Greenspan's Uselessness

Well, hell isn't freezing over, but Alan Greenspan has finally recognized that the budget deficit is a bad thing. He didn't say exactly like that, of course; more like this:

"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances," he said.

Okay, so big deal. But then he followed it with this in regard to two other worrisome issues, namely, the trade deficict and the giant consumer debt:

The Fed chief said rapid globalization may have allowed the United States to carry large trade and budget gaps so far without economic harm.

Translation: So long as we can bully less-powerful nations into agreements favorable to our trade policy, no matter how poor it makes them and no matter how repressive the governments we have to install or support, then we can continue down this idiotic and delusional consumerist path.

Then, when asked if something fundamental had changed to allow us to act in such an irresponsible matter, he quipped,

"Regrettably, the answer is no; the free lunch has still to be invented."

Well, damn! There's no free lunch? I'm just fucking amazed. This Fed chief is so awesome!

James Wolcott Knows the Truth of Things

Oh, how I wish I could turn a phrase like this gentleman, but I shan't try. Just read this piece by him instead. It is a perfect summation of the corruption of the Reagan-Bush world, their kneepad handmaiden corporate media, and the assaults on liberty and equality. A sample:

Bush's second term is a triumphal Fuck You that the pundits and cable newsers will interpret as a jaunty thumbs-up, not possessing enough self-respect even to mind being played for fools

It breaks my heart that it's so true.

The Italian Job

This is a startling turn of events, at least to me. According to the Washington Post, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is not buying the American version of the shootup of the car carrying freed Italian journalist Giuliani Sgrena, in which she was wounded and Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was killed.

"Only a frank and reciprocal recognition of final responsibility" will assuage Italians' anguish over the shooting, "which was so irrational to us," Berlusconi said.

Berlusconi, who has carried water for the Bushits in Iraq, overriding the Italian majority, would have been expected to swallow the story whole--after all, Sgrena wrote for a communist paper and certainly could be no friend of his administration's. So what happened? Well...

With the inside light on, Calipari sat alongside Sgrena and made phone calls to superiors to report his success. One was to an Italian official who was standing next to an American colonel at the airport, the prime minister said Wednesday, addressing the Italian Senate.

Calipari "therefore warned the American military officials of their immediate arrival in the airport zone," Berlusconi said.

Now, keep in mind that Berlusconi is not claiming it was an ambush, but only that it was, in his diplomatic language, "so irrational." But what would cause the Prime Minister to directly challenge his good buddies' account? He knows damn well that they lied about the WMD and the Iraq-al Qaeda connection and the yellowcake from Niger business--after all, it was an Italian newspaper that found the documents about the African uranium buy to be so poorly forged as to be laughable. So what changed? Has Berlusconi suddenly realized that playing their game gives no special privileges to him or his countrymen?

And as I write this, it is being reported that the detail that shot up the vehicle was assigned to protect John Negroponte, famously known for his oversight of death squad activities in Central America.

As a veteran myself, I simply cannot accept that those troops fired on that car knowing who was in it, but if someone alerted them to a potentially "dangerous" vehicle approaching their checkpoint, I'd sure like to know who that was, who he or she worked for, and follow it up the chain of command.

It stinks. It stinks bad.

Another Intelligence Crap, er, Coup

According to the New York Times today,

A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel's work.

You know what this means, of course. We'd better attack Iran, just in case! Further on, the piece says,

One person who described the panel's deliberations and conclusions characterized American intelligence on Iran as "scandalous," given the importance and relative openness of the country, compared with such an extreme case as North Korea.

Apparently, being completely wrong on WMD in Iraq--George Tenet's "slam dunk"--doesn't rate "scandalous" and I don't believe that this is an unconscious omission in the first page of this article. Keeping in mind the complicity of the New York Times in general, and Judith Miller in particular in the runup to war in Iraq, I have this bad feeling that we're seeing another piece put carefully in place for the June Iran campaign.

In a television interview in February on Fox News, Vice President Dick Cheney described the work of the commission as "one of the most important things that's going forward today."

Now Cheney, who has a habit of believing only that which aligns with his ideology, thinks the report is "important" because it gives plenty of wiggle room to argue for attack on Iran. On the one hand, if the agency reports that there is not sufficient evidence of the claims used for war, Cheney will cite the report as proof of the agency's incompetence. If, on the other hand, houseboy Porter Goss performs as expected, the CIA will support invasion through some cooked up crap ("It may look like a popcorn popper, but we are certain of its use in triggering nuclear devices.")

It is only in the third paragraph from the end of the story, immediately following the Cheney quote, that we get this reminder:

In the case of Iraq, a National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2002 was among the assessments that expressed certainty that Baghdad possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program. Those assessments were wrong, and a report last year by the chief American weapons inspector found that Iraq had destroyed what remained of its illicit arsenal nearly a decade before the United States invasion.

In spite of this, and if the CIA supports a move for attack on Iran, we can trust them because

At the Central Intelligence Agency, senior officials have defended the assessments, but they have also imposed new guidelines intended to reduce the prospect for failures.

