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September 19, 2006
WB: The Great White Hope

Billmon:

The Great White Hope

—
Just read the piece before I saw Billmon’s post on Cheney Says Hopes of World Rest on U.S.. The juicy bits:

Cheney asserted that the hopes of the civilized world depend on a U.S. victory.
…
Speaking to the National Automobile Dealers Association, Cheney suggested that the U.S. economy was firing on all cylinders and seldom has been stronger. He credited Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and urged Congress to finish work on making them permanent.

Cheney told the dealers that modern automobiles are "marvels of design, performance and reliability.
…
You’re part of the reason America remains among the strongest economies in the world."

In other news today:

Study Finds Threat to the Future of Ford
Chrysler cuts output in bid to reduce inventory
Ford, GM talk alliance in struggle to survive
Fitch Cuts GM Recovery Rate
Ford to Lay off 14,000 Salaried Workers

J.D. Power shows tough US market depressing new car prices

Even boneheaded, Republican voting automobile dealers will have some trouble not to feel fucked, when comparing Cheney’s talk with their daily sales numbers …

Posted by b on September 19, 2006 at 20:02 UTC | Permalink
Comments

The October Surprise will get rolling about the 10th of next month.
President Cheney and his Amazing Meat Puppet will keep their whole Iranian sanctions pot a boilin’ over until then. But they will not attack Iran preemptively.
That won’t work, not after the debacle in Iraq. Nor will they actually engage in sanctions, a boycott or a naval blockade, which the world will neither observe nor countenance. They need a war, but America can’t start it.
That’s why the plan is for Israel to attack a few nuclear enrichment facilities inside Iran, using conventional bunker buster bombs. This won’t accomplish a damned thing, since those bunkers are a full hundred feet underground. But it will let Bush hold up his hands and say, “There’s jes’ no holdin’ them Israelis back, heh heh . . .”
Then, when mean, bad old Iran responds with missiles at Israel, at US troops, or at oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, or at Saudi, Kuwaiti or other oil fields, or simply stops shipping oil — well, Bush will put on a ten gallon white hat, give a speech about brimstone and Jesus, and begin the 30-day 4,000-target bombing campaign that’s been planned for well over a year.
He carries the speech in his breast pocket, and he reads it to his bathroom mirror every night after he brushes that crooked smile of his. He’s ready. We’re ready. We’ve already moved several aircraft carriers to the region, and now we’re sending minesweepers to the Gulf from the first of October.
We’re primed and pumped for CNN’s next video war, but Israel has to start it so Bush can ride in on a white horse and save poor, defenseless Israel from the slavering Muslim hordes. And save Western civilization, too. And white wimmens everywhere, and kids, and puppies, and our precious bodily fluids. Just like Audie Murphy used to do.
Buy yourself some Exxon, some Blackwater and some Halliburton stock, or run the risk of working for a living from here on out.
Bush doesn’t bluff. He’s not going to lose this election and be investigated and impeached and imprisoned. None of the above. He’s down to a pair of deuces, and not much left to lose. He’s going to kick over the table, and start shooting. He figures it’s a heap sight better n’ playing out a losing hand.
A man has got to know his limitations.
Bush hasn’t a clue.

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 19 2006 21:05 utc | 1

A trip down memory lane (from the wikipedia entry on General Motors):

In 1953 Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation “because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa”. Later this statement was often misquoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” At the time, GM was one of the largest employers in the world – only Soviet state industries employed more people. On December 31, 1955, General Motors became the first American corporation to make over one billion dollars in a year.

NADA is an obvious venue for Cheney’s remarks. A part of the American auto industry’s problem is the protected status of new car dealers, primarily through laws at the state and local levels that protect their market power. On the one hand, US auto manufacturers can downsize but only if they spend billions to buy off their dealerships (see Oldsmobile). On the other, consumers cannot buy cars directly from manufacturers at “true manufacturers prices”. Thus, a conventionof rich businesspeople who benefit from corporate welfare is exactly where I would expect to hear Cheney delivering rosy scenarios.

Posted by: infoshaman | Sep 19 2006 21:17 utc | 2

Sounds like the kind of speaches Ken Lay was making not too long before he died.

Posted by: pb | Sep 19 2006 22:42 utc | 3

Gonzales wants Internet records saved for two years. Because any of you could be child porn perverts. “Gonzales acknowledged the concerns of some company executives who say legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on customers’ privacy rights. But he said the growing threat of child pornography over the Internet was too great.
Yeah, it’s crude, blunt, effective framing — you’re either with us or with the paedophiles. you speak up against it, the noise machine will attack you as a paedophile, or a paedophile enabler.
I bet it’ll work.
How much you want to bet that two years down the line they decide they should be prosecute anyone who pirated music, or was a political Threat to the great white hope, and hey what do you know, we already have all this data to mine! The new and improved The Un-American Activities Committee…Retro-HUAC to determine why we lost the war.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 19 2006 22:51 utc | 4

@Billmon:
Especially brilliant post, this one, thanks so much. These Orwell excerpts are just so utterly on target, it’s amazing.
@Antifa #1
Care to share some of your sources for this scenario? After everything we’ve been through in the past 5 years, it sounds all too bone-chillingly plausible to me, but still I would like to see some kind of source material if you have it. Or, if this is pure speculation on your part, please indicate as much. Inquiring minds want to know…
Thanks.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 19 2006 22:55 utc | 5

@Uncle $cam #4:
We can always write some robotic ‘searchers’ that fire innocuous queries at Google – search for stuff like “cat food” and “knitting needles” and any other mundane topic with no possible political or pornographic connotations. Fill up their databases with junk ALA Phish Fighter.

