A Right Proper Philosophy for Today

Now here's a street corner guy who is a step up from the old-fashioned guy in a sandwich board sign saying "Repent! The End is Nigh!". This guy has managed to absorb and synthesis the complete "message of today". This is what the political right and the big corporations want you to not just believe but to feel down deep in your bones. This is the new religion:



I find it really helps to have this "message" delivered in a proper English accent. It gives it so much more respectability and authority. It makes you want to drop to your knees and swear "I repent! Forgive me for I have sinned against the corporations and the political right. Forgive me. Bring me home. Let me become a blind consumer who is properly politically ignorant."

Post script: I would like to see the Occupy Wall Street protestors to use more humour like the above to disarm the vicious right that wants to bring down protest as "Un-American". The political right in the US has the "talking point" that the Occupy Wall Street has no "coherent political agenda". If you want to see very succinct statements of the OWS agenda, look at these statements.

Here is what the Republican presidential candidates call an "Un-American mob who are threatening our democracy":



What I see is a peaceful demonstration which is the very heart of a vibrant democracy. These are citizens in the street making known their opinions. There is no violence. This is an on-going peaceful assembly seeking the redress of grievances, a non-political gathering petitioning the government and the political parties to work diligently to redress the imbalance in the social fabric by giving the bottom 99% social justice in the face of corporate greed and the buying and selling of politicians by the Wall Street elite.

Making the US "Fiscally Responsible"

There are such wonderful stories coming out the US about Republican govenors making "the hard decisions" to stop the gravy train for all those greed civil servants and people with state-sponsored benefits. Here's an example of the brave Indiana governor Mitch Daniels "holding the line" on waste. Here are bits from an article in the LA Times:

Louise Cohoon was at home when her 80-year-old mother called in a panic from Terre Haute: The $97 monthly Medicaid payment she relied on to supplement her $600-a-month income had been cut without warning by a private company that had taken over the state's welfare system.

Later, the state explained why: She failed to call into an eligibility hot line on a day in 2008 when she was hospitalized for congestive heart failure.

...

Cohoon's mother, now suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was one of thousands of Indiana residents who abruptly and erroneously lost their welfare, Medicaid or food stamp benefits after Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels privatized the state's public assistance program — the result of an efficiency plan that went awry from the very beginning, the state now admits.

Though the $1.37-billion project proved disastrous for many of the state's poor, elderly and disabled, it was a financial bonanza for a handful of firms with ties to Daniels and his political allies, which landed state contracts worth millions.

The disparate effects underscore the risks of handing control over public services to the private sector. Whether the approach will ultimately improve services and save money remains a matter of fierce debate in Indiana. But the state's experience shows that without adequate safeguards, privatization can compound the very problems it is designed to correct: bureaucratic burdens, perceptions of influence-peddling and a lack of competition.

There is more, read the whole article.

Obviously Louise Cohoon, nor her now Alzheimer-suffering mother, understand the urgency for providing yet more tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires so that they will "kick start" the economy for the umpteenth time, a promise that keeps being repeated by the political right as they give away more and more wealth to the ultra-rich while whittling away at what little the bottom 90% get from government.

It is funny how the LA Times doesn't understand that handing over government programs to "entrepreneurs" is exactly what has "kick-started" the strong economic recovery which Americans can see all around them. Just look at those foreclosed homes, the laid off public service workers, etc. These are all signs of a super-charged economy leaping ahead providing millions of jobs and giving people mind-boggling salary increases as wealth flows from "trickle-down" economics.

It is typical that the "little people" simply don't understand the logic of helping the ultra-rich to get even richer so that they will let crumbs fall from their table. Obviously the "little people" have little brains and don't understand the sage wisdom of Republican economic policy. And they are a-historical. They can't look back and realize that Republican presidents delivered the bacon by making the "little people" phenomenally wealthy while cutting the public debt. Everybody knows that the Clinton years were the years of desperation where unemployment ran out of control, wages fell, and the federal government built up trillions in debt. It was only with Reagan and the two Bushes that the economy soared, people were so wealthy they bought 2 and 3 houses, and the federal debt simply disappeared like a puddle on hot pavement in the midst of a summer day. Right? What? Don't bother me with facts. I know my right wing ideology, and it tells me all the previous is true. I can't be bothered if historians claim the opposite. They are obviously the stooges of the liberal elites who are running the country into the ground, unlike the Republicans who have made the US wealthier, more powerful, more industrialized, better educated, and surfeited with budget surpluses "as far as the eye can see"!

