WHERE TO START

Where do you start in thinking about the horrible, insane mess that President Bush has gotten this great country into? Do you start with the unnecessary and illegal war about which has now been revealed that many civilian casualties were incurred because we got the opposite of what Bush suggested for months (years) was "good, solid intelligence"? Or should you start with the supposedly now booming economy in which any jobs that have so far been created are only taking us halfway (so far) to where we were before Bush hijacked (yes, that's like what terrorists do) our country and meanwhile college tuitions are going up, jobs are being shipped overseas, child-care costs and health care costs are increasing, and Bush's answer for it all is more tax cuts for the wealthy?

I mean, it's a fluid situation, and every damn day, there's some new study released by some just-formed group (usually with a name that describes either the opposite of the group stands for or explains it's nefarious purpose in doubletalk code) which claims to debunk the conventional wisdom. Or claims to reaffirm the conventional wisdom. At any rate, enough studies are done and released about enough topics that everyone who talks to a newspaper or a tv pundit has an expert-conducted study to cite that supports their side, no matter what their side is.

Prime example, global warming. Rightwingers say it's junk science, leftwingers say it's happening right now. Who's right? Well, let's go to the experts. Whaddya know, the experts all disagree. So it would seem there is no objective reality.

Except that they just disagree about certain things on the surface, even though they all agree that the climate is definitley changing. The WMD situation is another example--David Kay says "we were all wrong" about WMD because he hadn't found any, then just this morning, Glen Beck starts talking about how WMD shells with UN inspection stickers have been found in junk heaps in Turkey and Jordan. OK, maybe so, but we can all agree that the WMD are not now and have not for some time been in Iraq.

But, back to what I was saying. The situation in America is fluid, the economy does "a little better than expected" and the Republicans all stand up and cheer on every radio and TV show and then when first-time jobless claims "exceed expectations", they all harrumph about how employment is a lagging indicator. And it almost makes one's head explode.

And so everyone knows what the large, overarching truth is, i.e., global warming is happening, there were no WMD in Iraq at the time of invasion (esp. no nukes), the economy is in the crapper, and so forth and so on. So, not that this is any original observation or anything, but this is where, as the Cherokee proverb goes, he who bullshits best eats most.

There is a group of people who understand the actual truth and understand that if the public realizes that a given thing is true, they won't support the policies that this group proposes that will only benefit this group and even then only in the short run. So they break out the bullshit--case in point, we don't Iraq to switch to euros in oil trading, because that'll make it difficult for our buddies at Halliburton and Shell and Chevron Texaco to get a rich as fucking possible, so (and this is the bullshit part)--SADDAM IS BUILDING NEW CUELER WEAPONS and RAH RAH WE'RE THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH! The first part is false, the second part is mostly true, and...

My god, going through all this, I just don't know if I have the energy...long story short, get Bush out!!! I mean, his very family name is short for bullshit...

Saw Jan Schakowsy, Democrat of Illinois givin' 'em hell on C-Span a few minutes ago...stick it to 'em...