To fail is to succeed

How to get ahead in the Bush Administration. Fail. Be wrong about everything. Donald Rumsfeld is going to be retained while most of the rest of the cabinet is resigning. It is as if Bush reached down into the barrel of rotten apples and picked out the single most rotten apple of all to retain. Rumsfeld was wrong about attacking Iraq. He was wrong about claiming that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. He was wrong about the relationship between Iraq and the terrorists. He was wrong about the reception we would get when attacking Iraq. He was wrong about how this ”war” would be financed. He was wrong about how many troops would be needed. He was (is) at least partially responsible for the torture in Guantanamo and “Abu Ghraid. He has violated the Geneva Convention. He is about to be charged with war crimes in Germany. He is responsible for the unconscionable disaster and chaos in Iraq. He is responsible for the deaths and maiming of hundreds of American military personnel, to say nothing of more tha a hundred thousand of innocent Iraqi women and children. In short, he is an absolutely despicable human being and a failure.. Bush likes him and thinks he has done a “superb job.”

The Ohio vote is being recounted. So far it appears clear that Bush did not win by as many votes as it originally appeared. But so what? What would happen if it turned out that Kerry actually had won in Ohio? Nothing, that’s what. First of all you can be sure that it will not turn out that Kerry won. That would create trouble and uncertainty, and the last thing that our Corporate Masters want is trouble and uncertainty. It would be bad for business and business is what America is all about. We are right back to where we were in 1900 – capital versus labor. It is not quite as bad as it was because Marx didn’t understand that up to a point you could buy off the poor “with a six pack of beer and a long-legged whore on Saturday night” (someone else’s phrase). Nor did he reckon with a totally dishonest media that was in the pockets of one party. And so, a hundred years later, the people will have to take to the streets again. The never-ending battle between capital and labor, greed and justice.