Smoke and Mirrors

The smoke and mirrors are in play in the Bush administration. We bid a fond farewell to Scotty the Mouthpiece, a bumbling, incompetent, soulless spouter of Bush talking points for whom? My bet is a better liar, one who can deliver the Big Lies in a convincing way, or convincing enough for the modern press. That shouldn't be too hard, but can the new Mouthpiece, probably someone more of Ari Fleisher's butter-won't-melt-in-his-mouth accomplished liar mold. And poor Harriett, once considered the most qualified person to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court is now being hailed as a bumbling incompetent, incapable of making decisions. Rove has been freed of his duties as vizier to fulfill a role more suited to him, attack dog. And know what, of all the "shakeups" in the Cabinet, none of them comes from outside of Bush's inner circle.

Can't find anyone who shares the delusion that Iraq is going well, that the economy is creating good jobs and that your awl buddies are on our side, George? Perhaps realism has even set in among the GOP?

Today brings us yet another revelation that intelligence leading up to the Iraq war was massaged and misrepresented. Yawn. We endure the indignities. Six months before the start of the war (that's before yellowcake, pictures of trailers, addresses to the U. N., undercutting the weapons inspectors and shock and awe), the CIA had credible evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Bush, unaware of the logical impossibility, held that Iraq had to prove the negative, that they had no weapons of mass destruction. No wonder, he had no proof of the positive, that Iraq had them. Even the aluminum tubes, the only physical evidence, was debunked before the news was released, leaked by the Incontinent President or otherwise exposed to us. It was already about regime change. We have volumes of evidence that this war was started on false pretenses and still we fight.

$75.17 per barrel. $3.50 per gallon. How much is enough to realize that the Cheney smoke-filled-room energy policy has nothing to do with energy and everything to do with ExxonMobil's bottom line? And how much is enough to crash the Bush economy? When will the energy tax begin to draw us down into recession or farther should the Chinese decide to foreclose on our national debt. The policy of the Bush Administration seems to be the familiar "stay the course." "Rising gasoline prices is like taking a — is like a tax, particularly on the working people and the small-business people." Aren't those the ones he likes to tax? The guy driving the $100k sports car is probably unphased by $3.00 per gallon gas. I certainly am. Ethanol, particularly when we can't import cheap ethanol from Brazil due to the oil lobby's tariff on it, isn't the answer, nor is hydrogen. Conservation is the answer and conservation isn't a 2 MPG increase in SUV fuel efficiency. We already have supply problems. The worst is yet to come. Tomorrow I'll be out test-driving Priuses.