It's No Big Deal

Thanks to the Prince of Rummyworld for the title of tonight's entry. Today Rummy acknowledged that the Department of Defense is spying on protesters at military bases, using the tired old saw of its necessity for national security. He also verified that the DOD is keeping a database of these people. Now the dangerous Shakers and PETA activists can quake in their boots and we can all feel safer because it's necessary for our security to be enshrined in a database in the Pentagon for disagreeing with the Republican chickenhawks. Makes me feel safer. Does that mean that if I ride my bicycle around Buckley Air Force Base wearing a "No Blood for Oil" shirt, I'll make the database? I've already asked the NRA to put me on its enemies list and informed the Shrub that I'm against him. I get to make another database and we have another domestic spying program. But don't fear, according to Rummy, it's no big deal.

Likewise, it seems that someone at the White House did the math on the Obfuscator in Chief's bombastic savings of less than two percent of our energy, the amount imported from the Middle East. Today some mouthpiece told us it was all in jest, that it was just an example. We'll keep supporting the repressive regime in Jeddah by buying their oil, it was just an illustration of the savings the New Energy Economy (read, the Awl Bidness) will bring us. After all, it takes a gallon and a quarter of ethanol to produce a gallon of ethanol so the extra energy has to come from somewhere. Maybe that's the two percent we import from the Middle East. It's the Shrub's energy program and yes, Rummy, it's no big deal.

A big deal is the budget request for Iraq and Afghanistan, $120 billion. That brings the total cost of a war that was supposed to pay for itself to just under a half trillion dollars. Again, though, it's no big deal. After all, we deposed a stable government that had no ties to terrorists and no weapons of mass destruction and replaced it with a civil war. No big deal, though, as long as whoever remains in power continues to pump the reason for the war, oil. Had we invaded occupied Tibet, I wouldn't have made the claim but we didn't invade Tibet. Wal-Mart would have objected and the Chinese would have fought back.

And now we have a few thousands of missing e-mails from the White House's servers. Coincidentally, they're from the time that got Scooter Libby indicted, not that they might just cover Cheney and Bush's asses. Eighteen minutes of silence, anyone? No big deal, it's just a few thousand e-mails.

Your civil liberties, no big deal. Sam Alito, no big deal. Domestic espionage, tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor, energy policies and environmental policies controlled by polluters and wasters, no big deal. Our reputation abroad, torture, corruption in Congress, no big deal. It's never a big deal any more. Just a lot of bad little ones.