Tuesday, January 27, 2004

This is Not an Irony-Free Zone

See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.
- George W. Bush as quoted by Jacob Weisberg

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Bankruptcy Upon Bankruptcy

Refusal to listen to opposing opinions, and deciding in advance what you will do, in the face of all evidence to the contrary is yet another form of bankruptcy. This is intellectual bankruptcy, and is all too common in those who stop thinking when someone waves campaign money in their faces.

To be added to the moral bankruptcy of deciding to invade Iraq before the 2000 election, and concocting a constantly shifting set of lies and justifications, just so long as they got their war. Lie upon lie, a house of cards was erected that is now starting to fall. Let’s hope it falls before the election.

Or the financial bankruptcy they are attempting to visit on all of us, via massive tax cuts for the fortunate few already on top of the heap, while reaping the largest deficits in U.S. history, which mysteriously seem to keep getting bigger than we were told they would be. The goal here is to bankrupt the federal government within a few years, leaving nothing to do but dismantle or greatly diminish all social programs, like the Social Security fund that you and I have paid into all our working lives. Leaving the things the Bushies really care about - everything that has to do with war, spying and control of what you see and do. It’s what the Bush family has done for generations, conniving and profiteering at the expense of the rest of us, and not incidently, the truth as well. It’s just not the “American way”, at least it didn’t used to be.

But then Bush is just being true to form - he left a string of bankruptcies in his wake as every company he headed went belly-up shortly after he left it, since it was just a stepping stone to the next scam. These were oil companies, Arbusto, Bush Exploration, Spectrum 7 and Harken Energy. Each failed, yet Bush came out richer each time, due to rich benefactors (including the bin Laden family, and Ken Lay of Enron) bailing him out, or maybe they were just kindly folks lending a helping hand to the ne’er-do-well son of the the Vice President and later President. Many were investors who were later appointed to political office, or who were given sweetheart deals in dealing with the government. Bush, of course, is fond of giving sweetheart deals - like the “no-bid” contracts Halliburton and Bechtel got after being two of the largest contributors to Bush’s election campaigns.

When he became Governor of Texas, he turned a huge budget surplus into a huge deficit via out-of-control spending and large tax cuts for the wealthy. When Bush he left that office he was asked about the huge deficit. He said that it was not his problem, it was the problem of the guy coming in behind him. A refusal to take the blame for his deeds and a total disconnection from the consequences of his actions. Is this starting to sound like a pattern?

Yes, you can tell when Bush and his cronies are lying to us. It’s whenever their lips are moving…

- Bob Woods

Sunday, January 04, 2004

The More Things Change, The More They Are the Same

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
- Theodore Roosevelt