No Fear of Freedom

February 20, 2004

The Greatest Threat To America Today

Read a dinger a week or two ago who said the second greatest threat to America today is terrorism. Ehhnnttt! Not merely wrong, not even within hailing distance.

The biggest threat to America, sez he, is partisanship. Ehhnnnttt! Throw that man out of tha studio. Thass jus' ridicalous.

The greatest threat facing America today? Oh, it's roughly the same as it's always been, only worse. As Pogo said, "Yep son, we has met the enemy and he is us." Especially those of us who intend to vote for Georgie Whackjob baBushka, because Bush not merely represents, but personifies, the greatest threat to America today.

"Oh, he can't be that bad." The hell he can't. The man has a strong set of airy beliefs and not one fucking clue about the real world. He listens to his advisors on everything, even the news, but hasn't got one fucking clue what a decent advisor looks like.

He has committed us to defeating "evil" in the world. Vanquishing it. Talk aboutcher mission impossible. Evil has existed throughout history. If there is a God, she (Dear heart always tells me, "There is a God, and she's black.) has accepted it. But with George W. Bushy-tail"s mighty, visionary (hallucinatory) leadership, America can do what's never been done, even by God.

I think he gets that shit from the neocons. I strongly recommend Pat Buchanan's review (And don't think that don't feel weird.) of Prince Perle and and Flim-Frum's (The "axis of evil" man.) book for a really sensible (weirder and weirder) critique of the neocons. But I'm still gonna tell ya my half-baked theory.

The narrator in the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, believed that the character he calls Phaedrus, my namesake and the man the narrator used to be, thought his way into insanity. Phaedrus was a brilliant man, IQ maybe 180. I don't know if it's even possible to think your way into insanity, but if it is, I'd think you'd have to be pretty bright to do it. The neocon-artists are intelligent men. How intelligent, I dunno, but they're not dummies.

I believe they have effectively done what Phaedrus may have done. Maybe they didn't think they're way into insanity, but they did think, through "pure" reason and theory unconnected to reality, they're way into insane policies. As General Zinni said, they're academics who know next to nothing about the Middle East and have never had an idea that actually worked on the ground. And Bush listened to 'em. And they've been wrong about nearly everything. They have bolloxed the "war" on terrorism. And they want to do it some more. And Bush has no problem with that. Thass a purty big threat. But it ain't the half of it.

Got this little matter of ee-conomics ta consider. For a little compare and contrast, Brad Delong excerpts the Economist (A respected - sounds weird too, dont' it? - conservative publication. Well, they're not American conservatives.) Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Fools? Part CCCXXVI

The Economist thinks about George W. Bush's deficits and compares him to Ronald Reagan. The Economist knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of its. And, says the Economist, George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan:

Also from Brad: The CBPP Accurately Forecasts the Bush Budget Proposal and The Budget Picture:

First, it is impossible to balance the budget by 2014 simply by cutting spending. Using wish lists of small-government-is-better think tanks such as the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, the analysts tally savings from wiping out business subsidies; eliminating federal spending on K-12 education, housing, worker training, environmental protection and manned space flight; squeezing out waste; raising the Social Security retirement age; and trimming Medicare payments to health-care providers.

All of that gets them only three-quarters of the way to the goal; it still takes $134 billion in tax increases during 2014 to balance the budget. You won't read that in Mr. Bush's Feb. 2 budget, which likely will avoid looking beyond the next five years....

Second, undoing all of the Bush tax cuts, as Democratic front-runner Howard Dean proposes, won't be enough to balance the budget either. That yields about $300 billion in 2014. Even if Mr. Dean banked that whole sum and didn't keep his $1 trillion health-care promise, he still would be only 55% of the way to balance.

But it's even more fun than that. The gummint, any US gummint, uses the Social Security fund as a CYA lie about the true deficit. In 2015, the fund switches from surplus to deficit, an' it ain't gonna cover nobody's ass no more.

We got a $7 trillion dollar deficit today. If Bush's fiscal policies are continued, it'll be more than $12 trillion in 2014 and will have grown substantially as a percent of GDP. Our children and grandchildren will be responsible for every bit of that debt, and they din't even get a vote. And after 2015, as the baby boomers continue to retire and Social Security and Medicare costs explode, things start to get bad.

Unless we get a miracle, like supply-side economics actually turning out to work, meaning over 99% of economists are wrong, I'd say we're swimmin' upstream in a river fulla shit.

Add to all that Bush's arrogance, violations of international law, alienation of long-time allies, suspension of human rights abroad and civil rights at home -- hell, it jus' goes on forever, don't it?

When Bush was "elected" I really thought he'd be the worst president ever. Ehhnnnttt! Wrong again, banana breath. He's turned out waayyy worse than that.

WORST PRESIDENT POSSIBLE!! Or so I fervently hope.

posted 1:03 PM by Phaedrus | Link | |

Comments: Post a Comment