Contemporary American Political Dialog

This is an excellent bit of show-and-tell... This is the state of political "dialog" in the US:



Sadly, the reasonable viewpoint urging Americans to vote didn't get his message across. It was too many words. Americans only respond to "sound bites".

The New American "Revolution"

Thank goodness the "patriots" of today realize that democracy is a big waste of time. The only "liberty" than anybody can enjoy comes out of the barrel of a gun. So the new American "revolutionaries" are out in the dark of the night replacing old fashioned electoral politics with the politics of fear.

I'm thinking these new right wing "patriots" have learned a lesson from Osama bin Laden: change doesn't come from hard work and elections like Obama fought. Real change comes when you blow up buildings, assassinate people, and threaten the innocent. Thank goodness a new generation of brave patriots have stepped up to the challenge and are using the new politics to good effect.From Politico.com:

Reps. Louise Slaughter and Bart Stupak have received death threats.

A tea party participant published what he thought was Rep. Thomas Perriello’s home address and urged disgruntled voters to “drop by” for a “good face-to-face chat.”

Vandals broke windows at Slaughter’s office in New York and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s office in Arizona.

I'm glad that proud Americans have decided that the brownshirt thugs of Nazi Germany are the wave forward for politics in America.

This is reminiscent of the wonderful days of "democracy in bloom" during the early 1960s when the KKK struggled mightily to save "liberty" in America by bombing churches, pulling bus riders off buses and beating a political message into them by smashing their skulls, and by doing midnight assassinations. Ah yes. The good old days are back. The good old boys have stepped up to the plate and are swinging their baseball bats for "liberty".

And what's the threat? Why some Democrats want to provide medical insurance to the uninsured. How dare they? How un-American! If God intended people to have health insurance, he would have them born with insurance contract in hand!

Here is a relevant bit from Rachel Maddow. Fast forward to 1:10 into this video:

Dowd Hoists Obama on his own Petard

This is funny. Here's the opening bit of Maureen Dowd's take on the Nobel "Peace" Prize going to Barack Obama:

When he heard the Nobel Peace Prize shocker on Friday, Bill Clinton went into one of his purple rages. He picked up the phone and dialed the one person on earth who would be as steamed as he was.

CLINTON: Hey, man, it’s me. This thing is plumb crazy. Can you believe it?

W: No way, Jose!

CLINTON: First that prig Carter. Then that prig Gore. And now President Paris Hilton. The guy’s in office three days and he gets the peace prize? He should have gotten the Nobel in chemistry, because chemistry’s all he’s got. Talk about a fairy tale. This ... is ... just ... wrong! It’s killing me, man. I feel like my head’s explodin’. First I had the vast right-wing conspiracy, and now I have the vast left-wing conspiracy.

W.: I hear ya, 42. As if his head wasn’t big enough. This cat is all cage, no bird. He doesn’t have a clue.

CLINTON: Heck no.

...

CLINTON: Maybe you’re right, George. Some winners think the Nobel’s the kiss of death. Any peace prize that goes to Henry Kissinger but not Gandhi ain’t worth a can of Alpo. Heck, if Gandhi had known he was going to lose out to Henry the K, he could have had more time to eat french fries and chase girls.

Go read the whole thing to get the full effect of the ridicule heaped on Obama and the Nobel "prize" committee. Dowd skewers Obama, Bush, Clinton, the Nobel apparatchiks, etc. It is just too funny.

The Media as Muckracker

Poor Dean Baker. He keeps expecting the media to be muckrackers, fact seekers, reporters, searchers for truth, etc. That is so last century. In this Post Modern world we now realize that no viewpoint is privileged. All opinions are solid, one is as good as another.

So it is a bit shocking that Baker has the following reaction:

Marketplace radio had a segment this morning in which former labor secretary Robert Reich discussed with the host Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's prospects for reappointment. Remarkably, neither the host nor Mr. Reich said a word about Mr. Bernanke's responsibility for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Before taking over as Fed chair in January of 2006, Bernanke had served as head of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors and as a member of the Fed's Board of Governors.

