Guest Opinion: Just Look at this Mess!

I just came off of a little hiatus in order to complete a few projects and take some time off to sit back and watch or listen to what was happening out there. Man, what a crazy couple of weeks, huh? We've had BannerGate and LeakGate sandwiched in between the latest on Scott Peterson and Kobe Bryant. Then there was the race between the California fires and Bush's recent snotty press conference. Of course we had the Democrats doing fairly well on the local levels in the last election being over shadowed by two southern governor's races - as if that was any big surprise.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, "coalition" forces dropped over five hundred pounds of explosives on a factory, two houses and an open field in retaliation for the shooting down of a helicopter two days earlier. Two weeks ago, Paul Wolfowitz had his vacation at the Baghdad Holiday Inn interrupted by RPGs which, based upon his press conference, showed that under secretaries do poop their undies. Over one hundred and eighty soldiers have lost their lives since Bush boasted "Bring 'em on" and to make matters even more embarrassing - Jessie Lynch is a tad miffed that Rummy's Gang has exploited her ordeal which was turned into a propaganda piece masquerading as a Movie of the Week.

Speaking of movies, the Ronald Reagan National Fan Club raised its ugly head recently when word got out in the NY Times that CBS' "The Reagans" was not going to actually portray poor "Ronbo" as the second coming of Christ. Never mind that here was a president who could barely acknowledge AIDS, let alone actually do anything about it. Never mind that here was a president who had homeless people removed from the immediate area because he didn't like seeing them when he looked out the White House windows - even though he helped put them there in the first place. Never mind that here was a president who didn't like the fact that Congress didn't want to fund terrorist "freedom fighters" so he merely did business with Iran behind their backs to get his own way. Republicans insist that Reagan never be portrayed with anything but unquestioning reverence - even if he was the worst thing about the Eighties next to Scritti Politti.

CBS made two major mistakes. The first was to feel the need to "enhance" certain aspects of Reagan for entertainment purposes. The truth would have controversial enough and would have been a ratings coup and the Reagan Fan National Fan Club wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.

The second mistake was to cave in to right wing pressure and look like a bunch of pathetic losers who will be probably forced to show little more than Everybody Loves Raymond reruns during sweeps week. And passing the movie on to Showtime doesn't make anybody feel any better. The right doesn't want anybody to see it there either while the rest of us remember the bogus 9/11 flick put out by Showtime which depicted Dubya as a cross between John Wayne and Bruce Willis instead of the irresponsible coward he was that day. What ever happened to Murrow and Cronkite's CBS? What a damn shame!

Of course, cowardice isn't limited to Bush and CBS. It would seem that columnist Kathleen Parker failed in her first attempt at "Coulterism." Ms. Parker is one of those right wing wanna-be pit bulls who puts herself across as just an everyday soccer Mom. She's the columnist who wrote in October of '01 that in light of the events of 9/11, that "even the Democrats are glad that Bush "stole the election." She's also stated that anyone who thinks that Bush Co. abused, ignored or invented intelligence concerning 9/11 or Iraq is a laughable conspiracy theorist - ignoring the fact that Watergate was also a "conspiracy theory" - until the truth came out.

Anyway, it would seem that Parker, in her best attempt to be Annie C. the Nazi, wrote in an article how the Democratic candidates should be "lined up and shot." This quote was attributed to a friend of hers in the military who also had a problem with anyone questioning the Bush Doctrine. But it seems as though there were versions of the same article which were "toned down" to simply say "lined up and slapped." Now Katie P. says that it was all a misunderstanding and a timing problem. Seems as though after she sent her article out, her friend, a Delta Force member, stated he would rather be quoted as saying "slapped." Of course, this "explanation" came after a firestorm of angry email came into Parker's publishers. Personally, I have a hard time imagining a Delta Force member saying "slapped" anyway. Better luck next time, Katie. Besides, we all know what you meant.

Speaking of luck - isn't it great that someone on Senator Rockefeller's staff issued a memo suggesting that the role of the White House should not be exempt when considering the use or abuse of intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion? Thank God, because now majority leader, Bill Frist, can cop a "how dare you" attitude and can put the kabash on the whole dang thing, which he stated on November 7, was exactly what he planned to do! Besides the Republican senators have a thirty hour marathon planned to try to ram through a couple of right wing extremist judges to the Appellate courts that those pesky Democrats have been filibustering which they need to rest up for.

Now there were also a couple of stories that never appeared on the news that I feel need to be pointed out which show what a mess everything is. The first one would be hysterically funny if it weren't so threatening to our system of democracy.

Diebold Inc., of North Canton, Ohio is angry at two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for posting internal company memos and documentation on the Internet. These postings concern the vulnerability of the electronic voting machines which Diebold manufactures and some states are already using which not only leave no paper trail, but have been proven to be easily "hacked" into thus rendering voting results inaccurate. Now the people from Diebold insist that there is nothing wrong with their voting machines and they want all this nonsense about their vulnerability to cease and desist. Never mind that in a recent fund-raising letter written by Diebold's chief executive Walden O'Dell said he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." And just how, you may ask, did these two students get all this incriminating evidence? Easy. Somebody simply hacked into Diebold's computer network. Well, gol-all-ly! I feel pretty good about voting, don't you?

By the way, while you weren't looking, Dick Cheney's influence has come to the EPA in the form of the pending prosecutions and investigations of polluting energy companies being flushed down the toilet. Just thought you might like to know.

Oh, did you hear? The economy is doing much better. Seems as though farming American jobs out to other countries is actually good for the economy. And to all of you who are bitching that there are no new jobs being created, well you need to understand that over one hundred thousand jobs in the service sector were created last quarter. Now, if any of you have a problem with that, then you are being un-patriotic by discounting the economic miracle that is thousands of new burger flippers just waiting to ask you if you want fries with that. How un-American can you be? Plus, you're ignoring all those "temps" being hired without benefits or any sense of job security to do work for companies who lucked out and scored a government contract. Who cares if they may be out of a job in six months? You got to love those numbers!

Finally, let's talk about something we thought was gone forever. We've all heard various statesmen talk about the poor planning concerning Iraq. Many of them are Republicans and they all have a common theme when discussing Bush's Biggest Screw Up. They keep saying we don't have enough people over there.

Ladies and Gentlemen, they are floating the "D" word around again. Should Diebold Inc. or the Supreme Court screw up the democratic process of voting again in a year, you can bet your son or daughter's life that we will see the Draft make an ugly return to our culture. Bush the "Bring 'em on" draft dodging, coward has angered our allies to the point where we are truly on our own. The world is saying, "You broke it - you fix it yourself." So, we can all be rest assured that should Bush actually get another four years to nail the last spike in America's coffin - your children will be snatched away from you to die for Halliburton. Doesn't that make you feel so patriotic?

And let us not forget that while Bush and Co. continue to evoke images of 9/11 to keep the masses in compliance, they are doing their level best to thwart any investigation into what happened - what they knew and when they knew it. You just gotta love these guys! Oh, I know they've worked out a "deal" with the commission looking into that day but we all know how a Bush deal usually pans out.

Oh well, who cares? Besides, did you hear about Rosie O'Donnell in court the other day? Now that's news!

- From: From: http://wdjiii.tripod.com/wdjiii3/id1.html submitted to Scoop by the author.

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