What Health Care Reform Looks Like From the Ground

A Letter to President Obama from Precinct 384

This quick note is about a serious difficulty we are having with Organizing for America’s (OFA) health care talking points.101

I am an “Obama soldier” from the campaign -- precinct 384, NE Albuquerque, neighborhood team 39. Naturally, I went to the new OFA office this morning after receiving last night’s phone call. I met the all the friendly, bright eyed, eager folks hunched over their laptops and picked up a copy of the canvassing material.

After looking through it, I am concerned that this effort is making the same mistakes that were made in the campaign -- at least, the same mistakes with respect to the precinct 384 “voter universe.” For 30%-40% of the voters in this precinct, the talking points are a “clear miss.” In fact, I suspect that they even go so far “off target” as to be insulting. This is too similar to an unfortunate repeat of what happened in the endless 2007 - 2008 Presidential campaign “slug fest” where the most persuasive campaign issues seemed to simply be “over our heads and over our pay grade.”

I’ll note the exact conflicts the “Three Principles”President Obama’s promotion plan presents in the real life situations of this constituency.

1. Reduce Health Care Costs
This constituency: They usually don’t pay for treatment. They wait until things get really serious, then they go to the ER and apply for “No Pay” treatment. That process is frustrating, uncertain, demeaning and time consuming. They suffer from all the subtle indignities of this process -- especially when they know that other people have actual health plans. They are totally ready to pay more taxes to get dependable care.

The emphasis on “keeping” your doctor means very little to my neighbors. They don’t have a doctor. They have probably never seen the same doctor more than once or twice. They are completely accustomed to taking what they can get. “Go to the Doctor,” to them, means packing up the family and waiting in the ER for 5 or 6 hours, then not having enough money for medicine until payday.

2. Allow Choice of Coverage and Doctor
This constituency: They have never made any choices at all so far. Period. No choices! Coverage to them means the “safety net.” They, frankly, don’t understand what “choosing a coverage” means. They have never had an employer provided insurance plan, although they may know people who have. A 21st Century version of "keep away."

3. Better Quality Health Care
This constituency: They have no way to make an opinion about health care quality aside from their memory of outcomes. They haven’t experienced enough of a variety of health care, that is, the variety that is implied in the talking points, to make a judgment. As for reducing the paperwork, they have never had health care other than the “No Pay” kind which is always chest deep in agonizing, belittling paperwork.

I’m not interested in starting a class war here, but the OFA material seems basically intent on doing just that. Precinct 384 contains an awful lot of voters who are simply put off by choice issues presented to them at this level. The choice the voters in this neighborhood have made is simply one in favor of improved access to health care.

We registered a lot of these people who had never voted before to elect the President. When we talked to them and approached them in a suitable way, they were completely ready to learn about the election politics and VOTE! However, the Presidential campaign had the same “over their heads” direction as this health care thing, and we could have failed to deliver this state if all this population remained “left out” in favor of a campaign targeted at more prosperous urbanites.

Precinct 384 voters have the same worries as most other Americans. They know that, in a well designed response to the grave damage done to the country during the autocracy, major investments in not only health care reform, but also in climate change, energy policy and educational resource allotment, will mean huge spending bills moving through the legislative process. In the past, they have seen every such possibility of actual progress being ruthlessly looted as it is “negotiated” into oatmeal in the Congress. Traditional hillbillies, crooks and neo-con bigots join forces with "bought and sold" Democrats, emerging from their dens to savage any good idea, that is, to extract every possible illegitimate advantage for their friends and campaign contributors.

About 1/3 of New Mexico is watching these health care developments while “looking up” from the very bottom of the heap. We are a poor state with lots of immigration, education and public service issues. Our neighborhood team made our own campaign literature for 2008 for just this reason. And -- this seemed to work well. Both the President and OFA must make more of an effort to include this constituency by focusing on a description the new system and what it will be like for Americans in this very real situation.

I was never much of a John Edwards fan, but he talked about “Two Americas.” He was right. In New Mexico we need “Two Campaigns” and some way to keep them pointed at the right constituencies. The neo-cons are already targeting the new Democratic Congressional delegation from New Mexico. We can’t let this slide back to where we were when the state went for Bush in 2004.

To President Obama: “Remember us! Tell about a plan that relates to our ‘on the ground’ reality. We support you now, and we will continue to support you, but we would like to be included in the debate!”

Obama’s Recovery: Partners or Predators?

Is the President playing “Go Fish” or Chess?

Teaching neo-cons that there can more on the table besides a “carrot or a stick.” 86

Americans listened, considered and agreed with the propositions for national recovery presented in the Obama campaign. If there were any confusion, we may now conclude it arose from the painstaking media grooming of its implied image of the depth and severity of the economic looting done under the cover of the Bush autocracy. Over the decades of “conservative” administrations such as Reagan or the senior Bush, we have grown passively accepting of a routine corruption which had been presented as an "acceptable" and entirely "American," neo-con "leadership" principle.

It has gone even further than that.

We have accepted these gradually growing insults piece meal (Remember the frog who jumps from the boiling water, but remains, comfortably, in the slowly warming, tepid pan?” Yum. Boiled frog.) Americans have slowly and patiently been convinced that a great number of reactionary, neo-con principles are American values or, even, make sense.. For example, in the past couple of weeks from this writing, an “American flag” ship was “piratized” off the coast of Somalia. Its legitimate and honorable “mission” there was the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian supplies to our national friends in Kenya.

But wait.

The reason that ship was flying an American flag -- it had been temporarily renamed after the State of Alabama -- was thanks to a UN ruling. For some reason, the goods of our well intentioned altruism had to be purchased in the US at a price eight times higher than the same commodities could be purchased in the region. For some reason, those commodities had to be transported in an “American flag” ship which plied the waters of the Middle East at eight times the cost of a local alternative.

For some reason? For what reason? The neo-cons have successfully imposed their idea that any good act should begin with a good profit.

The same things happen everywhere. The Indians were persuaded to quit producing generic AIDS drugs, making the Bush Altruism Initiative of aiding African states with that disease one which purchased only “full priced,” first line, American made pharmaceuticals for the effort. Coupled with the irrational neo-con -- and now, Papal -- condemnation of prophylactic supply, promotion and use, the pharmaceutical model of “altruistic” profitability was realized, lubricated and firmly saddled astride vacuous, failed premises of abstinence and other convenient, recent appliances of the prevailing mythology.

These points are presented as example of our amazing, well developed idea that men cannot do good for any reason if it excludes profit. The possibility of assistance, altruism or even cooperation must always be offered in conjunction with an appealing, “oh, by the way,” kind of suddenly and innocently discovered profit.

With this brief account of fundamental neo-con psychology, let us move on the matter of the stimulus and its unwilling participants -- partners and predators.

Why are these participants unwilling and why are these participants, well, even participants in the first place?

First, who are they? The list can easily be extracted from the tedious, frustrating denizens of the current news cycle. There were bankers who got money to make loans and then didn’t make loans. There were health care HMO’s who received an invitation to change their ways, then didn’t change their ways. There were car company executives who were told to rationally reorganize themselves who then proposed “changes” which guaranteed the continuation of their same ruthlessly destructive past policies. There were pharmaceutical companies who were told to release their legislatively protected extortion-strangle-hold on the medical franchise. There were Wall Street “hedge hogs,” oil speculators and investment bankers who were told that they had to “take a hit” on their inflated, imaginary profit and loss statements, who, instead, scrambled around to move their imaginary “profits” off shore so they could pay all of their attention to the looting of the stimulus money (“stay the course,” “cut the taxes,” “make me whole,” et cetera).

