Are Our Leaders Really Incompetent ... Or Just Pretending?

→ Washington’s Blog

People want to assume that when someone in power messes up - especially someone who appears incompetent - it was just a mistake.

For example, folks can't believe that an incompetent president could carry out scoundrelly deeds.

But as I wrote 5 years ago:

As noted social historian and author Michael Parenti writes:

"Generally, US foreign policy is remarkably consistent and cohesive, a deadly success, given the interests it represents. Those who see it as repeatedly befuddled are themselves revealing their own befuddlement.

Sometimes the policymakers themselves seize upon incompetence as a cover. [For
example, when the Iran-Contra affair was discovered, President Reagan
pleaded incompetence.] His admission of incompetence was eagerly
embraced by various analysts and pundits who prefer to see their leaders
as suffering from innocent ignorance rather than deliberate deception.
Subsequent testimony by his subordinates, however, revealed that
Reagan was not as dumb as he was pretending to be, and that he had
played an active and deciding role in the entire Iran-contra affair.

***

No
less a political personage than Henry Kissinger repeatedly pretended
to innocent ignorance and incompetence when confronted with the dirty
role he and his cohorts played . . . ."

This strategy
of "playing dumb" and acting incompetent has, in fact, long been
employed by leaders on both the left and the right. Many liberals and
old fashioned conservatives have been suckered by this dumb and dumber
act.

***

Let's take a look at the actual history of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for insight into whether they are incompetent leaders.

After
Bush lost his bid for congress because he was perceived as an
over-educated, "spoiled rich kid from back East", he cultivated a
bumbling, "good old boy" image, and then started winning his political
elections. That's right: Bush actually cultivated a bumbling, misspeaking mannerism.

Moreover, President
Bush proposed painting a U.S. surveillance plane in the colors of the
United Nations in hopes of drawing fire from Iraqi military, as a
way to justify war against Iraq. Is this the kind of proposal that
someone who is incompetent would make, or is it the kind of thing a
conscious deceiver would suggest?

Rumsfeld and Cheney are also long-time experts at using deception to
justify their military and political goals. They were, in fact, the
folks who intentionally hyped the Soviet threat during the Cold War so that the defense contractors would make a killing and the U.S. would have a suitably scary "bad guy" to rally against (see this article). These guys, like other neocons, are students of Machiavelli.

Remember how the TV character Detective Columbo pretended he was bumbling and dumb, so that people would underestimate him? Or remember the TV show Matlock, where Andy Griffith pretended to be a slow-witted country lawyer in order to put people off their guard?

I would argue that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have also used this same trick: playing dumb.

Prominent
liberal figures and 0ld-fashioned conservatives have tried to warn
others of the ploy. For example, liberal guru George Lakoff wrote an
article in 2006 called "Bush Is Not Incompetent" which demonstrates that the Bush administration has been incredibly successful
in implementing its agenda (the article is well worth reading for its
evidence that Bush is not incompetent; however, I believe Lakoff
confuses neoconservatism with true conservatism).

Similarly, in an article entitled "Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools",
veteran investigative reporter Greg Palast says that the
administration got exactly what it wanted from the Iraqi war. And
popular liberal writer William Pitt says "the 'incompetence' thing is nonsense . . . Can anyone still think this was all by accident?".
Pitt recognizes that the White House, rather than being incompetent,
has gotten exactly what they wanted all along -- to invade Iraq, get a
foothold in the Middle East and to get control of the oil.

Indeed, the neocons have openly advocated civil war and instability in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries as a long-range strategic plan.

I noted last year:

Countries need to lie about their enemies in order to demonize them sufficiently so that the people will support the war.

That is why intelligence "failures" - such as the following - are so common:

• The
  U.S. Navy's own historians now say that the sinking of the USS Maine
  -- the justification for America's entry into the Spanish-American War
  -- was probably caused by an internal explosion of coal, rather than an attack by the Spanish.

• It is also now well-accepted that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which led to the Vietnam war was a fiction (confirmed here).

• And two lies were used to justify the 1991 Gulf War: the statement that Iraqis murdered Kuwaiti babies and the statement that a quarter of a million Iraqi troops were massed on the border with Saudi Arabia (see also this article)(technically, the statement about Kuwaiti babies did not come from the U.S. government, but from a public relations firm hired by the government).

