Bush Meets Obama Sans Sanitizer

What do you think they talked about? The hard line right wing nut job meets the symbol of evil... an intellectual.

Bush: Awesome to see you... really cool. Anyway my old horse here will show your wife around the plantation while you and I sit in that oval orifice.

Obama: office, Okay

Bush: So I never, thought I'd see the day a black guy as President (laugh snort)

Obama: It is History Mr.President.

Bush: History, (under his breath) damn' intellectuals. So you must have celebrated with BBQ and all in Chicago.

Obama: No, no, it was a small private affair.

Bush: You surely want you affairs to be private look what happened to Clinton (laughs)

Obama: Perhaps we should get down to business

Bush: What's with you people? Always business with you.

Obama: What do you mean "you people"

Bush: What?

Obama You said "you people"

Bush: I did?

Obama: Yes.

Bush: I don't pay attention to words, I find them confusing and limiting in terms of the actions I want to take.

Obama: Yes, action, we have to continue to act on the economy.

Bush: Don't worry about that. I put Cheney on it. I have him talkin' to Paulson everyday.

Obama: If you could just update me on the bailout?

Bush: I told you, you have to talk to Cheney. I don't really pay attention much anymore.

Obama: You don't pay attention, what do you do?

Bush: I've been playin' the Simms. (pause) White house edition.

Obama: The Simms?

Bush: Yeah, The Simms. You see, my guys this President who takes over the world and destroys everyone who doesn't like 'em.

Obama: Mr. President, If we could focus.

Bush: Focused, I am focused. You see, I'm the President and I'm married to this real hot wife, Peggy Lee.

Obama: Mr. President, I'm talkin' about the real world. You know the bailout, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Bush: shh Peggy want's to make love.

Obama: Mr. President, we have to deal with the real world.

Bush: Sorry there Mr. President-Erect. That's your problem now. In my Simms White House, I've got a one hundred percent approval rating.

Obama: Can I least talk to the Vice President.

Bush: (laughing hysterically) Talk to the Vice President. How? He's in his secret Hide-away. He says he ain't leaving, even when you move in.

Obama: How do you communicate with him.

Bush: He appears inside my Simms game disguised as my Mother. So he knows I gotta do what he says, cause he's sayin' it the way my Mother would. How's you mother?

Obama: She's dead sir.

Bush: Get yourself one of these simms things and the World is the way you want it.

Obama: How long have you been playin' that game?

Bush: Since I came to the White House. See I wasn't' so good at first, so Iraq attacked me.

Obama: And you...

Bush: Invaded of course.

Obama: So when you make a speech...

Bush: I'm talkin' to my Simms People.

Obama Why look at the time....

Unregulated Capitalism, Unmitigated Disaster

Namoi Klien in the Shock Doctrine brilliantly makes the point that Milton Friedman (the architect of our current financial disaster) and his students "The Chicago Boys" as they were affectionatly called by several fascist including Pinochet, made the claim that markets police themselves. We could be laughing, if we weren't so busy crying. The real point of the book, however is how these disciples (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Paulson) used a crisis such as the one we are in, to make large sweeping changes solely for the benefit of those atop the capitalist food chain. These changes were made, with the unfounded belief that it would benefit all. The idea being you can make changes the electorate would not accept unless under the most dire conditions. Sound familiar?

We have been living like this for eight whole years, but now with Barack Obama moving into the White House there is an unprecedented opportunity to affect real change for the benefit of the working class, fore Milton Friedman was right, shocks do present opportunities for real change and Obama seems to be all about that.

During the final weeks of the campaign, Obama was accused by the fascist (oops I mean the GOP) of being a socialist. This had little to no effect on the electorate. Why? Do real Americans know what a socialist is? No most of think it's communism. It didn't work, because the working class would gladly take socialism over nothing, which is what they have been getting from the children of Reaganomics. (They forgot to trickle down). I believe that many of the states that went blue believed Obama was a socialist and they were like "ok with us."

Obama is clearly not a socialist, but he is not so foolish to believe that markets police themselves. Even Lincoln that great American said "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people." I'm not saying that Lincoln was anti-capitalist, but this is a pragmatic view, a view that says we cannot have any economic system in it's purist form. We must temper our philosophy with pragmatic implementation.

John Maynard Keynes the architect of the new deal had this to say about unbridled capitalism, "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things all for the greatest good of everyone." Neither of these men are reactionary blow hards, but rather thoughtful intellectuals who had worldly experience and knew the difference between a man out for the good of the whole and those only out for the good of themselves.

Here is to wishing Obama a great journey full of new ideas and a new economic system that will work for all Americans and not just the robber barons atop this large Ponzi scheme we call free markets.