top**
of the fluff and foo-fah of DoD and DHS!! Additional
hundreds of billions of your tax dollars, over and above
all the **siwash** that your taxes is being wasted on!!
So here’s what we tell Congress.
NO NEW DEFICITS!
Cap DoD and DHS at only operations and maintenance
and veterans benefits. Kill all research and development.
Instead of AF2025, we’re going to slip it to AF2030 or 40.
Send all those six-figure white lab-coats to Houston for
FEMA training, then make them work on reconstruction
in New Orleans, and for minimum wages.
Take all those local police grants for new radios, new
cars, new pursuit vehicles, body armor, SWAT teams,
snow machines, quad runners, cigarette boats, and
the literally billions of dollars of fancy toys they had to
spend to use up the budget, and say, that’s it. Enough.!
There is absolutely no way DHS can spend the same
amount of money next year, they have spent this last.
Body armor doesn’t wear out. Radios don’t wear out.
I’ve seen brand-new high-speed chase boats sitting
in police garages that haven’t even been **used** yet!
Here, I’ll give you an example. I worked in WA DC on
legislation creating a new agency, back in the 1970’s.
From that creation, tens of billions of your tax dollars
was granted to state-level agencies. I worked in one
of those agencies. Our director came to use before
the end of the first biennium, and said, We have to
find ways to spend this Fed money, or we’ll lose it.
So I put in for a new walnut desk, and a computer
terminal, back when those cost $10,000 apiece.
And got them! In the 1970’s, in a brand new agency
just like the Department of Homeland Security, I
was sitting at a walnut desk, playing on a $10,000
computer terminal over the fledgling new DarpaNet,
with absolutely nothing to do.
That’s where your $250 BILLION is going at DHS.
Spend it, or lose it porkbarrel police and SWAT toys!
That’s where your $450 BILLION is going at DoD.
Spend it, or lose it porkbarrel science-fiction toys!
And next biennium, while you’re digging deep to
make a couple of HAL-KBR and SGR contractors
into zillionaires on the backs of minimum wage
reconstruction laborers and craftsmen, many of
which will no doubt be foreign guest workers,
DoD and DHS are going to be dreaming up even
bigger, newer, sexier porkbarrel toys to spend on!
CAP DoD and DHS at O&M and veterans benefits
until the War in Iraq is over, and until the rebuilding
of Katrina damage is complete. No ..New .. Deficits!
Politburo Government is a Deadly White Elephant.
Deadly and out of control, it will destroy our country.
Posted by: Lash Marks | Sep 18 2005 16:32 utc | 9
Bush is doomed.
His base don’t want Iraq, and they *sure* don’t want Katrina, and they’re *freaking out* about the deficit, value of their US$’s, price of Peak Oil never to go down again, the market/housing bubble, and low long-term Treasury bond payouts.
On top of that, Bush lost a *huge* section of his “over-the-top”, well-off blacks and hispanics, and single women. After Katrina, they’re G-O-N-E.
Not for nothing did he appear lit and backlit in
baby blue, with a sparkling royal blue tie, that
he wears every day now. Everyone in his Cabinet
is wearing a blue tie, a color once so anathema
to BushCo, you could only find it by zooming in
on their American Flag lapel pin.
Dylan said it best. It’s all over now, Baby Blue.
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 18 2005 17:02 utc | 10
Philip A. Klinkner’s “The Unsteady March”
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0226443418-0
supplies pretty convincing evidence that progress toward racial equality in the US only happens when a number of circumstances co-occur, one of which is a need for African-American troops to help fight a war. It wasn’t hard to imagine the troops in Iraq–like the Katrina victims, drawn disproportionately from among poor folks, who in turn are disproportionately Black–wondering why the hell they were in the desert instead of back home helping cope with the disaster. On this reading, Bush’s surprising acknowledgment of racism as a problem needing correction was actually addressed to the military and their families.
