Wolfowitz: King of the Incompetents?

And that's saying something, given the failures of Rice, Rumsfeld, and the Bushits in general. A couple of people have told me I'm overstating things to harp on the incompetence of Paul Wolfowitz, but this article in Salon today makes the case better than I ever could imagine. You'll have to watch an ad to get free access if you're not a member, but it's painless and worth it. For those who think I'm hard on Woofie, Michael Lind has this to say:

Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

Got that? He's a perfect incompetent.

The First Amendment Lives!

This is heartening. Regarding a protestor arrested for leaving a designated protest area:

While [U.S. District Judge Larry J.] McKinney said police security concerns were legitimate, especially less than six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police did not offer any substantial reason why protesters had to be "corraled" 500 feet away.

At least one judge understands that "free speech zones" are an insult to the First Amendment and to our founders. Leaders are obligated to face dissenters, or at least see and hear them. Let's hope that this is the first prick in the bubble surrounding the Potemkin village-type events that have cut the Bushits off from the real world. Even 9/11 is no excuse for eviscerating the U.S. Constitution.

Despair and Hope

First, if you're living in the developing world, you're probably shitting your pants over Wolfowitz's nomination for head of the World Bank. On the other hand, given what Woofie's policy influence has done to our military and our economy, his tenure at the WB ought to put a stake through its heart. Since the WB acts primarily as a frontman for U.S. colonial policy to engineer the financial enslavement of developing economies to international debt so that public entities can be raped by US-friendly business (as in attempted takeovers of public water systems, telecom companies, and so on), there are many who might view Wolfowitz as exactly the incompetent it needs.

Still, if you're living in Burkina Faso or Peru, the dark shadow of King Paul is falling over your future. With Iraq as the lead entry on his resume, it doesn't look good for anyone he claims to want to help.

Hostage to Our Ideology and Currency Traders

The trade deficit of a record $665.9 billion for 2004 could be exceeded by another $100 billion this year. That alone is terrifying in its implications for the U.S. economy. But here's the part of the report that really made my blood run cold.

The Bush administration has pressured China to allow the value of its currency to be determined by open markets.

The dollar has fallen significantly over the past three years against the 12-nation euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar, but that improvement has not shown up in an improving trade deficit because of the currency manipulation in Asia, analysts said.

In other words, our currency is being artificially supported in the Asian currency markets, which in turn keeps our exports priced higher. So? Well, what is scary is that currency traders seem to have us by the short hairs, because they could trigger an even more precipitous fall in the dollar worldwide, and since our appetite for foreign goods is unquenchable, the effects rippling through our markets will be near cataclysmic. Stocks plunge, interest rates rise to lure back those foreign investors, and the prices of goods inflate. The average working American gets screwed again. Better get a third job.

How much power does this give the Chinese? Ironic, isn't it, that we should end up as dangling from a commie thread of financial support?

It's time to start looking at Euro-denominated bond funds, at least for yours truly.

Brutal, Sick, Hysterical, and Satisfying

Having a bad day at work? Try Whack Your Boss. Yes, it's terrible, isn't it? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

More Pricks than the White House; More Dicks than Cheney's Office

Yes, I know I am a bad man, but thanks to Gridskipper, I stumbled onto this wonderful museum. Check out the "list of members" as well as the photo gallery.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh and learn, right?

Torture Nation

Doesn't this make me proud to be a veteran? Anyway, so much for the "few bad apples" excuse. This may be the smoking gun that links the acts of torture to the orders for torture.

The inquiry largely concerns a small group of mostly female interrogators who say they were urged by superiors to be "creative" in late 2002 when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed frustration about the lack of actionable intelligence being gleaned from prisoners at the base. That may have led some interrogators to take liberties, officials said.

That last sentence is a classic. I don't know how they train people now, but when I was in the service, we were made acutely aware of the Geneva Convention and it was essential to understand that there was such a thing as an illegal order. That is not to say that some people would balk at carrying out such commands, but I simply don't buy the argument that all of these guards and interrogators, ranging from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, simultaneously and on their own initiative cooked up these abuses that are so particular to the culture. Do you really think that your average G.I. knows enough about Muslim culture to have concocted these specific techniques?

