Keeping it up

Our central rule relating to just about everything the government does was most succinctly put by George H.W Bush:

George H.W. Bush, attended an environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. When asked by a reporter why the US refuses to pledge to reduce greenhouse gases, H.W. Bush replied: “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

The idea is espoused by every modern administration. Sometimes explicitly sometimes inferred. The American way of life- a car in every garage, a comfortable suburban existence, must be maintained at all costs. This American dream is the driving force behind our foreign policy. Built on the back of abundant domestic energy resources and industrialization, and now kept up through military control of Middle East oil and borrowing from Asia. What started out as the American dream was morphed into the American privilege, then morphed into the American entitlement. Something people used to strive for has become something people are owed just for being American. They hate us for our freedom, not freedom of speech or religion, but freedom to have it all, drive what you want anywhere you want as much as you want with the A/C on and the jacuzzi warm and ready at home to relax in and drink beer and eat Arby's in when you get home. This is America, where freedom is now symbolized by burning gas and hauling ass, if I can't jump in my truck and go anywhere I want and not worry about how to pay for it then I'm not truly free.

It's what terrorists are after us for. They hate our way of life Bush likes to repeat. A remark he is sometimes derided for, but he is more right than he is given credit for. Though not in the way he likely meant. It's not that 'they hate us for our freedom,' it is that they hate us for the things we do to maintain 'The American way of life.' With the depletion of our domestic oil supply, we have became increasingly involved militarily with the oil supplying countries. The size of this bailout that everyone thinks is staggering isn't that much more than our annual defense budget. Less, actually, if you incluse all of Bush's non-budgeted war spending. All that money to keep the oil flowing, and to make ever bigger better weapons ever better military vehicles and ever more expensive missile defense systems that give the cold warriors ever bigger hard-ons and ever bigger salaries and bonuses, all on the taxpayer's dime. Without cheap plentiful oil the American way of life could not be supported. The only choice our leaders have had is to keep the oil flowing by force. Carter was actually the first to ennunciate out oil driven strategy, which you can hear about in a worth watching interview here.

An ever greater percentage of our material production has been going overseas. Our trade deficit is getting larger and larger, all the wealth that used to stay in the country is going out. The 'cheap' things we buy are creating new growing economies around the world, on our dime. Meanwhile we pretend that everything is swell by borrowing money from other countries, to buy things from other countries, and to pretend that we are making tons of money by lending money to each other and charging each other interest and fees on the borrowed money. Our productive economy built in the early 20th century has become a parasitic economy, feeding off each other's debt, buying ever more and increasingly expensive consumer goods with borrowed money to keep the wheels of consumer debt turning, and borrowing money from abroad to fund it all. An earlier generation built railroads and American industry, the next built the highways and fought WWII, the next built subdivisions and fought Vietnam, and the next built exurbs and more subdivisions, sold American industry, and fought in the Middle East for a new world order, a thousand points of light, WMD's, and GWOT. George W Bush will leave office having almost doubled our national debt. A few will make out, collecting from all the good little Americans buying their houses and TV's and cars and gadgets on credit, but eventually somebody is going to be left holding the bag. The entire government has been trying desperately to keep the charade going this week, dire warnings of our economic growth slowing down from the President and the Treasury secretary himself. Their solution? Borrow more money. That's the ticket.

I'll see your Iraq and raise you a secret invasion

There was a debate tonight. McCain likes to say he was a maverick and 'opposed' president Bush on many things. McCain had pushed a point, that Obama was wrong to say he would carry out military missions in Pakistan. He said the line 'you don't say that publicly'. He also seemed to confuse attacking Pakistan with anti-terror missions that take place in Pakistan. It wasn't entirely clear which he was talking about but it seemd like he was referring to attacking the country of Pakistan during his whole talk on it. He then says, that if you do attack Pakistan, you do it in secret. His idea of the proper way to do things when you start a war is to do it in secret. He repeated it just a short while later, that if he were to attack Pakistan he would do it in secret. At least GW had the decency to pretend like he was giving us a choice with Iraq. Which as bad as it is is prefereable to 'oh hey by the way I started a war last night, hope you don't mind.' Worse than Bush continied, that kind of thinking is Bush squared.

An update: transcript exerpts

We've got to get the support of the people of -- of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.

Now, you don't do that. You don't say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.

...

So we've got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I'm confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command, that we will employ a strategy which not only means additional troops -- and, by the way, there have been 20,000 additional troops, from 32,000 to 53,000, and there needs to be more.

So it's not just the addition of troops that matters. It's a strategy that will succeed. And Pakistan is a very important element in this. And I know how to work with him. And I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I'm going to attack them.

Another Update: More related details on this subject are here at Thinkprogress

A nickel if you can think of an exception

Nothing good has ever resulted when GW has urged the American people to do something urgently.

Just give us a few trillion and we'll make it better, we promise

Bush's treasury secretary is saying the upcoming bailout is the economy's last best chance. After we have taken over the mortgages themselves when they nationalized fannie and freddie, and also taking over the biggest insurance company around, now treasury secretary Paulson wants $700 billion to buy crap paper from when those mortgages were sold and re-sold. The bush administration is pushing hard to get it pushed through, going so far as to say they are worried how the markets will react tomorrow, monday.

