Economics even I can understand

MaxSpeak, you listen:

The latest Bush entry in the Stupid Olympics, after the "terrorism is a nuisance" canard (nicely ripped here by Michael Kinsley), is their umbrage over the suggestion that they have a secret plan to privatize Social Security.

If memory serves, the President was emphatic in the third debate on the need to divert a portion of payroll taxes into individual accounts. That's privatization. The fun part -- the need to replace trillions of dollars of lost revenue to pay current Social Security benefits -- was missing from his spiel. [my emphasis]

There are only a few possibilities here.

[. . .]

How dare you?

From The Farmer at Corrente:

In an extraordinary response to these recent stories, Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt spoke thusly:

"The Bush campaign should be able to make an argument without having it reflexively dismissed as distorted or inaccurate by the biggest newspapers in the country."

Got that?

Remind you of something? Maybe this?

"I subordinate myself without further ado to Herr Adolph Hitler. Why? He has proved that he can lead; on the basis of his view and his will,.... He and the party are one, and offer the unity that is the unconditional premiss of success." ~ Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, 1927.

The 'L' Word

Bob Herbert in the NYTimes:

There should no longer be any doubt that the war in Iraq is an exercise in lunacy. It was launched with a spurious rationale, the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a fantasy relentlessly stoked by obsessively hawkish middle-aged men who ran and hid when they were of fighting age and the nation was at war.

This is a war that never made sense and now we are seeing - from the troops on the ground, from our allies overseas and increasingly from the population here at home - the inevitable reluctance to forge ahead with the madness.
The president likes to say he made exactly the right decision on Iraq. Each new death of a soldier or a civilian, each child who loses a parent to the carnage, each healthy body that is broken or burned in this war that didn't have to happen, is a reminder of how horribly wrong he was.

My, some variation of the word "Lunatic" seems to be the order of the day. I must've started it. Even the highly paid and supposedly fearless journalists are starting to hint around that maybe Dubya is a taco short of a combination plate. They need to reach into their shorts and, if they feel anything there at all, they need to ratchet it up just a notch: Bush&Co. are out of their fucking minds!

But What Do I Do With All These Dollar Bills?

This one's just great! From AlterNet. We're all over it, like a lap dancer on a Republican businessman with a wad of cash.

When a few officials of the local Republican party in Cleveland, Ohio decided to treat themselves to a good old-fashioned boy's night out at a strip club, they were greeted with an alarming sight: a Fox News television crew.

"They asked me why Fox was outside," says Angelina Spencer, The Circus club owner, "and I told them they were doing a story about our voter registration campaign."

"They all scrambled and fought over the back door. One guy even got his tie caught in the door," she laughs.

Once again, the good shit's in between the quotes.

With Americans spending around $10 billion a year on adult entertainment, the industry clearly has an opportunity to influence the outcome of the election. "A few Republicans have politely asked me to stop," Spencer says. "Anytime you get strip club owners involved in the political process, you know it’s going to be quite an election."

I like the more amplitudinous gals, myself. More room to stuff dollar bills.

Maybe they need a ride to the polls on election day. A chance to do my civic duty!

Hate? Of Couse Not. Loathe & Despise? Hell, Yes!

Byron Williams has this to say from Working For Change:

This may not come as a surprise, but I have received a plethora of e-mails accusing me of hating President Bush.

First, I hate no one. Second, I don't know President Bush, but he appears to be an affable individual. After all, any person whose favorite baseball player is Willie Mays cannot be all bad.

However, if hate is a loose euphemism for my profound disagreements with the president's policies the argument may have merit.

The good part is in between the quotes. Go read it.

It is the opinion of this writer that in order to support the president, one must place being a Republican above being an American.

I don't hate anybody. 'Hate' is a bad thing. I do, however loathe and despise George W. Bush. Personally. Anyone who could do to my (our) country the things he has done and think he is doing good work is a person worthy of my utter contempt on every level.

Delicate? Hell, No, And I'm In Good Company

Besides just Fixer, I mean. This article in Common Dreams about Michael Moore and the Founders:

This country was not founded by polite people. The American revolution did not follow Robert's Rules of Order. The America experiment was launched in revolt against the existing order, against corrupt kings and their equally corrupt business partners. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and their kind rejected the divine right of kings; they did not believe that power should pass from one King George to another. And the best of their number, Tom Paine, preached the healing power of revolution - not just for America but for the world.

