Can't trust Republicans with money

The financial failures alone should have been enough to remove Darth and Duhbya from their locations, disclosed and undisclosed, to Leavenworth.  Because they abhor accountability of any kind, $6.6 billion was simply pilfered in Iraq.

Who knows how much of it was five-finger discounted by overpaid mercenaries from the likes of Blackwater (now Xe).

Maybe Ahmed Chalabi is thrilled not to have become President of Iraq.  It always seemed as though he was in the whole three card monte with the neocons in order to get rich.  Maybe it was just a failure of imagination on his part.  By now, he may realize that being President only paints a bigger bullseye on your chest.

Then there are the billions we spent putting coats of paint on rubble and calling it public works.  We could really use that money to create a few stopgap jobs right about now.

Mercenaries

Decaying empires hire mercenaries - and pay dearly.

They pay in self-respect, not just in filthy lucre.

Oh, and of course, we should call them by their name. Contractors? Feh.

Taint so

ACORN was a scalp for Fox and the wingnuts. Did ACORN get stung? Sure. To a degree, they even deserved it, but their main sin in conservatopia is that they register po' folks to vote and to voice their concerns.

Congress, led by consistently pusillanimous Democrats, fell all over itself to condemn and punish ACORN with a bill of attainder. It's always a pleasant shock on those rare occasions when Washington Dems actually stand up for what they profess to believe in.

Can we - those with normal discernment - can we agree, however, that no matter how awful the sins of ACORN, they don't hold a candle to the murder and bribery of Blackwater (now Xe Services)?

Wealthies

Oh, the wealthies! For them, the business of America is ... enriching them. They talk like free marketeers, but they really want to restore feudalism, this time with regular bathing (for us - cold water's fine) and central heating (for them). They can't see why any further governing charters were needed after the Magna Carta. The goddamned common people have so perverted that noble agreement between the king and the lords that they think they're equal to the peerage. The wealthies cherish places like South Korea, where a man can be convicted of crimes but set free because his company is too important to the economy!

The wealthies say, "Give us your tired, your poor, ... and we'll work 'em until arthritis slows 'em down, and then we'll deport 'em back to Chiapas." They couldn't give a shit about race; it's class that matters to them. If you're management, that is, if you know how to get lots of work out of others, welcome to the country club! If you're labor, they'll outsource your lippy ass to Elbonia. Commonweal? That's their idea of oxymoron.

There's one aspect of racism that has always benefited the wealthies. When working class whites hate their black class counterparts, the wealthies can pay them less. Take a look south if you need evidence. Right-to-work is only partly about being a pissant non-joiner; it's also about not having to join anything that has darkies in it.

As with immigration and partly with race, most of the Republican platform doesn't cut any ice with the wealthies. They aren't going to teach creationism to their kids, but teaching it to yours gives them another competitive advantage in the next generation. They would love tuition vouchers to reduce their costs at elite prep schools, so they have common cause with the fundies who want a subsidy for their segregation and fundi-Christian academies, but their reasons aren't the same.

Likewise, their reasons for a bullying foreign policy only overlap with the bullies' reasons. The bullies love a good stand-up fight - as long as they are never out-gunned - but the wealthies love a good profit. Halliburton is the canonical example, but there are a thousand others. As long as they can keep us scared enough to fund rilly, rilly big shews of force, the wealthies don't actually need a war, but they miss the excitement of the Cold War terribly.

The nexus of the bully-wealthy connection and alliance is Blackwater. It doesn't hurt that Erik Prince is a fundie, too. (Why doesn't he run for President? Oh. My. God. Please, please, keep that thought a secret.)

GOP constituencies

Laughing the pretenders out of town leaves three guys who might just possibly win the Republican nomination, and they're a scary trio. One is an open theocrat and Confederate sympathizer. One will clearly and obviously say anything in the whole damn world to win - no, scratch that, it's worse, he'll say everything at one time or another if that will save the best for numero uno. The third is already 72 years old, though half the fossils in the media (think David Broder) would volunteer tonight to have his baby if only they had wombs, and he has deeply offended all the key Republican constituencies.

There are three constituencies that matter in the modern (ouch, oxymoron) Republican Party:

• fundies - a 2000-year-old human-written book is never wrong
• bullies - my country, right or wrong, I'll kick your ass
• wealthies - pro-business means never having to say you're sorry

Sure, there are gun nuts, xenophobes, and racists, too, spread liberally (ouch again) through the first two categories and even leaking into the third (remember Henry Ford?).

The fundies and the bullies do the work and provide the votes, but the wealthies, true to form, own the party and run the show. The fundies are pretty pissed, uh, are waxing wroth over this. The Bill Clinton penis hunt distracted them for a while, but now again they want to be darn sure that they get their turn before the apocalypse. Some of the loonier fundies need their turn to help bring the apocalypse. As soon as possible. No shit!

Oh, Blackwater, keep on rolling

Immunity and opacity are the "principles" of the Bushist regime. A democracy would insist on accountability and transparency.

Tucker Carlson should die

On Bill Maher, he's the glibbest, stupidest person ever to speak a complete sentence. He can't distinguish between the New York Times hiring private security and the U.S. Government hiring mercenaries. Isn't that much stupidity inevitably fatal?

You can bet on one thing: If a bus hits him, he'll have his mouth open, and bullshit will be coming out.