The Fog and Phony Show

The President continues to remind us all of the Kevin Bacon character screaming “do not be alarmed, all is well” at the end of Animal House, just as he is trampled to death under an escaping crowd, particularly with moves such as parading Iraqi-Puppet-Premier Allawi around Washington to tell us how swimmingly things are and how hopeful he is for Iraq.
Fortunately, at least one of the groups he will see lost its sense of irony (or reality) a long time ago, and will have no need even to suspend disbelief. That of course, would be the joint session of Congress, the body that, facing record deficits, has no problem adding another hundred-fifty billion dollars to the tab, with yet another round of tax cuts. Yes, yes– these are middle class tax cuts, so Democrats can jump on the tax cut bandwagon too. (Recall the shit Howard Dean took when he suggested that our national financial situation was sufficiently dire that all of the Bush tax cuts– for rich and middle class alike– be reversed? Kind of the same shit that, oh, John Kerry gave him for asserting that Saddam Hussein’s capture meant jackshit as far as improving America’s security. In American politics, not only is truth no defense, its some kind of a crime, at least as our bought and paid for media sees it.)
You know, it hasn’t been long since I mentioned our old pal Yaser Hamdi… but the government has announced his release, and that he’ll be on a plane to Saudi by the end of the week. I guess now that the election is less than six weeks away, he’s not sufficiently dangerous to continue holding in solitary confinement, as he was for the previous three years. Too bad that Jose Padilla has no connections to Saudi Arabia, or we’d deport him there (or at least, to Syria, like we do other reconstituted terror suspects.) To be fair, al-Marabh was only 27th on our list of most wanted terror suspects when we released him. Had he been in the top 10…
Good to see that the idiocy surrounding the detention and deportation of Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) has resulted in our government proposing action: to make sure dangerous miscreants like the famous singer don’t get to board airplanes in the first place.
Reading the full panoply of what’s going on should lead one to the obvious conclusion that we are being led by nincompoops at best, and lunatics at worst.
Responsibility is now a dirty word in this country– unless it applies to some minimum wage peon, in which case he or she is responsible for every bad thing that ever happens to them, especially if its beyond their control. Presidential
polling out there leads me to conclude that, contrary to the latest ravings all around, the election is still a dead heat. We’re after September 15th– I thought it would trend one way or another; while Bush looked like he was opening up a meaningful lead, Kerry’s starting to talk about Iraq and national security reversed that trend… we’re still at a dead heat, with the first debate a week away.
What I would like to see– seriously– is John Kerry tricking Bush into getting out of character. Not to make Bush look like his usual tongue-tied buffoon character– that will only help people continue to pretend that the New England Brahman preppy fratboy millionaire is “folksy” and has “common sense” (both of which are… lies). No. Kerry must make Bush start talking about something the President cares about deeply enough to actually take seriously (unfortunately, the only known subjects that fit that bill would be, in the President’s own words, “sports… or pussy”). Still, I suspect Kerry, former president of the debating society at Yale, might just be able to pull it off.
Just have old George Dubya Bush come off as articulate and intelligent sounding– about anything. Given the American electorate, that will probably finish off the President for good.