Yes, those new guidelines are sure to have fixed all the problems, both of actual intelligence collection, and then presenting it in unbiased form. With Goss running the show, Negroponte between him and Bush, Rumsfeld having neutered opposition in the Pentagon, and Cheney running over to Langley to bludgeon the analysts into submission, they'll have all the reason they need for bombs over Tehran.

Bullying on Social Security: Cheney on the Loose

In an earlier post about Bush's assault on Social Security, I wrote about raising the caps on income which is taxed for SS purposes. As it stands, only the first $90,000 is charged the FICA tax, and so someone making that amount pays as much into SS as someone who makes $1 million or $50 million. Bush, of course, wants to establish private accounts, taking a third of the revenue out of the SS system, which not only puts that money at risk in the markets, but also does nothing to improve the solvency of the program, whereas raising the cap does.

So, in light of this, here's an AP story on a Republican poll, the results of which were presented to GOP leaders. First,

The heart of President Bush’s plan for Social Security, allowing younger workers to create personal accounts in exchange for a lower guaranteed government benefit, is among the least popular elements with the public, Republican pollsters told House GOP leaders Tuesday.

Got it? "Personal" (read as "into the hands of Wall Street") accounts are not favored; in fact they rank at the bottom. Now this,

Despite the general resistance to higher taxes, there is very strong support for exposing higher levels of income to the existing levy, the pollsters wrote.

In spite of all the hype, well, bullshit and sleight-of-hand that these crooks have used to try to bamboozle the public, the people know that Social Security works, is not in "crisis," and can easily be made solvent for the next 100 years by a very simple and, for the vast majority of Americans, painless solution: raise the fucking cap. And the Republican response to this?

Almost immediately, House Republican leaders and an anti-tax group denounced the idea of raising the cap and chided the president for not excluding the possibility.

And Bush, in his bubble of unreality, according to Bloomberg reacts accordingly by sending Cheney out to lie and bully for him on Social Security privatization the way he pushed on national security matters.

Bush is mounting a full-court press for private accounts, the keystone of his plan, as polls show rising skepticism about the president's proposals.

Keep in mind that this is happening despite the fact that Bush himself admits that privatization is useless for fixing solvency. In February,

President Bush, on a road trip to promote private Social Security accounts, acknowledged Friday that his proposal would not by itself fix the future financial problems of the retirement program.

But he's sending Bullyboy Dick out to push it anyway.
It doesn't matter how much the public may not like the plan, the Bushits are going to do everything in their power to get their way, and part of their pattern is to wear down the opposition by lying and lying and lying again, and when Cheney is put on the road for something, you know they've rolled out the big artillery for dissembling. Just review his statements about WMD and Iraq-Al Qaeda connections even after it was declared even by Bush that they didn't exist.

What is scary is that today on the NY Times politics page, there are no stories about Social Security (but these is one about a woman becoming the White House chef!), which makes me wonder if the issue will be taken out of the public eye by the mainstream press to give room to Cheney to railroad the propaganda program for awhile as the public gets refocused by the media on Michael Jackson or whatever pointless issue can be used for distraction.

Bolton Is Perfect for the UN

John Bolton's prospective appointment to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations should be no surprise to those who suspect the Bushits of their determination to strike Iran.

Bolton's nomination is somewhat out of step with Bush's second-term emphasis on partnership and cooperation with European allies and with a recent detente in the administration's squabbles with the U.N. bureaucracy.

This article out to be a little embarrassing for the Intelligencer to print, given that no one should believe that Bush wants "partnership and cooperation with European allies," and the "detente" with the UN is, like everything this administration does publicly, a distraction from the agenda they've been faithfully following since day one. Watch what they do, for Christ's sake. Their words are absolutely meaningless. Let Frank Luntz, the number one Republican propoganda guru explain it to you.

Simply put, Bolton is another deliberate step in setting the stage for the June attack on Iran. Watch the rhetoric escalate accordingly. With Rice at State, Bolton at the UN, and the kabuki Eurotour taken care of, the war propaganda machine cranks into second gear. I really, really hope Scott Ritter is wrong, but with regard to predicting the moves of our own evil empire and his predictions to date, that seems unlikely.

Need a Lift? Check Out Ann Coulter's Beauty Secrets

Boy, when a day just seemed to go from bad to worse, I find this hilarious piece on our favorite hysterical wingnut's beauty secrets on World O'Crap. This is laughing out loud funny. Be sure to read all the way down to get the whole history of Ms. Coulter. At last, I understand her.

The blanched and hollow-eyed pundit flashed an enthusiastic thumbs-up as she lowered her emaciated carcass into a hip-bath brimming with virgin gore. "Ahh," she said, splashing the ruddy, life-giving fluid over her bony chest, "This is the life. Or the undeath, anyway."

Not to be judgmental in a lookist sort of way, but I get the impression from watching Ms. Coulter recently that since this piece was published back in November, 2003, the supply of virgins is nearing exhaustion.

