Monday, March 06, 2006

Tone Deaf? Tone Deaf??

If I hear one more pundit say the Administration and/or Bush is "tone deaf" I may never be able to stop screaming. Bush is to tone deaf as Ray Charles was to near sighted! Where do they come up with these inane phrases? Is there a committee? Or can anyone submit the phrase of the week: We do not do torture. We don't want to play the Blame Game. You're either with us or you're with the enemy. We can't comment on an ongoing investigation. Freedom is on the march. We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up. No one imagined that the storm would breach the levies. We've turned a corner.

Well, there's a corner I'd like for them to turn (180 degrees) -- tell the American people the truth. Bush is not Jack Nicholson and Americans can handle the truth. Don't compare apples and tennis shoes. There is no comparison. The truth is the truth; there are no mixed realities. Keep it simple.

We've gotten into Iraqi based on lies and greed and hubris. We don't know how to get out. We've wasted billions in funds, buckets of blood, tons of depleted uranium and thousands of lives. All of the reconstruction money has gone into building prisons, hard bases and outsourcing security. And there is no "coalition of the willing" -- only the "coalition of the oops, where did everybody go ..." We can't keep trying to micro-manage the world, the United Nations, South America and the Middle East. It's not what the American people want. (And no one else wants us meddling in their business.) We've done some very, very bad things but we'll own up to them if given the chance. Truth and reconciliation can work.

Instead of threatening the press with sedition for publishing leaks, we should be rewarding whistle blowers. And it's ridiculous and confusing to classify then declassify and then reclassify bits of information at whim. Who the hell can keep track? We should all stick our heads out the window and yell, "What part of 'bend over' are we not understanding?" 'Cause we're all getting screwed by an administration that believes that the only entitlements are their own, that a plant can be called a leak, that poverty is a crime, that plausible deniability is equal to ignorance as an excuse for stupidity or cupidity, that blatant racism can be covered up, that it's okay to practice selective ethics, that hubris is a virtue, that liberal is a four-letter word, that torture and extraordinary rendition and wiretapping are acceptable practices that can be excused because of a fabricated war on an unknown enemy for an endless amount of time, that tapes and transcripts will and can disappear and, that if caught, one can plead that one is tone deaf ...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for continuing to write.
Sincerely,
Lone Rangette

Anonymous said...

just a quicky to let you know I'm here, reading your posting. Sure glad you are there for us francine, saying what we all think, with words I could never muster. Love you, appreciate your views, the amazing insight you bring to the table,(screen!), miss you like crazy, can't wait to hear your vioce in the flesh. We'll be in conference at the Embassy suites all week(woop-de-doo)shall touch down again next weekend in good ol' Belinistan. Hope to see you there! xxoo tess

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