Friday, November 01, 2002

Pitt Vows to Investigate Self

11/1/02

PITT VOWS TO INVESTIGATE SELF


The new business about Harvey Pitt is wonderfully indicative of the Bushies' contemptuous top-down need-to-know approach, as in "I know but you never will because I know you don't need to because nothing you say or do matters, though you think you need to know in order to make an informed decision. And if you do find out, I'll never acknowledge whatever it is you're whining about, because the only decisions being made that count are the ones I'M making. So just bend over and take it like a man....who's become a woman. You MY bitch now."

It is amazing to think Pitt saw fit to withhold critical info on William Webster from HIS OWN commissioners before asking them to vote on him. But no more amazing than Bush withholding the North Korean a-bomb info from Congress before asking them to vote on Iraq, no more amazing than Cheney stonewalling Congress on his energy policy advisers, no more amazing than the Bush team hiding the facts of Cheney's heart failure prior to the election. And no more amazing than Rumsfeld & da boyz creating an ad hoc mini-CIA when the CIA fails to tell them what they need to hear to justify an invasion of Iraq. This business of White House executives blaming the bearer of bad tidings is the bottom-up corollary to the top-down Bush policy of withholding critical info from decisionmakers such as Congressmen or voters. That is, the Bushies also withhold critical information from THEMSELVES (this is what they did before 9/11, it's part of the reason 9/11 happened) when it doesn't agree with them. Presumably this is because their decisionmaking process is not fact-based, but faith-based. Perhaps a Burning Bush tells them how to wage their holy war or wars against Saddam, or whoever the enemy du jour may be. They seem to see themselves as having a healthy, a manly, a redbloodedly American, contempt for the facts. How else does one justify spending tens of billions on a technological unworkable Starwars program designed to stop missiles from countries which are now our allies? This must be the approach which earned Bush his gentleman's C at Yale. It may even be what got the party-boy off coke & booze----let go and let God.

Obviously it's time for Pitt to resign. But the Bush folks, being divinely inspired, never do anything wrong, so how can ANY of them possibly resign? It's a dilemma. The same one faced by Sec. of Army (and Enron gonif) Thomas White. But the solution is at hand. Deny deny deny. No, better than that. Don’t even acknowledge. That’s how the Bush Administration dealt with the threat of terrorism prior to 9/11, and look what it got them----3,000 dead and the most fantastic popularity ratings in history. Who can blame Bush and Da Boyz for continuing a policy which has thus far allowed them to fail meteorically upwards? Who can blame them for scorning the facts when they know in their hearts they’re right? The closest they’ll come to acknowledging that somebody, somewhere, screwed up is when they promise to investigate themselves, all the while squashing any hope of an independent investigation which might find something resembling fact-based truth. This applies not only to Harvey Pitt promising to investigate his own fishy fact withholding from his SEC commissioners, it also applies to the Bush Administration getting their compliant Republican proxies in the House to “investigate” the huge 9/11 intelligence failure while strangling in its crib an independent investigation of same.

Still, it’s dizzying that the Bushies are in-your-face even to Wall Street, who wants the SEC to have at least a semblance of integrity so they can go on fleecing the suckers. When has a Republican Administration ever before shunned the Money Men? Poor Wall Street. They're really taking a beating, what with the Nasdaq collapse, the WTC smackdown, the S&P deflation, Arthur Anderson, the recession, the stonewalling of the 9/11 intelligence-failure investigation, and the reign of Pitt. The irony of Harvey Pitt for Wall Street is that he originally seemed to be just what the Street wanted----a chummy clubman who would look the other way while brokers fleeced the rubes. The problem is, Harvey is too transparently corrupt for these scandal-ridden times. Wall Street needs a fresh spin. Harvey’s too much like the fat, ineffectual, old sheriff whom the thugs make dance for his drinks. The Street needs a new, seemingly lean and mean, marshal in town, someone who’ll at least jail a few inside traders and allow the rubes to delude themselves that the old crooked game is at last on the straight and narrow.

If not even the Wall Street fatcats (some brokers are thinning down, looking more like alleycats) are being represented, then who ARE the Bushies' constituents? Who in the country remains pleased that White and Pitt don't resign? Answer? The answer doesn't matter because the vast majority of Americans in these Confederate States don't have a clue who the hell Pitt and White are nor could they give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. These are the same folks who are apparently unable to distinguish Osama from Saddam. Maybe they (this includes both august houses of Congress) think the two are anagrams for the same fella, give or take a vowel or consonant. You say Osama, I say yo’ Momma, you say Osama, I say Sadama, Osama, Yomomma, Sadama, Yokohama, let’s call the whole thing off.

So there you have it. Q.E.D. Ergo propter hoc. The American Public is as information-proof as are the Bushies themselves. It's not a factbased country, it's a faithbased country which apparently has the leaders it deserves. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

The South HAS risen again.