Over A Barrel

OPEC blasts U.S., stands pat Vienna, Australia (AP): OPEC said it will not put more oil on the global market despite record-high prices for crude, blaming the U.S. for economic "mismanagement" it said was having a global effect. Oil prices surged past $104 a barrel for the first time after the announcement and the release of a surprise drop in crude stockpiles. The dollar sunk to record lows, with the euro fetching $1.53, in a first. Ouch. Can you say "lame duck"? Bush really got punk'd by his Saudi buddies, huh? Still, thank God for the lousy economy. It might be the only thing that saves us from a McCain presidency. Usually, when people have already made up their minds, they will stubbornly ignore common sense and vote for the wrong candidate for the wrong reasons. To be blunt, if it's not effecting them personally, controversial issues such as abortion, global warming, Katrina, and the war in Iraq are vague abstracts that are happening to somebody else. Except when it's the economy. It's a hard reality that can't be ignored. Unless you're rich, you're the new guy in Oz being sodomized in the showers every goddamned day. So, voting for the Grumpy Old White Guy who's telling you that everything is fine just the way it is doesn't make a lot of sense. Not when there's a dollar in your wallet dying of loneliness. Hell, even voting for a black guy or a woman for President might be a better idea.

White House threatens budget veto

(Cross posted at Rants 'n Reviews) White House threatens budget veto "The White House on Saturday threatened to veto a massive spending bill being assembled by congressional Democrats, saying it's unacceptable to add billions of dollars to domestic programs." But it's okay to add trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars to foreign programs. For a guy not into nation building, I guess one could say he's into nation destruction: Our own as well as Iraq's. Merry Christmas!

Bushwhacked

Big Brother, Inc.

Bend Over, Congress

So, what do I think about the Democrats getting butt-fucked by Bush? That's easy. They're goddamned cowards. And please don't talk to me about "pragmatism". That's a stale alibi I don't want to hear anymore. As the wise old truism goes, "Don't piss in my face and call it rain." JB knows what's really going on: Do not be mistaken: We are not hurtling toward the Gulag or anything that we have seen before. It will be nothing so dramatic as that. Rather, we are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little say over how they are actually governed, and increasingly little control over how the government collects information on them to regulate and control them. Slowly, secretly and imperceptibly, the mechanisms of government surveillance are being freed from methods of political control and accountability; and the liberties of ordinary citizens are being surgically removed under a potent anesthesia concocted from propaganda, fear, ignorance and apathy. Years ago I saw a sneaker commercial where a team of angry, pumped-up, ready-to-take-on-the-whole-damned-world football team was in the locker room before the big game. Just before charging out onto the field, they bellowed, "This is our house! Don't let nobody disrespect it!" But Bush did exactly that this weekend. He disrespected the White House. What's worse, the Democrats stood by like a herd of mute cretins and let him do it. Their gold-plated jockstraps were full of hollow words and empty promises. Don't forget, the White House belongs to us, and the politicians who work there are supposed to take care of the American people because its the job we elected them to do. Spying on our dirty laundry for political leverage isn't going to make us safer. The White House was disrespected, and more of our precious civil liberties were taken away because a bunch of lying, chickenshit millionaires couldn't wait to go on vacation. Shameful. Thanks to Alternative Brain for the head's up.

Sick

The great Paul Krugman takes Dubya to the woodshed: Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further "federalization" of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It's not because he thinks the plans wouldn't work. It's because he's afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can't do the same for adults. And there you have the core of Mr. Bush's philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it's hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed. This sounds like a caricature, but it isn't. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan "in any form," because "its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas." But it has taken the fight over children's health insurance to bring the perversity of this philosophy fully into view. There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you're afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.

Resume

Things Fall Apart

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi" Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."--George W. Bush I don't believe those rumors about George Bush being the Antichrist. He's too lazy. If you look at his forehead closely, you'd see the numbers "333".