All of them were train wreck remnants of the “If anything good is going to happen, it is going to happen to me!” greed ideology of the past. Their obsession of the moment is an arrogant example of their hubris, that is, their absolute rejection of the new “change” and “cooperate” theme of the Obama administration -- and the electorate which created it. Naturally, the first step for these brain dead felons was to purchase some Senators, which they did. By the way, some of our Senators are simply too frightened or honorable to enlist in this outrage. It seems that the real bargains in the Senate are the bourbon drenched neo-con bigots -- hillbillies with an ill advised continuing allegiance to the previous regime of Bush protected avarice.

All these folks seriously believe that what is happening to us right now is nothing more than a current model of what has happened to us in the past. Although this may be more exciting than usual to these “geniuses of capitalism” who are managing the pharmaceutical, banking, health care and other no bid contracting interests, they remain convinced that Obama’s efforts to rescue our economy present nothing new, that is, simply more of the same opportunities which have served their historical extraction practices in the past. They expect and intend to emerge from this “difficulty of the masses” with even fatter pockets and the “ownership deeds” to even more Senators.

Did we ever imagine what feelings a vampire might experience after he sucked the blood from the last living human? In this case, he would convince himself that his last victim was actually not the last living human and fly off gleefully in search of his next prey.

Obama’s proffered gambit was simple enough. “Stop exploiting our economy. It cannot survive any more of your pretend version of free marketism. All of you parasites have done unacceptably well for yourselves at the expense of everyone else, and now, the 'everyone else' is staggering along, near death, as you contemplate your schemes to extract even more from the ambulance staff which has come to rescue them.”

He has asked the bankers to take his bail out money and change their ways, take a few risks for the good of the country (for them, country = their personal finances). Instead, they have been shopping to purchase each other in the hour of peril while sitting on their bulging coffers of bail out money. He has asked the health care moguls to reconfigure their extortion to include the interest of those in the electorate who might need a doctor. Instead, those same moguls have redirected all their discretionary profits to an ad campaign to wreck his Presidency.

Obama has asked the executives of GM and Chrysler to “bleed a little” and reconfigure their business plans to something remotely rational. Instead, they have collapsed to their road weary, inflammatory “swan song” of blaming the unions for everything. He has asked the Senators to, provocatively to them, think of the good of the country instead of their “astonishingly beneficent campaign contributions.” Instead, they -- along with their neo-con progeny in the House -- have marched lockstep in a dismal phalanx of denial and greed all the while hoping in their wet dreams for Obama's failure and destruction.

Does all this describe a foolish failure of a pollyanna in the White House? Has the new President continued to “walk into the props” of a superior neo-con meat grinder whose sole claim to fame is more experience at cynicism?

Maybe not.

Who is ready to characterize Obama’s rather formidable capacity for effective political strategy based on such a short sighted view of his leadership path as it has emerged thus far? If you have this inclination, perhaps you should consider lowering your voice for a few months. If you think his embarrassing rejection at the hands of the so-called House Republicans signifies evidence of a lethal miscalculation in his political tactics, perhaps you should wait for the next act in this play.

Still, it seems that every ambitiously honorable attempt by this White House has ended poorly, that is, all the entreaties “across the aisle” have resulted in another of his restorative plans being dragged behind the truck of guffawing and boisterously emboldened, medievalist Republicans and other corporate schemers. The “Fox Conclusion?” The President is, aside from being a socialist, fascist, traitor, Muslim, gun controlling, international relations appeasing, abortion financing, gay black man, a ninny. The Foxites believe that they have prevailed. The tea baggers think that their frenzied message, whatever it was, is compelling, that is, has gained traction. The bankers think that they will be vindicated in the future, elevated by their tenacious grip on their publicly financed “McDuck Money Bins” and their complete refusal to participate in the resurrection of the economy or the country, now in a mortal, death grip peril. The AIG boys assume that tax payers won’t remember paying the cash for the outrage of their bonuses.

On the other hand, we can create this model in another frame entirely.

Obama entered his position of power with ambitions to reconfigure the economy (and a long list of other things, too) in a way that would redirect some of America’s prosperity back to those who have patiently provided the resources which support it. He knew, even before his inauguration, that those who had developed a criminal “nutrition” requirement of vast tax money in their pockets would react violently to retain their previous parasitic advantages.

They have. Just listen to them. Today, their lies could be baled like hay at harvest time.

Perhaps President Obama, not really stranded and bewildered on a side track after the neo-cons so arrogantly humiliated his efforts at reconciliation, is actually right on target. These practiced criminals have invested very heavily in their program of promoting themselves as honest “partners” in the rescue effort while disguising their more factual qualities as looters and criminals, that is, “predators,” hiding in wait to loot the life blood from the stimulus money.

Money we have paid and allocated to trying to restore the damage of their past looting.

Obama could have swung the massive hammer of electoral outrage in the first few minutes of his administration in a sweeping correction -- think of it as chasing the money lenders from the temple if that analogy is not too messianic. However, if he had taken this approach, the validity of his plan would have been supported only be his claims of its necessity. In the minds of Americans there would have remained the question: “Are these wounded victims of his really this criminal? Do they really place the prosperity and safety of our country in such a low position of importance compared to their continued wealth extraction?”

No. Obama has let these “bottom feeders,” perhaps emboldened by the likes of Carl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Sara Palin, AIG, Wall Street, Newt Gringrich and other “tea-bagger-wanna-be’s” -- well, you are familiar enough with the pathetic denizens of this long list, emerge into the light. He has allowed them to “show their true colors,” their traitorous lack of commitment to the national survival driven by a narcotic, decades long habit of successful greed.

If we were describing a “trial” of this past behavior of his now screaming critics, what we have seen so far would be the “discovery phase.” The character of these criminals had to be exposed, finally revealed to their victims, in this case the American tax paying electorate. Obama has presented the evidence we lacked before, and that evidence seems quite capable of penetrating the thrall of the controlled media’s past efforts to keep us hypnotized.

No one believes he has cock roaches until they reveal themselves in the light.

Remain calm and hopeful. All this had to happen first. The crimes had to be exposed and defined. Our national situation is, most likely, going to collapse to a truly desperate state as 2009 proceeds. We taxpayers and voters will be confronted with Obama’s compelling evidence as he ultimately makes his case for change. That will bring us to our trial’s “sentencing phase.”

To think that the foundering mess we see at this moment is a truly representative preview of that probably means that we are slowly loosing our collective hope. If any of us has decided to take that path, take it without me.

For the "media view" of the economic recovery plan,

http://cbs5.com/campaign08/obama.economic.recovery.2.904768.html

and a background look at some of the criticism of the recovery plan:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white_house/jan-june09/obama_03-24.html
http://www.newsmax.com/us/GOP alternative budget/2009/03/27/196690.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/02/05/president-barack-obama-fires-back-at-critics-of-economic-stimulus-plan.html

and finally, our traditional "Wiki" explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009


MeanMesa visitors who are not well acquainted with the economic recovery plan can find a wide variety of information available in the Google entry for this topic. As Americans we are spending an immense amount of our tax money in this effort to resuscitate our "critically ill" country now that the Bush parasites have been sent back to Texas. Its our money, our President and our future. Who could remain uninterested at a time like this?

A Chit Chat with Republicans About the Stimulus

A Primer About Obama's Recovery Plan85

It has become very intellectually chic to chuck pot shots at the Recovery Program of President Obama. Of course, we expected the really “trailer park” fizzle from the vacuous, foaming mouths of the neo-cons. One female host, Tammy Bruce, actually called Michelle Obama “trash” on a network interview last week.

