Bush Sells Plan for Iraq, Cites Bird Omens (from: The Disassociated Press Archive)

A Disassociated Press Report, May 27, 2004

US President George W. Bush tried to convince Americans on Monday the war in Iraq could be turned around as the US and Britain asked the UN for a resolution endorsing the handover of power to an interim Iraqi government.

In a half-hour televised speech at the US Army War College, Bush insisted the deteriorating situation was not a reason for despair.

"It's true we don't have a plan," said Bush. "But you can be sure of one thing: we will stay the course."

Bush's job approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, suggesting he faces the possibility of defeat in the Nov. 2 election. This speech was considered an important opportunity to persuade voters that the war in Iraq had not gone irretrievably wrong. Bush, however, did not take that opportunity.

"There are difficult days ahead," he said. "The way forward may sometimes appear chaotic. In fact it will almost certainly be chaotic because we don't have a plan and we have steadfastly refused to take advice. Even so we're hoping to hold this puppy together until the elections at least, and maybe beyond. And we have reason to believe that ultimately triumph will be ours."

Bush explained that his reason for confidence was a bird omen he witnessed while at his ranch in Texas.

"I saw an eagle clutching a serpent in its talons," he said. "It is a sign that God is on our side and the enemy is cursed. A great victory lies ahead for us."

This is the first time in a speech that Bush has evoked bird omens as relevant to the war on terror. Although widely known for his strong religious beliefs, the president's mention of omens has surprised some commentators, who note that bird omens in particular are associated with pagan Greece and Rome rather than Christianity.

"We are not really happy with this recourse to pagan practice," said Farley Shagmitt, current chairman of the Southern Evangelical Reformed SS League. "But the president is a man who loves the great outdoors, and if he finds inspiration in an American eagle, then maybe it isn't so un-Christian after all. God created eagles too."

Other commentators noted Bush's mention of the bird omen was oddly similar to a scene in the recently released blockbuster film Troy, starring Brad Pitt. In that film, based on Homer's war poem the Iliad, a Trojan priest at one point refers to an omen of an eagle clutching a serpent as a sign that Troy will win a "great victory."

"I think the president saw the movie and wanted to link his war on terror with the great ancient war between Greeks and Trojans," said Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). "Unfortunately, what the president failed to note was that finally the Trojans didn't win the war. Instead their city was destroyed by the invading Greeks. Thus this allusion to the movie is misguided: it's confusing and counterproductive, now at a time when we need clarity and direction from our leader."

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) agreed. "If the president wanted to allude to the Trojan war," she said, "he at least could have put America on the winning side."

During his speech Bush also referred to the prisoner abuse scandal, three times mentioning the Abu Ghraib prison where the scandal first came to light. Each of the three times Bush used the name, however, he mangled it. The first time he called the prison "Abugah Rape," the second time "Abu Garon," and the third time "Abu Garah."

"These bizarre mispronunciations do not necessarily suggest brain damage," Dr. David Wenford of the Harvard School of Psychiatric Medicine said in a telephone interview. "Such stammering over a particular word might also mean the person speaking is hiding something as regards the subject being discussed."

Wenford explained that such mispronunciations often indicate a "fixation" on the word in question, and that such fixations can develop from a feeling of shame or guilt over some hidden truth.

"Given the president's extremely dysfunctional performance on the prison name, I would suggest there may be more gruesome things coming to light in terms of abuse of prisoners."

Yep

Yep. It’s the end of an era.
No other way to put it.

New day dawning in our great nation,
time to shift gears.

New man at the helm.

Now I know there are those will say. . . .
Look--I've heard what some folks are sayin’.

That we made mistakes.

But time and tide waits for no man.
That's the truth.

Fact is we had tough decisions to make.

And we made those decisions.

We deliberated long and hard beforehand too,
I can tell you that.

Some of those meetings dragged on
more than an hour.

Course I can’t speak for everyone here,
but I myself, I get kinda antsy sittin' there.

Sitting there while they go at it,
While they all keep goin' over
the same old ground,
all of 'em saying the same thing
over and over in different ways.

So finally I had to take a stand.
You would of too.

No sense talkin’ everything
till you're blue in the face,
that’s what I say.

Besides, it was me
the people of this great nation
put there.

It was me at the head of that table.

And I'm not one to shirk responsibility.
No, sir.
Least not any more.

Cuz I'd been there, done that.

I'd taken that path,
and finally said,
"No, not for me.
Not any more thank you."

Cuz I was given a little lift up.

A little glimpse of the light.
A little helping hand
from One who doesn't let you down.

And I wasn't about let the American people down either.

So there I was,
sittin' there at the head of the table,
and a decision had to be made.

And I'd be darned if I wouldn't make it.

Course some of 'em sometimes
would start in with their "buts"
and their "howevers" and all.

But one thing I'm not is a man who listens
to these buts and howevers.

Never have been.

No, I'm a decider.

And most of the time
I'd already decided.

That's what I'd tell 'em too.

"Stop your hemmin' and hawin'.
I've already decided!"

Boy, once they heard that
they knew the course would be set.
It’d be set right there.

They knew from then on
we'd stay the course too.