Oops.

Obama's Economic Incompetence

Obama - like Bush before him - also appears to
be totally incompetent with regard to the economy. He hasn't been
able to rein in the giant banks or significantly lower unemployment.
Obama is following disproven models, and has appointed economists who
either helped cause the crisis in the first place, or who have drunk the
kool-aid of failed economic theory.

But Obama has actually been serving "his constituency": Goldman Sachs and the other Wall Street giants which funded his campaign.

And as I pointed out
last year, top economists running the Fed and advising Obama don't miss
the dangers to the economy due to negligence, but because they are rewarded for doing so:

Most economists don't exercise any independent thinking because economists are trained to ignore reality:

As
I have repeatedly noted, mainstream economists and financial
advisors have been using faulty and unrealistic models for years. See
this, this, this, this, this and this.

And I have pointed out numerous times that economists and advisors have a financial incentive to use faulty models. For example, I pointed out last month:

The decision to use faulty models was an economic and political choice, because it benefited the economists and those who hired them.

For
example, the elites get wealthy during booms and they get wealthy
during busts. Therefore, the boom-and-bust cycle benefits them
enormously, as they can trade both ways.

Specifically, as Simon Johnson, William K. Black and others point out,
the big boys make bucketloads of money during the booms using
fraudulent schemes and knowing that many borrowers will default. Then,
during the bust, they know the government will bail them out, and they will be able to buy up competitors for cheap and consolidate power. They may also bet against the same products they are selling during the boom (more here), knowing that they'll make a killing when it busts.

But economists have pretended there is no such thing as a bubble. Indeed, BIS slammed the Fed and other central banks for blowing bubbles and then using "gimmicks and palliatives" afterwards.

It
is not like economists weren't warning about booms and busts.
Nobel prize winner Hayek and others were, but were ignored because
it was "inconvenient" to discuss this "impolite" issue.

Likewise, the entire Federal Reserve model is faulty, benefiting the banks themselves but not the public.

However, as Huffington Post notes:

The
Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants,
visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly
dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central
bank has become a career liability for members of the profession,
an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This
dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee
the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the
central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic
economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.

"The
Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a
Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is
no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so
wrong."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/priceless-how-the-federal_n_278805.html

The
problems of a massive debt overhang were also thoroughly
documented by Minsky, but mainstream economists pretended that debt
doesn't matter.

And - even now - mainstream economists are STILL willfully ignoring things like massive leverage, hoping that the economy can be pumped back up to super-leveraged house-of-cards levels.

As the Wall Street Journal article notes:

As they did in the two revolutions in economic thought of the past century, economists are rediscovering relevant work.

It
is only "rediscovered" because it was out of favor, and it was
only out of favor because it was seen as unnecessarily crimping
profits by, for example, arguing for more moderation during boom
times.

The powers-that-be do not like economists
who say "Boys, if you don't slow down, that bubble is going to
get too big and pop right in your face". They don't want to
hear that they can't make endless money using crazy levels of
leverage and 30-to-1 levels of fractional reserve banking, and credit
derivatives. And of course, they don't want to hear that the Federal Reserve is a big part of the problem.

Indeed, the Journal and the economists it quotes seem to be in no hurry whatsoever to change things:

The
quest is bringing financial economists -- long viewed by some as a
curiosity mostly relevant to Wall Street -- together with
macroeconomists. Some believe a viable solution will emerge within a
couple of years; others say it could take decades.

Saturday, PhD economist Michael Hudson made the same point:

I
think that the question that needs to be asked is how the
discipline was untracked and trivialized from its classical
flowering? How did it become marginalized and trivialized, taking
for granted the social structures and dynamics that should be the
substance and focal point of its analysis?...

To
answer this question, my book describes the "intellectual
engineering" that has turned the economics discipline into a public
relations exercise for the rentier classes criticized by the
classical economists: landlords, bankers and monopolists. It was
largely to counter criticisms of their unearned income and wealth,
after all, that the post-classical reaction aimed to limit the
conceptual "toolbox" of economists to become so unrealistic,
narrow-minded and self-serving to the status quo. It has ended up as
an intellectual ploy to distract attention away from the financial
and property dynamics that are polarizing our world between
debtors and creditors, property owners and renters, while steering
politics from democracy to oligarchy...