However, once we exclude the “drug addled gas bag,” the whining “pretty little mama’s boy,” and the ultra pious, self-appointed, "stalwart defender of The Church," we are still left with some unsettling whimpers arising from unexpected quarters -- quarters we had always previously assumed to be more rational.

There are comments that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Director of the White House's National Economic Council, Larry Summers, should be fired for lack of purity and effectiveness. That would be “lack of purity” from having been a Fed Bank President during the Bush bailout in Geithner’s case and from having been a Clinton advisor in Summers’ case, that would have been before he was President of Harvard University. All these comments can be immediately discharged because they are founded on the premise that what we are doing right now is, somehow, logically similar to something we have done before. Any hope of that happy serendipity betrays a frenzied dash for the refuge of history, hardly a behavior we would expect from the brave knights we have sent to kill the dragon.

The Treasury Secretary is a frighteningly intelligent man who has been seriously cautioned by the Obama White House to try to “de-accelerate” his speech enough so it can be captured on an ordinary, modern video camera during his interviews. Naturally, neo-cons -- being allergic to leadership of any type thanks to their toxic, soul consuming cynicism -- are quite uncomfortable with a man who constantly needs to concentrate on speaking more slowly so the rest of us can possibly follow him. Neo-cons like slow drawls so Southern that most Americans either won’t listen to them or can’t understand what is said. You know, ... southern ... coach ... pastor ... You know.

But some modern liberal pundits seem to be put off because they can’t understand it either. They think that the reason they can’t understand it is because what Geithner is saying isn’t even remotely similar to anything they have heard before, the lingering, predictably desperate test of validity for those who have found themselves unable to think. The most limited, self promoted, modern progressives don’t believe that anything can be progressive now if it hasn’t already been progressive before. Those talkative folks identify themselves by providing endless explanations of exactly who was at fault for almost everything that threatens their pretend, historical, progressive "status quo."

But this post is all about having a chit chat with Republicans. There are actually a few of them still visible who are so inebriated on the Kool Aid and so head strong that they continue to claim a tiny, forgotten patch of Bush Jr.’s, medieval fear mongering “high ground.”

If you have had a creepy, out of focus feeling while talking to these Republicans and other aging reactionaries about Obama’s plan, don’t blame yourself! The person standing before you in those conversations isn’t actually saying anything. What you are hearing are talking points! The actual words being uttered in such conversations have been “piped” down to eager repeaters by their “thought masters,” repeaters who, when considered generously, have nothing else to say besides more road weary talking points about the Stimulus Package, Socialism, abortion, gun control -- well, you already know the list of topics they prefer.

On to the water cooler.

Although MeanMesa usually avoids inserted diagrams and charts, please consider this following exception. Perhaps we can spend just a minute with this National Debt record as an introduction to a few points which might “flesh out” your conversational repartees.

click to enlarge

The large block of red at the far right of the diagram is an estimate of the accumulated deficit of the Bush Jr. autocracy. Politically unpopular spending such as the war in Iraq is, of course, omitted. However, the total of the eight year deficit since the Supreme Court appointed Bush Jr. amounts to roughly three trillion dollars. What might have been a rather lack luster disaster was converted into the present calamity by two large tax cuts which directed vast windfalls to the very richest Americans, and the utterly outrageous PHARMA written Medicaid Prescription Drug Plan, designed to channel boat loads of tax money to the “pill masters” of the pharmaceutical lobbyists. The PHARMA bill was passed at 3 AM in the House. The tie vote in the Senate was broken when the Vice President Pretender voted in favor.

An often overlooked aspect of the trillions which disappeared into pockets of Bush cronies has to do with the rest of the economy, you know, the part where we live. After the extraction, that sudden, purloined flatulence among the rich and mischievous found itself stranded with nowhere to go. When we speak of financial instruments such as securitized toxic mortgages, incredibly leveraged, shadow assets on the profit and loss books of all the investment banks we are presently rescuing, and other Wall Street Casino speculative doodads, we see the “new home” all these suddenly wealthy “businessmen” found for their less than legitimate good fortune.

What might have been expected as “risks” associated with such a move were gleefully buried under the cover of a dysfunctional Justice Department, a conveniently blind Security Exchange Commission (Remember Madoff? Enron?), ruthless gangs of well paid Federal Appointees and an overly protective Executive (Autocrat) who had already hit his management high point bankrupting professional ball teams and oil companies his father gave him.

The Independent Senator from Vermont noted this unusual development:
Not everyone has had a hard time during the Bush years: “The top 400 richest Americans have seen their personal wealth increase by $630,000,000,000 - $630 BILLION - since George W. Bush was appointed President by the Supreme Court in 2000.” (Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sept. 18, 2008)

The point? When this much of the economy’s liquid money was effectively removed, it caused a bit of a shortage. After that initial insult to the economy, when the reckless schemes which had absorbed all these dollars fell apart, it created even more of a shortage. The spending which normally fuels the US economy ground to a halt. No one had any money, and no one could borrow any.

Yes, of course, all these “genius investors” immediately started bellowing for a bail out from the Bush Jr. -- Paulson crime family, but they were able to loot only a paltry $350 billion before their sponsoring syndicate was run out of Washington. That left them hungry for more. Their eyes, naturally, turned greedily toward the Obama Stimulus Plan. If that legislation could be converted to even more tax cuts, then looted as it straggled through the Congress, they could be made whole by the tax payers, a veritable wet dream for any self-respecting neo-con.

The Obama plan replaces all that “missing” spending with Federal spending. It is clear that such a bold move is probably the only chance still on the table to avoid a repeat of the World Wide Great Depression of the FDR days. The amount of spending in that spending bill is, unhappily, astronomical. That would make it roughly the same size as the take that Bush Jr.’s fellow looters snatched during the eight years when frenzied high crimes were the constant currency of the day. The economy was supposed to tank after the Bush crime family was safely back in Texas, just in time to blame Obama for everything, but, as is usually the case for everything Bush Jr. dreamed up, it exploded prematurely.

When your Republican starts off with complaints about too much spending and out of control deficits, show him the chart. Agree with him -- in a condescending way -- that it really is too much spending and that the deficit it will cause really is too high. Tell him -- compassionately -- that we have already paid off the neo-con extortionists once while they were gang raping us the first time, but that we are willing to pay again to save the country.

Then walk away.

For a comprehensive explanation of the contents of the 2009 Stimulus Bill,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009
and for an overview of the President's 2010 Budget, submitted to Congres in 2009,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/

The Presidential Pardon Party -- Happy Holidays!

The last act of the strange dark drama in the White House?

Don't count on it.

Think of it as a office gift exchange. 74

Two almost identical young men stood waiting outside the Oval Office in a line with several dozen more, every one an almost perfect copy. All aspiring young attorneys from K Street or elsewhere, they seemed to have arrived from a call to central casting. The hair cut of each one was conservative, identically short and stylish. The well scrubbed, boyish faces all emphasized the overpriced, tailored suits and the multi-hundred dollar silk ties. The practiced mood of subdued reverence was one obviously mastered for missions such as this one.

“Are they doing this in alphabetical order?” the younger of the two asked, turning to face the man next to his position in the line.

