The "Cheneysphere," "crying wolf," and deterioration of our infrastructure

Two articles I read recently on Raw Story.com jibed nicely with and articulated a couple topics that have been on my mind lately.

One is Cheney. More and more, he seems like the real criminal behind what is apparently, and sadly, a fascist takeover of our government. He's been around since the Reagan days, when all this crap started happening, and increasingly seems like the man pulling the strings of the respective puppets. Now that the right wing radicals are on shaky footing and their massive unpopularity is public knowledge and receiving media coverage, Cheney's bile-spewing is starting to seem desperate and is becoming more and more negative and insane-sounding. They call Gore crazy every time he gives a speech but that's just a cheap effort to smear him. Cheney and the rest of the right wing radicals don't need a smear campaign to lose support- people can just listen to the things they are saying.

The Raw Story article I'm talking about is where the boy who cried wolf comes up. The writer, a Hannah Selinger, points out that anytime anyone, in this case Connecticut senatorial candidate Ned Lamont, starts talking about failed Bush policies or the fact that the so-called war in Iraq was a grave mistake and was justified with lies, Cheney starts saying that that person is actually helping Middle Eastern morons who would bomb and kill us, that that person is in line with religious fundamentalists who want to fuck over anyone that doesn't believe their fundamentalist bullshit. So Cheney here is crying wolf again and again these days.

Out of his mouth comes some of most negative, bile-infused, twisted lies and smears you'll hear these days. He never has anything good to say about anything. This is our Vice President, the most powerful vice president ever. But to what effect?

The other article, this one in the Seattle Post by a Chuck McCutcheon, deals with something that's on my mind a lot lately. We all pay a lot of tax dollars, but the Bush Administration is squandering all of it on some truly moronic things, while the country suffers. We are left in the lurch while the Bush Administration slowly destroys the economy and puts the nation in debt. I'm talking about infrastructure, one of those things a government is responsible for, one of the reasons we pay taxes. Roads, power grids, protection and assistance in emergencies and natural disasters, prevention of natural disasters, protection from outside aggression and home grown crazies (yes BushCo does a horrible job protecting us from threats- they've weakened a strong military, exported our National Guard, and used a false war on terrorism to override laws, democracy and the constitution) are some of the things we pay for. But when a government stops respresenting us, stops protecting us, avoids its role as a helper and supporter of the people, then what kind of government is that?

New Orleans was the first thing that got me thinking about it- the wasteland it became and the apparent utter failure of government assistance after the hurricane of nearly a year ago. Why did that all happen? Would it have happened under Kerry? Global warming has made weather much more dangerous. BushCo has famously done nothing to reverse it, and is instead denying that global warming exists. BushCo is also famously involved in denying a lot of scientific evidence, even covering it up, scientific evidence of anything that blows the whistle on BushCo's tendency to destroy the environment.

Power failures are getting worse. Mental health services are a disaster, and ever since the Reagan days people who should be in a home somewhere are walking the streets and often end up in jail. The Seattle Post article points out a few other key points and makes the obvious point that we are less, secure, less safe under Bush and Company than we would be under an administration that wasn't burning our tax dollars in a war that is destructive, unnecessary, and toxic.

So my point is, when Cheney tells us Democrats are going to make us less safe, he's lying.