Their Filthy Mitts

This whole Social Security brouhaha that Bush and his lying minions have been trying to use to turn the most successful social program in American history into a trainwreck boils down to one simple truth: Social Security is where a lot of money is and the greedmonsters on Wall Street want to get their filthy mitts on it, and they believe they've paid for the privilege by supporting Bush. It's killing the brokerage folks that there is all this dough and they can't put it into play so they can suck off their percentage of the flow, and screw those who might depend on it in the future. Remember, they get their fees whether you win or lose; in other words, they always win gambling with your money.

We had a pretty harrowing meltdown in the market in 2000 from which we still haven't recovered. Is our attention span now so short that Bush can play us like this? Thankfully not...at least so far. Given the impressive array of flacks and hacks that the Bushits can amass to bamboozle Americans about something as fundamental and horrible as war, I am not going to underestimate the lengths to which these scumbags (and I use that as a mild description) will go to get their way.

Please keep your guard up out there.

Fasten Your Seatbelts?

Through Buzzflash, I found Bill Moyer's essay, "Welcome to Doomsday" on the whole rapture business, and in turn I went to the Rapture Ready website just to see if it was time to blow my savings on the wildest binge in history. As of today, the Rapture Index stands at 152, which means, according to the site that we should "fasten our seatbelts," because Jesus is on his way.

It should be noted, however, that this is a good 30 points below the high of 182, which occurred 3 1/2 years ago, so I guess I'd best not book that flight to Gomorrah just yet. What isn't clear from the Rapture Index is exactly when the point of no return will be reached. Will it happen at 200? 205? 500? They aren't saying, which is clever, because God knows prophesies could never be wrong. Except for all the apocalyptic announcements that have preceded the current batch, of course. Somehow, the world's still here, sinners and saints alike.

Anyway, here's my favorite part of the Rapture Index site: photos with accompanying links to Bible verse, all meant to indicate the increasing velocity at which we are approaching Armageddon. And while it would be easy to laugh at any adult who really buys this poppycock rubbish, when one of them sits in the White House, sending our young men and women to kill others in faraway lands, his delusion becomes our nightmare.

Read Moyers' article, then visit the Rapture Index site, then take a long hard look at who is running the county. That son of a bitch is sitting on our gigantic arsenal of nukes, waiting for Jesus. Feel better? No? Then this should help. Come Armageddon, as Moyers' relates from the fundamentalist fantasy,

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned the Messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow.

Note the "political and religious opponents"--that would be me for one, I suppose--and the fact that our torment will be the headlining act for the righteous. It's nice how this sadistic mythology synchronizes so nicely with the ravings of Scalia on the blessings of the death penalty and the torture memo of Tortureboy Incarnate Alberto Gonzalez, not to mention Bush's early predilection for blowing up frogs with firecrackers before he had access to the U.S. military.

Think about this the next time you see someone in a car with the bumper sticker that says, "In case of rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned." That would be a nice alternative to having it driven by someone who is unhinged and waiting for the end with a blood lust.

Oy!

Sunday: Countdown to Fascism in America?

In "A Fascist America: How Close Are We?" written by Justin Raimondo, you may find that some of us aren't just using the word to get attention. It may well be a closer reality than we care to admit. Mr. Raimondo gives a very sober account of how the dominoes line up, awaiting a single event to trigger the irreversible chain reaction that will eradicate what we thought was our democracy.

Mr. Raimondo lists three conditions:

1) The idealization of the State as the embodiment of an all-powerful national will or spirit;

2) The leader principle, which personifies the national will in the holder of a political office (whether democratically elected or otherwise is largely a matter of style), and

3) The doctrine of militarism, which bases an entire legal and economic system on war and preparations for war.

Although numbers 2 and 3 seem to be quite well established in this country, number 1 is the real obstacle, thanks, ironically enough, to the lingering hatred of federal government that sprung from the conservatives' own assault on it when they were out of power. The neocons' program to concentrate more and more power in fewer hands (their own) is alarming libertarians, who have sided with conservatives on economic issues, forming the coalition that battled the old Democratic Party for control since the defeat of Goldwater in 1964. Libertarians must be terribly conflicted at this point, and rightly so, given the ruthless excommunication by the Bushits when anyone even slightly wavers from idolatrous, unquestioning support.

Of course, idolatrous, unquestioning support of Bush, even when he and his minions have been proven repeatedly and disastrously wrong, is one of the common spittle-sprayed demands that spew from the pieholes of your solid Bushite. They are trying to create a cult of personality around Bush, and you have to admire their optimism, because Bush's image is wholly constructed for him. Cut away the PR and there's nothing but sawdust inside. The neocon elite, however, are no slackers, and having trafficked on the Bush name and used the Bush empire to position themselves, are now attempting to move into the final stage of establishing fascism in their own frightening fashion.

If you're not alarmed yet, check out "Wake Up and Smell the Fascism," by Laurence Britt. His 14-point "characteristics of fascism" are supported with lists of links that ought to keep you awake for a long time.