His slightly older friend whispered an answer. “Sort of alphabetical, I guess. They started at about 10 AM with Jeb, Harriet Meiers and a list of secret pardons from Cheney. A big bound book of Wall Street names took an hour after that -- we’ll never know who was in there. They did Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham early this morning, than a bunch of rapid fire ‘B’s’ -- you know, Bolton, Blackwater, Blackwell, and Brownie, et cetera. Giuliani and Rumsfeld came as twin drag queens.”

“Michael Scanlon and Tom DeLay’s attorney were here early yesterday. But, after those two, they did Bob Ney and Ralph Reed. An attorney even got the gay guy, Gannon, pardoned. His lawyer didn’t have much of a cash bundle, so I figure they must have had a little dirt of some kind. I guess the male prostitution business isn’t so lucrative anymore.” he continued.

The door opened momentarily to discharge a small group of the previous supplicants. The line inched forward as another small group of the young attorneys entered. The younger of the two quietly peeked through the crack for a glimpse at what was awaiting him when his turn arrived.

The scene was a surreal theater.

All the normal furniture of the Oval Office had been removed, replaced with garish things suggesting screen props from an 1950’s version of Alice in Wonderland. The place was filled with potted ferns and roses. Geese, goats and gerbils seemed to be rushing around in the open area, each contributing its voice to the clamor. Providing background music, a quartet costumed as Cheshire Cats with banjos and harps struggled along with a faint timbre of what might have been some cheerful Transylvanian folk dance had it been produced with more suitable instruments.

A single drummer, dressed as the traditional hooded figure of “Death,” beat out a melancholy, yet consolidating rhythm on a solitary snare held by a suspiciously decorated leather strap around his neck and shoulder. His drumming seemed to inspire the animals, at least the geese, to attempt to synchronize their squawking with the beat.

The President was seated at one end of the room on an elaborate sort of medieval chair. He was dressed in a theatrical lime green tuxedo with tails. Obviously inebriated, even though still early morning, he slumped with the detachment of a depressed imperial indifference to the events in the room. He wore a great, green top hat, probably made of foam rubber, adorned with rhinestones and peacock feathers in a long flowing plume.

A troop of immense, bare chested wrestlers had just completed their performance. Staffers were hurriedly ushering them out the far door. A dance team of young women dressed as Vestal Virgins waited impatiently for a signal to begin the next entertainment act. Some had already begun to throw rose petals onto floor at the center of the room.

Several young men from the same waiting line were in the Oval Office moving respectfully around what seemed to be a Bush administration version of the “stations of the cross.”

Wide eyed, the young lobbyist attorney again turned to his more experienced acquaintance, puzzled. “What in God’s name is going on in there?”

His friend answered calmly. “Relax. If you’d been here last time, you would understand everything. I spoke to a guy from the Chief of Staff’s office yesterday. It seems that the Bush wanted to avoid the Berlin Bunker atmosphere for the pardoning ceremony. The President choreographed this whole thing himself.”

Again, the first young lawyer stumbled. “But what does all this mean?”

His acquaintance answered. “In 2004 the motive was the Crusades. This year, it’s the Mad Hatter. Didn’t your boss tell you anything about this?”

The younger man responded, glancing down at the huge suitcase of 1,000 Euro notes handcuffed to his wrist, “All he told me was to make sure that the currency counting machine was stopped after the batch before me before I put all these Euros in it. He said it might not look like it, but that the exact amount of cash was important. He said it was something like a contribution to the Presidential Library Fund or something.”

His friend offered, “Well, it’s good that you’ve got that part straight. What happens in the room is simple enough. You go directly to the Attorney General -- he’s the one dressed in the Supreme Court robes. He will give you a parking ticket with your boss’s name on it.”

“After that, you take the ticket to the tall guy over by the windows. He’s playing the role of the Great Confessor. He’s the one dressed up as a medieval abbot. He’ll ask you if your client wants to voluntarily confess to the charges on the ticket. He means your boss, of course. You raise your hand and say ‘Yes, Great Confessor. My client confesses that he is truly guilty as charged.’ At that point, all the judicial stuff is done.”

“Then put all your Euro’s in the currency counter in front of Paulson.”

He could see Secretary of the Treasury sitting on a great wooden throne, elevated above the remainder of the room. Costumed as an extravagant courtier, he was heavily made up with bizarre cosmetics. Flamboyant lipstick had enlarged the outline of his mouth to reach from ear to ear suggesting a threatening psychopathy. Every detail of the man’s appearance was darkly grotesque.

“Let his little elf there in front of the throne run all the cash through the counting machine. When it’s done, he will whisper the amount in Paulson’s ear. Paulson is the one made up as the Exchequer for the Queen of Hearts. They’ll throw your boss’s, uh, donation in that big pot, and the ‘Exchequer’ will nod at the President.”

Astonished, the first young lawyer asked, “And then?”

His friend answered, “And then the Mad Hatter will wave his hand and the bunch from the Justice Department will issue your boss’s blanket pardon. You want to slowly and reverently back away -- withdraw ceremoniously toward this same door. Bowing subserviently wouldn’t hurt.”

The newer man asked, “What’s the parking ticket’s part in all of this?”

His more experienced associate responded, “That’s important. Blanket pardons can’t be issued without an admission of guilt. Now, we both know that the exact details of the, uh, ‘guilt’ involved here could hardly bear the light of day, so confessing to the parking ticket is a way to cover everything. Think of it as a symbolic act of contrition. Once you confess in your boss’s behalf, the pardon becomes legal. Of course, it centers on the confession to the parking violation, but, once that’s in the bag, the blanket pardon covers everything else. Slick, huh?”

The young man whispered back, “This is nuts. Does anyone on the, I mean, on the outside have any idea what’s going on here?”

His friend answered, also in a low voice, “No, of course not. You’d better believe it’s better that way. This has been going on a for a couple of days now, but the news black out is holding. Murdoch and the rest of the media CEO’s are scheduled for later today.”

He continued, “I plan to record as much as possible on this belt buckle I got through the security screen. I’ll blackmail my boss if his pardon goes through. I’m sure he’s already budgeted enough to pay me off. After all, he is a K Street lobbyist, right?”

“Wow. I work for an investment banker. They’re a little meaner than K Street guys. You know, a little more violent and pragmatic.” He paused for a moment, clearly deep in thought, then continued. “Gosh. All these people getting pardons. They’ve been running everything for eight years.” He mused pensively. “If they’re all gone, you know, pardoned and everything and gone on back to their regular lives, who’s going to run the government?”

This post proves that pardons can be fun! If you'd like to try it yourself -- with just a few actual facts -- link away!
http://news.muckety.com/2008/11/27/in-final-days-bush-likely-to-pardon-more-than-turkeys/7551

The BailOut Begins

The scene: a dignified mansion in the hills of Connecticut 62

October weather had turned the color of all the tall trees along the long curving drive. The guards and the security gate of the place had been left far behind as the Rolls limousine slid silently into the covered entry way. Its privileged passenger jumped out, rushing in to meet his comrades, a boisterously grinning group of middle aged executives.

“Jerry! Come on! The meeting’s just about to start. Want a drink?” one of the well suited but already disheveled gentlemen in the massive atrium asked.

“Is Paulson already here? And, Jack. Is Jack going to be in the meeting?” the limo’s passenger asked of the laughing crowd as he joined the happy procession to the meeting room.

“Oh, yeah! Everyone’s here. We were waiting for you. Did you get those last positions posted in the market?” someone in the crowd asked.

“You betcha!” he answered jokingly. Everyone else began to laugh even more raucously. “I’m all set to go. I wanted in a couple of tasty little banks and some commodities stuff before we prime this market for the big one! Heh, heh.”

