"I'd like to start off with a little Frank Sinatra song"
George's ipod
for release 04-30-05
Washington D.C.
George Bush is an amazing man. It's impossible to tell if he is just an inarticulate hick or if he is the most cunning and diabolical man on the planet. And then you must ask yourself if he really believes the type of garbage that he repeats and repeats and repeats like an insistent, noisy, smirking parrot or if he is just a savvy Texas used car salesman who knows full well that the tires are bad and the transmission is about to die and it needs a valve job but will still try to tell you that this is your dream ride and you can have it for only two trillion dollars but don't worry, you won't have to pay. Your children will.
Our President reminds me much of a tape recorder, a mussolini ipod with pre-recorded samples of Karl Rove whispers put on permanent shuffle. In his prime-time news conference on Thursday night, Bush took his butchery of the language to new heights. I loved this one, "And how far we let it go on is dependent upon our consensus amongst ourselves." Brilliant. He sounded like one of those GI Joe dolls with the string in the neck that you pull out and listen to a scratchy canned recording--"We are spreading freedom and democracy." or "Ownership Society." or "Sensible Energy Policy."
This all sounds fine and good if all you know of the world is what Fox News tells you. But when I hear "spreading freedom and democracy" I know it really means invading oil-rich middle eastern countries and setting up puppet governments in order to put a vise-grip on the petroleum reserves because we are junkies who see the fix dwindling.
And when I hear "Sensible Energy Policy," it feels all warm and fuzzy at first until I remember that the translation of that phrase is, "we're going to rape the virgin wilderness and to hell with the caribou and to hell with you cuz our big oil buddies are going to rape you every time you drive past a gas pump. Jesus wants it that way."
"Ownership Society" makes me wonder who will be the owners and who will be owned?
Then there is this troubling little phrase that keeps creeping into the President's rhetoric in various forms. It usually sounds like, "What the American people need to understand is....and blah blah blah." How many times have you heard him preface a sentence this way? Translation: The American people need to see it My Way.
When the President waxes eloquent about Social Security reform, it nearly brings tears for two reasons. One is because the whole idea of private accounts is so absurd and the other is because of the sheer beauty and skill with which Bushco can reframe an argument. What we are forgetting here, people, is that Social Security is not a retirement savings account, it is old age insurance. Let me say it again. Social Security is not savings, it is insurance.
The only resonance in Bush's argument for reform is that reform is surely necessary. Our Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme. When a valid insurance company collects payments and premiums from it's clients, it invests that capital and depends on the growth of that fund plus actuarial advantages (like the early death of the client) to insure that they can cover claims. The Social Security program is 'pay as you go', which sounds very thrifty and virtuous but what it really means is that the CEO's of the company (our government) have had their hands in the till for years and are spending the capital fund quicker than it's coming in for things like unnecessary wars and pantomime security bureaucracies, while shortchanging education and social services.
Now Bushco has devised a plan so that their buddies on Wall Street can join in on the Social Security bounty. Besides the two trillion bucks that it will cost to make the transition to private accounts, brokerage firms will have a perpetual revenue stream from managing the accounts.
The Poet's Eye cannot see why the sages in our government haven't come up with the sensible compromise. If you want to divert a portion of your payroll tax to an investment fund, then that fund should be commonly managed by Social Security, like a mutual fund. Of course this would cut out the investment bankers and the portfolio managers who pay for Tom DeLay's golfing trips. Pity.
Regrets, I’ve had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.
I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.---from George Bush's ipod