The I-Word

Time for the I-word again. Impeachment. I'm tired of feeling like a helpless, scared-to-death passenger trapped in the back seat of a speeding car as a boozy, coked-up Bush careens blindly towards the abyss. Melodrama? God help us, I don't think so. We already have more than enough reasons: Katrina, Iraq, an economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and flat-earth bozos tossing copies of Origin of Species into trash cans. Yadda yadda yadda. It's goddamned terrible. It's gonna take years to fix this shit. But it can get much, much worse. Before January 2009, a lunatic, I-Don-t-Give-A-Fuck Bush still has the time to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two and--ready?--go to war with Iran. Can this country survive World War III? I don't think so. Melodrama? I don't think so. Impeachment is the only check and balance we have left, and threatening to use it with no intention of doing so is like waving a cap gun in Tony Soprano's face: it can get you killed. It's not a political choice anymore. It's survival. Thankfully, there is a reluctant but ever-growing awareness in the United States about how batshit crazy the bozo in the White House is. It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten. (Don't you hate when that happens?) As the old saying goes, "Nothing focuses a man's mind like an imminent hanging." Thank the Goddess for enlightened self-interest. It ain't pretty, but it works.

Captain America Is Dead

Captain America is dead. It’s one of the oldest and most predictable lessons in the comic book “how-to” manual. If a new costume, a different writer/artist team, or a female character suddenly discovering she’s a lesbian doesn’t pump up declining sales, then killing the super-hero is usually what happens next. Ho hum. If the right number of outraged fans make enough noise, then a magical McGuffin is found, and one timely resurrection later, the Corpse In Tights comes back. If not, oh well. With Captain America, however, I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. It wasn’t just a sniper that killed America's super soldier: It was an identity crisis. Captain America was an anachronism; a heroic relic from WWII who didn't belong in George Bush's America. The super heroes who matter, the icons who last for decades and sink deep roots into our collective consciousness are primal archetypes that have a singular purpose. There's much more to their existence than gamma rays, a funny green lamp, or a bite from a radioactive spider. They are what the culture needs. Batman is a ferocious and relentless avenger seeking justice for helpless victims in the lawless streets. Superman represents the power of an America with open borders that freely welcomes refugees fleeing oppressive countries. The idea of Captain America was born during World War II, when the horror of Nazi Germany threatened to transform the planet into a concentration camp. The lines dividing good and evil were clearly defined then. Captain America knew who the bad guys were. We all did. But what about now? Where is Captain America's place in the ugly America of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld? What does Captain America do when he has witnessed a stolen presidential election, 9/11, the swift boating of John Kerry, fraudulent WMDs, Shock and Awe, Abu Grahib, the erosion of habeus corpus, torture, Alberto Gonzales, No Child Left Behind, Enron, "Intelligent Design", the Supreme Court putting out the welcome mat for Jim Crow, and Katrina? In Karl Rove's broken mirror, Captain America would be beating up abortion doctors and appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Is it any wonder that the myth of Captain America was lost, confused, and burdened by a bleak sense of irrelevancy? Naturally, as bad as things got for Captain America, it got worse for the United States of America. As usual, Tristero from Hullaboo nails it. Hard. “Once Bush stole his way into the White House, America entered a period of decline. Declining influence in the world, declining pre-eminence in science, and declining trust in international affairs. Some of this is normal and some of America's decline is not necessarily such a bad thing. But a lot of it is very bad news indeed. Perhaps the worst decline is that last one I mentioned, trust that the American system will, at the very least, place major checks upon, the megalomania of mentally unstable executives. And here's the nut of the problem: “Even assuming the next president makes Lincoln look like a log, would you trust this country if you were a foreign leader, knowing that not only had it enabled a George W. Bush to run the show but, worse, never held either him or his administration accountable for its serial crimes and failures? What - you think it's gonna be easy to say it's the dawning of a new era? Y'think the next President can just appeal to multiculturalism and s'plain away Bush? Like "it's just our culture" to let monumentally incompetent and murderous fuck-ups get off scot-free? “No. Until the Whole Sick Crew of Bushites is held accountable, this country will continue to lose influence and trust. It will mean that life for Americans who deal with other countries - that means all of us, Chucko, 'cause of the importance of our imports - will become increasingly more inconvenient. And the United States on many fronts, will continue to become less secure. It's hard to build alliances with assholes." Exactly. Let's not forget, it wasn't specifically Bush that was voted into power, it was what Bush represented. I don’t care how many votes Bush stole; it never should have been that close in the first place. What myopic white people wanted, I think, was for America to stumble backwards into an Utopian Pleasantville, where there were no scary jigaboos, queers, ragheads, or feminazis to worry about. It was a cold, narrow-minded ideology that brutally excluded everyone and everything that gave the United States its unique identity. No, you can't see the "White Only" signs, but we know where they are, and there's more of them every day. It worked, didn’t it? Lots of Americans voted for it twice. Now look where we are. And if we choose not to stop our slow descent into the abyss, then Captain America and the ideals he honored is truly dead. Unlike the comic book hero, the America we used to be so proud of won’t be resurrected. It won’t deserve to. Happy Fourth of July.