[As one
Nobel prize winning economist stated,] "In pointing out the
consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be
committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these
assumptions."

This
attitude did not deter him from drawing policy conclusions affecting
the material world in which real people live. These conclusions
are diametrically opposed to the empirically successful
protectionism by which Britain, the United States and Germany rose
to industrial supremacy.

Typical of this now
widespread attitude is the textbook Microeconomics by William
Vickery, winner of the 1997 Nobel Economics Prize:

"Economic
theory proper, indeed, is nothing more than a system of logical
relations between certain sets of assumptions and the conclusions
derived from them... The validity of a theory proper does not
depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions
of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real
world. A theory as an internally consistent system is valid if the
conclusions follow logically from its premises, and the fact that
neither the premises nor the conclusions correspond to reality
may show that the theory is not very useful, but does not
invalidate it. In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially
tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the
assumptions made."

Such
disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical
sciences. Its popularity in the social sciences is sponsored by
vested interests. There is always self-interest behind
methodological madness. That is because success requires heavy
subsidies from special interests, who benefit from an erroneous,
misleading or deceptive economic logic. Why promote unrealistic
abstractions, after all, if not to distract attention from reforms
aimed at creating rules that oblige people actually to earn their
income rather than simply extracting it from the rest of the
economy?

***

Not
only have our government "leaders" in the Fed, Treasury, Congress and
White House ignored the real world, they have taunted it - like
monkeys who pull the tail of the lion and then are surprised when the
lion attacks:

They have:

• Let the largest U.S. banks go bankrupt repeatedly due to wild speculation, then blessed the speculation and helped cover up the bankruptcies

• Privatized profits and socialized losses, trashed the real value of the dollar, and let corruption run rampant

• Covered up all of the fraud which led to the crisis

• Rewarded looting by the big banks

• Given trillions in bailout or other emergency funds to private companies, but then refusing to disclose to either the media, the American people or even Congress where the money went

• Let banks buy the government lock, stock and barrel (and see this and this)

• Blown bubble after bubble

• Plundered the treasury to effect "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"

• Allowed high-frequency trading to completely warp the markets

• Waged unnecessary wars all over the world, so that even our top military commanders are begging to slash defense costs, and otherwise buried our nation under mountains of debt (see this, this, this, this, this and this)

• Failed to take any meaningful steps to stabilize - let alone fix - the economy (see this and this)

These aren't the only areas where the "incompetence" card was played.

Cenk Uygur pointed out:

The New York Times reported ... that we sent in 36 U.S. Special Forces troops to get Osama bin Laden when we knew
he was in Tora Bora. By contrast, we sent nearly 150,000 soldiers to
get Saddam Hussein. In case you're keeping count at home, we got
Saddam and we didn't get Osama. What does that tell you about this
administration’s priorities? This goes beyond incompetence. If you send only 36 soldiers to get somebody in the middle of Afghanistan, it means you don’t want to get him...

Osama
had about 1,500-2,000 well-armed, well-trained men in the region. 36
guys to get 2,000? Why would we let ourselves be outgunned like
that?...

There is an inescapable fact – if you put this little effort into capturing someone, it means you don’t want to capture him.

***

If
people inside the administration actually held back from capturing
Osama bin Laden when we had him cornered, it borders on treason.

And
former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S.
Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan;
former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought
media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) says:

The
information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11
was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or
FBI to assert a defense of incompetence.

Postscript:
If you still don't believe a bumbler like Bush could have really been a
rascal, remember that Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence
Wilkerson said:

The vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy.

(Just like they've hijacked foreign policy in the U.S. for nearly 40 years.)

Similarly, if
you think Obama is incompetent in fixing the economy and reining in
Wall Street, remember that Harold Bradley - who oversees almost $2
billion in assets as chief investment officer at the Kauffman Foundation
- said:

“We are in a cabal... five or six players ... own the regulatory apparatus. everybody is afraid to regulate them"

Comments

[dcb]

I am sure GW is on a corporate/ government watch list to have his postings flamed and discredited. After all I would saay everything he said today is rather clear and obvious to anyone who has done some reading on the subjects in question. But, this message can't be alllowed to spread, and it will never appear in big media. The only thing I haven't figured out is why George hasn't been demonized like the wikki Guy. Call him a terrorist, lock him up, no trial, etc.