They knew it cuz by then they knew
who was sittin' at the head of that table.

I was.

And why was that?

Cuz the American people put me there,
that's why.

It’s the wisdom of democracy.
The wisdom of the people decides,
and you get what you get.

Fact is we were answering to a Higher Authority,
hearing a voice from a higher Whirlwind.

And if that voice is on your side,
then no man can stand against you,
am I right?

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
History will judge how we did.

Right now the talk may be one way,
but history will eventually weed and sift things
and the talk might come out another way.

You never can tell.

So folks shouldn’t be so hasty to judge.
Cuz history is not into second-guessing.

But now it’s time to turn a page.

Yep. It’s time we moved on to other things.

Cuz now the reins are going to another man.
Just have to accept it.

And he's a good man too,
a man with a smart wife
and two beautiful kids.

I wish him the best,
I reallly do.

I know he'll have to make tough decisions
like I did.

And sit through those meetings
like I did.

And I know that finally he'll have to decide.

Cuz that's what we're made of,
men like him and me.

We're deciders.

But I know he'll face disappointments too,
let me tell you.

Cuz when you're sitting there
on the highest chair in the land,
disappointments are sure to come.

People let you down.

They sure let us down,
Dick and Don and Condi and I.

Us in the loop, I mean.

Folks didn't always do things they should have.

A lot of folks, to tell the truth.

It's something that isn't pleasant to talk about,
but there it is.

They let us down.

Saddam sure let us down.

You can't count on that guy for anything.

I always told the American people
he was a liar, he couldn't be trusted.

And I was right.

There he was
sayin' he didn't have any more WMD
and of course we knew
he had to be lying.

But go figure--
that was the one damn thing he wasn't lyin' about!

We thought he'd at least have
some of the stuff around.

Course we knew he couldn't have
all the stuff we were saying.

But at least he had to have some.

But look--the bastard couldn't even be trusted
to lie about the one thing
he should of lied about.

So in a way he was actually lying by not lying,
see?

They're slippery, those guys.

Comes with the turf over there.

Most of 'em,
you can't even trust 'em to lie straight.

But it's not just Saddam I'm talkin' about.
Nope.

Cuz some of the folks here at home,
they let us down too.

Yes, our own people,
fellow Americans.

Like some of the folks on Wall Street.

Folks we thought we could trust.

I mean, when we pushed through
all that financial deregulation.

When we pushed that through--
got rid of some of the old rules.

It was to make the economy stronger,
not to give the green light
to every scheme
these clowns could cook up.

Along with the freedom of fewer regulations
should come some responsibility, am I right?

But that's not how these folks saw it.

These CEOs
--who'd of thought?--
they all started behavin' right off
like their main business in life
was making money.

It's crazy what some of 'em got up to.

The more you look into it--
makes your head spin.

So: disappointment.
That's how it makes you feel.

My successor,
as I've already said,
I'm sure he'll find some of the same disappointments
I did.

Because people don't do what you expect.

That's a fact,
and it's one lesson I've learned
from my time in this great office.

But still we got to keep on.
Have to keep on fighting the good fight.

We have to keep fighting
even though we're switchin' gears.

And we are switchin' gears here,
make no mistake.

We're turnin' a new page.

Yep.

It's a proud time for our nation,
I really believe that.
It’s a time of new beginnings.

And I'm confident we'll meet the challenges
like we always have.

Cuz we are a special nation,
a nation that loves liberty
like no other.

We are a blessed nation.

I want you to know
I've always considered it a privilege
to serve as your Supreme Commander in Chief.

But I'm at the end of my show here,
I won't deny it.

This is the last time
I'll be addressing you
as your leader.

We had some good times,
we had some bad times.

It was a heckuva show
we had together, wasn't it?

We won't be forgotten any time soon.

And in the end
history will judge
how we did.

But I got to sign off now.

Got to move on.

Tomorrow I’ll be handin' the reins
to the next hombre.

Cuz that's the way it is
in America.

So adios and good night.

And God bless ya.

Washington, January 19, 2009

Time to Pay the "Clown Tax"

It was the afternoon of November 3rd, the day after the 2004 election, and the Bush-Cheney team had just declared victory. Like many Americans, I was in a state of despondent disbelief. It was bad enough we had put these reckless clowns in office in 2000, but a second term? Having done such damage their first four years, I thought with another four they’d be likely to push us to the brink of disaster.

There was, however, one thin silver lining in the Bush win. At least he'd still be at the helm when the results of his policies began to be felt. In short: there’d be no blaming anyone else (i.e., the Democrats) for the mess they’d made of it. I penned a little ditty and emailed it to everyone I knew--especially the Republicans in my address book. The ditty ended as follows:

You’ve flouted the planet
Re-elected your man
He’ll still be in office
When the shit hits the fan

That was back in 2004. I think it’s pretty clear that the shit is now hitting the fan.

The fall in property values and the fall in the dollar and the fall in the stock market have got a lot of people down, worried actually. And for good reason. Because the bill America is now called upon to foot is really pretty hefty. We are finally starting to pay what we might call the "Bush tax."