After Alan Greenspan, there was probably no one better positioned to stem the growth of the housing bubble than Bernanke. Yet, he did nothing to combat the bubble, arguing that everything was just fine. This negligence was directly responsible for the crisis and the resulting downturn.

It is incredible that Bernanke's failure to combat the bubble does not even come up in discussions of his reappointment. This would be like a school bus driver coming up for a contract renewal with no one mentioning the fact that he had drunkenly taken his bus into oncoming traffic, killing all his passengers. Outside of the top echelons of power, workers are usually held more accountable for their job performance.

For goodness sake, as Obama has said "the past is the past, we should be forward looking". Just because a person was a mass murderer, we shouldn't let that blind us to his charming qualities, his wit, his ability to dazzle us with new possibilities. I say make Charles Manson Chief of the Supreme Court. He has an acute legal mind, as good as Bernanke's financial acumen. Put Al Capone as head of the FBI. He knows how to run an organization! Make Typhoid Mary the head of the CDC! Dig up Groucho Marx and make him Speaker of the House. Nobody could speak better than Groucho!

I just don't understand why Baker wants to confuse us with this rambling non-sequitur about buses and bus drivers. We are talking money.

If Bernanke is not interested in the appointment, I suggest that we put Bernie Madoff in charge of the Federal Reserve. Now there's a guy who knows how to do magic with billions of dollars!

All in a Day's Work

Thank God for the Republicans... they are the only sensible party that knows that we have to incentivize the rich. These big earners are the only people who really know how to put in a day's work. Everybody else is a slackard. But at least when you get the "incentive" right for the rich, they can put their nose to the grindstone. And this Republican strategy it is paying off. Here's the good news from Barry Ritholtz:

Blackstone CEO “Earns” $702 million

by Barry Ritholtz

Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman, a founder of the company, is cashing out.

This years lucre — $700 million, plus some minor salary — is the first of 5 equal payments that will net him a cool $4.7 billion dollars. Nice work if you can get it.

All I can say for sure is this represents a massive transfer of wealth from Shareholders to management.

Bloomberg excerpt:

“Blackstone Group LP Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman was the highest-paid executive in the U.S. last year as his compensation topped $702 million, the Corporate Library reported.

The package for Schwarzman included $2.3 million of compensation and almost $699.8 million from the vesting of one- quarter of the equity granted as he took the firm public at $31 a share in 2007, said the Portland, Maine-based Corporate Library. Schwarzman, Blackstone’s founder, was granted $4.7 billion in equity at the time of the offering, said the Corporate Library, which specializes in governance issues. . .”

Given that another 75% of a 2007 equity grant that totaled $4.7 billion remains to be paid out. It will vest in 4 equal installments over the next four years. “It is reasonably safe to assume that Mr. Schwarzman will remain at the top of highest paid CEOs list, or close to it, for a few years to come,” the report said.

Safe to assume? I don’ t know if I would take that bet . . .

You know... it is really hard to get good help these days. I remember when a million dollars would get most executives to put in a solid 4 hour work day. But these days, with all the riffraff making tens of millions, it takes some serious billions to get the attention of the really top notch executives. Pity!

Propaganda

The following is too namby-pamby to stop the insanity in the US over health care reform:



Democrats have to come out with its own tea parties and astroturf movement. Dems need to show up at Republican meetings and protest the real issues that Republicans have lied about, hidden, and distorted:

• No more dead babies! Stop the Congressional Republicans who have called for interning illegal immigrants. Everybody knows that putting a pregnant wetback in a lock-up will cause a spontaneous abortion. God loves the little babies! Kill the adults and harvest the little babies. That way Republicans can save wasting taxpayer dollars on internment camps and the Pro-Life movement will be happy because so many spontaneous abortions will be avoided! Save on Congressional Republicans for half-way measures!


• Save the US military! Stop the yellow dog Republicans who have called upon Congress to boost defense system to $10 trillion per year! That is treason. Freedom has no price! Stop renegade Republicans from undermining our security by limiting what we can spend on the military! We demand that Washington protect us by giving every American family a B-2 bomber and half a dozen F-22 fighters so that Americans can defend themselves against communists and Islamic terrorists!