I always wonder why editoral commentators don't ever bring the facts to gether to make on opinion. Instead they focus on isolated events. this keeps the public in the dark. Nobody wants to think they voted for an evil guy, a liar, a corrupt POS. I will tell you the powers that be make sure those are the only people we can actually vote for.

Notice, the best of all the presidential candidates from the right (Ron Paul) isn't considered a front runner despite the polls he wins. Instead he is characterized as extreme and a loon. They will never allow someone in office like him. The same way they destroyed whats his name as a third party candidate years ago. (the short guy with the big ears). He couldn't be controlled, hence he couldn't be allowed to be put in office.

[dcb]

I sent this letter to the financial times today.

Sir, While I can't speak for the Arab uprising, Mr. Britton makes the mistake of reasserting the propaganda that the financial crisis could not be predicted. This of course suits the official version as most of the elites who caused the crisis still remain in their policy roles. Not only was the financial crisis predicted by many, but history is clear that the federal reserve received multiple warnings regarding mortgage fraud, warnings from the BIS, and their own internal documents show they choose to ignore the housing bubble. Further the "big short" Goldman had on and other pundits who bet against housing show they could see it as well. In fact if one looks at the evidence the event was entirely created by those who remain within the policy elites. Multiple firms on wall street engaged in securitization fraud and packaged loans they knew to be substandard.   If we are to learn anything from the crisis, we must dispense with the idea that the financial crisis was not seen or warned about. Brooksly Borne warned about derivatives and the culprits of the crisis (Greenspan, Geither, Summers) had her removed from office. It still makes my head spin to think those whose beliefs led to the destruction of glass stegall protections, and derivative regulations had a policy making role in resolving the crisis.   Let me add, that I believe a speech at Davos by and economist warning about systemic instability was laughed out of the room by these same people.   As we look to fix the financial system after the last crisis, no example of how corrupt the system is is the fact that those who warned have no role in fixing the system. Instead those who would benefit from a cover up of their failures remain to sort out what went wrong.   The next question to ask is if the current system deserves to exist at all. I would argue it doesn't and is worth collapsing despite the short term hardships that would arise. If after Lehman the restructuring of Greek debt would continue to pose a systemic threat, then clearly we have seen that those charged with fixing the system have not done so.   If I had a vested interest in the status quo, it made me wealthy, gave me a position of power, I would do as little as I could to disrupt it. If I was a banker, or  banker supporter, I would seek to make sure the state always has to come to the rescue for fear fiscal contagion. Of course this is exactly what they have done. The false lesson of Lehman is to never let something fail, hence always leave the taxpayers on the hook for the risk mismanagement of bankers.   One thing that is clear from the crisis, is that the whole intellectual underpinnings of the western financial system are false. To expect those who have benefited and continue to benefit greatly from such a flawed system to actually fix it is as illogical as the efficient market hypothesis.   Further, I think one assumption we need to have learned from the crisis is that the financial elites work for themselves, not anyone else. Only a fool couldn't see the insability in ( the total leverage in the system) system, leaving the policy elites either fools, or supremely corrupt. Either way, they don't deserve to remain in power.

[Jack Sheet]

The section on mainstream economics (quotes from Hudson) is convincing to me. The disgusting abortion that the academic "discipline" of economics has become, being paraded as intellectually brilliant and used to rape entire nations and social classes, is enough by association to make anyone ashamed of having a university degree.

[oogs66]

Blankfein certainly used the play dumb approach in front of congress.  No way he didn't understand everything and could have provided much more detailed and useful and accurate answers.

[MadeOfQuarks]

Just as a sidenote: there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in economics.

The Prize thus confounded is the Swedish Central Banks prize in economics in the memory of Alfred Nobel, and it is announced and delivered concurrently. Probably purposefully to cause the misinformation that it is a Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel declared that the prize be awarded for those contributing to the greater good of humanity, clearly the voodoo of economics cannot qualify.

