Dear Mr. Luntz

I've listened to you flog your book on two talk shows and you've used the example of your infamous masterpiece of memes, "death tax", to flummox the hosts.

Your little parlor trick, "What is the event that triggers it" is misdirection.

They both fell for it.

The "event" is the taxing of the heirs to an estate.

Dead people don't pay taxes.
Dead people rot and go to hell, which you will do, hopefully sooner than later.

Thoughts on Ben Bernacke once again attacking our beloved social programs

Remember my Humpty-Dumpty analogy for the Bush Wars? Seems a lot of people started thinking along the same lines lately... and Dubya responded. Did anyone else hear his comment that he "doesn't think of Iraq as a broken egg", he "thinks it's more of a cracked egg"? (Duh? What's the difference, George? Exactly what planet are you from?)
I heard the sound clip one morning on NPR and didn't hear it again all day.
I think it says everything about our nation and what we have become.
You actually voted for this guy TWICE!

Remember when Bush's Invasion of Iraq was a *soldier a day* and a $ billion a week?

You knew it escalated to more blood and carnage a day, but did you know Bush's off-budget carte-blanche war is now costing your tax-sponsored credit card over two billion a week?
Couldn't we better spend that money here? On homeland security and shoring up successful social programs?

What is it about "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them here" that keeps "them" over "there"? Logically, "they" can do two things at the same time. We are not safer by invading other countries. We don't spread democracy, we spread hatred which will encourage someone sometime to act on that thought. Blowback is heck. Expect more blowback, and it will be heck. We are spending our life's blood on militarism for nothing...

Okay, so they have filled The Grover Noquist-described Bathtub to drown our government in.
We have been convinced by free traders and Madison Avenue to sell our birthright to the Godless Communist Chinese for cheaply made Walmart goods...
We have been lyed into spending over half of our wealth on militarism...
We have been sold on ignoring Peak Oil and Global Climate Change in favore of faith based armageddonist SUV driving...
We have been scared by scarey commercials about men in turbans, and wolves in the woods to the reactionary gutting of our Constitutional rights...
So folks, are you going to believe these proven to be lying bastards when they begin to proceed to dismantle your Social Security?
Ben Bernacke and George W. Bush are carrying Great Big Scissors to cut holes in your safety nets!
The Republic is dying okay you don't care about that, but are you going to bring Granny in to sleep in your spare room, or leave her on the side of the road?

----
*The now-shit-canned "An Army of One" advertising campaign took on new meaning with Bush's War, didn't it, when it became the blood price of conquest.
IU've marvelled at how the Righties seem to revel in ironic language... Federalist Society is exquisite, Crusade and Islamo-fascism, the short lived Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) changed to OIF, the code talking to the militant Christian Right, the litany of anti-environmental program names Blue Skies and Healthy Forests Initiatives, the evil No Child Left Behind... Is there a complete list online of this endless Luntz-speak I wonder?

We will finally defeat the Blackhawk Down syndrome.

Invading Somalia on the eve of a presidential address.
Curious timing.
The Decider has decided.
Immediately after the first Bush invasion of Iraq, GHWBush said: "we have finally defeated the Vietnam Syndrome".
Then we experienced Blackhawk Down in Somalia.
Will Dubya finally be able to say "we have finally defeated the Blackhawk Down Syndrome"?
It must have stuck in his craw all these years.

The reputation of the Bush dynasty is at stake.
We will win even if we have to kill a million 'collateral damages'.
They're only brown people with inferior religions sitting on our oil.
We'll Nuke 'em back to the stone age like the right wing press says.
(I hope you recognize irony there.)

Monday, (my blogger was down):
The official leak has been made. The public has been sufficiently acclimated to the news and is now in place to listen to the bastard's unplan without blowing their tops.
A surge of a billion tax dollar in aid for a works program for Iraq.
Surging right out of our middle-class losing-jobs losing-pensions losing-medical-care pockets.
The evening that Shock and Awe was launched, we went out to dinner... giving ourselves no chance of being near a video screen. I did not believe in the carnage of the rockets red glare as a spectator sport. We stood on the corner of Franklin and Davison, Flint, Michigan, in front of Angelo's Coney Island and saw, looking in all four directions, the destruction caused by years of globalization and ruling class manipulation.
Potholes, plywooded windows, dark empty streets, abandoned homes, abandoned vehicles, abandoned businesses, dying churches, closing schools, closing shops. The sense of danger, the knowlege that unseen bad people could do a drive by, or jump us in the park or on the street, that people die by violence in that hood so plagued by gang graffiti, and neglected rental property, and poverty.
If we needed to bring a 'freedom agenda' and a billion dollar jobs program and hope to somewhere, why not to Flint, Michigan?
Because we have no oil under our homes?
Because we aren't close to Israel so we have no strategic importance?
Because we are only average Americans in trouble?
Kinda recalls my mind to Hurricane Katrina as well.
Where is the loyal opposition?

A NOTE to those who have been media-farmed to think the first battle of Mogadishu was all the fault of the right side of the coin's favorite whipping boy Clinton...
Wars don't just happen. They are planned many moves in advance just like chess. DUH!

