DeBushification - Truth and Consequences?

As elections draw closer, BushCo's ratings go lower, and Iraq falls deeper into chaos, we could be finally seeing the end of one party fundamentalist/fascist rule in the US. After 6 years of incompetance, cynicism, arrogance, and belligerance, the US voting public may finally have had enough and are now willing to follow another course. Hooray. Better late than never. But given the blatent misrule of BushCo over these past 6 years, why have the Democrats not been able to mount a serious and effective challenge - and more importantly - hold this group to account for Katrina? for sex scandals? for crony capitalism? for massive defecits? for torture? for subverting the constitution? for our collapse of moral authority in the world? for losing Afghanistan? for the debacle of Iraq? If they have been ineffective in opposition, especially with so much fodder - can they now govern effectively? Can they provide the ways and means to clean up the mess and restore our moral authority in the world?

The fundamental task ahead for the Dems must be National Reconciliation - but reconciliation with full retribution. Nancy Pellosi is wrong to guarantee no impeachment or investigations. As every child knows, choice brings responsibility and consequences. Clearly Bush made his choice - as he frequently says, he is the decider, and so he and his supporters must bear the consequences of those decisions. We MUST have full disclosure on our long national nightmare - what happened, when it happened, who knew and when. This is critical - we need a full program of De-Bushification to purge our Security apparatus, our armed forces, and our Government beauracracy from the incompetant political hacks (Heckuva Job Brownie?) who've brought us to this pass. The Dems need to put the Constitution back front and center as the basis for policy - domestic and foreign- and most importantly, bring those who violated it to justice. It is from this amazing document that we derive our moral authority and only by reclaiming it and prosecuting those who besmirched it will we be able to move forward. If we do not clean our own house, we will never be able to fix Iraq, N Korea, Iran, Latin America, etc. It is instructive to note that now that the GOP is feeling the heat, they're the ones clamouring for bi-partisan engagement. Of course when they were dealing with a monopoly of power, bi-partisanship was neither encouraged or desired. Now that it looks like they might be swinging from their heels in the square things look very different indeed. It is time to put an end to such nonsense. BushCo and company have engaged on a radical revision of every tennent this country holds sacred and now must be made to account. Impeachment, bring it on. Investigations, more the better. Subpeonas? Sooner the better. We cannot move forward until we excise the cancer. The faster we do so, the sooner we can get back to business as usual.

So Dems - take note! There can be no more equivocations, finessing, or other intellectual follderroll. You cannot continue to be a party of loosely aligned interest groups bound together by bizarre notions of political correctness. You must be prepared to move swiftly and with purpose if you are to gain the trust of the American people to exercise power. Use the Constitution as your guide and prepare to govern - but govern with the knowledge that half-measures won't work anymore. And that time is growing short...

Market Lobotomy or A Con in Front of Me?

It's curious times we live in, no doubt. For over 2 weeks now as the news gets worse from Iraq the Dow flirts with historic highs. As we get closer to the day of reckoning for BushCo, oil is at its lowest barrel price in months. Corporate earnings are hitting all time highs as the Last Crusader's popularity hits all time lows. Is this just a coincidence? Is this just BushCo's corporate and Saudi cronies pulling strings to manipulate our vote? Is it, a through-the-glass darkly take on James Carville - It's the Economy Stupid? Not necessarily. Remember, this is Hippo Trotsky you're reading not MoveOn. As we're fond of saying if its a choice beween Machiavelli and stupidity, its almost always the latter.

But - what we do have is the final fruit of the BushCo fascist policies coming to fruition at the exact time it can do the least good in saving them. Think about it - wages are at all time lows, the cost of consumer commodities are at an all time low. Corporate earnings are high and given the war, there's a mini-boom going in defense, communications, and others in the Military Industrial Complex. The combination of tax cuts, corporate welfare, unnecessary warfare, and reliance on Chinese largesse and cheap goods (not to mention some reasonable action by the Fed to halt interest rate hikes) has all come together to give us a little bubble of speculative cheer. Now, had BushCo's illegal war been the success he and his fascist (state capitalists) supporters believed, he would have been crowned the Shah of Iraq by now and we'd have enough oil to keep this shell game running for ever - A thousand year republican Reich was at hand. But alas. He didn't reckon on two things:

1. His war, based on lies, was not winnable
2. His economy, based on debt and corporate welfare, is not sustainable

As the public is finally waking up to the horrors of the war, the chaos from N Korea/Iran and the GOP looks more vulnerable than ever, the economic bubble blown by incompetant BushCo is overheating and getting ready to pop. As long as the war keeps on and fear, uncertainty and doubt in the world is the order of the day, the clean-up will not be pretty or short. Hang on, we're in for a bumpy ride!

Pretzel Logic?