[Vic Vinegar]

(Staying up late, surfing the web while refreshing George Washington posts may or may not be healthy :-)

Thanks for the info.  I suspect it is true but will check it out.  To quote from Igby Goes Down:

Igby: Oliver is majoring in neo-fascism at Colombia.

Oliver: Economics.

Igby: Semantics.

That about sums it up.  Goodnight y'all.

[virgilcaine]

the dear leader as servant to the queen is no accident either, holding her chair, smiling, bowing.

[Vic Vinegar]

This is unfortunately true as well.

If it gives you any solace, the Queen was just named Andy Cohen's "Jackhole of the Week" on Watch What Happens Live.

[JB]

hate to break it to you, but Ron Paul is a 33rd degree Mason. stop voting for the satan worshippers. 

[Vic Vinegar]

But not all Masons are evil.  Didn't you ever see Sherlock Holmes? :-)

[Mr Lennon Hendrix]

Patriot Act clears House, Senate.  To be signed into law by Robot, because Obama is busy cooking burgers in Europe.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55803.html

[Vic Vinegar]

The robot signing is just an added "fuck you" to the people who care about this stuff. 

[Vuvuzela]

Leaders are actors in a scripted movie called the NWO

Script: Herzel, Marx, Weishaupt  and Co, Producer: The Rothschild's,&Rockefeller's  Directed by: Bildeberg Group, trilateral Commision. Commitee of 300 etc etc

Leading Actor: His Darkness the Kenyan Emperor Maximus

[blindman]

they are not pulling a colombo, maybe a barzinni.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9QlJ3h2pqo
.
The Godfather
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtYjdEwa8GA&feature=related

[nothing can go wrogn]

"The public sucks, fuck hope" ~George Carlin

http://www.maniacworld.com/the-public-sucks.html

[SuperRay]

What's sad is that there is even a question about the depth and breadth of corruption and deceit in this government.  Those moron trolls attacking the messenger are just brown shirts who have some bizarre delusion that they're in the 'club,' when they're actually the most deceived of all...

It's been downhill since the presidential coup of 1963... won't be pretty in the future

[Reese Bobby]

Cain/Paul 2012

[George Washington]

Paul/Kucinich 2012. Please get past the left-right dog and pony show.

[Reese Bobby]

I'm still on my Cain honeymoon.  He sounds like me on muslims...

[jeff montanye]

cain is an unwavering supporter of israel.  i stopped reading at that point.  ron paul would not accept cain's offer of v.p. were cain to be nominated (shiver) for president.

[Smokey1]

Unauthenticated specious garbage.

Ignorant empty rant devoid of any substance whatsoever.

Your attempt at journalism leaves much room for improvement.

You are woefully out of your league when attempting to discuss anything related to public policy or national affairs.

[DavidPierre]

Smokey(Jim)Quinn:*

This goes out, special to you...

"Here I am at a famous school ...{Wharton} 
I'm dressing sharp and I'm acting cool ...{on ZH}

Oh God I am the Ameriklan dream ...{on the web}
But now I smell like Vaseline

I'm a miserable son of a bitch
Am I a boy or a lady, I don't know which"

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac02hVqLV1Y&feature=related

"You know what you are... an Asshole!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQZ8Ciy7RLU&feature=related

And this goes out to... SmokeyQuinn's 'flavorite' fat Ewe in the paddock...Avalon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syBn6PzMzP8

"As long as she does it with Four On The Floor"

...........................................................

*{#803384 ... SmokeyQuinn's sorrid history}

[Smokey1]

Pierre,

I see that you still have that vendetta against Quinn. Why don't you give it a break? Everybody knows that me and Quinn are two seperate people. You just make a fool of yourself by claiming he and I are the same person. But I know you are forever pissed at him for booting you off his site. He wouldn't put up with your spamming all of your 9-11 Truther nonsense, and I don't blame him.

Get back to the barn now. A couple of sheep are waiting for you to join a threesome.

[DavidPierre]

SmokeyQuinn:

Just to refresh your con artist memory...