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Sep 19 2006 23:34 utc | 6

U$,
nice to see an area were Europe is ahead. The EU data retention act was decided upon almost a year ago. Implementation has been slow by the member states (and some parliaments have actually protested) but soon we will be safe in the knowledge that Big Brother is watching.
Or you can use TOR for your underground communication and Relakks for your highspeed needs. (Relakks costs a bit and uses more legal then technical hacks but allows any program and is faster, TOR is free and collaboratory).

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Sep 19 2006 23:50 utc | 7

Antifa:
‘ Buy yourself some Exxon, some Blackwater and some Halliburton stock, or run the risk of working for a living from here on out. ‘
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? No thank you.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 20 2006 4:27 utc | 8

Skod, you do realize the Tor onion client is a U.S. DOD creation yes? Can you say built in back door?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 20 2006 4:32 utc | 9

Antifa:
That was myself at number 8 above, sorry.
Uncle Scam:
Two years is nothing. Google presently sets its cookies to expire thirty-two years from now, in 2038.
Unlike the federal government, the folks at Google are very competent. They give you a gigabyte of mail space so they can save ALL your mail. Did you forget that they guarantee to “read” it? That is to add to their googlebase profile of you evertime you drop a note, or do a search? Do you think it’s deleted when you press the delete button? Have you noticed how quickly they complied with the Chinese government’s requests?
The googlebase. Think about it. Turn off cookies for google searches. They are utterly unnecessary.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Sep 20 2006 4:37 utc | 10

John Francis Lee perhaps you weren’t a patron of da bar last year when I posted on how to delete google cookies, anyway, while I searching the archives for it I found this updated thingy…Script: Delete Google cookies

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 20 2006 4:51 utc | 11

U$,
did not know that. Got to look into it.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Sep 20 2006 12:26 utc | 12

@ Bea;
Have you had a chance to read Colonel Gardiner’s report for the Century Foundation?
THE END OF THE “SUMMER OF DIPLOMACY”:
ASSESSING U.S. MILITARY OPTIONS ON IRAN

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 20 2006 16:22 utc | 13

Joan Didion, whom I love as a novelist, has a rather low key piece on Cheney in the New York Review of Books.
link

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 20 2006 17:06 utc | 14

@Antifa: thanks for the link, and for your chilling October prediction. (anyone remember Ray Bradbury’s “October People”?)
Gardiner’s conclusion:

Policymakers who begin with the seven “truths” of the situation* can easily proceed down a path that leaves the military option as the only one on the table. There is a certain inevitability to this path, a certain inexorability to the momentum toward war. The policymakers will say that the Iranians have forced us to go in this direction. But the painful irony is that these policymakers are forcing the direction on themselves.
At the end of the path that the administration seems to have chosen, will the issues with Iran be resolved? No. Will the region be better off? No. Is it clear Iran will abandon its nuclear program? No. On the other hand, can Iran defeat the United States militarily? No.
Will the United States force a regime change in Iran? In all probability it will not. Will the economy of the United States suffer? In all probability it will. Will the United States have weakened its position in the Middle East? Yes. Will the United States have reduced its influence in the world? Yes.
When I finished the 2004 Iran war game exerise, I summarized what I had learned in the process. After all the effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. “You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work.” I have not changed my mind. That conclusion made sense then. It still makes sense today.

*Seven “truths” of the situation that the administration believes are on page 5 of the Gardiner PDF–the quotation marks are Gardiner’s. Since Bush goes by gut belief and Cheney makes his own reality, I don’t expect Gardiner’s advice to go anywhere.

Posted by: catlady | Sep 20 2006 17:24 utc | 15

From Noirette’s link:
“The very survival of the executive species, then, was seen by Cheney and his people as dependent on its brute ability to claim absolute power and resist all attempts to share it.”
Didion defining dictatorship, nyet? Not so low-key.

Posted by: catlady | Sep 20 2006 17:58 utc | 16

Thanks for the link to Didion, Noirette.
Two quotes that stick out:
“In 1991, explaining why he agreed with George H.W. Bush’s decision not to take the Gulf War to Baghdad, Cheney had acknowledged the probability that any such invasion would be followed by civil war in Iraq:
Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in…. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists?… How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”
“Cheney leaves no paper trail. He has not always felt the necessity to discuss what he plans to say in public with the usual offices, including that of the President. Nor, we learned from Ron Suskind, has he always felt the necessity, say if the Saudis send information to the President in preparation for a meeting, to bother sending that information on to Bush. Only on the evening of September 11, 2001, did it occur to Richard A. Clarke that in his role as national security coordinator he had briefed Cheney on terrorism and also Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, but never the President. Since November 1, 2001, under this administration’s Executive Order 13233, which limits access to all presidential and vice-presidential papers, Cheney has been the first vice-president in American history entitled to executive privilege, a claim to co-presidency reinforced in March 2003 by Executive Order 13292, giving him the same power to classify information as the president has.”

Posted by: jonku | Sep 20 2006 19:05 utc | 17

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