Posted by: rootlesscosmo | Sep 18 2005 18:35 utc | 11
its all a hoax. imho. this a.m. i was reading my new yorker when i stumbled across this EPA/lott/casino story that got me thinking about haley barbour, of new bridges fame and also the ex rnc chairman and present gov of mississippi.
just last night i had googled him after reading TMP cafe
This raises an intriguing question. Just how did Gov. Haley Barbour request help? I have been unable to find a request made by the former Chairman of the RNC comparable to Blanco’s. Certainly the situation in Mississippi would have justified a similar request from Gov. Barbour.
I wonder how his actions would stand up in contrast to those of Gov. Blanco?
Considering the actions of the Cheney office to get power turned on in Collins, Mississippi, to get the Colonial Pipeline back in operation, one might suspect that, if Barbour did anything, he had a better phone number than Blanco had. Any ideas which one?
low and behold i wasn’t surprise to find this lovely piece Coast needs a new type Marshall Plan now
We need visionary leadership. Gov. Haley Barbour is off to a great start with his call for a “Mississippi renaissance.” Let’s hope other leaders in the public and private sector — local, state and federal — join the governor’s renaissance spirit and think outside the box to create a newer, better community.
We need a Marshall Plan for the Gulf states — not just Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, but also Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia, where hundreds of thousands of homeless and jobless citizens have relocated.
barbour helping along w/the contracts i have no doubt where all bushies generosity will end upSecondly, we need to pass special legislation to allow our local cities and counties to carry out these things quickly without a lot of bureaucratic red tape. We don’t need a new bureaucracy. Local governments and local citizens know how they want to rebuild their neighborhoods. And it is a no-brainer that the first thing we need to get back in place in Gulfport, Biloxi and Hancock County are casinos to get people back to work and the tourism economy running.
The unprecedented scope of Katrina destroyed the whole Gulf Coast tourism economy. So it requires an unprecedented economic solution. Temporary aid is good, but not enough to save the economy. I’m talking about jump starting the permanent, private sector of the economy on a massive scale with clear, simple authority to get the job done
We need a special session of the Legislature to ask, respectfully but firmly, the president and Congress to adopt such a Marshall Plan, and pass enabling state legislation to permit city and county governments to work in public-private partnerships to implement such a plan according to the design and vision of the local communities, with technical assistance (but not red tape) from state and federal governments.
This strategy will require bold, compassionate, enthusiastic, fair leadership at every level, but particularly within the small cadre of federal, state and mostly local city and county managers who should be recruited from the private sector and should start thinking and working immediately.
The economies of south Mississippi and the Gulf states, and maybe even the nation, do not have the luxury of time to mend and restore in the same manner as after Camille. Actually, the Mississippi Coast did not recover from Camille until the casinos came, 20 years later. For Mississippi, the key to restoring the economy is restoring the casinos, right away, in storm-proof structures. The governments should assist every casino company in getting back into business quickly — restoring jobs, tourism and hope.
Posted by: annie | Sep 18 2005 19:46 utc | 12
The governments should assist every casino company in getting back into business quickly ? restoring jobs, tourism and hope.
Great. A Marshall Plan to rebuild casinos. Doesn’t that just about sum it up?
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 18 2005 19:56 utc | 13
that carpenter’s song keeps running thru my head
we’ve only just begun…. to live
Posted by: annie | Sep 18 2005 20:02 utc | 14
Marshall Plan to rebuild casinos w/illegal alien labor. As few jobs for americans as possible. After H. Andrew, construction workers flooded in for work…now it’s bankrupt the treasury – this is Soc. Security & Medicare money they’re stealing – and screw am. workers.
This post ’04 election theft website,that surely everyone remembers, has renewed relevance here:
The next dickwad who says, “It’s your money, not the government’s money” is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least… can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they’re red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.
Update – And buy your own effing casinos.
(50% of Mississippi’s tax revenue comes from gambling.)