Outside a chilled autumn drizzle had begun, misting over the two dozen or so gleaming limousines in the side driveway. Chauffeurs, abandoning their automobiles, had begun to congregate in the caterer’s tent. A few of the younger ones took furtive glances at the girls who had just arrived in the caterer’s bus.

Inside, the meeting was starting. Treasury Secretary Paulson, flanked on either side by a couple of Wall Street giants, was chuckling at a quiet joke shared between them. Behind the Secretary a ceiling high panel lit up. On it were a cascade of the most recent inside trader information from the market. The attendees grew silent.

Bernake sat solemnly at the other end of the great conference table. Dignified servants rushed to fill every coffee cup and drink, pausing only to slightly rearrange the incredible bouquets. Paulson swept his hand to the side. All the staff quickly hurried out of the room, closing the door. Two Blackwater guards took their silent positions on either side of the doorway. Husky and intimidating, neither of those two faces reflected a sense of any of the events in the meeting room.

Paulson began, still chuckling. “Okay guys. Who would like a chance to participate in the, ah, saving of the economy? A show of hands, please.”

All those now seated around the table quickly raised their hands, smiling but attempting to feign a serious, concerned look.

“Very well,” Paulson continued, also pretending seriousness, “I want each of you to take your pencil and the little slip of paper in front of you and jot down what you think your fair share of this should be. Be sure to write down your name so we can be sure you get the, uh, financial help you’ll need to, uh, well, you know, save the economy.”

Again, the room filled with laughter. The stock market moguls began to write, all the while looking suspiciously at each other. Most of them held their hand to block any possible view of their papers by those sitting next to them. Almost all at once, everyone present folded the little slips and placed them in a basket being passed around.

Bernanke rose, tapping his water glass as if to propose a toast. “Some of you may have noticed that I have five extra slips here at my chair.” All eyes greedily shot toward the Federal Reserve Chairman. “Hank and I have a special surprise. We all know that the drama of our credit tantrum is what made this possible, and, right now, Hank and I would like to express our special thanks to a few of you who really got involved with our dog and pony show.”

The Federal Reserve boss droned on, “We know that you could have refused all those nasty little interviews with the media hacks. We also know that those of you who actually submitted yourselves to those ugly questions could have just lumbered through it. Well, in some cases those interviews were truly works of art! All those troubled “deer in the headlights” looks, the smiles of desperate optimism and the loosened ties were sheer mastery. You guys terrified the whole world with your performance! Bravo! Bravo!”

“For you, we have a extra bonus! Right now, I am writing down your names and yet another amount of bail out cash in addition to what you’ve already asked for. Everyone! Everyone! How about a big round of applause for the actors in our midst?” the Reserve Chairman beamed.

“You know who you are! Barry, Steve -- stand up! Josh, Bill, Mikey! These are the boys who drove this baby home! Big round of applause! Big round of applause!” the Chairman continued, folding the extra five slips of paper and ceremoniously dropping them into the basket.

One of the honored interjected his own praise. “Hank, annihilating your old Goldman Sachs foe at Lehman was a stroke of genius! That scared the crap out of anyone who might have seen through our other antics. A big hand for Hank! A big hand!”

Paulson, bowing and still clapping, made his way to Bernanke’s end of the table. Taking the basket, he went to a small door at the side of the room. “We’ll have the results of our, uh, work here in a few minutes. My Treasury people are issuing the credit vouchers right now.”

Returning to his seat, he glanced over his shoulder at the trading board behind him. The cascade of stock prices had already grown a hint of positive trends. A moment later all the bail out issues had been posted. He rose again, this time turning to look at the results. “Okay. We still have four-hundred- twenty-seven billion of the original seven-hundred.” Every face at the table was now locked onto the Treasury Secretary. “So,” he continued, pausing for effect, “let’s have some fun!”

Paulson and everyone else roared with laughter. “We, ahem, still have to decide the ‘quick and the dead’ out there among all those little banks. Anybody got any scores to settle?”

Instantly, all those at the table rushed to raise their hands. One particular man was frantically waving his arm back and forth.

“Okay, Larry. You look like you’re ready to go. I assume you would like to make a call to Quicksilver National in Cleveland. Go ahead! Get even with that little ingrate!”

Larry was already punching in the numbers on the elaborate telephone at his seat. He toggled to the speaker phone. A pleasant woman’s voice answered. “Quicksilver National. How may I direct your call?”

Larry, struggling to control his glee, answered quietly. “The bank president, please.”

The receptionist answered politely. “I’ll transfer you to his office. Thank you for calling Quicksilver.”

The Treasury Secretary quietly held his finger to his lips. “Quiet everyone. Quiet.”

Another woman’s pleasant voice answered. “President’s office. This is Ms. Mayhew. How may I help you?”

Larry, now almost out of control, stumbled ahead. “This is Lawrence Kashbague from Kashbague and Scrape. I need to speak with Mr. Tumblethorpe.”

The voice responded, “Mr. Tumblethorpe is in a meeting at the moment. Can I relay a message to him or, perhaps direct your call to someone else?”

“No, I need to speak with Tumblethorpe himself. This is an urgent call. Please slip him a note and tell him I’m on the line. Tell him I’ve got some important news for him.”

The crowd around the table struggled to swallow their guffaws.

After a few moments, the bank president was on the line. “Yes? Mr. Kashbague?”

Larry attacked. “Tumblethorpe! How’s your begging coming along? Did you manage to swindle anyone out of any cash or is Quicksilver still only a couple of hours from collapsing?”

The voice on the line was surprised. “I didn’t expect to hear from you, Kashbague. What do you want?”

“I want to buy your bank, asshole! I’m sitting in a, ah, special meeting with the bail out on a trading board in front of me. I’m offering you a hundred-seventy-six million for Quicksilver. Is that enough to bail it out?” Larry laughed.

Tumblethorpe, obviously shocked, stammered for a moment, then answered. “Well, we’ve been asking three hundred-forty-five million, but no one has any money. A hundred-seventy-six is awfully low. I’m not sure we can do that.”

Larry shot back, “Okay. Just ride the bastard all the way down, then! This is the last chance you’ll get. That’s a fact! Heh. Heh. You can take that to the bank, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“Where did you get that kind of money, Kashbague?” Tumblethorpe asked.

“Doesn’t matter, loser.” Larry fired back. “It’s a hundred-seventy-six or nothin’. Take it or leave it.” The others attending the meeting could barely contain themselves. “Make up your mind. You want it or not?”

After a pause in the conversation, Tumblethorpe’s shaky voice returned. “I, uh, guess I’ll take it. I mean my shareholders will, ah, ...”

Larry shot back. “Done! There is one other small matter, Tumblethorpe. That hot teenage daughter of yours. She’s got to marry my boy.” The efforts to maintain silence at the conference table now fell apart.

Tumblethorpe’s voice, now thoroughly shaken, finally returned. “You’re crazy! Who else is there? I hear voices.”

“Yes or no. What do you want? You think that daughter of yours will have a nice life with a washed out ex-con for a bankrupt father?” Larry continued to press.

“Oh God. What am I doing?” Tumblethorpe struggled. Stammering, he continued. “Okay. You’ve got me, Kashbague. Take it. Take it all! Take Melinda!”

“We’ll be talking.” Kashbague added ominously, chuckling. He hung up. The entire table exploded with violent, hysterical laughter and back slapping.

When the roar subsided, Paulson again rose, asking, “Okay, who wants to go next?”