"Smokey says:

"In my opinion you are being a bit harsh. Blacks should be respected. What other form of animal can walk around on two legs and sometimes communicate with humans? Dogs can’t. Cats can’t. Sheep can’t and cows can’t. Blacks are arguably the most sophisticated animal in the history of the planet, yet there are still people who insist on criticizing them. Some blacks could even pass for humans, admittedly a very few, but the reality is that some COULD pass for being human. Admiration, not contempt or pity, should be reserved for all blacks. —-And fudd, you don’t have to be ashamed of being black as midnight. I’d already suspected as much before you gave it away tonight, based upon the rank stupidity and unmatched ignorance of all your comments across the board whenever you post here. No way in hell a white person is as fucking stupid as you are."

...........................................................

Jason Rines, a web developer and ZH member @

www.RagingDebate.com 

SmokeyQuinn's former webmaster...

"Smokey and Jim are the same people... YES !

I mapped both the I.P.'s back to his office at Wharton."

http://ragingdebate.com/politics/remembering-911#comments

..............................................................

Smokey says:

“ Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton are fucking worthless, stinking alley niggers of the lowest order. I get sick as shit of the way whites are routinely discriminated against in this country. The fucking spics are just as bad, worse actually, than the blacks. They come over here and murder and steal from this country and make fucking demands of the citizens here. All a spic knows how to do is steal and fuck. That’s it. Steal and fuck. And Tarbaby can’t fucking wait to legalize all of them so that he gets their votes to provide support for his Socialist agenda. Entitlements have pissed this society down the drain.”

............................................................

SmokeyQuinn encourages some very sick shit and the man should be pitied but not encouraged.  His previous webmaster kicked him off of a blog he provided free for his Racism and other sickening posts and lies.  The man has some serious issues under his facade of economic journalism.

That's the history from a year ago!

You are a proven LIAR and a total FRAUD ... go ahead ... deny it !

[Citxmech]

You do a wonderful job of bringing the subject to life Smokey,e.g.:  "are you hiding deciept through your own fiegned ignorance - or are you really that stupid?"

To wit:  "Unauthenticated specious garbage."  Geo cites more than any other poster on ZH - this article included...  Just in case you were wondering, those things in blue text are links;

"Ignorant empty rant devoid of any substance whatsoever."  You fail to back up this statement with any "authentication."  You also fail to mention why we should be persuaded by your "argument" - oh yes, that's because you didn't provide any referances or actually make an argument;

 "Your attempt at journalism leaves much room for improvement."  As we all strive to grow and improve, please refer us to some your many published works of jounalistic genius so Geo and the rest of us can see how it's done and learn something; and finally

"You are woefully out of your league when attempting to discuss anything related to public policy or national affairs."  Who is in this league?  I'm sure many of us here would love to read more critical articles of similar, or even greater, depth and substance as those regularly provided by Mr. Washington - as is evidenced by the string of accolades and statements of support he receives on a regular basis.  If there is a legion of extraordinary investigative journalists you are aware of that we are not - I can't wait to start reading their work as well.

[Smokey1]

Deceit is spelled d-e-c-e-i-t.

Feigned is spelled f-e-i-g-n-e-d.

Please expound some more on MY ignorance, Dumbass.

[Citxmech]

That the best you got?  Seriously?

[Smokey1]

References is spelled r-e-f-e-r-e-n-c-e-s.

[George Washington]

Nice example of numbers 2, 5, 8 (not authenticated by the government and "authoritative" corporate mainstream media) and 18 ...

Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation

[BetTheHouse]

George. You post 2,000 word rants every day about some new enormous conspiracy you have uncovered, and when anyone points out how you have absolutely no evidence to support your latest rambling fantasy, you respond by citing some random kooky list of numbers. You are exhibiting textbook symptoms of mental illness.  Let me help, and try not to react with hostility, because this is not intended to be hostile:  You do not have some secret knowledge. There is not some government infrastructure out to silence you and your bold truth telling. There certainly are conspiracies, but sorry, no, not every single thing that happens is a conspiracy. Before the internet, people who act like you are acting would only be seen wandering around the subways, mumbling non-sequeters to themselves. Please dude, get some help. Start by taking this screening test.  Seriously:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/sztest/primetest.pdf

[Smokey1]

+ 1000 

Well said and very accurate. Professional psychological evaluation may indeed help George out significantly.