Nothing would horrify Moore's critics more than the suggestion that he might well be the best upholder of the revolutionary spirit in the current day - and thus the greatest patriot. But, then, Moore's critics tend to confuse patriotism with blind obedience. And if Jefferson and Madison teach us anything, it is that the true patriot must always stand against King George.

The time for delicacy is long past. It's time for knees to the groin and baseball bats.

A condom

From Mrs. F, apparently goofing off at work:

The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an Eagle to a condom because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance.

A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.  It just doesn't get more accurate than that.

Palpably Unstable

Not any better, however a little more delicately said than my partner did, but the same sentiment.

[. . .]

The prophets of doom, whom Cheney exemplifies, are precisely right about the importance of this election. But the momentous decision awaiting Americans is not whether they return to power a President who is uniquely qualified to protect the US against terrorism, as Cheney et al would have us believe. It is whether they re-elect a man who, it is now clear, has become palpably unstable.

The evidence has been before our eyes for some time, but only during the course of this election campaign has it crystallised - just in time, possibly, for the 2 November election. The 43rd US President has always had a much-publicised knack for mangled syntax, but now George Bush often searches an agonisingly long time, sometimes in vain, for the right words. His mind simply blanks out at crucial times. He is prone, I am told, to foul-mouthed temper tantrums in the White House. His handlers now rarely allow him to speak an unscripted word in public.

[. . .]

Go read the whole article at The Guardian. I don't need to say anything.

New Florida Ballot

To see the new Florida Ballot, click here.

Big John

You don't have health care?
Can't afford your prescriptions?
Can't get a flu shot?

" . . . And what does George Bush say to you? 'Stop whining'."

"If Halliburton made flu vaccines, there would be more vaccines in Florida than oranges."

Inmates In Charge Of The Asylum

Here's some follow-up on Fixer's post on the faith-based presidency. In our ongoing effort to spare no expense and bear any hardship to bring you news of things we consider relevant, I actually read the entire article by Ron Susskind in Sunday's NYTimes. You should too.

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

Reality-based community? So everybody between Fixer and me is in the un-reality-based community? The arrogance of these bastards!

Bush shouldn't be in charge of the United States. He should be in charge of some wacko neo-Christian-Nazi compound in Idaho where they can wear cammies and carry big no-balls-compensating weapons and just carry on to their little hearts' content about how the rest of us "just don't get it." Somewhere, not too close to a town, where they can anoint themselves with Crisco and worship their little chimp-like idol. Somewhere where they can't hurt the rest of us and we can keep an eye on them. Behind gray stone walls would be better.

Besides being the devil's spawn, they're all fucking crazy, clinically insane, and we are the worse for it.

I hope God doesn't tell them to unleash our weapons of mass destruction just before they are escorted out of the White House in January. In irons, I hope.

Print the article. Keep it next to the shitter and read a little every day. There's a lot more in it besides these excerpts.

Ezra says

What Gordon and I have been on for the last week. Go read over at Pandagon. He's got the results of the Newsweek poll there too.

More draftier, a lot, like

From that smart kid, Matt Yglesias:

Pay no attention to the redeployment of the Army NTC OPFOR to combat duty in Iraq. Thinking too seriously about what this implied for the future of the US military and about how badly overstretched our forces are right now will not be good for your health or your tax status. Incidentally, wasn't the redeployment of the Blackhorse to the Middle East part of the plot of a Tom Clancy book?

I guess that's how the WH does its military planning, see if there's a Tom Clancy parallel. I wrote about this a couple months back:

You know, I write spy novels and some science fiction. The reason I bring this up is not to peddle books, but to make an observation. Bush & Co's actions sound like the plot of a fucking spy novel. It's as if they're taking literary license with the war, the way I would when I ask my audience to suspend their belief in the flow of time and the details. (If writers didn't, novels would be SO long and boring, and filled with minutiae, that no one would want to read them.) But wars don't proceed like novels do. The president is not an omnipotent being, like a writer, who can mold the world so the outcome is in his favor. War, and running a country, involves minutiae on a biblical scale and all the details have to be addressed BEFORE war is declared. It's as if Bush thinks the world works like a TV show or a pulp fiction novel.

