The Republic of Texas

The following is what passes for political humor among Texas Bush voters. My response follows.

VOTE BUSH!

And people wonder why we are a bit proud!!!!
Republic of Texas:

I thought you'd all get a kick out of this one - Texan or not (and Republican or not)....

Texas has given all those complainers plenty of time to get used to the results. After seeing the whiners along the inauguration route,
the folks from Texas have decided that we might just take matters into our own hands.

Here is our solution:

#1: Let John Kerry become President of the United States (all 49 states).
#2: George W. Bush becomes the President of the Republic of Texas.

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic?

NASA in Houston, Texas (we will control the space industry).

We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States.

Defense Industry (we have over 65% of it). The term "Don't mess with Texas," will take on a whole new meaning.

Oil - we can supply all the oil that the Republic of Texas will need for the next 300 years. Yankee ! states? Sorry about that.

Natural Gas - Again we have all we need and it's too bad about those northern states. John Kerry will figure a way to keep them warm....

Computer Industry - we currently lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications: Small places like Texas Instruments, Dell
Computer, EDS, Raytheon, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Intel, AMD, Atmel, Applied Materials, Ball Semiconductor, Dallas Semiconductor, Delphi, Nortel, Alcatel, Etc,Etc. The list goes on and on.

Health Centers - We have the largest research centers for Cancer research,the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world and other large health planning centers.

We have enough colleges to keep us going: U.T., Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Rice, SMU, University of Houston, Baylor, UNT, Texas Women's
University, etc. Ivy grows better in the south anyway. We have a ready supply of workers (just open the border when we need some more )

We have control of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc.

In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard. We don't have an army but since everybody down here has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an army in 24 hours if we need it. If the situation really gets bad, we can always call Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over a couple Texas Rangers.

We are totally self sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs and vegetable produce and everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they
taste good. Don't need any food.

This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic of Texas in good shape. There isn't a thing out there that we need and don't have.

Now to the rest of the United States under President Kerry: Since you won't have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only President Kerry will be able to drive around in his 9 mile per gallon SUV. The rest of the United States will have to walk or ride bikes. You won't have any T. V as the space center in Houston will cut off your communications. You won't have any natural gas to heat your homes but since Mr. Kerry has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas.

Signed, The People in Texas

My Response:

Yeah, only one...errr...well, more than one problem:

- George Bush will be the President of the Republic and will ship all the jobs overseas;
- Bush would give tax cuts to his friends and the wealthy of Texas so all the infrastructure and colleges would atrophy;
- The Texas Air and Army NG will go on the George Bush drill plan and only train two days a year (and then defer for college) and the enlisted who remain will be exhausted from continued rotations to Iraq which Texas inherited when Bush took over;
- The wounded will have to make their own prosthesis because Bush will have cut TVA benefits for the returning soldiers he committed to war;
- Bush will piss off the rest of the US, and the world, and therefore there would be no one to buy their products and consequently their manufacturing would go in the toilet (how many horns can you put on Cadillacs or lift kits on trucks anyway?);
- TASA will state they're going to Mars and then cut funding for everything and they will have no booster rockets to get anything they do manage to build into space anyway;
- All the technology firms will outsource their work to California and Northern Virginia where the brain trust is anyway;
- What companies remain will not be able to raise capital as there is no stock exchange in Texas and transparent accounting will have been made a thing of the past by the ENRON "None of Your Elitist Business" Accounting Act;
- Since Texas has flip-flopped on patient rights (and Bush agreed), health care costs will sky rocket;
- The Christian Fundametalist Health Network will force all the Texas Teens who get pregnant in the back of a camaro/trans am/ford truck while cruising from the Wal-Mart parking lot to the Dairy Queen after mandatory bible school to cross the border to get a safe abortion, condoms, the pill, or a good pediatrician;
- Since beef is the largest meat produced, weight and heart health issues will skyrocket further burdening an already taxed healthcare system;
- All medicines will have to be imported - probably from Canada;
- All the sports teams will be run by the Bush family and subsequently run into the ground like every other company he has managed;
- Same with energy companies, which will be given to Cheney and his friends from ENRON and Haliburton - so I bet the US would have more gas than Texas by the end of the first year as TENRON-HALIBURTON will have sold everything to outside buyers and then set up empty accounts that they then sell to Texas homeowners at twice the price because of the "shortage";
- The secret energy policy board will recommend invading Alaska as they are unfairly hording their oil reserves and it will give Haliburton a chance to overcharge for feeding the troops serving in the Alaskan Theatre;
- Bush will legalize all immigration and by the end of his first term, Texas will be the northern most portion of Mexico.
- The senior Bush will move back to Maine.

But there is one bright side, Wal-Mart will be hiring, the smog will remind the Mexican's of home, the water will be a nice glowing green and all the knuckleheads who work for Bush will go with him so we can get on with running the greatest country in the world.