• Support Chuck Grassley's Real American Tax Holiday. Stop all taxes on entrepreneurial workers. Give Real American's a break. Instead, put taxes to those who make less than $1 million per year. Anybody making less than a million is a slacker and is doing nothing to help the economy. Make them pay for the dead weight of government. Go Grassley one better: Encourage Real American dynamism by a matching dollar program. Give anybody who makes more than a million dollars a year matching dollars. That's the way to put government to work. Have the government match Real American income dollar for dollar. This will help grow the millionaire class. Support Real Americans. Support Chuck Grassley Real American Tax Holiday!


• Stop Rush Limbaugh! He wants to annul all marriages except those of gay couples. Rush needs to be stopped before he destroys the American family! Somebody get Rush into a church and exorcise the devil that has taken over his soul!


• Save scientific research in America! Senate Republicans have called for crash research program to re-incarnate Mussolini. Stop funding fruit fly research. Put tax dollars to good use with ARM (Americans to Re-incarnate Mussolini)! ARM is critical to America's competitive future. Only if scientists can re-incarnate Mussolini and we make him dictator-for-life is thereby have any hope to get American's trains will run on time. Stop wasting scientific funding, those are a monstrous misuse of public funding. Switch to ARM. We need a Mussolini makeover!

With enough Democrats chanting the above slogans and shouting down any Republicans at their meetings, hopefully a true "democratic dialog" will be restarted. It is just plain unfair to let the Republicans charge ahead with the "new politics" while Dems stand around with their heads up their.... Democrats must show they can step up and play the game of politics with the same zeal and those Republicans.

Only in America

From a local news organization WYFF 4, Greenville, South Carolina, I file the following story under "only in America"...

A driver, now identified as an Asheville firefighter, shot a bicycle rider because he was angry the man was riding with his child on a busy road, Asheville police said.

The shooting happened Sunday morning on Tunnel Road.

Officers said the victim was riding with his wife and had his 3-year-old son in a child seat attached to his bicycle when a driver approached him.

Police said the driver, Charles Diez, claimed he was upset that the victim was bike riding with his child on the heavily traveled Tunnel Road.

Diez pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting the victim in his bicycle helmet, according to police.

They said the bullet penetrated the outer lining of the helmet but did not actually hit the victim's head.

Police arrested Diez and charged him with attempted first degree murder.

His bond was set at $500,000.

Diez has been a firefighter with the Asheville Fire Department since 1992, according to officials.

On Monday, they confirmed he has been placed on paid investigative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.

OK, that is a bit of a cheap shot. These kind of nutty things happen in other countries as well...

But since the NRA-dominated US believes that the Constitution implicitly enrolled everybody into a "militia"

Second Amendment
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

everybody in the US has a "right" to carry guns. So when you get angry, you don't yell at them, you point a pistol and shoot. And you get the above result. Only in America.

My real question is: Where is the NTA? (the National Tank Association) Where are those American patriots fighting for the rights of tank owners to drive their 60 ton heavily armed tanks up and down the streets of America exercising their Second Amendment Rights? I think the NRA are a bunch of wimps. Real Men won't stay in the NRA. Real Men will quit and join the NTA. That's right: real toys for boys! Patriot pride. Put a tank in every house! The only protection against an oppressive government is having every householder in US in the cockpit of a fully armed, fully loaded tank ready to take on any government agent who would dare undermine the sacred freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution!

Meanwhile, back here in Canada, I'm trying to support you Americans by setting up a NABA (National Atom Bomb Association). That's right! I want to amend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to allow every decent right-thinking Canadian to bear arms, real arms, atomic bombs.

Progress report: so far I've got myself qualified as a true Red & White Canadian patriot, so I've signed myself up to get the first A-bomb. I want to expand membership in NABA, but I've finding it hard to find true blue Red & White Canadians that I could entrust with the solemn right to bear nuclear arms. So I'm a bit stymied. I figure I'll have push forward on my own. My first project is to put my A-bomb in the front yard with a sign "if you touch this, the last sound you will hear is the sound of freedom!"

Bringing "Enhanced Interrogation" Home

You knew it had to be only a matter of time...

Since Bush deemed waterboarding to not be torture, then it was only a matter of time before police departments decided to use this non-torture technique on criminal suspects to "encourage" them to confess to crimes...

UK cop accuses colleagues of waterboarding pot suspects

By Stephen C. Webster

Published: June 9, 2009

Six members of London’s metropolitan police force are the focus of a criminal investigation after a corruption probe revealed allegations by a serving officer that detectives waterboarded suspects allegedly caught with a “large amount” of marijuana.

