THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION:ITS AS BAD AS HE FEARED IT WOULD BE

the gobvernment!

Representative of The National Association for the Advancement of Road Pylons, George Walker Bush

And, lo, the Magic Eight-Ball hath spake.

hate to tell certain folks that i told 'em so, but ...

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE WASTED YER VOTE ON RALPH NADER!! ARE YOU NADERITES HAPPY NOW??

ahhh, that felt good!

Yeah, that answers everything there, Tad.

I VOTED FOR NADAR BUT i KNEW gORE WOULD TAKE mASSACHUSETTS ANYWASY. BESIDES, GORE DID WIN. BUSH IS SO HAND IN GLOVE WITH CORPORATE AMERICA AND BUSINESS INTERESTS ITS RIDICULOUS. HIS HANDS HAVE ENRON BLOOD ON THEM TOO. I CAN'T WAIT TILL THE WAR (READ:DISTRACTION) IS OVER SO PEOPLE REALISE HOW CRAPPY A LEADR HE IS

Now that you've confessed yer sin, go forth and sin no more Hanle y. :-)

Also, pray nightly for the continued health and well-being of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Breyer ... lest you like the idea of "Chief Justice Scalia" or "Chief Justice Clarence Thomas" (!)

Anyway, this whole "Axis of Evil" is pure B.S. Iraq is pretty rotten, to be sure, but Saddam Hussein can't even breathe without having missiles raining down on him. North Korea is certifiably nuts, but they are more a threat to themselves (inasmuch as they can't even feed their people now) not to mention the fact that Chimpy essentially put the kabosh on the North-South Korea talks last year. As for Iran, certain people appear to be stuck in a 20-year time warp -- Iran has cleaned up their act considerably over the past decade or so, they have a democratically-elected government, they have been seeking to restore relations with us. Chimpy's comments have essentially kicked the Iranian moderates in the teeth, and I suspect some sort of suck-up to either Israel or Saudi Arabia in this.

It's all about creating another Cold War, another boondoggle to dump billions of $$$ into a defense bunghole (remember those multi- thousand dollar toilet seats?) and scare the living shit out of people so that Bushy can pay off his defense contractor friends. It's so transparent and sickening.

But it's working, sadly.

Chimpy's comments have essentially kicked the Iranian moderates in the teeth

I'm not entirely sure, actually. I suspect Powell is playing both ends against the middle there.

Bit soon to be sure of that DG. I've been avoiding the news today for royal-allergy reasons, but didn't chris patten just very publicly denounce the "axis of evil" speech as (diplomatic language version) "unhelpful and not exactly thought through" = (non-dip ditto) "in-fucking-credibly retarded"?

ok maybe i'm just an optimist but the bush administration seems totally *brittle* to me currently, its aggression only a few steps away from panic sometimes. bush senior — historians among you will recall — had a 90% approval rating shortly after the gulf war, and went on to fail to win a second term, to a proven philanderer that all pundits agreed could not win once, let alone twice.

big piece in the new new york review of books, by uber-banker felix rohatyn, on enron, called "the betrayal of capitalism" — it's relatively kind to bush — incompetence rather than corruption, it says — but if the wall street establishment are *already* voicing doubts of this magnitude, and during wartime, a war announced as payback for an attack on new york's financial district (let's just restate it: "the betrayal of capitalism", ie NOT a small crime in FR's universe), then things are a lot less cut-and-dried than they seem.

i MEAN " AXIS OF EVIL"? WHERE DID BUSH GO TO POLITICIAN SCHOOL?

Bush and blair were both nominated for the Nobel peace prize by a right wing Norwegian member of parliament, (they make the nominations). Tony ought to be ashamed of such company.

Until last week Iran was begining to engage with the world and starting to demonstrate that islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive. Infact Iran stands out as the most democratic Islamic country (excepting the south east asian moslem states) and deserves to be engaged with on the world stage. OK there is the small matter of the stated foreign policy objective of the destruction of Isreal, but then not so long ago it was a stated forign policy objective of the US That communisn should be erradicated where ever it was found which led to military actions to remove governments, unconstitutionally in central america and africa, and of course with great sucess in south east asia.

It should be noted that bush appointed, to the post of Under secretary of state for Western Heemisphere affairs, a man who was convicted of misleading congress in the Iran Contra Affair (remember that, selling arms to Iran to fund fascist Rebels in Nicaragua) and who attracted congressional censure for working beyond the bounds of what congress had deemed it acceptable for the CIA to do.

Worse than that, Ed, it was the leader of the far-right Norwegian party (either the People's Party or the Progress Party - one of those is in Denmark and the other in Norway but I can never remember which) on which the centre-right Norwegian government depends to hold up a parliamentary majority - see "The Scandinavian Right" thread from last November. Yes, that unsettled me too.

Remembered: it's the Danish People's Party, and the Norwegian Progress Party. What drives far-right organisations to give themselves names so manifestly unrepresentative of their actual opinions?

Mark S made a good point upthread about Bush Sr's downfall in 1992: remembering the hysterical flagwaving mood of the Gulf War, it's the best historical precedent we can hope for.

What services should the government provide then, Mike?

Oh, don't tell me... Tell your Congresspeople.

It's a vast right wing conspiracy, I tell you.

The government should destroy all cell phones

http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/axis.shtml