We are Shocked! We are Shocked!
(No, Really, We’re Shocked)
By Jim Washburn
Do you ever wonder if George Bush sees himself as Ferris Bueller, and the United States is just one big boring high school aching to be pranked? Before that final school bell rings next January, what great pranks might that mischievous little chimp still pull off? Bomb Iran? Rename Guantánamo “Hedonism III”? Reclassify oil shale as a vegetable?
Whatever he does, he doesn’t exactly seem to be sweating his legacy. You wouldn’t either if you were looking forward to a lifetime of calling in chits with the oligarchy you’ve served so well, for whom his administration has been one long no-bid blowjob. He can leave it to his successors to mop up the spooge, while he spends his twilight years serving on corporate boards and doing the Macarena at testimonial dinners.
In a lot of ways he’s been acting like the big vacation’s already started. Consider, for example, that goose-stepping or whatever the fuck it was he did at the White House photo op when he endorsed McCain a few months back.
I’m one of those people who is convinced Bush has been wearing a bug in his ear since at least his second debate with John Kerry in 2004. After stammering though the first debate, Bush in the next one suddenly was bursting with facts and positions, but always following a weird pause wherein the distant look on his face suggested he was listening to either God or Dick Cheney. Some also noted he was packing a bulge under his suit more consistent with a radio receiver than a Levitra layover.
At nearly every speaking function since, those same awkward pauses have arisen, followed by him mouthing phrases he doesn’t seem to comprehend. In other times, it would have been an outrage if it were suspected a U.S. President was running on remote control; these days it’s more a sense of relief. But of late Bush appears to even be goofin’ on his handlers, either riffing off their lines or winging it entirely. The result is a stunning return to form, like the Bush of old, giving the fusty English language a brisk butch rub. Consider his July 15 press conference, where, when speaking of the resurgent insurgents in the emergent Afghanistan conflict, he declared, “They have no disregard for human life!”
Let’s ignore the obvious – the beaucoups disregard for human life evinced every week by our killing of Afghan civilians, or the hundreds of thousands dead or mangled and the millions displaced in Iraq – to talk about someone else whose life has been cheapened by Bush: you.
You may have missed this, because it’s hardly been reported in the U.S. press, but the Bush EPA recently devalued the cash price of a human life, yours included, from $8.04 million to $7.22 million. That’s right, on Bush’s watch, the value of your life has gone down while the value of oil has quadrupled.
My first thought on hearing this news was, “I’m worth $7 million? Kill me; just let me spend the money first.”
But they’re not going to give you the money, though they may very well kill you. The reason the EPA attaches a value on human life is so it can do cost/benefit analyses on environmental protections. Say that putting better pollution controls on a coal-fired electrical plant will cost $208 million: The EPA estimates how many people will die if the controls aren’t put in place, and weighs the dollar value of those lives against the expense to the business of limiting their pollution, with the higher amount deciding whether those controls are required. So by devaluing your life, the Bush EPA has with one bold stroke moved to allow a higher threshold of toxins and environmental degradation in your life, which will further cheapen it, allowing even more toxins ... .
Shocking? Not really, but this is: “Green Beret Electrocuted in Shower at Iraq Base.”
Is there no limit to the unmanly terror those Islamo-fascist thugs will commit? Kill them all!
Slow down. This highly decorated Staff Sergeant, Ryan Maseth, wasn’t killed by terrorists, but by a wrongly wired water pump, it was learned – after the Army had obscured the reason for months. He is one of at least 13 U.S. servicemen who have so far been electrocuted in Iraq, along with scores who have been injured in electrical mishaps, while, The New York Times reported July 18, many soldiers report receiving daily shocks in their barracks and, in one recent six-month period alone, there were over 283 electrical fires that damaged or destroyed U.S. military facilities in Iraq. Just last month, 10 buildings at a Marine base in Falluja were destroyed in an electrical fire.
Jesus Christ, has Reddi Kilowatt changed his name to Sunni Kilowatt or something? Why is it that even electricity seems to be at war with us now? Of the 4,125 U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq at this writing, one out of every 317 was killed in an electrical mishap.
So let’s get to the Kellogg, Brown & Root of the problem: KBR – the Halliburton offshoot that was given highly lucrative no-bid contracts to build facilities for our forces in Iraq – evidently used such poor materials and untrained labor, with little or no oversight, that there are systemic electrical problems throughout the theater of war. According to a report by Pentagon official Ingrid Harrison, KBR was aware of the hazards yet “chose to ignore the known unsafe conditions.”
A bit of history: When Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, he had the Pentagon pay millions of dollars to Halliburton to produce a study showing how, gee, Halliburton could more effectively perform the infrastructure work – construction, food service, etc. – previously done in-house by the military. Returning to private life, Cheney, who had no business experience, was made CEO and Chairman of Halliburton, and used his Pentagon contacts to weave Halliburton into military operations.
The idea was that our troops would be better and more economically served by privatization. From electrocuted Green Berets to troops sickened by sewage water served as potable, from the shameful privatized conditions at Walter Reed Hospital to billions in over-billing, it’s been working out great, hasn’t it?
By the EPA’s new estimate, those 13 electrocuted servicemen are worth $93.8 million. KBR’s most recent contract to service our forces in Iraq is for $150 billion. Guess who wins that cost-benefit analysis?
Published: 07/23/2008
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you are brilliant AND funny. a rare and exciting combo.
loved reading this.