From the Scotsman....
"You've got to hand it to George Walker Bush. Everyone in the world thought he was a moronic, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, mindless puppet doing the bidding of his super-rich, neo-con, oil-soaked paymasters while paying lip service to the concerns of the great unwashed.
Instead it turns out he's a political genius.
The American economy is going down the toilet. It has a budget deficit ($4 trillion over the next 10 years) that would make Kim Jong Il blush. Worryingly, China and Hong Kong have accumulated $177 billion of US debt, giving the world's biggest dictatorship a great deal of economic power over the world's richest democracy.
Vast amounts have been squandered on enormous tax cuts that disproportionately favour the super-wealthy (the bottom 60% of US society got a mere 14.7% of Bush's $1.6 trillion giveaway, while the richest 1% got half of it). Meanwhile unemployment has rocketed. And for George, healthcare is just another word that begins with "h", like "Iran". In short, the ordinary American is getting royally shafted by the Bush administration.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
How'd he do it? Well, he made them scared. Not in the way he makes us scared - by having his finger on the nuclear trigger while looking very dim and slightly deranged - but by raising mythical bogeymen to terrify middle America.
After the horrific attacks on the US on 11 September, 2001, the Bush administration should have dedicated all its resources to hunting down Osama bin Laden and his little helpers. Instead, after taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan (a good move spoiled slightly by the chaotic mess that country is currently in), Dubya decided to focus on Iraq: a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Despite all the lies about weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaeda training camps and uranium from Nigeria, Saddam Hussein was as great a threat to the US as my mum. (Note to any neo-cons who might be reading: this means that the Iraqi leader was not a threat at all. It does not mean you should carpet-bomb my mum's house or have her deposed in a right-wing coup.)
Careful use of terror alerts have kept swing voters good and jumpy so that they chose the "tough" George Dubya Bush over the "sane" John Kerry. This despite the fact that the Iraq adventure has made America more of a terrorist target than it was before and that American (and British) servicemen are dying there at a frightening rate.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
As a result we're in for an exciting four years of unfettered neo-con crusading. Especially if you live in or near a member of the axis of evil: Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, the Pitcairn Islands, France, San Francisco...
On the brighter side, US domestic policy's going to be dictated by extreme fundamentalists so the colonials might as well tear up that precious consitution of theirs and replace it with the Book of Leviticus.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius. Truly, we "misunderestimated" him."
(PS- this is from a fun article series from the Scotsman newspaper entitled "Heroes and Villians." This week, GWB is the hero. Last time it was Prince Harry for beating up photographers.) heh. www.scotsman.com
Instead it turns out he's a political genius.
The American economy is going down the toilet. It has a budget deficit ($4 trillion over the next 10 years) that would make Kim Jong Il blush. Worryingly, China and Hong Kong have accumulated $177 billion of US debt, giving the world's biggest dictatorship a great deal of economic power over the world's richest democracy.
Vast amounts have been squandered on enormous tax cuts that disproportionately favour the super-wealthy (the bottom 60% of US society got a mere 14.7% of Bush's $1.6 trillion giveaway, while the richest 1% got half of it). Meanwhile unemployment has rocketed. And for George, healthcare is just another word that begins with "h", like "Iran". In short, the ordinary American is getting royally shafted by the Bush administration.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
How'd he do it? Well, he made them scared. Not in the way he makes us scared - by having his finger on the nuclear trigger while looking very dim and slightly deranged - but by raising mythical bogeymen to terrify middle America.
After the horrific attacks on the US on 11 September, 2001, the Bush administration should have dedicated all its resources to hunting down Osama bin Laden and his little helpers. Instead, after taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan (a good move spoiled slightly by the chaotic mess that country is currently in), Dubya decided to focus on Iraq: a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Despite all the lies about weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaeda training camps and uranium from Nigeria, Saddam Hussein was as great a threat to the US as my mum. (Note to any neo-cons who might be reading: this means that the Iraqi leader was not a threat at all. It does not mean you should carpet-bomb my mum's house or have her deposed in a right-wing coup.)
Careful use of terror alerts have kept swing voters good and jumpy so that they chose the "tough" George Dubya Bush over the "sane" John Kerry. This despite the fact that the Iraq adventure has made America more of a terrorist target than it was before and that American (and British) servicemen are dying there at a frightening rate.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius.
As a result we're in for an exciting four years of unfettered neo-con crusading. Especially if you live in or near a member of the axis of evil: Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, the Pitcairn Islands, France, San Francisco...
On the brighter side, US domestic policy's going to be dictated by extreme fundamentalists so the colonials might as well tear up that precious consitution of theirs and replace it with the Book of Leviticus.
And yet Dubya persuaded the suckers to vote for him. The man's a genius. Truly, we "misunderestimated" him."
(PS- this is from a fun article series from the Scotsman newspaper entitled "Heroes and Villians." This week, GWB is the hero. Last time it was Prince Harry for beating up photographers.) heh. www.scotsman.com