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Friday, September 21, 2001 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- If anyone truly wonders whether or not the boy-king, former Texas Governor George W. Bush, is really in charge in the White House which was stolen in his name, one need only point to this fact:
While Usurper Boy was playing what Bryan Zepp Jamison so aptly called "whack-a-mole" throughout September 11 and the days immediately following, Dick Cheney stayed at the White House and did all the real work a head of state is supposed to be doing. (One notes that in Bush's first speeches after the bombing, the first thing he did was to tell the nation that Cheney was safe, a tacit admission of Cheney's true power.)
As noted in National Journal's Hotline Scoop earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal on September 14 reported that Dick Cheney "was the primary point of contact" for Congress' leadership when lawmakers flew to a federal installation in rural Virginia on the day of the attacks. Cheney, not Bush, was the man who, according to the WSJ, "led four or five conference calls to the secure facility to discuss the evolving crisis and the U.S. response" to the attacks.
Just as Karl Rove handles Bush's connections to the religious right as well as intimidation of the media, and Karen Hughes provides the boy-king his psychic security blanket, Dick Cheney and his mentor/ideological twin Donald Rumsfeld run the day-to-day operations of the occupied White House, including its foreign policy.
Colin Powell? Forget him.
Powell's just impotent window dressing whose sole purpose was to con fence-sitting voters into thinking the Bush Junta wasn't just a bunch of Reagan and Nixon retreads. Colin's son Michael, the slickly evil corporate head of the FCC, actually holds far more power. Nope; when it comes to overseas matters, the arrogant cowboy unilateralism of Emperor Palpatine Cheney and his buddy Darth Rumsfeld holds sway, even though it helped bring about the attacks of September 11.
For one example: Common sense tells one that "Star Wars", the pet project of both Cheney and Rumsfeld, would have been useless against the attacks -- yet the Emperor and his Dark Lord are still pushing for it, because it makes their defense-contractor buddies (and campaign contributors) happy.
For another: Common sense tells one that in order to get New York and the rest of the country back on its feet again, we need a Marshall Plan which supports the activity needed to rev up our economic engines. But in order to pay for this plan, we have to undo the ruinous billionaires' tax cut that got shoved down our throats earlier this year. What the GOP is doing, instead, is pushing for yet ANOTHER tax cut for their wealthy campaign contributors, by gutting the capital gains tax. This is precisely the path down which Red-Ink Ronnie Reagan led us, lo these many years ago: a path that led to a junked economy by the time 1992 rolled around.
It has been stated before, but it bears repeating: The GOP nowadays, and most especially those of its party that illegally hold the reins of power, do nothing that will anger their biggest donors. Likewise, they will never sacrifice their own comfort or profits in order to come to the aid of the country whose flag they so shamelessly wrap about themselves.
Copyright © 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications, Inc.