Let's hope this is the first domino falling for Rumsfeld, Bush, et. al., to pay for this shameful episode. The toleration and/or promulgation of torture is a black mark on the hide of everyone who has ever served the nation. Torture is never justified by a civilized people.

If You Earn and Depend on a Paycheck...

Yes, it is class war. The Bushits are making war on the working class, and that is us, every single one of us who goes to work every day to earn a paycheck, to dutifully pay our taxes, to contribute to the economy. Do you poor white southern Americans who voted for Bush really think that gay marriage is more threatening to you than this (from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune)?

Worse, tax cuts that help low-income Americans save for retirement are set to expire, while tax cuts on stock dividends and investment gains would be extended indefinitely. . . At the same time, lawmakers say they don't have the money to finance basic federal services. Funding for veterans' benefits would drop by nearly 10 percent over the next five years under the White House budget, even though the nation is asking men and women in uniform to make greater sacrifices than at any time since Vietnam. Spending on schools and job training would drop by 9 percent, even though Bush calls himself "the education president." Spending on environmental protection and transportation would fall by 16 percent and 13 percent respectively.

Fifty-nine million suckers! Well, minus a few hundred millionaires who benefit from this war on working people. Fool me once, twice, three times . . . How much can working people in this country take? They must quit letting their social fears allow them to overlook the real damage done to them, their children, and their country. Wake the fuck up! The atheists are not out to get you, the gays are not out to get you, Spongebob is not out to get you, or the Seven Dwarfs, for that matter. Bush and his gang of criminals are fooling you again and again and again by getting you drunk on bigotry and then gangraping your financial future right in the ass.

Take your country back. Now.

Greenspan's Uselessness, Part Two: And They Laughed at Al Gore about the "Lock Box"

It only took five and a half years and the wasting of the surplus plus a precipitous plunge into a darkening deficit, but even this idiot sees the light:

Greenspan also suggested resurrecting the notion of sealing off Social Security revenues from other uses. Last year Social Security tax revenues plus interest exceeded benefits by about $150 billion, he said.

"We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes' around the trust fund real," he said.

Good grief, what a useless and irrelevant shithead.

The Giant Cockroach

If you live in Florida, or in Phoenix, Arizona, you're probably familiar with the giant flying cockroaches that live there. Yes, I know they're called "palmetto bugs" in Florida, but they're cockroaches nonetheless. My experience with them while living in an older part of Phoenix years ago was instructive. They tended to live outside mostly, but occasionally one would find its way into the house, and pop out from behind the toaster, clatter under the microwave, then jump to a crack in the cabinet, all the while with me in hot pursuit. Usually, because I really hate having one in the house, I'd finally catch it between hiding places and then have to smash it, which was like stepping on a roller skate if you happened to use your shoe, so big and full of mush those roaches were. The crunch, however, was very satisfying.

So every time I see Tom "the Bugman" Delay, I am immediately transported back to that kitchen in Phoenix, madly chasing a giant flying cockroach, because Delay's recent scrambling in the face of his malfeasance in so many areas is analogous to that experience. He is quick, tough, able to vault and even take wing for short distances, but in the end he's too big to hide and, despite his hard exterior shell, repulsive appearance, and ability to live comfortably in sewers, he's going to be crushed. It will, to be sure, leave a huge mess, but the satisfaction of removing such a despicable pest from the scene will make it bearable.

Crunch!