What becomes more and more obvious to those paying attention is not only how dangerously divorced from reality is the Last Crusader but how truly dangerous his logic is becoming. It's "Fuhrer in the Bunker" time folks. As George Santayana said "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." Can you say "stay the course?"

In today's press beating he said that "This is a real challenge of the 21st century. I like to tell people we're in an ideological struggle. And it's a struggle between extremists and radicals and people of moderation who want to simply live a peaceful life. And the calling of this country and in this century is whether or not we will help the forces of moderation prevail. That's the fundamental question facing the United States of America beyond my presidency. And you can tell I've made my choice. And I made my choice because the most solemn duty of the American president, in government, is to protect this country from harm."

So let's parse this shall we? First we cannot be in an ideological struggle if we are truly there to help the forces of moderation. Which is it Last Crusader - are we in it to spread democracy as you said last year - a RADICAL doctrine - or to protect the moderates? If its the latter, than pre-emptively attacking their country without cause and possibly killing 600,000 of their people - an EXTREMIST action - puts the lie to that statement. And of course the final lie is the close: He's doing this to protect America from harm. How this follows from his previous statement is beyond me, but how killing close to a million people including American boys and girls is protecting us - when the threat is coming from everywhere we're not - challenges any definition of sanity I'm aware of. The moral and psychic damage George the Chicken Hearted has inflicted on our national character through war, torture, and the trashing of the international order will be devastating for at least a generation. Santayana sums it up best again: "To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman." Hopefully the next election will see the start of bringing BushCo to justice and putting an end to the last Crusade.

October Surprise?

As we move deeper into the election cycle and the scandals swirl with ever greater fury - Abramoff's abomination, Foley's folly, and of course the mother of all scandals, the BushCo Baghdad Blasphemy brought to the fore courtesy of Bob (paying down past sins) Woodward - we've all been waiting with great trepidation for the Rovian October Surprise. Well guess what? We got one - but not the one BushCo was planning. Seems that while the Last Crusader George the Chicken Hearted, Rummy Von Doom, and Condi, Madame Mendacity were fiddling in Fallujah, Kim Jong-Il wasn't content just to be the latest Atlantic Monthly coverboy. Oh no. He decided that now was the perfect time to lob a big atomic halloween pumpkin at the White House. Surprise! Now that's what I call ring & run!

Now let's see if we've all been paying attention: Bill Clinton engages North Korea, encourages South Korea's Sunshine Policy and nuke development is halted. Republicans blast him for being weak. And he got a blowjob. BushCo rides into town, all talks stop, the South Korean president is publicly rebuked for letting the Sunshine in, and one short State of the Union speech later - voila! 12 nuclear bombs in the hands of one of the most deranged, erratic, and meglomanical leaders of a modern nationstate. Outside of that guy in Iran. Oh wait, he's building one too. And they both fund terrorists for real. Hmm...weapons of mass distruction, funding for terrorists, dangerous leadership - so where does BushCo send our boys and girls? Iraq! But of course we're fighting them there so we don't fight them here. But now that they've got the bomb we better hope we don't fight them anywhere.

We create our own enemies. The laws of physics are quite clear - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. BushCo's actions have brought about his polar opposite in Iran - Ahmadinejad is the fanatical muslim Bush. KJI, not to be outdone is determined to prove he's the baddest man on the planet. Maybe he's the mirror opposite of DeadEye Dick. The worst fears of Oppenheimer have come to pass as the worlds most dangerous weapons are now in the hands of apocalyptic, fanatical, end-gamers: Communist, Muslim, and Christian. Trick or Treat!

Weapon of Mass Consumption?

Juvenal, the Roman satiric poet is credited with coining the phrase Bread and Circuses to describe the way cynical governments stave off large scale demonstrations of discontent among their populations. With WalMart, (and Target, and CostCo, and HomeDepot), BushCo has its own supersized variant. As we know, real wages have not risen since The Last Crusader George the Chicken Hearted took office. His tax cuts as we also know have benefitted the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans - or his base - as he's fond of saying. However coporate earnings and the Dow are approaching stratospheric levels even as we are witnessing one of the lightest periods of economic expansion. In addition, while unemployment remains reletively high, hours worked have risen here in the US again (the oft quoted US productivity statistic). Not to mention the fact that we're engaged in long war with no end in sight and get to experience the overall corruption and incompetance of the BushCo regime daily. So the question remains - why are people not angry? Why are they not in the streets demanding accountability and The Last Crusader's head on a pike? The answer is simple -- BushCo uses WalMart to buy-off the general population and pay-off his fat cat Cronies. Bread and circuses out of Bentonville!