“The officers under investigation were among 10 based in Enfield, north London, who were suspended in February in one of the worst allegations of corruption to hit the Metropolitan police in recent years,” reported The Telegraph.

“The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC),” reported the Times Online. “It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested in Enfield and Tottenham.

The British publication added: “Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said ‘it would not have been in the public interest to proceed.’ It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.”

“The officers, who include a detective sergeant, were originally suspended over allegations they stole property during the drugs raids,” noted Sky News. “The officers are members of the Enfield crime squad based at Edmonton police station.”

“[British] papers gave varying accounts of the exact technique used by police, with the Times saying that officers poured water on a cloth and placed it over a suspect’s face to simulate the experience of drowning,” reported the Associated Press. “The Daily Mail said police officers repeatedly dunked the suspects’ heads in buckets of water. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.”

“The [metro police] Directorate of Professional Standards received information from an MPS employee which raised concerns about the conduct of a small number of officers on Enfield borough,” a police spokesman told The Telegraph. “The Met’s DPS then initiated a thorough investigation and as part of this made a referral to the IPCC in April 2009.

“The IPCC is independently investigating the actions of six officers during the arrests of five people in November 2008. ”

“Any allegations of such behavior are treated very seriously … and if found true the strongest possible action will be taken,” Scotland Yard told the AP in an e-mail.

So... you too can soon expect your local police to add this new "technique" to their repertoire of standard policing procedures. I look forward to the day when people who are reported to be "acting suspicious" will be routinely processed by these enhanced interrogation techniques to ensure that the full truth is expeditiously extracted from suspects. Why waste time with legwork and brainwork when you can "squeeze 'em like a grape until they pop".

What did you expect? Once Bush unleashed the "new techniques" there was no reason to limit their effective use to scary "terrorists". These are wonderful techniques -- time tested since the Spanish Inquisition -- that cry for application in today's world.

Green Shoots Revealed

Leave it to The Onion to do the down-and-dirty investigative reporting necessary to get to the root of the "green shoots" meme that is sweeping the nation. Okay, maybe not sweeping the nation, but certainly being echoed (lip synched?) by all the really big media movers and shakers.

Get informed about this grass roots phenomemon, go read the article Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again.

Yes... it takes serious satire to uncover the truth. Who knew that gardening metaphors would bloom this spring? Just asking...

Too Many Americans are Slacking Off

Here data from CBO (Congressional Budget Office) showing that the bottom 99% of Americans are just plain not working hard enough. They are letting the upper crusties put in long hours and make more and more money. Obviously those in the bottom 99% will just have to pull up their socks and put in the hours to make their fair share of income.

I figure if the typical top 1% puts in a 32 hour week and makes 25 times as much as the "middle fifth" (i.e. those in the 40% to 60% range), then it just means that these middle fifth guys will have to put in 25 times the hours so they can get their "fair share". Let's see... that means an 800 hour work week! So quit slacking off, get out there and work, I mean "really work"!


Obviously the people in the bottom 20% are hogging all the leisure time. The poor upper 1% are working, working, working while the bottom 20% either claim unemployment or get those slack McJobs that leave them with too much time on their hands.


The result is that the top 1% are simply having to pick up the spare change that the bottom 99% just refuse to "earn". It is disgraceful to see how the bottom 99% have forced the rich to take an ever larger piece of the economic pie. Sadly the rich have to tie up their leisure hours going to $10,000 a plate charity "events" in an effort to find a way to get rid of all this excess foisted on them by their fellow citizens who simply refuse to put in the kind of effort at work that would give them a decent income!


Lately we've seen how desperate those top 1% guys have become. They've crashed the economy so that they could wipe out big chunks of their stock holdings just so they could adjust their books and no longer hold "all the chips".

The top 1% have gone from tanking the stock market to sabotaging the gears of industry and commerce in an effort to cut back on their accelerating income and wealth. We can only hope they can bring the economy to its knees and get rid of all those loose dollar bills and get us back to the good old days when a dollar was a dollar and it meant something.

I've always said, stop feeding the kids and they will learn to appreciate a good meal! The rich are just showing this kind of concern for the rest of us by collapsing the economy. When we all stop earning bucks, then having 25 times as much of nothing will feel just like have an average dose of nothing. The rich will have saved us from our foolish spendthrift ways. They will have brought us all back into the warm fold of the family where we can all quietly starve equally together.

