What a summer for national credulity fitness. My credulity gets a lot of exercise, since I cover Texas politics. Like Alice in Wonderland's White Queen, years of practice have enabled me to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. But here we are with a perfect feast of mind-bogglers, everyone's credulity stretching and straining in a giant national workout session.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. Well, sure, I can handle that one. Manna from heaven for political humorists of all stripes. I'm afraid the joke will begin to wear thin, however. I know we all like to make fun of California as the epicenter of nuttiness, but in fact that big, beautiful state is in terrible trouble. A $36 billion deficit is not amusing. Teachers are being fired, and programs to help the most helpless -- the oldest, the youngest, the most frail -- are being cut.
The state's economy took a terrible blow in the artificially created energy crisis of 2000-2001. Enron and the other corporate thieves -- empowered by years of the Republican mania for deregulation -- drained as much as $45 billion out of the state. It's a mess and, as is often noticed, Gray Davis is so uninspiring he makes wet Kleenex look exciting. But the 200-plus other candidates should realize that no governor can be popular faced with a mess that size.
Now, the fact that our government was contemplating creating a futures market in terrorism is a bit of a pause-causer. "They're doing WHAT?" we said, in a rare moment of national unity. This bonkola endeavor became more understandable when we learned John Poindexter, of Iran-Contra fame, was behind it. Poindexter was up to his neck in Iran-Contra, one of the battiest pieces of illegal cloak-and-dagger fruitcakery ever perpetrated by a government infested with wannabe James Bonds.
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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15435&CFID=8960575&CFTOKEN=76123027
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