Interesting Times

Many Canadians, like most folks south of the border, watched the Veep debate tonight. Nothing new or startling was revealed but I found it very interesting.

I have long suspected that Dick Cheney is the real president of the United States. Cheney, who is not a converted party boy, has always been the intelligent, hard working, savvy political animal. Everything that the president is not.

Compare Bush and Cheney, in this format. As soon as questions started, questions Bush had not been given specific answers for, the president fell apart. He couldn't improvise. He had no real understanding of what he was talking about. He became confused and struggled for words. He looked like a first year student, asked a question not covered in the text, trying to fake an answer.

Cheney, on the other hand, had a head full of facts, arguments and of course, the litany of lies with which he defends the Iraq war.

It was weird, listening to Cheney repeating the lies about weapons of mass destruction and Ben Laden connections to Saddam. In spite of the number of high officials, in the Administration,
who have recently stated the obvious proven truth regarding those lies.

Now, we already knew that Cheney has several IQ points on the pres but what was shown in the debates is that he knows what he's talking about even if he is full of shit.

More and more, Bush looks like a much weaker version of Reagan. Much weaker because Reagan had some class and social graces our Texas wildcat simply does not have. Of course, Reagan had one very important advantage. Reagan didn't have a huge bundle of things to hide re his past behavior. Reagan’s past needed little of the complicated cover ups that Bush requires.

I have noted, people burdened with a life of lies and the hidden agendas that protect those lies, have difficulty with even very simple issues and problems. Simply because of the things that must remain hidden. That is even more true for a person in a high profile, big responsibility job, such as being president.

A prediction: If Bush beats Daddy by winning a second term, he will leave the office in disgrace.

While both parties claim that restarting the draft is not even a thought, there is a bill being worked on , in Congress, for starting the Selective Service board again.

Everyone in the know, regarding military matters, is saying that the military must be much larger. Knowing this, Bush recently enacted a pay cut for military personnel. The military pay cut being one of the ways the administration planned to recoup loses that resulted from the tax cuts for the rich. Just the sort of thing one does when supposedly planning a major recruitment drive.

The point of this being that the draft is coming back. That, I believe, will be the beginning of the end of Bush as a political figure. The anti-war movement, that will be born out of a reintroduction of the draft, will bring the dark side of Bush and his life of lies to the table. In a way that hasn't happened yet.

We live in interesting times. I expect the next four years to get even more ‘interesting’, no matter which billionaire club wins the election.

If Bush wins, it will get interesting, faster.