Earmarks and Ear Rings

How to strike a deal with a prostitute.
How to look beyond the insult of the ear marks to the real injuries of the budget. 53

At election time we are usually bombarded with promises to relieve the burden of earmarks. It is a promise made by the man who is not “behind the curtain.”

There are indeed two great currents of our money flowing through the process in Washington. Like a tsunami, there is a small wave traveling along the surface where we can see it, but there is an immense movement below the surface, finally materializing as it ultimately inundates our coastal cities. Concerning the matter of earmarks, the situation is the same. They are little more than insulting distractions, mosquito bites on the tail end of a bull.

A short note on the meaning of term may be in order. In the old days, that is, in the days when people read books, the corner of a page might be turned to assist the reader in returning to some specific material of special interest. Translated to the hundreds of pages of a typical issue of legislation, earmarks , at least in concept, serve the same purpose. Whatever the original focus of the bill in question, earmarks typically appear in some convenient, rarely read section, thus, the name.

To the originator of the earmark, however, a convenient means to locate his “little jewel” among the great body of “other stuff” in his bill, might include folding the corner of the page containing his earmark in his copy.

The exact nature of the earmark, that is, its nature with respect to more normal and transparent congressional decisions, is interesting. The usual process of allocating our tax money through the representative process of our Congress refers, somewhere, to a kind of general (majority) agreement as to the legitimacy of the proposal. In the optimistic idealism of our Constitution, a bill is written proposing an expenditure on a certain project, the Congressional Representatives all read it, argue about it, and perhaps negotiate compromises between differing views of it and, finally, pass it.

The life story of an earmark is somewhat different. Whatever project is proposed in an earmark typically reveals certain other character traits. It is something which will assist its author’s reelection. It is usually presented as something not really meriting the attention of the entire Congress in the sense that more central legislation might. Perhaps the goal of the earmark is presented as a matter of too small a fiscal significance to “tie things up.” More commonly, the benefactors of the earmark are seeking some advantage not particularly appetizing to the taste of the full House, hence the wide variety of the things -- from short expensive bridges to doughnut museums.

One might think that such highly exclusive interests would fail to garner Congressional votes, and if so, one would be partially correct. Happily, at least for the successful ear markers, this dismal possibility is mitigated by other rather arcane traditions in the Congress. Yes, although the bridge earmarked by one voice will hardly serve to interests of a constituency a thousand miles away, there remains the prospect of “mutual back scratching.” Supporting, or at least , failing to oppose, that distant pork will inevitably arise again later as a promise by its sponsor to support something much closer to home, say, so close as to be in one’s very own Congressional district. In that case, a bridge -- no matter how exclusive its benefit -- can often be converted directly into votes in a reelection campaign.

Occasionally, earmarks really do actually serve the interests of the country in some redeeming way. Usually however, this happy exception is little more than a passing dream in a windstorm. Perhaps Mullah Nassr Edin’s political axiom that “all political possibilities can also be political liabilities if they appear at cocktail parties without their lipstick” may be applied just here.

Patience, please. We’re getting to the prostitute part. A tedious context must be presented for my readers who have lives beyond obsessive political wonkerism.

We may need to ask, “What political purposes are served by ranting and railing about earmarks?”

First things first, be advised that all the earmarks (including $350,000,000 for Sara’s on-again off-again “bridge to nowhere”) in aggregate comprise no more than a “gnat’s sneeze” when compared to the massive flow of our money through the Congressional budget process. For example, we allocate around $400,000,000,000 (four hundred billion compared to $350,000,000 -- three hundred fifty million) annually for the visible elements of our defense expenditures.

Obviously, constructive efforts to maximize the effectiveness of the much larger amount would represent a laudable legislative effort on the part of a Senator. Yet, we find him repeatedly hawking one complaint after another about the smaller amount. Earmarks enjoy the unlikely advantage of being “insulting” to voters and taxpayers far away from the bridge. In fact, at least to voters and taxpayers, earmarks can be made far more “insulting” than a couple of “whoops, we missed that one” moments revealed in the review of the incredibly more massive defense allocation, for example. The "insult" is personal! After all, most of those tax payers will never have a chance to drive across that bridge.

Finally, to the matter of the prostitute. Let us imagine a sexually repressed evangelical in a distant city to attend a meeting of, say, a Sunday School Budget Convention. It is the evening after a long day of conferencing. He finds himself in the absolutely worst part of town, piloting his rented car along dark dismal streets lined with, shall we say, “women of the night.”

There they are. Lined up one after another, each competing for his attention. We arrive at the focal question. Will he select his secret evening company based on her ear rings?

Our evangelical might glance at those baubles for an instant, but his more energetic attention will quickly migrate to other features, you know, matters of a more substantial interest.

In our tortured analogy, of course, the ear rings represent the earmarks. But what do those “other matters” represent? The invitation offered to voters by the Senator’s flammable campaign diatribe about earmarks is an invitation to be transfixed on the ear rings, ignoring all the other considerations. Once again, he will say “Those bastards over in Fartandbolt County have a fine new bridge paid for by your tax dollars! Every cent interloped from the General Fund by that crooked Senator of theirs!”

It is, perhaps, a message made all the more poignant when considered in the sight of your own delapidated bridge, that is, the one right here in Boltandfart County. The ambition of this Senator, populist hero that he is -- or claims to be, is to distract us from the fact that the defense allocation contains five hundred “whoops!” items, each with a taxpayer cost ten thousand times larger than the entire cost to replace both bridges. And, that would not be the cost of replacing them with hard bid contracts, either. That would be the cost of replacing them with “brother-in-law,” no-bid babies of the worst variety! (“We simply had to buy a fleet of Bentley convertibles to pull the gravel trailers!”)

So, we have made a comparison between the bridge costs and the Congressional budget’s defense allocation. So what? Defense spending, often, but not always, at least results in something tangible (the Osprey? As in: "It's an Osprey! Don't stand under it when it 'flies' over!") which can appear on a video. The unseen killer traveling below the tsunami’s modest surface wave is comprised of far “stinkier” matters than a wasteful defense budget. In this sense, we once again descend with the evangelical’s eyes as he sizes up those now infamous "other matters" in the process of selecting his prostitute.

Yes, we can be insulted by Fartandbolt’s good fortune at our expense, but that new bridge is little more than a “slap on the cheek” when we consider the "other matters." If that new bridge in the next county is a “slap,” there are other budget drains more akin to having a vampire inserting a permanent blood capture needle in one’s artery. The campaigning Senator works diligently to keep our attention on the slap and off the needle.

Do we really want to conduct our electoral responsibilities based on an ear ring?

What exactly are these vampires extracting from us? In a land with wealth so great that we hardly notice the needle, that is, where we seem to perpetually enjoy the ridiculously false luxury of considering only the ear ring, we can be deceived by immensely over priced “elephants” (not a Freudian slip, usually...) which seem to provide at least a “little something” for a price so outrageous that it would never bear the bright illumination of a sunny day. Examples? Of course.

The pharmaceutical bill written for us by drug company lobbyists is the polar opposite of any imaginable bargain it might promise for the price. Yes, we have a nice discount on our medicine, but the price is unfathomable. Predictably, every economizing advantage is, essentially, illegal. What a coincidence!

The "deregulation of everything" seemed to be a means to eliminate inefficient and over priced government controls. Instead of the promised reduction in our costs for everything from electricity to mortgage loans, we have wound up suffering through the total exploitative vaporization of Enron and the taxpayer bail out of Bear Stearns.

