Like the French say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." I know, the diacritical marks are missing. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Anyone believe Pelosi and the rest will do anything much different, even if Sen. Obama becomes president and the Dems have a filibuster-proof majority? Didn't I hear her say 2 years ago that earmarks were on the way out? Oh, I must have misunderstood -- that was directed at SCOPE, not presence. Waay waay out, in terms of number of tax dollars redirected by the New Majority..
Anyone believe Barack Obama has a nutcracker in his back pocket, a la LBJ, to twist the ones in charge into following a new line?
House prices are staying up in the DC metro area, I hear -- lots of people with "stable" government jobs, and "stable" government-contractor jobs sucking off the public teat or lobbying to direct more of the mother's milk of tax dollars to themselves and their clients -- and every special plea they make to their contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch "will of course be good for the whole country." They always are, right?
Like the French say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." I know, the diacritical marks are missing. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Anyone believe Pelosi and the rest will do anything much different, even if Sen. Obama becomes president and the Dems have a filibuster-proof majority? Didn't I hear her say 2 years ago that earmarks were on the way out? Oh, I must have misunderstood -- that was directed at SCOPE, not presence. Waay waay out, in terms of number of tax dollars redirected by the New Majority..
Anyone believe Barack Obama has a nutcracker in his back pocket, a la LBJ, to twist the ones in charge into following a new line?
House prices are staying up in the DC metro area, I hear -- lots of people with "stable" government jobs, and "stable" government-contractor jobs sucking off the public teat or lobbying to direct more of the mother's milk of tax dollars to themselves and their clients -- and every special plea they make to their contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch "will of course be good for the whole country." They always are, right?
What chance for a sensible national health care system? As a nurse and veteran, I happen to think the VA model has a lot to recommend it, except as administered by the hypocritical neocons who "support our troops" by, well, all the stuff they do to, and don't do for, them once the GIs have been hamburgered by that phony "war on terrorism" or whatever the excuse of the week is. Think all those "health desurance" executives in all those "competing" companies are going to give up their impossibly-complex café plans and huge paychecks without a fight?
And how will Obama undo the packing of the federal judiciary with "strict obstructionists" from the Wrong -- oops, Right way of thinking? Think Roosevelt had trouble with Nine Old Men? Wait till you see what the hundreds of life-tenure-even-for-bad-behavior judges and justices do to any efforts at renegotiating the Social Contract, let alone at specific enforcement of the tatters of the existing one -- Gingrich’s "Contract on America," spelled out in places like the Heritage Foundation’s seminal (as in what the rapist leaves behind) "Mandate for Leadership," published originally in 1980 and revised ever since, and readable right here on the internet. Read, and be afraid.
You might see the part about how the Radical Right (please, stop with the "conservative" label already) consciously planned and executed the mountain-of-debt strategy not only to move all that wealth upward to the "Base" and all that debt downward to everyone else. So that there’s no way any do-gooder Commie stinkin’ Liberal will ever be able to manage a little more social justice or even preserve the shards of the New Deal and the Great Society.
And of course there’s all those New Steal federal employees added during the, ha-ha-just-kidding "smaller government" Bush League and Reagan years, like the oil-and-gas-for-sex kids in the Minerals Management office. There’s a huge cadre of "Right"-thinking people in the bureaucracy and their friends among their "customers," the various, wink, wink, regulated industries. That mass has an enormous inertia to go with the momentum already given by the Bush League toward the Right. Good luck redirecting that, folks.
And of course the flock on the Right is headed back to its favored position as disloyal opposition, doing another Gingrich-Rove act to sucker Jane and Joe Palooka back into eventually believing that only the Right will protect their rights. Like via electronic video strip searches by "millimeter machines" built by a "defense" contractor, now appearing at your local airport. See yourself naked on the internet? But they told us these TSA would be PROTECTING us! Ah, but they make the airport security check lines run on time!
And speaking of inertia – what possibly can be done to bring reason into the "defense" sector? The generals can always say they have TOP SECRET information that makes it absolutely necessary for the survival and security of the Republic(ans?) to have, e.g., a 313 ship Navy, with lots of carrier task groups for senior admirals to command, so they can "project American power" anywhere, any time. Anyone want a slightly used V-22 "Osprey?" Via its one little constituency in Congress and the military and manufacturing sectors, this crash-by-wire turkey has survived multiple budget attacks, even though an Iraqi with a rifle could shoot it down and it couldn’t even shoot back. And there’s dozens more in the pipeline. Speaking of which, Sen. Obama apparently thinks growing corn to make ethanol to fuel your SUV even if it costs more for all your produce as a result is a "good idea." Brazil, he says, is largely energy-independent – all that alcohol from sugar cane, right? But did I not read that the rain forest, that useless jungle, is being hacked to make more fields for the cane (and grazing for greenhouse-gas-generating cattle and the termite population), with all that goes with THAT change.
And of course there’s that monstrosity called the Department of Homeland Security, which looks more and more like a cross between the Keystone Kops and the former East German Stasi. Whatchagonna do when they come for YOU? Think Sen. Obama can rein in what Dickless Cheney and his tribe hath wrought?
"Foreign policy?" Doesn’t that consist of the actions of that cadre of CIA specialists in bribery, extortion, and all those other bits of de-stabilizing trickery that move other governments either out of office and into the grave, or into "more favored nation" status under "friendly" despots? And the snivelly pontifications of the folks in Foggy Bottom, where the tactful language of diplomacy hides its own set of secret horrors? Already there’s a planetary shortage of edible rice – while we’re choking on the immanence of Professor Rice the State Secret-ary. Along with all the hundreds of billions in weapons gifts and sales EVERYWHERE, to help keep the pot stirred up (see above paragraph on "defense") with all the opportunities for graft and outright wholesale theft that "instability" provides?
Fugeddabout the $15 or $30 billion A MONTH in taxpayer wealth – present and way into the future – bleeding out of that expanding rupture in the nation’s aorta, so much of which is sopped up by fraud. Remember the billions of dollars in CASH, actual pallet loads of neat little bricks of non-sequential $100 bills, flown by US military transports to Iraq and abracadabra, "disappeared" into the fog of war. No doubt a big chunk now funds the black-hole budgets of the NSA and CIA and PDQ and all those other alphabet agencies (see above on "homeland security.") And, as the lawyers say, "inter alia," the flight of the former "Iraqi" Defense Minister" in his US-Taxpayer-Boughten private jet, with his own little stash of purloined paper money.
So if you think happy days are here again, and that we are about to enter a golden age of political homeostasis, pull up your socks and be ready for a taste, as one baseball great of yore said, of "Déjà vu all over again."
And if by some incredible October Surprise, McCain and Palin rule the roost, all I can say is "Whoa, Nellie!" and be grateful that the NRA has helped us citizens load up on weapons up to and including antitank guns and all that. Maybe the Right was right on one little thing, at least.
Oh, and one version of the story of Pandora, and that mortal box she was given to guard, is that the last of the plagues on humanity to escape from the box (after war and famine and disease and hate and all that) was, get this,"Hope."
Hope we don't choke on "Hope and Change."