Category: News

I received an urgent, earnest e-mail asking me to sign a petition expressing my indignation at how the Democrats went belly-up once more to the White House bullying tactics and passed the Security Bill which limits our freedoms just so they won’t appear weak on security in the next election.

Sorry, gang, but the indignation ain’t in me this round.

It’s not that I don’t feel that the legislation isn’t an assault on our liberties or that is unnecessary and useless; I do. I just don’t think the Dems can be shamed into changing their vote at this point. Despite their pre-election rhetoric before the elections in ’06, they haven’t voted to end the war in Iraq or cut off the funding for it because they are more concerned about maintaining and widening their control in Congress and gaining the White House as well. That, more than anything else, is their real objective.

Power.

Same as anyone else in politics.

It’s turned into the political Catch-22. To do anything, you must gain power. To continue to have the ability to do anything, you must maintain power. Actually do anything and you risk losing power. So instead we get smoke, mirrors, theatrics, and power plays. That’s on both sides of the aisle.

The Bush Administration has, at least, understood the concept of using the power accrued; they’ve just made a terrible hash of it. Can we all agree that the WMDS were always an excuse, that 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and that the Bushies knew it, know it, and didn’t and don’t care? The real basic premise of the Bush Neo-Cons was to get rid of a murderous dictator that even the other Arabs didn’t much care for and, in his place, create a functioning democracy that, by its success and example, would begin to change the face of the Mideast. 9/11 simply offered a justification. All in all, it was a seemingly laudable goal but it was attempted by a crew that didn’t know the language, didn’t know the culture or the people, and couldn’t be bothered to learn. There was no contingency planning. It was a perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance.

I’ve seen that kind of mixture before, on a much lesser scale, when Ron Perelman bought Marvel in 1989. With him came business types who were going to apply sound business theory to Marvel. Comic books were just another set of widgets and they would apply their Universal Business theories to make Marvel a combination of Disney and McDonald’s. (I’m not exaggerating or making this up; that’s what I was told by a Marvel insider at the time.) They took a company that had maybe 70% or more of a strong market and then bankrupted the company while nearly destroying the market. Again, a combination of arrogance and ignorance. Perelman and his people knew everything; they didn’t ask for the advice of people in the industry. They already knew better. Except they didn’t. They made choices that made everyone in the industry who did know something about how it was run start scratching their heads.

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