It Rots From the Head Down

Well, if it isn't business as usual. Revelations and confessions continue to roll down the head chute of those citizens formerly confined to the extreme right of the political bell curve. Those hogs who gained access to the pig trough's center and are now slopping themselves silly. And they're into it up to their gullets ravenously inhaling the fat of the land while they still can.

Perhaps recent revelations explain why the hideous hogs are becoming more and more up front with their confessions of indiscretions. In the face of ever surfacing evidence, it's now easier to admit it than lie, deny and conceal. Seems their backroom stench and stinkin' under the table deals inevitably float to the top.

But we Americans are a forgiving lot. I don't know our capacity for thievery and outright public admissions of it, but we haven't reached our limit, obviously. Not yet. Perhaps that explains the increasing feeding frenzy of those in power. Of their apparent penitence when caught. They sense a public awakening. A public dragging behind them a media reluctant to ply its trade, i.e., investigative reporting and truth!

Just today in the news we read of the resignation of a senior scholar at the highly respected libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, after writing articles favorable to pig lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Nothing wrong with that, right? Oh, but damn! Turns out Business Week discovered --before writing the articles--Doug Bandow took money from Abramoff. Nothing wrong with that either, right? Unless you get caught.I'm sure many Americans share Bandow's rue. He suffered "a lapse of judgment". Dada would suggest that's not exactly right. Bandow's real regret is his god-damnned ass got caught.

And so it goes, right up the ladder. We're seeing more and more money "flow backwards" to shady dealing pigs from whence it came as our corrupted congressmen and senators learn the other half of the American politics lesson, that part that says, unless you get caught.

I'm feeling so badly for our representatives who have promised to return the slop they "didn't know" was tainted or they just got caught flat out taking. Perhaps some creative person should come up with a kind of restitution relief fund by sympathetic citizens to help the bastards repay the graft they received.

But is a mournful "lapse of judgment" admission, promise to repay tainted monies, or one's resignation sufficient rehabilitation of corrupt officials to placate folks? Who knows. Probably. We'll see.

Anyone in favor of throwing some asses in jail? (Dada's not an advocate of capital punishment. Well, not yet anyway.) Or is prison just for the kid you makes a Saturday night 7-11 beer run?

Yep, right up the ladder. Bill Clinton, our best Republican president ever, got impeached for staining a dress and lying about it. Bush stains the whole damn nation, its principles, its Constitution, and the globe but continues to dance.

If only Americans and their voting machine manufacturers believed in checks and balances. We'd be so far beyond ourselves and our growing sinkhole mess now.

Yesterday came Bush's admission of his NSA authorization to spy on Americans. Under our "old Constitution" that was illegal. That should be at least impeachable offense number 12, 13, or 14. Hell I've lost count. Of course, if one wants to include such "offensive acts" as stained dresses, then the number of impeachable crimes goes way beyond my scale to measure.

But it's not as if Bush hasn't given us hints all along. His admission that he had to propagandize the citizenry by repeating the message over and over in order for us to believe the truth (sic) was nothing but a bastardization of Hitler's Nazi Propaganda Minister, J. Goebbels, who said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

And don't forget Bush's way too honest confession, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier - just so long as I am the dictator."

I think what Bush was trying to tell us was the pretense that he's leading a nation supposedly based on democratic values makes his work much harder than it need be.

Seizing control of the government to advance one's radical agenda while simultaneously stealing the people's rights and their national treasury could be accomplished in much less time and with much less effort if he didn't have to maintain our illusions he's keeping us free and safe under the constraints imposed by the Constitution.

Having to wave his magic wand of distraction with one hand sure slows his dismantling of the country with the other. If only he could use two. It'd be so much easier--and quicker!

But perhaps the hints he's given us--which have gone largely unheeded by the majority of the citizenry--have enabled him to slough off some of his former pretensions of honesty. After all, no one minds Cheney's secret energy policy. That's the one we Americans are not privy to see. The one designed to "most benefit" we, the citizens. The energy policy conceived and written by the energy industry giants. (Anyone remember Enron's, "Fuck grandma!" CEO Ken Lay?)

And few too many of us gave a damn when Bush stood before the world in Panama and said we don't torture before a backdrop of photos we'd all seen that looked suspiciously brutal and torturous. (It all depends on how you define it, right?)

And none of us really care that phony news stories written and fed the public were of the White House, by the White House and for the White House. Or that talk show hosts were paid money to spew White House crap to an unsuspecting audience. Or the Defense Department is disseminating its own news globally. Who gives a shit, right?

So why do we care of Bush's admission that the intel for his war was bogus. Or that knowing that then, he'd have still done the same. (Dada suggests he and the rest of his crime family did know the intel was cooked, his confession of such is yet to come, pending his latest test of our gullibility limits.)

All of this has raised little reaction or concern. So, emboldened by our indifference, was perhaps the reason Bush confessed yesterday that--despite constitutional prohibitions against it--he authorized his National Security Agency to spy on all of us? How many of us buy it was done for our own protection? To make us safer in his unsafe world?

Not me. I'm not buying it. I think Bush told us long ago the real reason: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier." Maybe it is. Or maybe the nation's on it's way to becoming one. And who would care. So long as you don't get caught!