If this author were Tom Friedman of (amongst other things) the New York Times, he might have this thought on the transition, from the previous misAdministration to the incoming Obama years...
"The only thing we learned in the last eight years, is that Tanks and Garbage trucks cost more than Ambulances and Pickup trucks..."
And 'Tom' would go on to show us how the costs of destruction are one-dimensional, as we knew long ago from our oft-repeated quote from Dwight Eisenhower (stand by...). Bombs and bullets provide a one-time profit to their source contractors, get used, or stored, but they never 'create' positive consequences.
But the Ambulance that saves a life, as well as the pickup trucks of the plumber, carpenter or mason, are public or private expenses that benefit their source contractor, and their end users: patients and hard-working women and men.
Not being Tom Friedman, and being on the ZEN side of things, we reflect now on the nightmares of past propaganda, in comparison to the nightmares of present reality.
There is no single aspect of the outgoing misAdministration that deserves praise, and while Dick Cheney appears as healthy as Kim Jong-Il ...
Seriously: who believes that that true blue–blooded oilman Cheney has EVER boxed and hauled his own cartons from one sordid office to a new location? As an excuse for his situation, however, that excuse is as fine as any other.
He may be paying for the sins of his public career and we are not inclined to add to the weight he carries.
Do you know anyone who didn't sell their Halliburton stock? :-)
Looks to be a perfect economic analysis of the outgoing misAdministration, non?
As the war in Iraq intensified, and as the shadow-economy oil speculators drove the market to absurdly dis-economic cost levels, Halliburton rode the Republican wave to its natural cyclical end.
The world, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the hot spots in Africa, Mexico, even in New Orleans: the world needs a year of ambulances. A world and year of blankets, simple food... clean water.
Guns or butter... Econ 101, in the simple true words of the last clean(er) Republican President (link goes to a previous crystelZENmud post):
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."(Dwight Eisenhower, during his Administration)
One sure thing, is that the weight of the misunderestimations presented by the spectacularly connived policy pronouncements of the outgoing misAdministration, have begun to be lifted from the shoulders of the peoples of the world. The dark dreams of empire-mongers give way to the weary charge laid upon Barrack Hussein Obama, and Congress, in spite of their badger-vicious minority Republican Party and its media allies.
Conservatives don't get it, perhaps. Yet to be a 'Conservative' in the USA requires soul-searching as to whether they follow a lost concept or their present reality. A new Republican Party may arise, but it would either have to be better, or worse, than that model run into the ground by Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh. Any Conservative reading this Progressive blog should seek out the writings of Ike Eisenhower, or study the waning years of Barry Goldwater, whose epiphany was "Why do I spend so much time HATING?..."
We, the People, however, should have stronger bases to create the sustainable future we've desired, as the world asks, waits, witnesses.
Those were 'Thoughts for a change'...
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