That's why they thought they could take Afghanistan using Special Ops forces alone. Some civilian in the Pentagon must have read Rainbow Six and said, 'we can do it that way'. Seems Tom Clancy never saw the need for a draft, but when we put a training unit on combat alert, a draft is probable. If the Air Force and the Navy put the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels on combat alert, a draft is imminent. I wouldn't be surprised if the Top Gun School personnel at Miramar are already training up for Iraq.

Social Security privatization

I posted about this last week. Today, DemVet has this:

[. . .]

But as short on specifics as the plan is, it's instructive to see who might benefit from this "privatization" effort, because you know that someone's gonna make a buck or six from any 1600 Crew program (Iraq-CheneyBurton?). Seems that there's an investment company waiting in the wings for just such an opportunity...and surprise surprise surprise, guess with whom it's affiliated?

[. . .]

So, not just one, but about as many cronies as possible stand to benefit from this so-called "privatization" effort. How much you want to bet that there's no scenario where privatization does not include capitalization of some bank account related to Fearless Leader his family and friends (Saudis anyone?). Neilsie and Silverado will look like amateur hour if this happens, count on it.

Yes, him

Frank Luntz, that is, the Pillsbury Doughboy of pollsters and Republican spinmeister wrote this in London's Financial Times:

The big story of the US presidential election up to yesterday was how few undecided voters there were. Now the final presidential debate is over, these voters have essentially made up their minds - and it is George W. Bush who should be worried.

If John Kerry is elected the 44th president, it will be because of a single night in Miami, when he came to debate and Mr Bush came to - well, no one is quite sure. The double-digit lead that Gallup polls, long considered the authority for presidential polling, gave Mr Bush after the Republican convention was fully erased by that fateful 90-minute confrontation.

Step by step, debate by debate, John Kerry has addressed and removed many remaining doubts among uncommitted voters. My own polling research suggests a rather bleak outlook for the Bush candidacy: many who still claim to be "undecided" are leaning to Mr Kerry and are about ready to commit.

Can Mr Bush turn the tide in just 18 days? Absolutely, but he must address voters who still harbour economic and national security concerns. And that requires a fundamental shift in the president's strategy and message. Asserting that the economy is strong and Iraq a success is just not credible to the majority of Americans - or to the stubborn 5 per cent who remain uncommitted.

[. . .]

Via Jim Hightower.

Worrisome for Bush indeed. If Luntz is saying this, you know the Bush people know it. Look for a flood of dirty tricks to spew forth from the Repubs in the next couple weeks.

More Enlightenment

Gordon can see the future, so can the Bunny. The Rabbit doesn't like what he sees if President Numbnuts is reelected.

NYT Endorses John Kerry

Hallefuckinlujah! Read this editorial in today's NY Times:

We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking - something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change. And while Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam was first over-promoted and then over-pilloried, his entire life has been devoted to public service, from the war to a series of elected offices. He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core

Along with the invasion of Afghanistan, which had near unanimous international and domestic support, Mr. Bush and his attorney general put in place a strategy for a domestic antiterror war that had all the hallmarks of the administration's normal method of doing business: a Nixonian obsession with secrecy, disrespect for civil liberties and inept management

We have specific fears about what would happen in a second Bush term, particularly regarding the Supreme Court.

If he wins re-election, domestic and foreign financial markets will know the fiscal recklessness will continue.

The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages.

We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.

Sometimes these New Yorkers are pretty smart.

Gordon the Enlightened One

Seems like my partner's on to something. From Eric Alterman via Skippy:

If Bush somehow wins, it will require an even bigger steal than four years ago.

Instinct

From NYT via Josh Marshall:

[. . .]

Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''

[. . .]

As [Former NJ Governor & EPA Chief Christine Todd] Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.) [my emphasis]

[. . .]

As I've said before, our (NY, NJ, CT) Repubs are different from their ilk in other parts of the country. They tend to be more of the Classic Conservative mold rather than the Bible-thumping, Christo-fascist bunch. The Mrs and I used to have respect for Christie Whitman. 'Used to' being the operative word until she too caved to pressure like McCain did and actively supported Bush this cycle. She used to have principles, unlike that asshole we have running our state (Pataki). But though she denies her remarks, they do have a ring of truth to them (Gen Shinseki, Paul O'Niell, and others). She was awful quiet after she left EPA, wasn't she?

P.S.- Go read Melanie too.

Faith-based deprivation

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