Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Price, Apparently, Is Not Right

So I woke up this morning and thought that it would be nice to sit in front of the television for a few minutes before I got my day really started and watch The Price Is Right. Unfortunately, President Bush was on TV instead, hammering home the same talking points he has always hammered home about the war in Iraq: If we don’t complete the mission, we lose, and terrorists will attack America.

This has been the Republican party line since September 11, 2001, a cold, black day in American history. Know why it was such a cold, black day in American history? Not just because of the terrorst attacks. No, it was also a cold, black day in American history because it was the day that the Repulicans decided to exploit that horrible tragedy to scare the American people into submission and complicity. The day became colder and blacker in retrospect as each successive day went by and the vast majority of Americans—an uneducated, redneck, evangelical mass of fleshy lemmings who have not had an original thought of their own in who knows how long—continued to support that expolitative agenda, the culmination of which was the unforgivable crime of re-electing this failed President in 2004. Once Bush is out of office and history begins to write the real story of his presidency, how long will it take before America as a country finally begins to understand Bush in the same way that it now understands utter failures like Nixon? I can’t even think of any other Presidents, besides Nixon and Bush II, who have done more to damage the United States.

What follows will be some random blurbs in reaction to today’s speech - I figured I should at least blog about it a little bit, and since I can bring my laptop out to the recliner in front of the television...well, then, there you go.

He’s yelling at people. He accuses the reporters of asking him hypotheticals and says he will not answer hypotheticals, and then says that his job is to make sure that the hypotheticals don’t happen. He stands up there and says that we should let him do what he has been doing ineffectually since he took the oath of office, and refuses to consider what might happen - other than the blindingly obvious fact that terrorists will attack Americans mercilessly on every square inch of American soil as soon as we end the war - if his plans and strategies and tactics don’t work. And yet what evidence do we have so far that these plans and strategies and tactics have worked at all? That they will ever work? None. Oh, well, there are some who would say that Bush is a hero because his efforts have prevented any further attacks on American soil. Anyone who believes that hasn’t read enough - or probably anything - about the way al Qaeda operates. They work strategically, not tactically, and with a firm understanding of the kind of operation that will work and the kind of operation that will not work. An operation like September 11th was a long shot in the first place, because of the inherent difficulties in attacking America, geographically speaking. It worked because Americans - rushed, harried Americans - had decided to relax airport security to the point that Mohammad Atta and his crews could get on planes with box cutters in their bags. The whole thing could have been prevented if we had simply not allowed box cutters on planes in the first place. Never mind all the failed intelligence and lack of cooperation between the FBI and the CIA. NO KNIVES ON PLANES. So I guess Maggie Gyllenhal was right - it is important that we, as Americans, stop to consider how our way of life has contributed to the ease others have in finding ways to kill us. (Of course, I thought she was right all along, but most ignorant Americans had the knee-jerk reaction that she was unpatriotic - this is more of the Bush poison, because they do their very best to make it appear as though anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest is completely unpatriotic and perhaps even part of al Qaeda.) No new Bush policies have made America any safer from another 9/11. Only slightly tighter airport security, which is nothing that any other President would not have done. We could have had Barney Fife in the White House after 9/11 (come to think of it...) and we would have gotten tighter airport security. At least for a little while. Until those very same rushed, harried Americans got tired of waiting in those lines again. No, we haven’t had another 9/11 yet because al Qaeda hasn’t come up with one yet. The argument that follows that one, from the Bushies, is that al Qaeda hasn’t had the chance to plan anything new because they have been on the run since 9/11. Well, yeah. Again, Barney Fife would have massed the deputies once something like that happened. If you commit a crime, there will be someone you have wronged, and that person will set the authorities on your tail; the intensity of the manhunt will be in direct proportion to what you have done. Ordering the murder of three thousand people will get a lot of people with guns to start looking for you. Any President would have attacked the country that harbored and trained the jihadists. He hasn’t come up with anything unique or creative - he has not used his brain to think of some new way to fight this menace. He has just done what those before him have done in times of trouble: fire missiles at targets he thought were good but actually weren’t. Remember Shock And Awe, that opening salvo of the war in Iraq? Do you remember that it did not get anyone they had targeted, including Saddam Hussein?

