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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Thursday, November 05, 2009

A Fond Look Back At The Bush Administration 

...there are very few reasons to reminisce about the late and generally unlamented disaster that was called the administration of George W. Bush. History will probably show those eight long years to be a grim joke played on American citizens by a feral band of yes-men, fixers, and hustlers who never encountered any national issue - either great or small - that thew couldn't twist around into some pure raw financial windfall for the benefactors and patrons that essentially bought Bushco's ticket into the White House. There is, however, at least one reason to look back fondly on that era, especially the period after September 11, 2001:

At least during that era, we could live with the comfort of Dick "Big Dick" Cheney being incommunicado, hiding out in one or another "undisclosed location". Yes, there was the occasional muttering, angry emergence on some Sunday political show, looking for all the world like one of those 'world of nature' movies where one of Jacques Cousteau's divers would get too close to a moray eel fetched up in some coral hidey-hole, but for the most part we didn't have to listen to ol' "Big Dick" all that much. Now that he is free of the strictures of spending all of his time underground, all that is over and that's a darned shame, because these days you can't swing a dead possum without hitting a podium behind which cranky ol' 'Big Dick' is looming, carrying on about the failure of courage the Obama administration is showing over the conflict in Afghanistan...

It is ever so slightly possible, if you will grant me this indulgence, that we wouldn't be in the leaky boat we are in right now if Bushco principles like 'Big Dick' had decided to express as much concern over "winning" the war against Terra in Afghanistan way back in 2002 or 2005 or 2008 as they - and he - are now. These days, we seem destined to be graced with repeated calls for massive infusion of troops to Afghanistan by one of the primary architects of the abandonment of our earlier efforts in Afghanistan in order to invade a sovereign nation that posed the unspeakably terrifying threat of launching paper mache remote-controlled UAV's laden with nuclear chick pea bombs from rogue Iraqi garbage scows anchored off the Eastern Seaboard.

Or something like that...

Why we even need to be exposed to the likes of 'Big Dick' Cheney at all when it comes to the very military action in Afghanistan that he readily abandoned in lieu of the much more profitable invasion of Iraq over six years ago is a question for historians to sort out. All we can know is that we should look back fondly on the last administration if only because we didn't have to listen to 'Big Dick' Cheney's mewling half-witted nonsense like we do these days...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:36 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

As We Consider Why MSM Themes Matter More Than Reality 

...all you need to know, as far as the MSM is concerned, is that Obama has suffered a stinging defeat for his hoped-for agenda, all because a really lousy candidate for Governor of Virginia got the stuffing beat out of him and a sitting Governor of New Jersey who suffered from a certain personally profound unpopularity failed in his effort to secure a second term. On the other hand, as of this moment, the MSM is for some reason refusing to discuss the fact that the race for the seat in New York's 23rd Congressional District is going to be won by a Democrat for the first time since God made dirt...

It's an interesting view of analysis, or at least what passes for analysis in these latter days of the decline of Main Stream Media as a real live Fourth Estate. The bottom line in tonight's elections is pretty simple, however. The Democrats just lost two Governor's offices to Republicans who will immediately begin cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating programs and reducing services for everybody else, a prospect to which I say "Good; maybe even Great!" I have long been a disciple of de Tocqueville's long-ago observation that “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve" when it comes to state and local elections. If all those de-energized '08 Obama voters in New Jersey and Virgina want to send him a message by sitting on their hands this time around, they can now check off that "mission accomplished" box and live with the consequences for the next four years...

On the other hand, in the in-focus race that really mattered up in New York's North Country, the much- discussed power of the tea baggers to bring the Republican Base back to majority dominance has resulted in a Democrat winning the seat for the first time since the end of the Civil War. The tea baggers weren't really interested in talking about those two governor's races because they are sufficiently sentient to grasp the difference in power balance between holding a Governor's office and holding a seat in either the US House or US Senate. New York's 23rd District mattered in a way that no Governor's election ever could because the 'baggers understand that it is only within the halls of Congress that they can achieve their ultimate goals of nation-wide political and social change...

...and they failed. They lost every which way and managed to construct a narrative for the New York 23rd special election that will provide future generations of political operative with a manual on either how to - or how not to - throw away a clear poltical advantage, depending on which way those future generations want to swing. What they didn't do was demonstration how to win when competing outside their weight class...

We may well not here much about that tomorrow, though, because the MSM is clearly so anxious to construct a theme addressing the decline of the influence of the current president. That theme construction will be manifested by the loss of two formerly Democratic Governorships, while the loss of one more Republican seat in the House of Representatives - which just yesterday was going to be its own manifestation of the rising power of the tea bagger right with Hoffman's inevitable victory - will be lost in all that other noise about how the loss of the Governorships in...wait for it now...New Jersey and Virginia...spin out the threat of eventual DOOM for the current administration...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:17 PM 0 comments

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