by Rich Miles
(Thanks to DemforChange for the inspiration for this piece)
Omigod! The brilliance of the plan! The sheer, world-class genius!
I've been wrong about George W. Bush. He really is a great leader, and the Decider he keeps telling us he is. He's formulated a plan to end global warming!
It's called nuclear winter.
Think of it: Our president is intent, is totally committed to, is obsessed with attacking Iran. He's dying to kick some new raghead ass, and this time he really means it.
This time he's going 'nucular'.
See, here's the kicker: Bush has shown himself willing to use nuclear weapons against Iran, despite the indisputable fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons now, and isn't expected to have them for at least 5 years.
That's bad enough - to unleash the hideous death-dealing power of a nuclear weapon, or perhaps more than one, on a nation that is no threat to anything American except the self-esteem of its president. It's enough that the "most powerful man in the world" is considering using the most powerful weapon ever devised by the mind of man on what will almost certainly be a large proportion of civilians.
But what is worse is that is that virtually every sane voice with any knowledge of the matter believes that ANY attack on Iran will do nothing less than inflame the entire Muslim world against America - and those countries that are now trying desperately to remain on our side, or at least neutral, will suddenly and forcefully become our sworn enemies.
And if there were ever any chance that we will, in America, have to "fight them here" instead of over there, the nuking of Iran will virtually ensure it will come to pass.
But from the psychopathic point of view of George W. Bush, there will be two important upsides as our nation engages in a world war that will make the last two look like school picnics: Once and for all, little Georgie will have proven himself more of a man than Poppy, and when the mushroom clouds start sprouting like...well, like mushrooms, all over the globe, not just in Iran - that pesky global warming stuff will stop bedeviling him.
Oh, my poor nation. Oh the humanity.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Doing it on purpose
by Rich Miles
Today is Feb. 1, 2007.
Within the last week, we've discovered that:
- The US may have botched the training of Iraqi police recruits by outsourcing the job to unqualified private contractors - and then failing to follow up to see if the contractors were even TRYING to do the job.
- Our troops, who are fighting Bush's War, many of whom don't even know why, are underequipped even to the point of not having enough ammunition.
- Our government sold spare parts for fighter aircraft to people who then resold them to Iran, the country that Bush is now fully erect to attack.
and
- The nominee for the Director of National Intelligence has a $2 Million a Year Conflict of Interest
And that's just within the last WEEK.
So a question, actually two questions, that I've asked over and over for the past 4 years or more comes up once again: Are these people screwing up on purpose? And if so, WHY?
I mean, what other explanation can there be? The law of averages would seem to dictate that they'd get SOMETHING right occasionally.
But no - I cannot think of one single thing - not ONE, not even a hospital being built or a schoolhouse being painted - that this administration and this Defense Dept . and this State Dept. and this Justice Dept.(oh, don't get me started on the Justice Dept.!) has not utterly and totally
screwed up.
The above examples in the links are pretty much prima facie - not open to much interpretation. But one has to admit it's true that "screwing up" is a moving target - or "in the eye of the beholder" as my dear ol' grandpa used to say. (It's true - he really did, he said "screwing up is in the eye of the beholder")
So let us, in the interest of fairness, allow that some will not think presidential signing statements are "screwing up", despite their apparent extraconstitutionality and their clear intent to place the president above the law; or that the Justice Dept. removing career federal prosecutors, many of them right in the middle of major cases against drug smugglers, terror suspects, and corrupt politicians, and replacing them with political appointees of questionable competence but unquestioned, unquestioning Republican loyalty is not, on any sort of objective scale, "screwing up."
Perhaps some will say we're too harsh to call it "screwing up" when our country's chief law enforcement officer says that the Constitution does not guarantee the 800-year-old legal principle of habeas corpus, or when Bush signs an executive order 'that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.'
And perhaps there will even be some who think it's not screwing up for the government to interfere in the ability of scientists to tell the world about global warming and other scientific matters.
But as some folks are saying about Bush's War, if this isn't screwing up, what is? Can the world, quite literally, survive any worse screwing up than this entire administration and everything they do?
So - way down the page, back to the second of the two questions: since it seems unquestionable that they're doing it on purpose, why?
Sadly, frighteningly, there is an answer to that question: Christianists on the March
"...A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity."
In other words, they need chaos to thrive. Who better to give it to them than George W. Bush and his humanity-challenged thugs?
Today is Feb. 1, 2007.
Within the last week, we've discovered that:
- The US may have botched the training of Iraqi police recruits by outsourcing the job to unqualified private contractors - and then failing to follow up to see if the contractors were even TRYING to do the job.
- Our troops, who are fighting Bush's War, many of whom don't even know why, are underequipped even to the point of not having enough ammunition.
- Our government sold spare parts for fighter aircraft to people who then resold them to Iran, the country that Bush is now fully erect to attack.
and
- The nominee for the Director of National Intelligence has a $2 Million a Year Conflict of Interest
And that's just within the last WEEK.
So a question, actually two questions, that I've asked over and over for the past 4 years or more comes up once again: Are these people screwing up on purpose? And if so, WHY?
I mean, what other explanation can there be? The law of averages would seem to dictate that they'd get SOMETHING right occasionally.
But no - I cannot think of one single thing - not ONE, not even a hospital being built or a schoolhouse being painted - that this administration and this Defense Dept . and this State Dept. and this Justice Dept.(oh, don't get me started on the Justice Dept.!) has not utterly and totally
screwed up.
The above examples in the links are pretty much prima facie - not open to much interpretation. But one has to admit it's true that "screwing up" is a moving target - or "in the eye of the beholder" as my dear ol' grandpa used to say. (It's true - he really did, he said "screwing up is in the eye of the beholder")
So let us, in the interest of fairness, allow that some will not think presidential signing statements are "screwing up", despite their apparent extraconstitutionality and their clear intent to place the president above the law; or that the Justice Dept. removing career federal prosecutors, many of them right in the middle of major cases against drug smugglers, terror suspects, and corrupt politicians, and replacing them with political appointees of questionable competence but unquestioned, unquestioning Republican loyalty is not, on any sort of objective scale, "screwing up."
Perhaps some will say we're too harsh to call it "screwing up" when our country's chief law enforcement officer says that the Constitution does not guarantee the 800-year-old legal principle of habeas corpus, or when Bush signs an executive order 'that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.'
And perhaps there will even be some who think it's not screwing up for the government to interfere in the ability of scientists to tell the world about global warming and other scientific matters.
But as some folks are saying about Bush's War, if this isn't screwing up, what is? Can the world, quite literally, survive any worse screwing up than this entire administration and everything they do?
So - way down the page, back to the second of the two questions: since it seems unquestionable that they're doing it on purpose, why?
Sadly, frighteningly, there is an answer to that question: Christianists on the March
"...A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity."
In other words, they need chaos to thrive. Who better to give it to them than George W. Bush and his humanity-challenged thugs?
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