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 21:25 utc | 16
P.S. Why is any money at all going to rebuild large businesses? They’re insured. Wasn’t it all going for infrastructure?? Is the JackAss Party going to wake up & do something about that.
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 21:28 utc | 17
The Art of War – Kind of Blue
Today, out of the blue, an old web development proposal
I’d made finally paid off. I got a real-time e-mail from a guy,
senior principal at an international investment firm, sitting
in some airport on his way back from a chi-chi resort in the
south of France, working through a secure link at good.com,
going through his company web server remotely, on to me.
He mentioned a few things that I never think about, after
his opening hi-howdie. If the US taxpayer is being tapped
to pay for Katrina, how did the Ponzi-scheme which is the
insurance industry manage to dodge their own liabilities?
How did Silverstein in New York City, for example, manage
the World Trade Center disaster into a double-indemnity
payout for him, (which for all we know, Federal aid to NYC
included payout coverage to the insurers), when the same
can’t be said for anyone trying double indemnity on the
hurricane and subsequent flood that followed?
But he went far, far deeper then. Why are we being paid
in 1984 dollars (real wages flat since Reagan took office)
but paying in 2010 dollars (our prices hyperinflated in the
anticipation of run-away shortages, real or monopolized).
Why, for example, did President Bush put a tariff on the
Canadian soft lumber industry and eliminate prevailing
wages in the entire SouthEastern United States, just as
the “greatest reconstruction in all US history” begins?
“How did the United States ever become so insane?”,
he asked rhetorically (he’s not a native-born American).
I shared with him, about back when I was forging ahead
on the crest of the 1995 InterNet wave, discussing web
craft with a business leader aide-de-campe in Africa.
“What will your Internet (we were developing an e-comm
website site for their business) do for people in Africa?”,
he asked me as we chatted up the details.
I thought for a moment, and then since this guy was my
client, I leveled with him. “It won’t do a thing for Africans,
except bring the return of slavery. The Internet is about
the consolidation of information and commerce, same
as monopolies and manipulation on oil and energy.”
The investment broker interrupted my rambling story.
His response kind of puzzled and then shocked me.
“Yes, you were correct, ” then he explained. “There is
no destruction of money. Most people don’t understand
that. Money may disappear from your checking account,
but it appears in someone else’s checking account.
All of the gold, silver, diamonds, rubies, emeralds …
and money, that was ever created is still in existence.”
That was a pretty heavy thought for me to swallow.
“There is more money now than ever in all history,
and your Internet,” he went on, “as you put it, is the
single greatest consolidator of financial power since
the civilized world came into existence. You may be
earning in 1984 dollars, but the banks and brokers
are earning in 2010 dollars, even in 2040 dollars.
They can watch in real time, not just the equity and
commodity trade prices, but the volumes, the puts
and calls, the spreads, the trends, even the curls,
the dynamic change in trends … all in real time.”
“Yeah, that’s why I don’t trade in stock futures,”
I tried to keep my hand in this rarified conversation.
He laughed, “When your broker says there aren’t
any shares available to short a stock, what he’s
saying is, his own brokerage, or some big investor,
is watching that play out in real time, on two or
three screens simultaneously with a derivative-
program calculating instant by instant, and the
“short” signal has just gone green over green.”
“That’s probably what happened in Katrina,”
I tried desparately to keep my caller amused.
“No,” he countered, “Katrina was a disaster. The
banks and brokers and oil companies and rich
bastards who own everything had to sit and watch,
just like everyone else. It was total chaos.”
Then he said his flight was boarding and he had
to let me go. “Send me your development proposal
again, update the pricing and the technology for me.”
I said I would.
He rolled it all up for me, “Remember that all of the
money in the entire world is simply just churning in
slow chaos, in the inexorable process of migrating
into bank accounts of people so incredibly wealthy,
you simply can’t possibly fathom it, and the pace of
that money migration has just leapt into high gear.”