Pardon Me (Part II)

Hat tip to Scrivener's Error.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Yesterday you called for a deadline for U.N. action on Kosovo. When would you like that deadline set? And are you at all concerned that taking that type of a stance is going to further inflame U.S. relations with Russia? And is there any chance that you're going to sign on to the Russian missile defense proposal? PRESIDENT BUSH: Thanks. A couple of points on that. First of all, I don't think I called for a deadline. I thought I said, time -- I did? What exactly did I say? I said, "deadline"? Okay, yes, then I meant what I said. --George W. Bush, U.S. President, from a press conference in Albania, June 10, 2007 I'm sure the hard-core 28% of the public that still supports Bush most likely voted against Al Gore for being "too smart". Yeah, Al would have been a lousy President of the United States. Who did that damned, nose-up-in-the-air egghead think he was trying to impress with his fancy book-learning, huh? But Robert Kagan, writing in USA Today, believes it's time for something different: Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, tried-and-true or fresh-face-on-the-scene, the next president had better have a complex mind. I'm not just talking about intelligence or smarts, George W. Bush graduated from Yale and Harvard; C student or not, he wasn't failing. The tragedy of the Bush presidency is not about failure; it is about a conception of success that is much too simple. Bush campaigned, for example, on the promise of "compassionate conservatism", but when the chips were down, he delivered a simple form of "cowboy conservatism" long cherished in the American psyche. Like the citizen-sheriff in High Noon, a decent man and reluctant warrior, George Bush-as-Gary Cooper courageously stood up at one end of our global Main Street and faced down the Bad Guy, Saddam Hussein, to protect his family and community. But here's the problem: The real world is not a western movie. In High Noon, when the lone heroic actor succeeds, the town is saved and the movie ends in the quiet triumphalism of plain-spoken American. In the real world, a super-power sheriff acting essentially by himself, no matter how brave, imperils the global town no matter the outcome of the gunfight. Other than being entirely too generous of Dubya's intentions, Kegan fully understands what the problem is: complex issues don't have simple solutions. Leaping before you look isn't "staying the course", especially if you're stepping off the roof. But that stubbornly-loyal 28% of the public with fifteen second attention spans doesn't want to hear that. What they want is fast food news they can gulp down without thinking, and big, won't-go-away political headaches like Iraq solved by tossing it in the microwave. Bush is the type of President they want, the guy they can have a beer with and not worry about him making them feel stupid. What's worse, there are other voters who feel the same way as the 28% does, they're just not out of the closet yet. It's a seductive but false luxury America can't afford anymore. Ignorance isn't bliss; it's a temporary blindness that keeps you from seeing the beast that's gonna tear your throat out. Personally, I wouldn't want the guy I'm having a beer with to fix my car, never mind putting him in the White House. I don't want a boozehound that's going to vomit on my shoes. I want the sober, boring, responsible guy who's going to drive my drunken carcass home. What I and the rest of this country needs is somebody in charge who isn't afraid to be smart. As Thomas Fuller said, “Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.”

Dubya

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." --H.L. Mencken.