The Bush Administration covertly started setting up Somalia for a regime change and nation building (actions which, during the 2000 presidential campaign, Dubya deplored. However once he was selected in the Supreme Court coup of 2000, spreading a Freedom Agenda became his mantra too. Funny how all that power and influence change a guy.)
Such meglomaniacs, such meddlers, such blood soaked hypocrites.

I copy and paste from Wikipedia:
In September 1991 severe fighting broke out in Mogadishu, which continued in the following months and spread throughout the country, with over 20,000 people killed or injured by the end of the year. These wars led to the destruction of the economy of Somalia which in turn led to starvation in large parts of Somalia. The international community began to send food supplies to halt the starvation, but vast amounts of food were hijacked and brought to local clan leaders, who routinely exchanged it with other countries for weapons. An estimated 80 percent of the food was stolen. These factors led to even more starvation, from which an estimated 300,000 people died, and another 1.5 million people suffered, between 1991 and 1992. In July 1992, after a ceasefire between the opposing clan factions, the United Nations sent 50 military observers to watch the distribution of the food.
Operation Provide Relief began in August 1992, when the George H. W. Bush White House announced that U.S. military transports would support the multinational UN relief effort in Somalia. Ten C-130s and 400 people were deployed to Mombasa, Kenya during Operation Provide Relief, airlifting aid to remote areas in Somalia and reducing reliance on truck convoys. [...] When this proved inadequate to stop the massive death and displacement of the Somali people (500,000 dead and 1.5 million refugees or displaced), the U.S., in December 1992, launched a major coalition operation to assist and protect humanitarian activities, Operation Restore Hope under which the United States would assume the unified command of the new operation, in accordance with Resolution 794 (1992).

Mission shift to nation-building
A key moment in the operation was when the mission shifted from delivering food supplies to nation-building.On March 3, 1993 the U.N. Secretary-General submitted to the U.N. Security Council his recommendations for effecting the transition from UNITAF to UNOSOM II. He indicated that since the adoption of Council resolution 794 (1992) in December 1992, the presence and operations of UNITAF had a positive impact on the security situation in Somalia and on the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance (UNITAF deployed some 37,000 personnel over forty percent of southern and central Somalia). However, there was still no effective government, police, or national army with the result of serious security threats to UN personnel. To that end, the U.N. Security Council authorized UNOSOM II to establish a secure environment throughout Somalia, to achieve national reconciliation so as to create a democratic state.
Affairs went downward from there...

This is Vietraq, and folks, it was planned like a chess match.

Sacrifice, continued.

Yep, the Rovian Propaganda Catapult is smokin'.
I'll bet the Surge will involve a Sacrifice.

Note: the BBC reported yesterday that The Decider will choose Sacrifice, to hell with the soldiers, Dubya has a Rep-u-tation to protect.

(Isn't that how he'd say it ... over-enunciated, like a kid in a spelling bee, or like Rene Montaigne when she wants a piece of specially placed meme to sink in?)

Note: Did you hear what that self-deluded mother's son said about his place in history? Aughh! He's actually thinking of how the history books will re-write his story. I was hoping when the minister was reading the Beatitudes and relating them to Gerald Ford's life, that Shrub might hear something tidbit worthy of emulation. But, no. Dubya must have been daydreamin' of his place in the history books, or how good it is to be king of the world.
I guess if we can re-write Ford's legacy and pretend to believe it for a week now, then Dubya must feel pretty safe that no matter what he messes up, his biographers will apply copious lipstick to that pig.

Have you noticed too, for these last few weeks we've been hearing estimates of 20 thou, thirty thou, up to seventy thousand troops for the Surge. This morning I wake up and... WTF? NPR mentions something like 7 thousand will be the target.
Are the propaganda boys playing good cop bad cop with numbers?
Hell, The Decider is thinkin' right about now, what kind of a Sacrifice is 7 thousand? Why, that's a picnic!

google this: Bush further sacrifice

I did. (I heart Google.)
Have you noticed the soundbite "word of the week" meme that Dubya is catapulting... sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

Sounds like he has a Christ complex, only he's not sacrificing himself for other, he's got it backwards. (Note: after I write this I go and read the Buzzflash interview with the author of Bush on the Couch. Yep, the sacrificing of others to protect his own fragile ego is a symptom of his sociopathic personality.)

Sacrifice:
Shrub, from a clip I heard on on the radio, December 22, 2006: "I'm not goina make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq except that its going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices."

Sacrifice:
"The most painful aspect of the presidency is the fact that I know my decisions have caused young men and women to lose their lives," Bush said at an end-of-year press conference in Texas. A White House spokesperson added simply that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain".

Sacrifice:
Bush acknowledged the scale of the Iraq crisis on Saturday in a short statement on Saddam's death. Abandoning the gung-ho approach of past years, he cautioned that Saddam's demise would not halt the violence. "Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," he said.

Yep, the Rovian Propaganda Catapult is smokin'.
I'll bet the Surge will involve a Sacrifice.