It seems almost absurd now the scope of crisis than have been taking place. What more perfect metaphor for bush's presidency than a massive failure of the US financial market with a taxpayer funded bailout on a scale to be the largest in our history, while never ceasing to proclaim that everything will be ok, they have it under control. Not one for small actions, Bush has managed quite a few achievements of scale, through a combination of ineptitude, bad luck, single mindedness, and corruption. The largest reorganization of federal government and the country's largest bureaucracy with the homeland security dept. The most expensive war(s) we have ever fought. Some of the biggest intelligence failures ever, or possibly biggest deceptions ever, with WMD's. One of the biggest natural disasters and most pathetic recovery efforts in New Orleans. The largest terrorist attack on our country. The most obsessive push for a powerful executive branch as there ever was. One of if not the most corrupt and inept administrations ever. And this is the administration that we are falling over ourselves in order to give them huge sums of taxpayer money to do with as they see fit and somehow bring about a miracle cure for what they so love to refer to as 'turmoil'. Based on their say-so that it will work, it must be big, it must be immediately with no time for analysis or study, and they must be given a free hand to do what they wish.

The pattern of behaviour is long. Bush and his administration's response to every crisis, whether real or manufactured, is to push something gargantuan through as fast as possible with as little detail as possible, and with maximum authority to the executive and minimal room for questioning or transparancy.

A Video for Ed

Yankee Stadium




The rest is worth watching too

A video for Eyeball

since he felt alienated

{insert world leader's name here}

If you can sit through the first half of an interview McCain did in Miami, you will get to hear McCain get completely stumped when asked if he would meet with Spain's Prime Minister. He was asked two or three times and gave boilerplate answers about standing with our friends and being against those who would do us harm in 'the region'. It appeared that 'the region' he thought Spain was in was Central and South America since they had just been talking about that previously and he mentioned Cuba or something in the same breath.

The interviewer repeated again 'now this is Spain we're talking about, Prime Minister Zapatero'. Again McCain gave a boilerplate answer and said he would have to 'check on the situation' before giving a specific answer. It definitely seemed like he had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Though some have speculated he is keeping Bush's cold shoulder policy for taking Spanish troops out of Iraq.

Then, McCain's 'i will have to check on it and see' comment, and this is coming from the supposed foreign policy guru maverick, could just as easily have been substituted with 'I don't know my stance on the person or country you are talking about so I will check with my neocon advisers to find out if they are for us or against us. I don't decide who to like or not I leave that to my hockey Mom and her Christian Warriors.

Top 10 reasons to vote for Obama

10. It's the most likely way to get George Tenet in front of a grand jury
9. It's the most likely way to get John Yoo in front of a grand jury
8. It's the most likely way to get Donald Rumsfeld in front of a grand jury
7. It's the most likely way to get John Ashcroft in front of a grand jury
6. It's the most likely way to get Alberto Gonzales in front of a grand jury
5. It's the most likely way to get Scooter Libby in front of a grand jury
4. It's the most likely way to get David Addington in front of a grand jury
3. It's the most likely way to get Dick Cheney in front of a grand jury
2. It's the most likely way to get George W Bush in front of a grand jury
1. It's the most likely way to find out what the Bush administration's domestic spying actions were.


Today in the Washington post was a bit of a history of the fight over Bush's spying bill and the threatened resignations. Some have pointed out how it says that Addington, Cheyney's chief of staff, signed Gonzales's name himself. Others have pointed out that no one knows for sure what was actually changed or done differently from the previous 3 years of the program that made them able to give legal cover to it. One of the best lines from it is:
Bush expressly overrode the Justice Department and any act of Congress or judicial decision that purported to constrain his power as commander in chief.

Obama has been asked about this as has Biden and both have expressed openness to investigating what went on the last 8 years. Short of a Nader victory Obama is the most likely, or better the only one likely to shed some light on Bush's many misadventures. Black baby incident notwithstanding, McCain still has highly doubtful prospects of even mentioning them specifcally. He will most likely continue Bush's fine tradition of passive blame assignment. 'Mistakes were made' type of nonadmissions. He is not likely to expose his party to that scrutiny nor want to bring to light any of the downsides to his beloved global war on terror national security theme he has hitched his campaign horse on.

A day of celebration

My loyal readers are both surely celebrating now that their archnemesis Yost has got the boot. I really don't care that much but I wanted to be sure to beat them both to the punch in mentioning it.

In case you haven't seen it

A 9/11 tribute video, RNC style. A new low in politicizing the event.

Double Standards

Larry David reference

My favorite naysayer argues that Obama's healthcare plan as outlined is a poor one, and also gets in some healthy bitching about Democrats in general.

Airport Security

I get to my car in the airport parking lot today and on my windshield is a small newsletter from a preacher or reverend with a the front page being a small bit about the pastor in charge of the publication, and the rest an article about quote "evil Catholics" being the masterminds of the Waco incident as a part in a broad war between Catholics and whatever this guy was. And really if there is such heightened security as to make you take your shoes off every time you fly (even if they are sandals) it seems to me just as risky to have quasi militant Christian religious nuts running around the parking lot, leaving things on all the cars?