The destruction of unions, for example the air traffic controllers union, was touted as a way to really save some bucks. Now we spend money at an incredibly increased rate to compensate for labor shortages. The workers remaining are fighting to perform their life saving tasks with equipment which belongs in a land fill. The airlines, far from being able to fulfill their promise to pass such savings on to us as consumers, are now raising fares weekly amid a customer population stranded in planes unable to take off where even a bag of peanuts is now offered at a price.

No-bid military contractors performing theoretically necessary tasks of all sorts at costs beyond measure (one bottle of drinking water in Iraq: $8.80?) were proposed as a means to lower the price of war-fighting. Halliburton is no petty crook. Its corporate extraction of tax money will reach toward one half trillion dollars before we finish in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that incredible amount of compensation will be for what we taxpayers might generously consider a few billion dollars worth of honest work.

If current matters are too troubling, reach back in history. The famous Keating Five bail out money is quite possibly still financing some small part of McCain’s campaign or, at least, some of his houses. Enron’s carefully engineered brown out in California, that is, the one which suddenly required out-of-state generated power to be imported at eight times the cost of the local stuff, was not “chump change.”

These are not simple cases of building a bridge for someone else. These are major withdrawals of major amounts of our economic blood. They have been carefully crafted by the most exploitative Congressmen and Senators, executed not as earmarks but as central legislation and protected by the absolute perfidy of other legislative, judicial and executive branch crooks and criminals (Those would be the “hard working” politicians who are now retired into $50 million dollar homes somewhere nice.) who were supposedly responsible for “checks and balances.”

Once these “blood sucking” programs are in place, they can last for decades, every day promoting dynastic fortunes resourced by our tax money. (For example, California is still suffering under the burden of the desperate contracts it got railroaded into to turn the lights back on. This even after the alleged death of Enron!)

So, no matter how appealing it may be to just gaze at the ear rings, keep track of the more important stuff, too. Don’t let them lead you down the path of simply responding to insults about someone else’s bridge while they slip the needle into your artery for a permanent blood draw!

They won’t quit just because you have been manipulated to deliver another election to them. Like the prostitute. They see themselves as the gift that just keeps on giving.

Only after they win their election will they notice that you've pulled out their needle!

Honestly Appraising Why We Can't Do Much

The birthing mist of a new world order or the tears of the patriots?
It just becomes so tedious to keep pretending. 48

How far will we extend the destructive echo of this President and his tormented friends? How grave will we determine his petulance for the desecration of everything in his sight? Of course, we lick the economic wounds of a country looted to exhaustion and exasperation by his cronies, always covered by the authority of his office. Of course, we try to overlook the outrages his friends have perpetrated on our fellow American citizens, elections stolen in brazen crimes, bizarre, ambitious power concentrated with his penchant to be able to “arrest” any of us without charge, hearing, lawyer or law, policy disasters at home and over seas.

Are they somehow feeling more secure with the Governor of Louisiana secreted away in a federal prison? Are they reassured when the desperate voices of Katrina’s victims are silenced by their media friends? Do they feel vindicated when the outrageous crimes of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramhoff drift into the morass of yesterday’s news? Are they laughing and saying “I told you so! They’ll do nothing!” when they seem to have eluded the consequences of their illegal wire tapping? It is a grim picture of our descent from the rule of law, a grisly movie the world's worst watch for inspiration.

Are these usurpers frightened yet?

We, as citizens, might still claim that our failings here amount to no more than a little bad hygiene in the maintenance of our election powers and our democracy. We could, in fact, claim that had we somehow limited the spread of this greedy toxin to only the regions within our own shores. If that had been the case, our tragic embarrassment would have been solely our own private national affair, a domestic thing. We could have credibly told the world to wait, that we would correct our transgressions here at home, then, when that house keeping was accomplished, we would have once again begun to behave in a rehabilitated way consistent with our claims about ourselves. Consistent with our brave traditions. Consistent with our ideals and our national heritage.

Consistent with the incredible possibilities of our Constitution.

Sorry. It has spread beyond the borders and beyond our hope that it might be contained. It is raging around the world as a violent science fiction monster, encouraging every despicable cast off loser everywhere to abandon any fear of either our decency or our retribution. All these wretched little villains have found gangrenous bravado as they copied this President and his criminal friends. Whatever reluctance previously visited on the machinations of these little demons has been castrated. Now the brutes are finally emancipated from any concern that their monstrous ambitions might be countered, or even, criticized by the optimistic insistence of ideals from this country. Not only have we unleashed our own government’s threatening hubris on our own citizens, we have made the bloody spectacle of every tinhorn savage around the world abundantly acceptable. Once that minor detail was actualized, the blood bath began. And began quite horribly with a wrenching impunity that simply wasn’t there before we made a shallow, unmarked grave for our old high born thoughts here at home.

What in the hell are you talking about?

So the Russians invade Georgia, an ally of ours (or, at least, an ally of our President. Georgia turns out to be one of the three places on the planet where the locals still like him.). Naturally, as we sit here stupefied, bankrupt and effectively demilitarized, we are no more than a toothless bore as our President pleads with the new (not pretended) powers of the world to try to be a little more decent. Should our irritating complaints about Georgian sovereignty become too shrill, perhaps those mean old Russians will trot out the most deflating argument of all, the argument about our own failed colonial ambitions as we attack and occupy based on unexamined lies.

It seems that we have fumbled even the cheapest of our neo-con traditions, that is, of course, the choreagraphy of our famous, Republican "October Surprise." Its rescheduling to August is understandable, given the disheartening McCain campaign. The usual, really "stinky" side of things is certainly trotted out in fine form. McCain's primary international affairs adviser is a well paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia, no doubt providing a "wink and a nod" concerning that country's self-destructive challenge to the Russian Federation's 58th Army.

Massive deception being the currency of the neo-con realm, perhaps the Georgians were led to believe that, with our backing, their aggressive moves against their giant neighbor might be tolerated. Now, the Georgians, along with most of the rest of the countries in the world, understand that our backing is not much more than talk. Our "October Surprise," usually initiated by some sort of "unprovoked" attack by one of our "saved for a rainy day" enemies somewhere, is designed this time to use the military resources (and the blood) of others.

Will someone as inept as our President actually be able to replace the old "saber rattling" of our past "October Surprises" with an entirely "privatized" version where all the players are foreign? Wasn't there another Island of Granada somewhere with "trapped" college students closer to home? Sorry. Not if it requires anything from the American military. The cupboard is bare taking care of our violent international oil extraction schemes.

At least they can film a few dead Russians there in South Osetia to “justify” their violence.

Did we think that a punkish, out of date dictator such as Mr. Mugabe would show his blood soaked indifference to his people without the benefit of a failed, vacuous government here? Once his dread of some sort of American response to his outrages was nicely laid to rest, his real nature began to surface. Hollowed out as we are, the world can hardly expect the skeletal remains of the United States to actually do anything except send our useless diplomats to whine in chorus. Without an army or an economy those diplomats have also been rendered toothless.

In Sudan we have mastered the ability to countenance genocide. All of our promises after Rwanda have been made into cold soup for our meager breakfast. We dare not ostracize our cash master, the Chinese, or in any way perturb their profitable, and now, understandable complicity in the killing. Perhaps our task now is to learn how to continue our pretenses about ourselves while we watch helplessly.

Mr. Bin Laden’s great victory was once well diluted by our media and opinions. Now we see that he has emaciated our resources with his clever management of the poor, frightened old women in Washington. Bin Laden’s targeting was superb and astonishingly effective. With only a pocketful of insurgent tactics he has disabled our Constitution just as certainly as if he had hit Habeas Corpus with a shoulder fired grenade launcher. If we think the blasted hole in the Cole was a terrifying development, perhaps we should compare it to the ashy remnants of our Bill of Rights.