Best of luck!

People of the US minus Texas

PS - My apologies to my more level-headed Texas friends.

A Response To: "Private Investment Protects Environment Where Government Fails"

Read This First ---------> Editorial Link

I think it would be valuable to you and your readers if you provided some empirical evidence to back up your examples of how private ownership, or lack there of, has made environmental situations better or worse. I think you may find that much of this type of evidence scarcely exists or is contradictory to your claims. Within the construct of Capitalist Ideology, the idea of privatizing preservation SEEMS sound on its face, but I think if you were to scratch below the surface you would find that it does not translate fully to reality. This is pretty much what happens when any ideology, be it from the left or the right, meets with reality.

The most obvious example, and frankly the most ridiculous one you presented, would be the difference between privately and publicly owned forests. The amount of public forests far outstrips those of private ownership, which provides a greater opportunity for natural fire by simple statistical chance. Additionally, those fires started by humans happen on public lands because that's where the public camps and where malcontents go to express themselves. However, if you have data that supports your supposition, I would love to see it.

Another ridiculous assertion is that by creating and privatizing elephant farming to create a controlled market for Ivory you would help preserve African elephants. Basically, you assert that it would create a market-based reason for saving the elephants. Please show me any kind of empirical evidence that supports this supposition. You can't. The reality is that some things are worth doing even if they won't result in profit.

This idea is the fault line within capitalist ideology and yet is one of the most important indicators of enlightened society. Yes, capitalism provides many great incentives to move society forward, and certainly is the basis for the successful progress of freedom. But, capitalism alone does not provide incentives to do those things that will not result in direct profit for an individual or individual corporation. What capitalism DOES do is set up an infrastructure that provides surplus and expendable resources that can be applied to issues that are in the interest of society as a whole, but will not directly result in profit. The extent to which a society is willing to expend such resources on non-profit efforts is a large indicator of its social enlightenment. Sometimes, in fact often times, there are those things that must be done to promote the greater good of society and those things will not be profitable.

I don't think that utilizing capitalism as a tool to help preservation is without merit. However, I think you have done a disservice to the idea with the examples you site and I think that capitalism alone will certainly not be the answer. The record of corporate abuses is clear and the fact that we came out ahead of communist nations with regard to record is a direct result of our collective conscience implemented through government regulation. If you would like to argue that we need more efficiency from our government services, I would agree. But, this would include better enforcement of environmental regulations so that we can ensure that those using the environment for profit are indeed fulfilling their obligation to care for the environment - even when it seems it would be in their best, i.e. profitable, interest. As with most things in the human world, the answer will most likely be a mixture of the two. Ethical and responsible capital enterprise backed by enforceable and enforced regulation combined with support for those things that provide no direct profit. Socialism and communism in their purest forms do not work, but neither does pure self-interest and it’s ideological foolishness to believe otherwise.

A Response To: "President Says He Had No Foreknowledge of 9/11"

Read This First ---------> Editorial Link

I think one of the biggest problems many people are having with the issues before the 9/11 Commission, and by extension their judgment of the Bush Administration, is that many are getting wrapped around the axel of the process and whether the Bush Administration is trying to hide something. In my opinion the only thing the Bush Administration is trying to hide from is political embarrassment stemming from the fact that their own hubris towards anything "Clintonian" and their own inability to lead this country in the direction of their vision, or any vision for that matter, caused them to NOT place terrorism of the kind implemented on 9/11within the Top 5 of their priority list. The reality is that they probably DIDN'T know about the attack, but that's not to say the information wasn't there or they aren’t at fault for missing it. Therein lies the real source of embarrassment and also the real problem.

If we take the President's word at face value, then it begs the obvious question, "Why didn't he know?"

There are only a few possible reasons:

A) The information did not exist and therefore no amount of effort, to include grand strategies and policies, would have mattered.

This simply is not a possibility as there is more than enough evidence that various agencies had different pieces of the puzzle, i.e. known suspects in the country, suspects taking flight training, increased chatter, old evidence that it was tactic under consideration, etc.

B) The information existed in bits and pieces and these pieces simply were not put together and communicated to the appropriate people.

This is more likely, but may only be part of the issue, albeit a large part. If there is truth to this, and there seems to be, then it begs the question, "Why couldn't the pieces be put together?" Well, having served in the Intelligence Community as a consultant, I can tell you that there are a myriad of disconnects that can allow such information to languish and remain unconnected for days, weeks, months or even years. This subject is one that needs its own commission and years of work, and enormous amounts of political will, to fix. But, this issue speaks directly to why Richard Clarke's insistence on meeting with the "Principals" was so important. The Principals were the ONLY ones authorized to know EVERYTHING within their particular area of the Intelligence Community. By putting the principals in a single room in order to discuss a single topic one sets the stage to circumvent the bureaucratic maze that creates the stovepipes that are the root of all intelligence disconnects. Having this meeting, facilitated by a single-minded anti-terrorist expert, would have been the ONLY tool available, given the current state of the intelligence community, which could have possibly "connected the dots". THIS IS WHY THE PRINCIPALS MEETING WAS SO IMPORTANT! Without it, there really was no way to put it all together. Richard Clarke knew this and the hubris of the Bush Administration blew it off.

