Banishing the demons of the Bush years

I've been shifted by Obama's stance on the tax cuts. I've lost some faith that I still had in him. There are those who have told me it was irrational, like my sweetie! (hi hon, sorry!) but dang it, I thought hope was something. That we could clean up some of the Bush mess. That we could get things heading in the right direction. More FDR than JFK...

With that in mind, a killer essay on Al Jazeera by Jamal Elshayyal about the British student rioting, as the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats triple tuition. Nick Clegg is the head of the Lib-Dems for this election; a young well spoken telegenic fellow. He's now in coalition government with the Tories.

During New Labour's time in office, Blair's government also increased university fees - the man who had set out "Education, Education, Education" as his election campaign heading - tripled the cost of those who wanted to continue in higher education.

Back then, students also marched against the proposals. Their demonstrations were also largely peaceful. Blair was consistent in his governing of Britain - he ignored them too.

Those two decisions (invading Iraq and trebling tuition fees) are arguably the single most important issues which brought about the collapse of New Labour.

Fast forward a few years and it's 2010. You have a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. The Lib Dems brought into power to prop up a Tory government without whom it wouldn't posses a working parliamentary majority.

As with New Labour, the Lib Dems are lead by a "young and dynamic leader" - Mr Nick Clegg. He too used the right to education prominently in his election campaign.

In fact, in the run up to last May's parliamentary elections, the Liberal Democrats categorically stated that they would oppose ANY increase in university tuition fees. Furthermore they cosied up to the National Union of Students, and canvassed across university campuses. There is no doubting that the student vote won the Lib Dems several seats in parliament.

But power is a dirty, dirty thing. It gets to the mind and eats at the soul. No sooner had Mr Clegg, champion of the students, the man who would "keep the Tories in check" become deputy prime minister, than he forgot his most important campaign pledge.

That last paragraph's opening lines... "Power is a dirty, dirty thing. It gets to the mind and eats at the soul." Got me to thinking about President Obama.

I think Obama did think he could make more change than he has. But I think that mesmerizing corruption and power play of the Bush years has left an actual evil residue in the White House. Dick Cheney's subterranean sojurns - as he met in the underworld of NORAD with nuclear djinns, making dark pacts to destroy the Constitution and spill blood for his oily overlords.

So - how has the Obama administration gotten to this point? Did they fall for the blandishments of power - the secret power that Bush and Cheney built? (For that matter, did all of that secret power transfer? Are there agents still taking Dick's orders?) I can see Barrack falling for the Faust thing - making a deal with the devil for a shot at something he thinks he sees, but his ambition blinds him, and he falls deeper into the thrall of these underworldly Princes of the Dark.

Quick recommended link: Juan Cole on BP and Iraq

Juan Cole is worth reading for a number of reasons - he's a lefty prof who understands the middle east from serious experience (living there many years, extensive reading of sources in their native languages) and every so often he goes off on the right-wing in wonderful, hard-hitting, factual but passionate rants.

And so when he draws the correlations between Iraq, an oil-based deadly disaster, and the BP oil spew, another oil-based deadly disaster, he does it with style.

Here's one hot paragraph. Read the whole thing.

Both the Iraq tragedy and the BP tragedy are testimonies to greed and hubris. They speak of gigantic endeavors undertaken with insufficient forethought and too few resources. They are enterprises that made a handful of ruthless men wealthy, and impoverished everyone else. In the cutting of corners for short term petty profit, in the extractive determination, in the disregard for any rule of law or prudent regulations, these two projects were both stamped with the personality of Dick Cheney (who met with energy corporations and worked tirelessly to remove them from regulatory oversight, so that he is at the matrix of both disasters).

The Field Negro

BitchPhD, where I've guest posted, has got some good race discussions. The reminded me lately of a blogger - the FIELD NEGRO - from who I ripped the following. Amazing.

Monday, May 11, 2009

I will take Rush over the black guy.

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think,"..." I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

That was the devil himself disguised as an old white man named Dick Cheney. He was telling CBS News and anyone who would listen that he would rather have a fat drug addicted [alleged]pedophile in his party, than a genuine "American hero", Colin Powell. Wow!

Now I am no political expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am guessing that if you asked most A-murder-cans who they would trust more to be their leader, they would say the good general and not anyone from the new "axis of evil"; Cheney,Rush, and Newt. Just a thought.

The Bush Regime - in pictures

All of this is gleefully credited to BAGnewsNotes. Great site for digging into those worth-a-thousand-words pictures that we don't usually see on the internets. There's a great analysis of a White House photo up there now - and here's the money quote:

It's President Bush, self-styled Leader of the Free World, who takes the prize for transparency: we can see right through him, and there's nothing there. Forget the shirt collar that's getting a little bit loose, or the cords beneath his chin that have started to pop in the past month or so.

It's the utterly blank stare that stops us. He's not looking at anything at all (this was the day before Hashimi brought up the light off in the distance.) He could be thinking of lunch, clearing brush or waiting for Santa Claus. It's that look of someone showing up at a funeral who's forgotten the name of the deceased, of a blind man without his guide dog.

...and here's the link to the story....

...and here's the photo itself.



And here's the rest of the commentary.

Light At The End Of The Corridor
by Chris Maynard

Sooner or later, someone was bound to bring it up.

Finally, on the afternoon of December 12, the "L" word was used in Washington. Tariq al-Hashimi, the vice president of Iraq, in direct view of President Bush, said that his country faces "a hard time, but there is a light in the corridor." The last man to talk of distant lights in narrow passageways was Lyndon Johnson, who had enough shame, and sense, to leave office in 1968.

The trio above has made a show of taunting anyone who even mentions sense and shame. On Monday they left the State Department, stopping only for a brief statement to the press, taking no questions. The answers were, visually, quite obvious. Vice-President Cheney, head lowered as usual to avoid looking at lesser mortals, appears to be folding up notes, or perhaps a cheat sheet with only the word "No" scrawled across it. Secretary of State Rice looks even glummer than normal, her chin diving toward her collarbone. Suddenly the years of staring down anyone impertinent enough to question her are over, and the world is tired of her rigged version of Musical Chairs.

It's President Bush, self-styled Leader of the Free World, who takes the prize for transparency: we can see right through him, and there's nothing there. Forget the shirt collar that's getting a little bit loose, or the cords beneath his chin that have started to pop in the past month or so.

It's the utterly blank stare that stops us. He's not looking at anything at all (this was the day before Hashimi brought up the light off in the distance.) He could be thinking of lunch, clearing brush or waiting for Santa Claus. It's that look of someone showing up at a funeral who's forgotten the name of the deceased, of a blind man without his guide dog.

The lid seems to be pretty tight on the meeting itself, with no mention of who exactly was there or what exactly was said. For this administration that's business as usual, but given the release of the Iraq Study Group report there might be some interest in what's going on in private. Tough luck for democracy, but government can be messy that way.

It could be a look of resignation, of finally biting the bullet and asking for help but that's pretty far-fetched. The deadlines are already slipping; his response to the study was originally scheduled for "before Christmas" but now the talk is of "early January."

"Their money spent, their wine gone sour," what's another couple of weeks, or months, or even years?

(hat tip: Gary. image: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. December 13, 2006. nytimes.com)