SAR #11123

  “How many corpses should we count, and for what cause?” 

Evan S. Connell, Jr. Points for a Compass Rose.

Creepy Mission: We invaded Afghanistan (and Pakistan) to decapitate al-Qaeda by killing bin Laden. We've now done that. Karzai isn't worth supporting and if the Afghans, after 10 years of our benevolence still want the Taliban to rule, then let them. Have a parade, hand out some medals, bring the troops home and forget the pipeline, .

Don't Frighten the People: Among cuts resulting from our current race to the bottom is the deletion of funds for the Energy Information Administration to gather and disseminate data on world-wide oil production and consumption. The forecasts would only scare the people unnecessarily.

Losing In Translation:Bernanke's explanation of the Fed's actions is to increase stock market prices in order – his words - “to manage perceptions” so as to instill confidence in the (purported) recovery so that customers will charge out and run up their debt. How this varies from what Greenspan did is this: Greenspan dealt in pure propaganda. Bernanke combines propaganda with a printing press.

Ding-Dong, The Witch is Dead! Isn't celebrating any death with cheers and flags and delirium in front of the White House and at ground zero and in town squares in North Carolina... isn't that exactly what we detested in the happy crowds celebrating 9/11 throughout the Middle East? And the ridiculous 'serious talking heads' discussing if this made Obama a shoo-in in 2011. Folks, it's bread and circuses. The bread thing will stop him; all politics is local and there's nothing closer to a voter's heart than his pocketbook. Yes, a little feel-good patriotic killing helps things, but only in the month or two before the polls. Eighteen months out is far too early; we'll have to keep Gaddafi on hand and kill him later on. Maybe he's got more grandchildren... You've had your two minutes of hate, get back to work.

Priapus: Wal-Mart argues, successfully, that is too big to be sued. Their Supreme Court agreed.

Fog Of War: NATO insists that neither Gadhafi nor his offspring were the target of airstrikes – they were aiming at a military control center. Either their munitions or their statement is faulty - one or the other.

Hair Shirts & the Inquisition: Austerity, that's the thing. Cut government spending. Fire everyone. Kick the widows and orphans off the dole. So Germany, the IMF, the ECB and others told Greece and Spain. Spain's unemployment has reached 21.3% and for some reason tax revenues are falling. Same thing's happening in Greece. Guess they need another round of austerity.

Quoted: “If you try to take figures like Bachmann, Ryan and and the rest at their word when they claim to fear the rise of debt, almost nothing they have ever done in public life makes any sense.”

Shell Game: Shell claims it has none of the problems BP has with leaky wells and none of the problems Exxon has with alcoholic-steered oil tankers and really really wants to drill for oil off the North Alaskan coast because, golly gee, there's enough oil there to fuel 25 million cars for 35 years. Let's see, there are over 250,000,000 cars in the US, so that's enough to last the US just over 3 years.

Barn Door: Japan's TEPCO is planning on building a wall to defend the Fukushima nuclear reactor compound against damage from a tsunami. Sounds like a Good Idea, too bad the horse is gone.

Gone Fishing: The GOP solicited votes by campaigning against further bailouts (which were Bush administration policy, but that's another wrong turn). Now they've changed the bait and are against government regulating the financial industry – the very lack of regulation that brought us to this fine pass. Only adult supervision will keep the gamblers on Wall Street from doing the same greedy, foolish things that brought on the Great Recession, but the GOP wants us to believe that government, not Wall Street, is the problem. Suckers. They're fishing for suckers.

Porn O'Graph: Lest we forget.