Bin Laden’s suspicious immunity has even become acceptable to us. Perhaps better said, his constant escapes have been made acceptable to us. We have even been slowly convinced that this failure, among all the others, doesn’t imply that we remain anything but a super power, an absurdity made possible by the ugly implication that skepticism had become treason.

This ugly list of nobodies who have embraced this opportunity to behave any way they wish could go on for many pages. Silly us. We thought Iran would be the next addition to this rolling disaster.

Do those vacuous eyes, wallowing in a pathos of psychotic bewilderment, betray a deep inner terror when considering the murderous complexity of Hamas and Hezbollah, now met with little more than hopeful abstractions of foreign policy? Do those weary jowls blush while watching Mr. Putin, into whose soul he claims to have glimpsed a trustworthy hint of reason, massacre our friends? Can his machine of deception somehow reconcile his associates’ rage about appeasement by the reasonable to his own desperate appeasement made necessary in the ruins of no other possibilities?

The awful example of our leadership has caused harm to the people of the world far beyond our borders. His comment that “Oceans no longer protect us...” is little more than a nagging migraine to those of us left stranded here in the corpse of America. We have long ago lost the luxury of bemoaning our own dilapidated state. We are now fully in “survival mode,” frighteningly distant and uninterested in much more than the painful, grave challenges we now face on almost every front. Our intuition as citizens now faces the unavoidable. We have lost a class war.

The whole idea of the protection of the oceans, frankly, became much more a warning to those outside our country. Our national self-serving misdirection and greed seem to have established themselves as propositions both devoid of shame and quite waterproof.

Thanks for the Education, George!

Blog doc 17 How Much Reconstruction?

Soon there may be a legitimate President in the White House, one which has honestly won an election, one which has campaigned with some sort of implied promise to purge not only the fiscal effects of criminal looting from our economy, but also the wild psychology of the adolescents who have looted our national resolve with their puerile fear mongering.

The cleansing of Abramhoff, DeLay and others of their ilk was a mere scratch on the surface. Granted, each of these minor abrasions revealed more and more of the incredible “classism” of a spoiled draft dodger with the ambitions of an eight year old. As American people, we are cynically adapted to the idea that we will be robbed by “a thousand cuts” no matter who has reached power [Similar to “Being nibbled to death by ducks.”]. However, this time even our long suffering numbness has been insulted by crassness and savage incompetence as we have patiently watched ourselves being robbed.

Civility has been a problem. Any public American has been reluctant to openly and brazenly refer to the executives of the country as “criminals,” or “liars,” or even “corrupt fear manipulators.” No public speech has stood to say clearly that we are foolish and cowardly victims of our own fears, that we are presently suffering the consequences of our failure to stand up as adults when it was the moment for us to face our challenges.

It may be time to reconsider our classical past. Can we reasonably suspect that the Roman Senators would have been so sheepish in either speech or action given the general historical image of their ambitions? Of course, there were limits within such a body, some imposed directly by fear of the consequences of being too blunt or overly suggestive of acts of political competition. Still, we have to assume that even the “low bar” of Roman Senatorial speech in such a place was significantly more direct and specific than the mouse-like drivel of our day, oration filled with obfuscation, blurry generalities and innuendoes.

We must now consider whether or not our blurry, modern concept of oration will ever possibly be direct enough to be a foundation for the correction of the improprieties which have been foisted upon us by our present autocrat. George Bush’s puerile, adolescent attacks on American Constitutional Law have been neither sophisticated, that is, of such a complex and subtle nature as to not manifest themselves in concrete absolutes of criminality, nor hidden away beneath layers of conditional possibilities which might sustain any question about their seriousness. Very little effort has been made in an attempt to present these crimes as confoundingly complex, to establish a continuing idea in our thoughts as citizens that perhaps, “We wouldn’t be so upset if we actually knew more about these matters.”

It is clear, now, that neither our educated and critical opinions nor even our unbiased intuitions have been given any weight in the autocrat’s concerns. He has simply acted, in the behavior of a young boy, to consolidate any advantage he perceives possible, regardless of the appearance of such an act to us. This may represent a greater affront to the citizen than the actual substance of such crimes. Of course, the scandalous actions of his government and his cronies constitute a direct and material loss to us, but his willingness to act in these ways without an accompanying attempt, no matter how mediocre, to at least confuse our perception of such crimes is nothing less than an arrogant and magnificent insult.

In the first case, we might, when our government has become reestablished after the election, launch out in a revolutionary frenzy to expose every tiny instance of his record. Every lie, every cheap manipulation through false fears, every instance of greed and looting, every corrupt redistribution of power, every grotesque “religious” ambition, and every other destruction of our cultural heritage -- legal, economic, social and in spirit -- might be revealed. Once the perpetrators and the abettors and the benefactors have been identified, the next phase of such a reconstructive undertaking might reasonably be a Stalin-esque purge of these parasites.

If this response were selected, the most notable of these self-descriptive elitists should experience the horror of the prisons they like so much, that is, not the “tennis-court” incarceration always mysteriously provided for the careless criminal nobility of the past, but the “real thing” inhabited by the victims of their own inspired, self-righteous laws. It would present them with another, so-far unexplored, opportunity to not only flesh out their claims to populist ideology, but also to establish an environment for them to learn new and exciting lessons about life in hopeless, endless terror. You know, Iraqi civilian style.

The alternative would be one extracted from a more Sunday School response to these attacks we have suffered. Because we will be so occupied with new challenges necessary to “get America moving again,” we might, in the shade of reconciliation and economy, just let these things go, just think of the future, just let the past die its own death.

Pursuing this alternate path, we might feel certain that the rest of the world would be quite reassured to notice that Americans are not vindictive, that they really only care about such luxuries as justice and honor when The Great Economy disregards past infractions and directs itself toward brighter days in the future. These foreigners, after all, might need to understand that our dedication to the Constitution can be reasonably mitigated, that is, we can tolerate such violations and move on, when the time and effort to pursue them would inconvenience our traditional, pragmatic interest in progress and growth.

Such a presumption might be more destructive to our international perception than all the ill conceived nonsense of the autocrat we will discard. We will simply consider the comparative down side of such an image as it is balanced by our previous “faith based” disaster relief, abstinence based AIDS relief and free-market ideology and “faith-based” designs for national reconstruction (after our “shock and awe” approach to “faith-based” regime change and its inevitable, “faith-based” post-bombing house cleaning).

The world might, finally, comprehend. The phrase, “Oh those Americans! No matter. Boys will be boys.” might be the seed for a new, more positive world view of our culture, but, unhappily, the disastrous opposite might more likely be the case. Can we, as a nation, dare to continue our insipid claim that “Gee, it seemed like a good thing for us to do at the time.” as a panacea for all these tragedies of our past greed and our past fear?

We might need to think a bit more seriously. We might find ourselves formulating a new message to our leaders.

“If your plan involves handing our tax money over to your cronies so they will support your campaigns, if your plan involves dropping bombs from the planes we citizens have paid for, if your plan requires holding people for years without lawyers, trials or charges, if your plan defines the cunning required to prepare the electorate to vote against its own interests as a result of your deceptions, we are not interested in your plan.”

“Please be advised. We have become a little more testy about being made into patsies. Many thousands of us have graduated from the Bush School with advance degrees and the scars from our long painful studies.”