DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Kurt Vonnegut had a great run. And in his final book, the nonfiction A Man Without a Country, he got off some profound, clever shots against our present President. Imagine that.
Even as we mourn Vonnegut's loss we see Dick Cheney, his metal heart and test-tube blood refreshed daily by the Transylvanian earth on his coffin floor, wake each evening suited up and ready for another round of lies, mayhem, and feeding enriched batches of evil into the overloaded mind of the pathetic little nitwit sitting in the Oval Office in his Top Gun costume.
This country not only sells guns to its maniacs, it even installs them as President and places them in charge of the biggest, most lethal collection of war-making machinery in history. Had we known just how vile and demented this guy was, we’d have understood that our passive acceptance was making us co-conspirators in our own self-destruction.
By Ivan G. Goldman
Kurt Vonnegut had a great run. And in his final book, the nonfiction A Man Without a Country, he got off some profound, clever shots against our present President. Imagine that.
Even as we mourn Vonnegut's loss we see Dick Cheney, his metal heart and test-tube blood refreshed daily by the Transylvanian earth on his coffin floor, wake each evening suited up and ready for another round of lies, mayhem, and feeding enriched batches of evil into the overloaded mind of the pathetic little nitwit sitting in the Oval Office in his Top Gun costume.
This country not only sells guns to its maniacs, it even installs them as President and places them in charge of the biggest, most lethal collection of war-making machinery in history. Had we known just how vile and demented this guy was, we’d have understood that our passive acceptance was making us co-conspirators in our own self-destruction.
BUSH BIDED HIS TIME
But if a candidate has enough money, he can hide behind an election process that fails to ferret out character and can even camouflage astoudingly low levels of ability and intelligence. So Bush bided his time for awhile cutting taxes for the rich, walking away from the Kyoto Treaty, planting heck-of-a-job Brownies all across the top of government agencies, making sure there was no energy policy to conflict with the goals of Exxon-Mobil and Saudi Arabia, and, curiously, impaling counter-terrorism strategies set in place by the previous administration, which he replaced with nothing at all.
But soon enough he mounted his toy steed and dispatched American forces down the mountain for oil, glory, and to scratch the itch of his homicidal pathology. Now his new man at Defense, Robert Gates, who’d signed off on the bipartisan Baker commission’s report, has extended Iraq tours to 15 months. That highly touted panel, remember, said we must begin using diplomacy to extricate ourselves. But after waiting two weeks for everyone to forget the report, Bush threw in more, rather than less, and Gates oversees this mad race toward the abyss.
The war is killing us, and the “surge” is doing it quicker. Congress must hold fast against war funding and impeach these bastards. It’s doubtful it will do even half of that, but we have to stay after its members and make them fear the next election more than they love their corporate paymasters.
But soon enough he mounted his toy steed and dispatched American forces down the mountain for oil, glory, and to scratch the itch of his homicidal pathology. Now his new man at Defense, Robert Gates, who’d signed off on the bipartisan Baker commission’s report, has extended Iraq tours to 15 months. That highly touted panel, remember, said we must begin using diplomacy to extricate ourselves. But after waiting two weeks for everyone to forget the report, Bush threw in more, rather than less, and Gates oversees this mad race toward the abyss.
The war is killing us, and the “surge” is doing it quicker. Congress must hold fast against war funding and impeach these bastards. It’s doubtful it will do even half of that, but we have to stay after its members and make them fear the next election more than they love their corporate paymasters.