“Make sure you get some of that money for yourself!”
he laughed, and then he was gone.
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 18 2005 21:59 utc | 18
Is the JackAss Party going to wake up & do something about that.
Short answer: No.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 18 2005 22:01 utc | 19
Tante Aime – Great Post. but could you clarify a bit at the end?
and the pace of
that money migration has just leapt into high gear
Is this just starting, or does he mean since Repugs stole WH in ’00, or since Hurricane Toto? When did it start & what occasioned it.
P.S. Did you get that gig in Africa?
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 22:13 utc | 20
And they’ve gotten away with it; this yelling about taxes while sponging off the tax payers of the north. Even the military bases are just another way of being on the dole.
Posted by: ken melvin | Sep 18 2005 22:48 utc | 21
This is a southern thing.
The south might or might not rise again, but it *will* vote blue again. Not the dixiecrats, mind you, but the George-Bush-Is-Awful-crats.
I’m in Texas right now, and there is no one I’ve talked to who thinks the Republicans are doing right by them. A couple hundred thousand dedicated blue voters just moved to the Gulf coast. Many of them are in Tom DeLay’s district. That’s one reason it’s OK for conservatism to stop choking the government, according to him.
Plus, if you’re George Bush, you don’t want to be The Man Who Destroyed New Orleans. 20% of foreign petro comes in through that port. 5% of GDP is traded there. Of course you’re going to rebuild it, and of course you’re going to try and appeal to anyone who’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Ironically, that doesn’t include the right wing rhetorical hit squad.
Posted by: Enoch Root | Sep 18 2005 23:04 utc | 22
The Gulf Coast has now been officially re-named, the Gold Coast.
Posted by: Edward Teague | Sep 19 2005 0:01 utc | 23
The Triumph Of Compassion
Forgive the length, but in order to get the most out of it it must be posted in it’s entirety:
NB: when I signed up for Melvin’s spamming program, I had no idea I’d be asked to write think tank “scholars”‘s speeches celebrating the march of freedom, neoliberal prosperity enhancement related program activities and the inherent benevolence of big government conservatism. It seems an awful lot like writing bad soft porn to me. The alternative is greeting people at Wal-Mart, so. . .
When I look around me, I see sorrowing people in all shades of brown; from the unhappy palest brown people of the Appalachias to the unhappy darkest brown people of the Mississippi delta. Most of them do not need to be sodomized in order to understand democracy. Most of them can live alongside each other with very little cannibalism. Most of all, most of them want to be good, and I want to help them be good — no matter how brown they are. You see, in a way, we are all brown people now. But, dare I say it?, some of us have incorporated their browness and their unhappiness in ways that place a burden on everyone else. The solution to this is compassion.
Compassion comes in many forms. There is the pepper scented compassion of crowd control. There is the gentle tap, tap, tap on the door — like jolly woodpeckers — when compassion comes to take away things that might hurt someone. And there is the compassion of helping people to stop living beyond their means.
Where I live, we have a saying: fool the baby, throw out the horse, but don’t drink the bathwater before closing the barn door. What it means is this. Many of you are fat, indolent and stupid. You are inbred, moral degenerates and ceaselessly violent cretins. Now for the good news. I am from the think tank. I’m here to help. You may still be some shade of brown when I’m done, but you will be good.
With me today are members of the Compassion Corps. You can see from their boots that they love their jobs. Some of them have medical training. They will help you rehydrate after you fill out the liberty questionnaires. Out of respect for your customs, your cavity care will be done by members of your own sexual persuasion, in privacy, with just enough personnel to make sure it’s thorough. I have also prepared a schedule of freedom fees, which will eventually replace the taxes you pay. After you’ve learned how to live within your means, the taxes will be reduced according to your moral clarity quotient. A good way to boost the quotient is to help members of the Compassion Corps, and the civilian military contractors assisting them, find out what people with less moral clarity are doing.