Think about it - you may be earning less, you may be working more, you may even be unemployed - but you can still buy tons of stuff! Why worry about higher wages when you can still get that flat screen TV? This is why BushCo puts no real pressure on China around its monetary policy, human rights, and Iran - not only because they fund so much of our deficit but because of the cheap Chinese products that stock the shelves that numbs the populace that propels the profits of the corporations that control BushCo which is running the country into the ground. Follow the money and it all comes back to the same thing - a Government run by corporations is Fascist to its core, though unfortunately BushCo can't get the trains to run on time - either here or in Baghdad. As Orson Scott Card has aptly observed "If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."

BushCo's Blue Dress?

As the wild waters of PageGate whirl wider round Washington Republicans, you have to ask can this really be the end of BushCo? As Huey Long said, "only a dead girl or live boy will finish me" and it seems we've got several of the latter here. While Chester the Molester Foley goes on his merry way into rehab and the inevitable lawsuits start getting filed (justifiably it should be said), I'm struck by what it says about our country and what we require of our leadership.

As a nation Americans will tolerate anything but S-E-X-ual misconduct of any kind. Truly S-E-X is the original sin of our body politique. We can invade a sovereign nation without cause (Iraq), lose a war we had already won (Afghanistan), let our own people die in a natural catastrophe, lose a major US city, create hitherto undreamed of deficits while continuing to cut taxes of the richest 1% of Americans, make the tragic medical condition of one poor woman a national political travesty (Terrt Schiavo), actually argue about evolution in the 21st century, allow corporate lobbyists to head government agencies, rollback most environmental protections and give radical christian fudamentalists a 6 year stomp on the seperation of church and state, and yet, it will be S-E-Xual misconduct that will finally bring BushCo down. This is not to say that this is a harmless peccadillo between consenting adults - quite the contrary. Foley is a sexual predator who deserves everything the law can possibly throw at him. But the revulsion that is now surfacing against the BushCo regime should have been exhibited so much sooner and for so many more globally important transgressions. I guess it's better late than never. And now that its happened I must admit the Blue Dress looks much better from this side than it did the last time we saw it.

Draft or On-the-Rocks?

It is of course apparent to anyone following the deepening morass that is Iraq that we are now at a significant crossroad in the conflict. If, as the Last Crusader George the Chicken Hearted says, that the battle against "IslamoFascism" is the defining conflict of the 21st Century and one that that we cannot afford to "lose", than clearly, we must do everything possible to "win".

(Let's be precise once and for all - we are fighting radical islamic fundamentalism. Fascism is the union of corporations with a centralized, authoritarian, nationalist state. The folks we're fighting are against the whole concept of nation state and seek to establish a supranational islamic caliphate. What we have with BushCo is Fascism. Ok?)

If we contine using the strategy and tactics employed thus far we are guaranteed to "lose". We do not have enough troops and the army is streatched too thin to "win" - however winning is defined. So what is to be done? Clearly the elephant in the room is the draft. If we are to win this war, we need troops. The only way to get troops is the draft. But the draft, next to Social Security, is the other 3rd rail of American politics. And we were told after 9/11 that no sacrifices would be required. We would have candy and flowers in Iraq and tax cuts for all. So to actually require sacrifice at this juncture - with support for the war at an all time low and the GOP running scared in a sea of scandals - is simply not an option. Democrats have been villified for cutting and running and granted they have been singularly ineffective in their opposition to the war thus far, but time and event have transpired in such a way as to demand that BushCo and the GOP lay it on the line before a major election. Do they really want to win their war or has it only been about the politics all along? As Robert Foster Bennett said "Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation." Only the Decider can decide that now...

Day of Atonement?

So is it a coincidence that we have a series of high profile school shootings, a major Republican sex scandal involving underage pages, George Allen's pathological bigotry (read rebel flag & hangman's noose) and potty mouth, as well as major revelations of incompetance and lies from Condi, the Madame of Mendacity, Rhummy Von Doom, and of course, The Last Crusader himself...George the Chicken Hearted? Of course not. There's a reason why personal debt rates are higher in red states, the divorce rates are higher in red states, teen pregnancies are higher in red states, adultery rates are higher in red states, alcoholism rates are higher in red states, more meth labs are in red states - (those numbers are well documented in the MSM folks) because the wages of hypocrisy are always paid in sin.

People can't entertain two conflicting points of view at the same time and yet, that's exactly what the GOP is asking Americans to do. Uniting while dividing, moralzing in the midst of immoral war, compassionate conservatism, lobbyists in control of major government agencies - it's chillingly Orwellian in its scope and brazeness. The contradictions they've institutionalized puts us at war not only with our enemies, but with our friends, allies, & our own common sense. Hence why everything this administration touches turns to dross & why so many Americans' worst instincts & impulses are suddenly blooming like poppy fields in Afghanistan. The wages of hypocrisy are always paid in sin.

John Quincy Adam's famous quote comes to mind - "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."

I'm also reminded of the old joke - "God is coming and boy is She pissed..."