Funny

In this piece Dean Baker makes fun of the Wall Street banks that have collapsed the economy. He pokes fun, but he is deadly serious...

The Bank Bailout: Were Bankers Victims of Predatory Lending by the Government?

Those poor bankers are now claiming that they got predatory loans from the government. I'm not kidding, that is what the NYT reports, although it didn't quite put the issue in these terms, presumably to spare the bankers from ridicule.

The NYT article tells readers that some of the banks are now unhappy with the terms of the TARP and want to return the money they borrowed. However, this early repayment would effectively carry substantial penalties (sort of like the penalties for early payment on adjustable rate mortgages with teaser rates).

This raises tough questions. Should borrowers be held responsible for understanding the contracts they sign. Admittedly, these are bankers, so perhaps more leniency needs to be extended, but what about the sanctity of contract. Larry Summers, the head of President Obama's National Economic Council, gave a great lecture on the importance of the sanctity of contract when the topic was the bonuses of AIG executives. Perhaps President Obama can get Mr. Summers to give the same lecture to the bankers who are now complaining about their repayment penalties.

Hopefully future news stories will bring these issues into the discussion.

I love the ironic touch about the "sanctity" of contracts. Oh, and the bit about early payment "penalties". Yep, it's hard to not shed a tear for these poor victims.

An "Honest" Guide to Investment

This is a Saturday Night Live skit that nails the financial industry and how they treat their victims... uh... I mean "customers":

Poking Fun at Bush

Here's a fun little satire of the "accomplishments" of the Bush Administration. Read the whole thing at Jon Swift's website. Here are the highlights without the mischievous details:

• After Hurricane Katrina President Bush kept our cities safe.
• After the October 2008 stock market correction there have been no Great Depressions.
• After Iraq and Afghanistan took a turn for the worse, President Bush kept us from losing any wars.
• After the District Attorney firing scandal, the outing of Valerie Plame and other scandals, President Bush restored integrity to government.
• After divisive elections President Bush united our country.
• After Abu Ghraib, President Bush reaffirmed America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions and against torture.
• After 9/11 President Bush kept America safe from terrorist attacks on American soil.

I for one am like totally impressed by Bush's ability to save America from another Katrina. Like, Jon Swift really nails this one...

In the three years and a half years since Hurricane Katrina not a single American city has been destroyed or partially destroyed. There are more than 10,000 cities in the United States and because of George Bush every single one of them, except for New Orleans, is still largely intact. Of course, no one could have predicted Hurricane Katrina, and if President Clinton had not left us so woefully unprepared, New Orleans would probably be in a lot better shape than it is now. But since Katrina, there have been numerous hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, fires and earthquakes and none of them has gotten out of hand and wiped out an entire city because of the disaster preparedness policies President Bush put in place. For national security reasons we may not know until records are declassified how many other potential disasters, like epidemics or nuclear power plant meltdowns or alien invasions, were averted because of the work that government agencies did behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Presidents don't usually get credit for all the disasters that don't happen. But I think we should congratulate the President for doing a heckuva job on keeping America safe in the years since Katrina.

I dunno... seems to me that Jon Swift is setting the bar awfully high. Who can expect Obama to come anywhere near these kind of awesome "achievements"??? I'm already getting nostalgic about Bush.

I'm going to miss they way Bush so ineptly kept sticking his thumb into the eye of the world opinion and so determinedly kept beating down ordinary Americans so that he could richly reward his people, the gazillionaire plutocrats. You know, those swank people from Wall Street who raped and pillaged freely for eight years. Ah... it is sad to see the "good old days" come to an end. It is going to be so dismal to see the little people work and actually get rewarded. I predict it will go to their head. They will think that should be allowed to vote in the next election. Oh My God! We have to nip that in the bud.

Those "little people" will probably get all uppity and think they deserve pay raises for the efforts to get America back on the rails. But Thank God! There is Jeb Bush in the waiting just offstage to come in and save America with a new round of big tax cuts for the super-rich and, or course, a new round of bailouts for all the big corporations. Yes... I can see light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Just four years of misery until 2012 when the sweaty little underclass can be put back in the closet and we -- the real Masters of the Universe -- can pop the cork on champagne and party on with a new round of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous... four more years! four more years!