Let's Give Thanks for All the Suckers

I don't hear this saying much these days, which surprises me, but some of you are familiar with it: "Don't piss down my leg and tell me it's raining." I can't think of another aphorism (epigram?) that is more apt to describe the Bushit mentality than that, except that it is far too mild. Something more in line with their actions would be, "Don't shit on my dining table, rape my daughters, burn my house down, torture my sons and detain them for years without charge, destroy my infrastructure, torch the environment, shovel all my cash to your rich buddies and then tell me your defending my interests. Oh, yeah, and don't leave my ports, chemical and nuclear facilities open to sabotage while paying Halliburton to overcharge our underequipped troops for meals and tell me we're secure." For a complete listing of failures, lies, incompetence, and general criminality, see Bush Watch and add it to your bookmarks.

Of course, allegedly 59 million suckers voted for these criminals, so some people obviously do think that a golden shower from Dick Cheney's lifted leg is just a nice acidic warm spring rain. And you know, that should give some of us comfort, knowing that so many are so gullible for such hucksterism as shoveled by the Bushits. If there's anything to keep the economy going, it's a bunch of unquestioning mass consumers whose total measure of anything is precisely what their Repug leaders and blowdried and powdered fundamentalist TV preachers tell them. If I were a marketer, I'd be devising products and sales plans targeting precisely that segment of the poopulation.

Let's say we come up with a Rapture Detector/Gaydar system to enable parents of young children to sweep their childrens' friends and classmates to see if they are of the chosen and rapture-ready as well as not gay. Call it the "Patriot Wand" and maybe make it in the shape of the cross with a built-in electronic Bible and concordance for easy reference. Available options would include a remote shocking device to prevent children from masturbating as well as a 130db siren of James Dobson screaming "You'll burn in hell!" to offset any negative language about the Bushit administration, the Christian right, or talk of equal rights for anyone except heterosexual male Christian Republicans. Include a radio that receives only Rush "Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy" Limbaugh and Sean "I sure don't hope anyone realizes how truly stupid I am" Hannity. Perhaps, if you turn it upside down, it reveals Ann Coulter in a nice black leather dominatrix outfit...or Karl Rove. Get that packaged in red, white, and blue for $119.95 and we're rich, baby!

Ya Gotta Love This Guy

From David Podvin's "Savagery":

Ann Coulter is not merely eighty pounds of toxic sewage wrapped in six feet of reptile skin - she is the vicious ghoul that remains after conservatism has been scrubbed of its camouflage.

Actually, he doesn't spend much time on Coulter, so you can safely read this without endangering your meal intake.

What Exactly Is This Malfunction Called?

I just haven't had the juice to blog these last couple of days. Between Tom Delay's ironically cockroach-like survival under conditions that ought to exterminate any public figure, and that simpering, narrow-eyed, shoulder-hopping laugh that accompanies the most unfunny jokes in human history coming from George "I'm not a chimp" Bush, I find myself wondering this: Is there some mental condition that protects right-wingers from the illness that overcomes me and many of my cohorts whenever we see or hear either of these vile characters? There is something so repulsive in each of these figures that I simply can no longer countenance them on my television or in a magazine or on radio. To hear Bush's faux-folksie drawl wrestling with even single-syllable words in a mock sincerity that is so obviously phony literally puts me off my lunch. And Tom Delay, while as smart and crafty and ruthless as Karl Rove, is so morally compromised that he nearly can be seen to be rotting before our eyes.

And yet there are millions of Americans who love these two. How is that possible?

Humans are wired marvelously for determining subtle indicators of hostile or other intentions in our fellow humans. Call it a bullshit detector or an alarm system, the capability serves us well at avoiding uncomfortable or even dangerous encounters. Some people, admittedly, have a very high sensitivity to such things, and live lives of terror. Others, however, have almost none, and in situations that would have most of us running for our lives or striking against the threat, will actually embrace someone who is intent on harming them.

So, is love of Bush and Delay some sort of brain disorder? Oh, if only that were true, then there would be hope. Yes, our long Bush-Delay nightmare would turn out to be something treatable, perhaps. Then again, maybe not, since even when confronted with proof, including the person's own words (as in Bush admitting no WDM or Al Qaeda connections in Iraq), the repugs still love their corrupt and failed leaders and will deny the existence of any such evidence.

Snow is falling outside. Better to watch that than continue this for the moment.