0714 - Poli-Tricks

The U.S. political scene (unlike the quiet Anguilla political scene) has become almost intolerably silly. It is enough to make the usually tolerant OO “Clunch”, our Forgotten English Calendar’s Friday word. Clunch is said to mean “Abrupt in speech and irritable”, at least in North Lincolnshire. Look around: a GOP Senator who produced the famous $400 million “Bridge to Nowhere” seems to be being wiretapped by the FBI for taking gifts from an oil type. The Dem Representative who stashed $90 thou or so in his freezer from a sting is still around the Capitol, somehow neither indicted nor ethically investigated. The sex scene is hot in Washington (as it often is) with everything from a Dem who patronized the DC Madam to a GOP Senator doing strange things in the airport men’s room. And as for the business of the Nation, forget about it, since the 2008 election is only 13 months-plus away, and the States are fighting to see who can hold the firstest primary. Who needed this?

It is not as if there aren’t any problems. After yelling at the GOPs for wasting money on porky projects, the Dems produce their own list of appropriations for butterfly museums or such. Who votes for this stuff? As for the President, he threatens to veto a bill to extend health insurance coverage for kids (called, irritatingly, SCHIP) because that costs money, while busily spending about $3 billion a week in trying to get the Iraqis to stop their favorite sport of killing each other and take up dodge ball. Meanwhile, it seems that most U.S. money spent on Iraq reconstruction has been wasted, stolen, or gone missing, or so the audit reports say. Five years later there isn’t electricity or water in Iraq, and Iraqis who love to get guns and shoot each other somehow can’t police their own streets.

Grr. Clunch it is. It’s not like the old days. Our Senior Counsel spent many decades in Washington, and remembers when the GOPs stood for a balanced budget, when Federal programs were sometimes in the hands of competent managers (remember the men on the moon?), and when you could find some in Congress who were interested in doing the right thing. Now, in primary season, it seems the job to be done is for a Giuliani to pretend to the national Gun Nuts (the NRA) that he was wrong to forbid guns in New York, while someone with the same name as the former Governor of Mass. (Romney) says he no longer believes in tolerance for gays or a woman’s right to choose. Wasn’t it Mass. where a Gov named Romney signed the bill for gay marriages?

Not that the Dems are a more edifying spectacle, on the stump or in Congress. Their golden advantage is the Iraq mess, but they are scared silly to do anything that the GOPs could say wouldn’t “support the troops” or cause the U.S. to “lose” the brilliantly unsuccessful whatever it is Bush & Co. were trying to do in Iraq. On the far left of the Dems, the MoveOn.org stupids produce the dumbest ad of the year, attacking General Patraeus. Look fellows, the Army is a big, big, bureaucracy, and Patraeus is a bright bureaucrat. You expect him to say that what he has been doing for years is a failure? Grow up.

Somehow, and the still extra-lively Alan Greenspan will be glad to explain how and why, the U.S. Dollar has declined in value after seven years of Treasury Secretaries who talked about a “strong dollar”. The Canadian Dollar is now worth as much as the U.S. (used to be worth 60 cents) and you don’t even want to know how much your lunch bill in Euros comes to in dollars when dining at Tropicana on St. Martin, as all good Anguillian Expats do. Meanwhile, talking about restaurants, almost all restaurateurs on Anguilla are on vacation. It’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich time here. It is also construction everywhere, giant hammers pounding holes in the rock starting at dawn. Grr!

Next time: Decisions [OO #715]

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

Home