"In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false."
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| rock and roll means fuck "In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false." |
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Monday, September 15, 2003 sunday mornin' comin' down. today was the first sunday in forever that i could spend any way i pleased. i was fortunate enough to be able to spend it with a couple of newspapers and some django. some thoughts in no particular order... first, i am growing weary of all the 'but, is he electable?' business being bandied about in regards to this dem presidential candidate or another. the question that should be asked is 'does bush have a chance?' my answer: no. i am of the opinion that a year from now the most unelectable person in the race will be none other than dubya himself. fuck, i have a cat that will outpoll bush in nov 2004. after a summer where it seems much of the nation limited its news consumption to the comings and goings of ben and j-lo, (apparently splitsville at the time of this writing. a note to her future suitors: do we detect a pattern here? she's got a world class bootay and all but, well, she's a bit fucking nuts.) it seems that folks are finally beginning to catch a whiff of just how rotten our current state of affairs is. check out today's NYT. Dizzying Dive to Red Ink Poses Stark Choices for Washington How a Huge Surplus Became a Vast Deficit, Fast When President Bush informed the nation last Sunday night that remaining in Iraq next year will cost another $87 billion, many of those who will actually pay that bill were unable to watch. They had already been put to bed by their parents. Administration officials acknowledged the next day that every dollar of that cost will be borrowed, a loan that economists say will be repaid by the next generation of taxpayers and the generation after that. The $166 billion cost of the work so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has stunned many in Washington, will be added to what was already the largest budget deficit the nation has ever known .... The $8 trillion difference between those numbers has little precedent in American history. The long-term budget forecast has declined as much in the last two years as the total revenue collected by the United States government from 1789 to 1983. A Fall Worthy of Milton "It really has been a Miltonian experience, from the heights to the depths," said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, invoking "Paradise Lost" as a metaphor for the budget's fall. that's not from the op/ed page either, kids. that's A1 above the fold. SMACK! The Tax-Cut Con A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits, but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy adjustments. If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained. In particular, Social Security will have to become far less generous; Medicare will no longer be able to guarantee comprehensive medical care to older Americans; Medicaid will no longer provide basic medical care to the poor. ... In Norquist's vision, America a couple of decades from now will be a place in which elderly people make up a disproportionate share of the poor, as they did before Social Security. It will also be a country in which even middle-class elderly Americans are, in many cases, unable to afford expensive medical procedures or prescription drugs and in which poor Americans generally go without even basic health care. And it may well be a place in which only those who can afford expensive private schools can give their children a decent education. KERPOW! An Unsustainable Policy on Iraq Mr. Bush has so far failed to explain satisfactorily how he plans to secure Iraq without a crippling, indefinite American military commitment; speedily achieve Iraqi self-government; and share the burden of rebuilding Iraq's industries and society so the United States can leave on its own terms. And his maneuvering room may soon shrink, since the Democratic challengers are desperate to break out of the herd on Iraq. If Mr. Bush does not demonstrate a clear and convincing strategy soon, he may face political pressure to bring home American troops under conditions that would be embarrassing for America and perilous for the Middle East. Of all the possible scenarios, the most important one to avoid is a poll-driven scramble to bring the troops home that suffers the same lack of preparation the administration showed at the end of major combat. POW! Saying When It's Over A few months ago, White House officials were scoffing at comparisons between the occupation of Iraq and the lengthy post-World War II occupations of Japan and Germany a half-century ago. But last week, both President Bush and his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, were invoking those successful experiments in nation-building as they counseled patience. BLAM! deep doodoo the bushies are in deep, deep shit. how is anyone gonna run on this record? and, if you think things are bad now, wait a few months. by election day it's gonna be much, much worse. we're still gonna be on our own basically in iraq. the calvary ain't comin'. they may drop a few coins in the cup but you can forget about any significant contribution of troops from just about anyone. india? not bloody likely. they've got elections next year too. pakistan? don't hold your breath. egypt? c'mon, yer killin' me over here. france/germany? how do you say 'drop dead' in french? how about 'freedom fries'? 'old europe'? 'chocolate makers'? one thing that everyone seems to be overlooking as regards the possibility of western european troops deploying to iraq is this: the western europeans, hell, practically the whole EU hates bush. they can see quite well that the request for money/boots on the ground is, in many ways, part of a 'please bail my ass out in an election year' strategy. they would be sending troops to die in place of americans to placate the concerns of the american electorate. there is no way in hell that bush gets reelected with american kids getting waxed everyday in iraq. it would be so much better if those kids spoke french or urdu or turkish. the problem for the bushies is that pretty much no one in those countries really cares to see him serve a second term. this administration came in pissing all over the kyoto accords and other such nonsense. we didn't need them this spring when we called the UN a 'debating society' and 'approaching irrelevance'. well, guess what? it seems that the very folks the bushies are passing the hat around to now have decided that they don't much need bush either. sucks to be you, kid. what makes it worse is that today we learn that the long anticipated report on iraqi WMD 'programs' or the previous regime's desire to one day have such 'programs' (they've long accepted the fact that the actual, tangible WMDs aren't to be found. why? they never existed, that's why.) that david kay had promised will contain 'suprises' contains this beauty: we haven't found dick. nothing. nada. apparently the lack of anything politically expedient to report has both downing street and the white house eager to bury it. they may never actually publish the thing at all. that's gonna go over like a fucking brick with those that told us as much a year ago, not to mention the families and friends of those that went to iraq and never came back. nice. to suppress the report we had all been promised because it could be politically damaging to these evil, bumbling morons is just beyond the fucking pale. it's obscene. oh, and one last thing. the next time the axis of evil that is dick cheney emerges from his 'secure, undisclosed location', will someone slip a freakin' bible underneath his right hand before we let him say a fucking word? i can't remember ever seeing a such a display of unmitigated bullshit shoveled forth by a heavy from any administration during a MTP appearance in my life. i would run down falsehood after prevarication after bald faced lie if i had the energy to do so. i don't. go check out this rather flabbergasting annotated collection of quotes from this travesty over at uggabugga. it's really pretty staggering in scope. amazing. there is a special place in hell.... i'd like to dedicate this song to the press. the replacements: "shootin' dirty pool" " do us all a favor, get yourself a spine.." posted by downtown | 1:40 AM |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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