Just became obvious to me why the hillbillies wear boots with the suits. I listened to the inaugural speech on NPR and man the bullshit was thick. Need waders.

There he goes again

You just can’t sit by and let your government run on automatic. Automatic pilot is for aircraft.

Microcosm: A few years ago our homeowners association was run by a man we later learned wasn’t even an owner. He was renting. He diverted hundreds of dollars of our fees to a relative as a way of paying himself, stealing money.

Of course most of us just want to live here, pay our fee, and have a nice common lawn, shrubbery, and a few annuals planted at the entrance to our neighborhood. Maybe 15% of us attend the annual meetings to approve budgets and elect officers.

It’s kind of like that in all of America. We may complain at the local bars and diners but we pay our taxes and go to sleep at night pretty sure other countries won’t invade us. We don’t “go to the meetings.” Heck, if more than half of us vote it’s a benchmark.

Many things have gone wrong in government and we usually don’t find out until it becomes too big for the corporate media to ignore. Kind of like Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair, where guys like Elliot Abrams and Ollie North were convicted of crimes. Abrams was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.

Now Rummy is looking longingly at using death squads in Iraq modeled after Reagan’s cockamamie Iran-Contra idea. From Sojourners: “Is it merely coincidence that President Bush appointed Elliot Abrams in mid-2003 to be his senior advisor on the Middle East?”

“The ‘Democracy Option’ disappears in Iraq.”

It is difficult to keep your heart these days.

Also from Sojourners and the daily dig, “silence is betrayal.” Don’t let even your town council member steal a dime, don’t let your government steal your country’s soul.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Turn your back on lies today. Turn your back on Bush.

Burning the candle at both ends

Here’s how one and one equal zero in the Bush economic doctrine: Tax cuts have improved the economy, helped create jobs. The economy is growing.

Social Security is in crisis and must be handed over to Wall Street to save it. This will cost three trillion dollars and we’ll have to borrow it to “save” Social Security.

Hmmm. If the economy is growing and jobs are being created because of tax cuts, and if Bush is going to make those tax cuts permanent, then the Social Security trust fund surely must grow, too.

The numbers Bush uses to create the crisis in the minds of those stupid enough to keep accepting twisted logic from this White House are based on the most pessimistic economic forecast his geniuses of propaganda can fake. So Bush wants to take your retirement (all of it, for the poor elderly) and roll the dice with his investment banker buddies.

It would be like taking grandmother’s money to Vegas on the chance she may go broke before she dies, even though you might calculate she has enough to live to be a hundred and twenty.

One end of the candle, tax cuts for the wealthy/crushing debt for generations to come, is burning. Think about that today while America in Washington “celebrates freedom,” prepared to light the other end of the candle. The elite, powerful, and rich are really celebrating the freedom to pick our pockets.

Can’t think of a better man to carry a lantern of truth for the people than Paul Krugman, interviewed by Rolling Stone:

RS: What would you say to college students and young workers who are convinced they'll never see a dime of the money they put into Social Security?

Paul Krugman: You've been sold a scare story. Right now Social Security has a large and growing trust fund -- a surplus that has been collected to pay for the surge in benefits we'll experience when the baby boomers start to retire. If you're twenty now, you'll be hitting retirement around 2052. That's the year the Congressional Budget Office says the trust fund will run out. In fact, many economists say it may never run out. If the economy continues to grow at an average rate, the trust fund could quite possibly last forever.