"Our long National Nightmare" is almost over

[Patiod]

To mark the "one year til it's over" mark, I'd like to re-post this amazing prescient article from "the Onion" that's hung on my office wall since early 2001

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784 - Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

And now that the economy is heading straight for the crapper, even the part about leading us into financial chaos is coming true.

What's sad is that the "I told you so" that I've longed to throw out at all my Bushbot friends just isn't going to feel very good as I stand in a country that's in debt, at war, and in the midst of a warming planet. We could have taken a turn that would have moved us away from all that, but some of our fellow citizens chose to go to the Dark Side.

[Atman]

1. Dude, our long national nightmare is about to hit REM sleep.

We're in for long national night terrors.

.

[begin_within]

2. 7 years of Torture,

followed by this one last year of last-gasp machinations by BushCo

[stray cat]

3. I take it you see a difference between Bush and the dem candidates?

I know I sure do!

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Or it might be just starting to pick up steam.

Snipped from author James Howard Kunstler's latest blog entry:

Knees knocked last week from sea to shining sea as the shape-shifting monster of economic reality cut a swathe of destruction through the markets and financial ranks. The exact nature of this giant beast still remained largely concealed in a fog of accounting gambits, policy blusters, and reporting dodges, but a few intrepid scouts who glimpsed the behemoth up close said it looked like Godzilla with Herbert Hoover's face.

George W. Bush, tried to appease the beast by offering each American adult the dollar equivalent of half a month's mortgage payment -- with the exhortation to drive forthwith to the nearest WalMart and blow it on salad shooters and plasma TV's -- but Hooverzilla just laughed at the offering and pounded the equity markets further into the dust of loss, while the "bank-like" guardians of wealth lay in the drainage ditches bleeding from their ears and eyes.

My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode -- the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations ("liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia.

I resort to such admitted extreme hyperbole because it may be the only language that an infotainment-drunk society can still process in the face of an epochal calamity that will transform the lush terms of everyday life as we've known it into something like a bleak surrealist landscape in the manner of Tanguy. That crashing sound out there is the armature of confidence needed to support an economy based on faith that borrowed money will be paid back. It's as simple as that. (Doesn't seem so exciting now, does it?)

The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral. The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in. The developers of malls, office parks, and power centers are weeping into their filing cabinets as the harsh daylight of insolvency stops the orgy of "consumption" and the retail tenants pack up their unsellable goodies for the liquidators, and the rent checks stop arriving in the mail, and the notes on this mall and that mall enter the eerie realm of "non-performance." And, of course, there are the genius wonder boyz and Wall Street playerz whose algorithms and turpitudes underwrote the script of this horror show -- for all I know they'll end up laughing into sugary skull drinks on a beach in the Cayman Islands, or doing Chinese fire drills in federal prison (or simply ass-fucked on the granite countertops of their Tribecca aeries by mobs of angry, repossessed, swindled former American dreamers pouring into Manhattan from the tract house dormitories of New Jersey and Long Island).

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/01/fullblown-panic.html

I gather JHK is not in the "optimist" camp.

[Patiod]

5. The overseas markets are tanking today

People overseas are more afraid of our coming crash than we are....

[Hydra]

7. I think JHK has the best grasp of what is happening

and it won't go away as long as we depend on our current system.

[Yael]

9. This was a good read. Thanks for the post!

[ladjf]

6. With good luck and good leadership, most of the damage done

by Bush might be repaired within 40 years. The environmental degradation will never be fully repaired.
The man is an unmitigated disaster for life on Earth. Only in a dysfunctional political system could such a raving madman be allowed to continue to spread his deadly venom all over the planet.

But, a good and smart Democrat in office in 2008 would be a GREAT start.

[Yael]

8. Holy wow is that spooky

Credit where credit is due. They nailed it.

[smokey nj]

10. From 2 weeks ago: Bush Begins Preparations For Nation's Final Year

January 5, 2008 | Issue 44•02

WASHINGTON—As his last term in office winds to a close, President Bush has directed White House aids and Cabinet staff to begin preparing for 2008, the nation's 232nd and final year in existence.

"My fellow Americans, it has been an honor to be your last president," said Bush during a televised address Tuesday, assuring citizens he would do everything possible over the next few months to promote a smooth transition into utter oblivion. "I want you all to know that I do not intend to let what precious little time we have left go to waste. That's why I ask all citizens to pull together and follow me, so we can accomplish everything we've ever wanted to before it all crumbles around us in a terrible belch of smoke and ash."

Added Bush, "It's now or never, people. No regrets."

As part of his ambitious 11-and-a-half-month plan, Bush has prioritized winning the War on Terror in order to secure Iraq's stability in a world where the U.S. is nothing more than a fleeting memory. Additionally, he has urged Congress to block upcoming stem-cell legislation "just in case," and has set aside the months of April and May to get in touch with all countries the U.S. has wronged in the past and apologize, and default on America's $9.16 trillion dollar international debt with a wild spending spree, respectively. <snip>

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bush_begins_preparations_for

[Patiod]

11. Let's hope that one isn't as eerily prescient

:scared:

[smokey nj]

12. My thoughts exactly

:scared:

[baldguy]

13. I won't breath easy until there's a Dem in the WH & overwhelming Dem majorities in the House & Senat...

Personally, I think on Nov 5 when everyone knows the election results Bush will declare it to be invalid & bury himself in the bowels of the WH with a couple divisions of Blackwater troops surrounding him.

[PlanetBev]

14. That's what I thought

However, I just read on MSN.com that Oliver Stone is making a movie about Bush.

Swell...

[Patiod]

16. Seriously, can you imagine anyone going to see that?

I think even the clueless 30% will have had enough of him by the time that one comes out.

[Morereason]

15. We still have to change our priorities as a people or we will continue down a similar path.

Sure, there will be a psychological "sigh of relief". But we need to take a deep look of how we got where we are. And it isn't all about the politicians....

[Iggo]

17. It's just starting.

Recession is here. Depression is in sight. And the end of our current system of "Demaocracy" is a real possibility. The Neo-Cons have fucked us over, but good. They're gonna bail before the crash and leave it to the rest of us to to clean it up. It'll be hard work, and it's gonna get a LOT worse before it gets better...if it ever does.

It ain't over...it's just starting.