He also keeps calling Iraq a sovereign government, as though if he repeats that slogan enough times, people might begin to think of Iraq as some kind of royal place, like England, maybe, where they have things like, you know, infrastructure and roads.

“If we don’t succeed in Iraq, this country is less secure.” He doesn’t say why; he just says it will be so. He gives us nothing to believe about what he says; all he does is say things that he knows will scare stupid Americans, and he is fully confident in how many stupid Americans are out there, because his only piece of domestic policy since he took office is No Child Left Behind, which works to ensure that Americans will never really get any smarter.

He questions whether the Democrats understand how dangerous the world is. George W. Bush actually stood up on national television and questioned someone else’s understanding of something. I could barely see straight for all of my shame and embarrassment that I have to think of this orangutan as my president.

He said, "Take the child tax credit; if it is not made permanent, in other words, if it expires, and you got a family of four sitting around the breakfast table, the taxpayers can be sure that their taxes will go up by $2,000 - $500 for that child, $500 for the one right there, $500 for this one, and $500 for that one. That is a tax increase. And taking $2,000 out of the pockets of the working people will make it harder to sustain economic growth." Okay, a family of four, George, would have only two children, not four, but hey - maybe your Yale degree wasn’t in math.

Trickly little question there, one about how he has so far failed to achieve any progress on his three big second term goals: Social Security reform, tax code overhaul, and immigration reform. He was asked why shouldn’t Democrats be given a chance to work with him during his last two years. His answer began with his dangerous little smirk and with him saying that that was a tricky little question there - except that it was not nearly as complex a question as some of the others, but it did ask him to think about what it would be like to work with people who did not always agree with him, and this is a President who ignores those who do not agree with him, so there was no way for him to answer at all - but here’s how he tried. His answer was that he had not given up on any of those goals, that he had two years left to achieve them, and that he “believed” that he would best be able to achieve those goals with a Repulican controlled Congress, and that he “believed” that he would be working with a Republican controlled Congress. He did not say why he believed any of those things, and he offered no evidence of how working with a Republican controlled Congress had worked since he had taken office. And then he made that joke about how the Dems are already measuring the offices on the Hill for their new - undoubtedly blue, right? - drapes, quipping that everyone is saying that the result of the election is a foregone conclusion. That’s a defense mechanism, of course, and maybe it turns out that the idiot knows at least one thing - that he is an enormously unpopular President in his second term, that the midterms are nigh, and that a large shift in seats in Congress almost always takes place as a result of the midterms during the second term of an unpopular President. He knows his party is in trouble (thanks to Mark Foley for IMing the pages, and Dennis Hastert for covering it up) and that he will have an even harder time bungling his job and making America less safe in his last two years if he loses control of Congress. He’s like a rattlesnake that you’ve backed into a corner. Except that he really is all bark and no bite.

If you thought we would lose sir, would you tell us? His answer: I don’t think we’re going to lose. All he sees is victory, all he understands is what he wants, and he has no idea how to get there - only the foolhardy faith that someone else can get it done and that he can then explain it in small words for ignorant Americans and take credit for it even though neither his life nor his job were on the line. That’s one of the reasons that it is easier for a second term President to do what Bush is doing - he knows his job is safe. Unless, I suppose, someone walked into the Oval and found ••••• on her ••••• giving him a ••••••.

Ugh. This is no way to start one’s day.

Oops, wait, it’s going to get worse. I was watching ABC, then they signed off and I clicked over to CBS to check for The Price Is Right (it was on commercial), and then clicked on NBC - and they’ve got Joe Biden, the Democratic Senator from Delaware, and perhaps low-grade Presidential candidate in 2008, blowing hot air in response to Bush’s talk.

Actually, by the time I finished writing that last paragraph, Biden had finished, and did not seem to have said anything of substance. It’s actually been quite awhile since Joe Biden said anything of substance - some time before the John Roberts confirmation hearings, where he made himself look like a complete ass and pretty much ruined any chance he had of running successfully for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

After Biden, they brought on Tim Russert, and then Brian Williams, but I checked CBS again, and The Price Is Right was on again, except that it was the last regular game before the second showcase showdown, which means the show was basically over; and I had missed the bulk of it because of listening to President.

Again...ugh.

If you want me to un-censor the three words I have censored a few paragraphs up, please post a comment and let me know.

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