[foofoojin]

-1001

If you think a psychologist can help you or someone else, you are nuts.

[Rick64]

 Both of you offer no rebuttal, only condescending remarks and verbal abuse. Do you think you are convincing anybody?

[jeff montanye]

perhaps each other.

[Conchy Joe]

Making it look like they are just stupid just allows people an out when they get caught or in case the worker bees ever wake up.

[Diamond Jim]

sorry GW....the Great One actually believes all that has transpired in our economy since he took power. All one needs to do is look at where he got his "education", who were his mentors, where he got his training and who his wife is to know he has every intention of re-distributing wealth in this country and bringing it to its knees so we can be just like his ideal in Europe. Then we can beg the euroids for admission to the EU and the great world wide socialist order. He hasn't fooled me in the least since he began (and never ends) his campaign for election.

[jeff montanye]

redistributing wealth?  from the poor to the rich i hope you mean.  obama kept w's financial policies essentially unchanged, extended w's tax cuts and so debased his own reform credentials as to make suspect future candidates promising change.

[acrabbe]

GW keep it up. This type of editorial output needs to begin to permeate the mainstream internet channels. Very inspirational and really propmts the intelligent and critical thinkers who are "on the fence" to take a closer look at things in this here bizarro world.

http://slv.collective2.com

[Braindonor1]

People buy the incompetence excuse because to do otherwise threatens their egos and identity. How so? - Because to admit that our leaders (or others) take deliberately anti-social, selfish, or evil actions with no particular concern for the negative consequences - rather than do the same things due to 'incompetence' - means that we/the individual has to admit we have erred in judgment and are responsible for enabling such behavior for as long as we have failed to criticize or act against it.

Given that most people believe that such self honesty is a potential liability (interfering with their self image as a brilliant, well informed person who is never wrong), the continued embrace of the incompetence explanation provides for preservation of the all important self delusion.

Having said that, when I was finally able to accept that the incompetence explanation no longer fit, I found it to be tremendously liberating. I believe it is impossible to see the world as it really is while subscribing to it.

[Confuchius]

It seems that the out-of-control washington whore is about to cut off air travel to Texas.

This, of course, is how the "civil" war began, and which seems about to begin once again; and not a moment too soon.

[honestann]

Oh yes, they most certainly know what they're doing.  And what they're doing is 100% intentional.  Everything they do is the action of diabolical predators.  Everything.

[Fred C Dobbs]

You are correct George Washington as are the posters above who mentioned evil.  Isn't it about time people on the left start recognizing Obama for what he has done?  And what the United States has become?  

I will never forget years ago when I heard Greenspan tell people at the top of the housing bubble to go out and buy a house with an adjustable rate mortgage.  I knew then that he had not just been wrong about everything but intentionally lying about it.   

Keep writing GW.  

[Citxmech]

I remember that speech also - At the time I was not very in tune with Austrian economic theory - but even so I remember thinking wtf is he talking about - that makes no f'n sense. . .

[Yancey Ward]

Thoughout my life, I have found that incompetence is found about 100 times more often than pretend incompetence.

[New_Meat]

True incompetence is, after all, the least hypothesis.

I've always enjoyed the conflation of a) W and gang are/were totally incompetent, but b) they conspired to <fill in your conspiracy here>.

- Ned

[jeff montanye]

while true incompetence may suit occam's razor, as you note, saying w et. al. were incompetent yet conspired (sucessfully) to ... argues otherwise.  perhaps one needs to distinguish between incompetence/feigned incompetence as it occurs in the population at large and as it occurs at the highest reaches of power.  

[Yancey Ward]

And I have to mention the 1 in a 100 are not certain.  It could be true incometence all the way down.

[Rick64]

Excellent post. Right on all accounts.

[Problem Is]

+5 Excellent Work GW
Keep plugging away at the facade of complete, systemic corruption...

Who Bats Lead Off on Bastille Day?
This derivatives induced fraud of a crisis was not only the criminal ruling finance capital oligarchy...

But a complete failure of our corrupt political class...

[Problem Is]

<JUNK> means I got to one of the worthless, whore, sock puppet bitches...