What is George up to?

Well the past days have been anything but dull to say the least. George and his administration have pulled a hit and run and headed south for the ranch. His recess appointment of Bolton was of no real surprise, as just about everyone expected it, including the Easter bunny. Bolton’s appointment however has wrought grumblings from both Democrats and Republicans not to mention pretty much the entire United Nations. However Bolton is not exactly “in” yet, as he may face a Credibility council in the UN which may deny him. I however doubt the UN will do this formally but I do expect some saber rattling and general grunts from the audience.

Moving right along, we have Dick Cheney who has pretty much raised the hair on back of the neck of just about every rational human being who has read his latest little announcement. According to The American Conservative magazine “The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.” WOW, no kidding! No we have plans to attack Iran in the event of any 9-11 style of attack upon the United States regardless if we know they are the cause or not. This is some pretty audacious stuff here. What is more chilling is that this statement was made at nearly the same time as an article in the Washington Post, which reported that the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Iran's nuclear program revealed that, "Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years."[12] This article carefully noted this assessment was a "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies.” Maybe Dick is feeling a little like Harry Truman in the wake of the Hiroshima anniversary?

Back down here on planet earth another startling possibility has emerged; that the boss of CIA leak probe prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely to be replaced by a former Bush classmate at Yale. Being this administration is neck deep in what is appearing more and more each day as the next version of Watergate, they have a set of brass ones to think they can pull this stunt and not catch proverbial hell for it. Already in a recent opinion piece to the editor of The Reporter, a reader made the comment "Rove being wrongly persecuted by jealous liberals," I have to laugh at this as he is not being persecuted, he is being investigated, and after Americans having to listen to Slick Willy Clinton stand in front of America and ask to define “is”, we now have to listen to the spin doctors of this administration use the same blather with Rove saying that he didn't say Valerie Plame's name; he stated "Wilson's wife". When will these people learn that it didn’t work for slick Willy, it sure as heck won’t work for the very uncharismatic Rove.

Meanwhile, China and Russia have become best buddies and are even having joint military exercises complete with tea and crones. China has removed its peg of the US dollar threatening to further devalue the dollar even more, as if it weren’t already having a tough enough time against the Euro. Speaking of that funny sounding currency, the Euro, it seems that Iran is now planning on selling its oil in Euros instead of dollars, and being that the Euro is about 30% more valuable than the dollar, it is going to take more dollars to purchase each barrel of crude. Some suspect that what did Saddam in was the fact he switched to the Euro over the dollar, but that’s another story. In addition to this, a recent envoy to Saudi Arabia had such a positive effect that Saudi Arabia has recently stated it will pull back 360 BILLION dollars in assets from abroad, from that about 60% which are located right here in the United States or about 216 billion. I wonder what the envoy said to piss them off. Either way, I am sure pulling 216 billion worth of investments in the US will help the economy.

Then there is this little human interest bit down in Crawford where the mother of a solider who was killed in Iraq has asked to speak to the President. Now granted, I can understand that the President does not have time to speak to everyone, but he was at least kind enough to send out some of his advisors who stated that “Mr. Bush wants you to know he cares.” Not long after that, several of the people who showed up were promptly arrested for walking in the road instead of the ditch. Good thing there wasn’t a sewer pipe for them to crawl through. Oh the humanity.

So, we have crying mothers of slain soldiers catching hell from the law for not walking in a ditch, we have Saudi’s pulling out substantial investments in the US, we have the Chinese and Russians getting awfully buddy buddy, we have Iranians who are changing their currency and also making friends with Russia and China as they try to get enough cash scraped up to have a nuclear capability that our own intelligence says is about 10 years away, we have an administration neck deep in an expanding investigation that has grave implications, we have a Vice President who in his bunker is barking orders for a nuclear response to a country that don’t have a nuclear capability or at this point even a reason to attack the US. We have a man appointed to represent the US to the world and the only problem is that the rest of the world like most of the people here in the US can’t stand the guy. So we have all these things going on this week and these are not little things, these are huge things, so what is a President to do? Why go on vacation of course.

Flip