C) The information existed and it was either ignored or misunderstood.

This is also likely a piece of the puzzle, although not as large. There is ample evidence that the President was briefed continuously on "intelligence matters", many of which concerned terrorism. However, there is also ample evidence that direction the Bush Administration was heading was one of ballistic missile defense and more strategic approaches to combating what amounted to tactical level terrorism. This means that either the President and his staff were not getting good intelligence or they were ignoring or misinterpreting the intelligence they were getting. There seems to be some evidence in regards to the line of reasoning that they misinterpreted or ignored what they were getting. Three books, "The Age of Sacred Terror", "Against All Enemies", and "The Price of Loyalty" all speak to the machinations of policy development and information distribution, as well as outright hubris, within the current administration. Reading between the lines one can see that this administration, and in particular the head, led by edict and visionary belief. Basically, they have a staff of like-minded believers and “subject matter experts” that are responsible for implementing policy based on the edicts passed down from above. While this isn't necessarily a bad way to lead, delegation is, after all, a key to good leadership, it must be accompanied with appropriate context, intent and follow up to ensure that the orders aren't carried out in a vacuum or for the sake of showing effort as a replacement for progress. Without the proper intent or goal communicated, most will try to accomplish the letter of the tasking instead of the spirit. If you don’t know the end state to be reached, how can you reach it? And, if the leader doesn’t know the end state to be reached, how can it be properly communicated in the first place? Better to show effort in the absence of direction then to ask for direction, no?

If this is the case, we must ask ourselves, "Was the intent clearly conveyed?" If it was, then the Bush Administration is guilty of not following up on its edicts - something the Washington Post is currently writing about. If it wasn't, then the Bush Administration is guilty of blindly passing out edicts without actually providing direction in the form of intent or actual measurable goals. Either way, it seems like a very poor approach to problems that can affect the country as a whole, say like global terrorism. Now, add to this the fact that they didn’t have, ignored or misunderstood what the Intelligence Community was saying and you have a very detailed and succinct recipe for disaster. Without this knowledge, how could they possibly communicate a clear end state? Sure, they created a policy, but to what end?

Conclusion:

Did the Bush Administration KNOW 9/11 was going to happen? Almost definitely not, and to think otherwise draws attention away from the real issue. The real issue is why they didn't know or have a better idea it was going to happen. The answer I think is a mixture of both B and C above:

- They did NOT have a counter-terrorism policy of their own in place (they admit they were developing one - they say a better one).
- They downgraded the position of the only real expert with any continuity on the subject because they distained anything connected to President Clinton (Hubris).
- They terminated the only mechanism available to work around the bureaucratic maze that is the current Intelligence Community, i.e. they disbanded the "Principal's Meeting" (Again, hubris).
- The counter-terrorism policy was based on an ideological "vision" that was not consistent with the threat, i.e. missile defense vs. tactical counter terrorism (they either ignored the briefings they were getting or misinterpreted them).
- The policies they were pursuing were either implemented wrongly or were wrong to begin with (lack of clear communication of intent and/or lack of follow up).

All of the above speaks to one thing and one thing only, lack of good leadership. Regardless of whether the neo-conservative ideology the Bush Administration, et al, promotes and pursues is correct, with regards to counter-terrorism, the creation and implementation of policy was poorly led and implemented. People point to the President's actions after 9/11 as an example of his leadership ability. This is an intellectual slight of hand at best. 9/11 clearly delineated what needed to be done in regards to global terrorism. With our military might even Michael Dukakis would have done the "right" thing when an enemy has been so bold as to stand up and go toe to toe with us. With that said, the Bush Administration has even managed to screw up the War On Terrorism as well with his clearly miscalculated foray into Iraq that has exhausted our military and wasted national resources on a venture with little or no return with regards to countering global terrorism.

THIS is why the Bush Administration is attacking Richard Clarke and his mild accusations with such vigor. They don't want people to start looking too closely as they will figure out the greatest lie of all, this administration offers nothing beyond ideological faith and resulting vision. Just look at the "No Child Left Behind" initiative, the "Faith Based Charities & Services" initiatives, the "Energy Policy" initiatives, etc., etc., etc. With each book and each revelation the onion is peeled a little more and when the onion is peeled back far enough, there will be nothing there. Much like the vacuous leadership of the Bush Administration. If the one thing the administration can point to, “war time leadership”, is tarnished, there will be nothing left to promote.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"