In the past two presidential elections, many supported the Bush ticket because, they said, Republicans would “lower taxes” and “promote growth by deregulation.” And it’s true: ever since the Bush team came into office, the mantra has been “deregulate, deregulate, deregulate!” Deregulation is one of the main Republican planks. According to this economic philosophy, you cut all the regulations you can and allow companies to simply do whatever they want. Just as the Bush team cut most of our important pollution and environmental regulations, so they did the same thing with the regulations that used to keep the banking and finance industries in line.

Bush and the people he appointed gleefully tore up that carefully written rule book that previously governed Wall Street financial firms. And now we’ll have to pay for their irresponsibility. Bush and Co. let the foxes invent their own rules, because, in Republican doctrine, government shouldn’t have any oversight function. The result has been almost a decade of decreasing rules as to what kinds of financial instruments Wall Street firms could use to play hide-and-seek with each other. As is now clear, hide-and-seek is not the best game to play with a nation’s wealth.

Now we see how it all turns out--don't we--and now America is paying for its mistakes: its biggest mistake being to elect these extremists to begin with. America is finally paying the “taxes” it owes under the Bush Administration. And this tax assessment is proving rather expensive, isn’t it? Above I called it the “Bush tax.” But why not make it clearer? It is the tax modern citizens must pay whenever their leaders play fast and loose with the budget, with war and peace, with the laws governing finance and industry. And this is how Republicans, increasingly, have played it. We should really call it the “clown tax.”

Many have blamed (lifelong Republican) Alan Greenspan and his policies. It’s not unreasonable to blame this (lifelong Republican) finance guru. The problem is that Greenspan allowed too much cheap money--money was too easy to borrow. But why did Greenspan go so far in this direction? Some studies point out that the pressure was on to loosen lending standards because our government itself had borrowed enormous sums to finance the Iraq war and wasn’t ready to come even close to paying for these expenses by maintaining anything like a reasonable tax structure. So we see the Republican philosophy in action: You spend more than ever, go waaaaay into debt, but you don’t pay for these expenses, you just keep borrowing money from people you should be suspicious of to begin with, i.e., China. And you pour out this borrowed money on projects that, mostly, you don’t even pay attention to. Contracting for the Iraq war has been an incredible farce in terms of the accounting practices allowed. Our financial well-being was handed over in the form of huge bricks of cash to people who could be trusted, mainly, to steal them.

This is called “small government”? I’d call it robber baron government. Our country has been nearly bankrupted by eight years of Republican leaders doing whatever the hell sounded good for the time being and not thinking anything as to what the results would be. The Iraq war has been exactly this (we do not, contrary to current rhetoric, have anything like “victory finally in sight”) and our economy is proving another painful instance of the same thing: irresponsible, ideologically motivated policy decisions on a world-altering scale.

So as we watch our wealth decrease weekly--from the value of our homes to the stocks we have in our porfolios to the value of our currency itself--we should think about how all this disaster relates to the eight recent Republican years. How thoughtless arrogance on the world stage and voodoo economics at home have led to one pretty nasty tax bill. Yes, at the end of the day, Bush has raised your taxes more than anyone ever has.

John McCain is part of this same party and a supporter of the same economic philosophy. Sure, McCain can now see, like everyone else, the disaster that his own party’s policies have brought about. But he hasn’t presented anything in the way of how he will differ in his own approach. All he can do is imply that he is “different,” that he is a “maverick,” and will clean things up. But the problems we have are not mainly the result of individuals’ bad character, or individual politicians stealing directly from the public coffers. They are the result of bad laws and bad foreign policy and bad tax policy--policies that have hurt mainly middle and lower-class Americans but, as we see, have also finally hurt richer Americans too.

Want to see how closely McCain is connected to the deregulators who set the stage for this disaster? Just take a look the career of Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator McCain has counted on most for his economic policy. It should frighten anyone.

How long will we be paying the “clown tax”? I really don’t think a McCain White House would be independent enough of the big lobbying powers and beholden enough to our struggling middle class to bring our country back to what it should be: a country of law and order and reasonable, well-considered policies. I think the Republican party is too drunk on its own discredited economic philosophy, its own ties to (very) big business, to make and promote the kind of level-headed policies we need. What do you think? Does the Republican approach to economy and foreign policy deserve another four years?

Is your home’s value down twenty or more percent? Are you maybe in danger of losing your home? It’s the clown tax.

Is everything you buy at the store suddenly more expensive because your dollars are suddenly worth much less than before? It’s the clown tax.

Has your stock portfolio lost a third of its value, so that what you thought you could count on to help out your retirement is now less valuable than if you’d buried it in jars in the yard? Time to pay the clown tax.

How much has this hidden Republican tax cost you so far?

The clown tax: a payment assessed to all Americans for Republican deregulatory foolishness and arrogant cowboy adventurism. Want to really lower your “taxes”? Then don’t put another clown in the White House.

--.

On the disconcerting career of McCain's main economic adviser:

What Phil Gramm Wrought

On the financial impact of the Iraq war:

A Talk with Joseph Stiglitz

On associational disorders of various sorts:

The Disassociated Press--News for Nation Builders