Some of you may have already recieved notices asking you to report to the new dignity centers. This is not because you are bad. It is because you have unrealized potential for being good. An early version of the moral clarity quotient program has identified you as belonging to the demographics most likely to benefit from rigorous self-actualization counseling. The very finest open source database mining techniques have determined your status. Thanks to genetic circumstances beyond your control, some of you are a paler brown than others. You may wish to consider how this will affect the way you self-organize outside class times. Those of you who are darker brown, again through no fault of your own, may wish to consider what the paler brown people have done to put you in need of dignity instruction. All of you are urged to report any casualties to the courtesy patrols.
I have no idea when or where this speech is to be given, or by whom, for that matter. I suppose the television media personalities will let us know.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 19 2005 0:15 utc | 24
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch working to set H. Clinton up to be the one who destroys Social Security & Medicare ‘cuz all the money they’re shovelling to their cronies is ravaging the Treasury Greenspan’s just sanctioned bankrupting. (You need binoculars to see the JackAss Party 🙁 )
Posted by: jj | Sep 19 2005 0:20 utc | 25
The “Fuck You Boys”, is that the term that is being adopted for the last true believers willing to defend the bunker? And if they get their way, I can liver under a regime that meets the acceptance of the “Fuck You Boys” ?
what are the chances that we can avoid this fate?
Was it Debs or U Scam that asked who thinks we are not fucked?
Posted by: christofay | Sep 19 2005 5:37 utc | 26
“Something wonderful is about to happen.”
Stanley Kubrick, “2001”, a movie about American
technology impacting with another civilization
in the form of a black monolith, like Islamic
jihad, which worships a black monolith in Mecca,
and which, after an American colonization party
journeys to Saturn, god of war (in Iraq), the
power of technology in HAL, (Halliburton) turns
against US, and reduces America to a helpless and
dependent infant again. Did I leave anything out?
Am I the only one who think George Orwell’s
“1984” is more important today than the Bible?
1984 brought the birth of the personal computer
which will ultimately control every aspect of
our lives, and siphon off every datapoint of our
personal privacy. 1984 was also the birth of
Reaganomic Neo-Conservative fascism, when real
wages hit the same black wall that Kubric’s did.
Orwell and oracle’s aside for a moment, isn’t it
ironic Katrina is short for Ekaterina, known as
Catherine the Great, German princess and Russian
empress, the wife of Grand Duke Peter Tsarevich.
Peter was physically and emotionally retarded,
occupied himself with childish games, but above
all, he hated the country over which he was
destined to reign, rather like Tsar George II.
Catherine showed the Russian people the insipid
nature of Tsar Peter, and with the military as
her champion, became Empress and Sole Autocrat.
Peter, hopefully like George, soon abdicated.
Hey, it’s a bit of a reach, but George was well
on his way to becoming both Fuehrer and Pope,
just before Katrina blew into town. Remember?
He may still succeed, if he can secure SCOTUS.
But SCOTUS won’t help George against Katrina.
Soon, George won’t have a pot to piss in, but
long before then, his Cabinet and his retinue
will have deserted him. Sychophants and politicos
always sniff when a party’s over, and make their
getaways, long before the final curtain falls.
Watch the Repug dominoes start to tumble….
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 19 2005 6:49 utc | 27
Please, please don’t underestimate Karl Rove and his ability to manipulate people who aren’t paying attention.
I can’t claim credit for this notion, it is Mark Schmidt’s (tmpcafe), but I agree wholeheartedly. They will put ridiculous things in every reconstruction bill – corporate giveaways, crappy labor conditions, no environmental regulations, you name it – to force Dems to vote against the bills. Then, in 2006, they will use the “no” votes against all Dem incumbents.
Since most people don’t pay enough attention to noitice these tactics (remember the DHS?), it has a decent shot of working.
Posted by: andy | Sep 19 2005 16:05 utc | 28