Life Aboard the B Ark or Failure Wasn’t Just Inevitable, It Was Programmed

[McCamy Taylor]

“The idea was that into the first ship, the ‘A’ ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and then into the third , of the ‘C’ ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things; and then into the ‘B’ ship---that’s us---would go everyone else....I think as far I can remember we were programmed to crash….”
Douglas Adams The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I. Welcome Aboard the Magic Christian: Meet Your Crew

Sir Guy Grand : Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people. We'll be using quite a bit of it in the next two hours... luckily I have enough for ALL of us. The Magic Christian

Meet your captain. Our president “made” his only million the B Ark way. He had his buddies in the City Council of Arlington, Texas use the power of eminent domain to condemn private land for a private investor----Bush. This was one of the first cases of this type of government abuse. W. built a ballpark, which he then turned around and sold to the city of Arlington for a tidy profit. Why could not the City of Arlington just build their own ballpark since they did all the important work, acquiring the land and all? If they had done that, they could not have given the son of an ex-president a million extra dollars of taxpayers’ money. W. has known for some time that the B Ark of America was on a collision course with economic reality under his mismanagement, that is why his family has been buying up Paraguay.


http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/SweetheartDeal.html

http://www.cco.net/~trufax/general/bush_family_paraguay_hideaway_up.html

Your Co-pilot is a little smarter, but even less ethical. Our vice president saddled his company, Halliburton with God-Only-Knows-How-Much-Money in asbestos debt when he was at their helm. That is why he had to lie this country into war, claiming a link between the 9/11 hijackers and Saddam and then awarding Halliburton a bunch of no-bid contracts for work that has resulted in our soldiers and civilian workers being electrocuted, raped, poisoned and hijacked in the never ending conflict in Iraq. Business as usual in the B Ark of America. When the shit hits the fan, Co-Captain Cheney plans to be living it up in the Shangri-la that is United Arab Emirates where Halliburton has relocated along with all the money it has looted from the U.S. taxpayers.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E6D9113CF93BA35751C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Your defense chief cut and ran, which has probably helped the economy in the last couple of years. Before he went, Donald Rumsfeld persuaded our country to stockpile Tamifu, because his pharmaceutical company owns the patent on this anti-influenza drug. This, despite the fact that Tamiflu resistant avian flu (bird flu) already been documented in Asia before the Bush administration decided to give Rummie a windfall and there were other products which could have been selected. Tamiflu resistance in on the rise in regular influenza, too, as you can from this article entitle Tamiflu resistance explodes in Chicago . Things do not look good for our country if we have an influenza pandemic, but they look great for Gilead, Rummie’s B Ark Company, which is not required to actually do anything except post a profit from the sale of the Tamiflu patent to Roche. We do not know where Rummie is going to hide to avoid criminal charges for war crimes relating to torture and illegal renditions. Maybe in UAE or Paraguay?

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/02160803/Tamiflu_Chicago.html

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/?cnn=yes

Cashier Henry Paulson cheered as the competitors of his own firm, Goldman Sachs went under. Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers----they were supposed to fail. This was all part of God’s planned “crash”, a kind of Darwinian winnowing of the weak from the herd. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae---who needed them? Well, maybe the Chinese did, since they had invested in them so heavily, and China owns us. Better help them out---but screw their stockholders. Let the world associate the names Freddie and Fannie with the financial scum of the scummiest B Ark mortgage lenders. AIG would get some money too---grudgingly---because Goldman Sachs had a stake in them. The only two firms that were sacrosanct on the B Ark, the only ones he cared about were the house of Morgan , because Morgan was a good old fascist who stood up to FDR and stood by Prescott Bush in his time of need and Goldman Sachs ----because it is personal with Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs was his team. The $700 billion blank check was all about bailing out Morgan and Goldman Sachs and giving their executives and good friends like Paulson big fat bonus checks courtesy of the tax payers. The captain, co-pilot and defense chief had gotten to feed from the trough. Now it was Paulson’s turn.

http://searchingforthetruth.typepad.com/searching_for_the_truth/2008/09/shameless-cronyism.html


II. Grover Norquist Built the Death Star

Doolittle: Don't give me any of that intelligent life crap, just give me something I can blow up Dark Star

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010514/dreyfuss

Here is a great read from The Nation for people who do not mind I told you so journalism. Written and published way back in the spring of 2001, when Cheney was holding his energy meeting and AT&T was setting up the spying operation on American citizens and the FERC was turning a blind eye on Enron’s price gouging scam in California, this article laid out the economic feature of America under the command of Captain George W. Bush. It is called Grover Norquist: Field Marshall of the Bush Plan.

Who is to blame for our economic crash? There are lots of little players. Phil Gramm, former economic professor knew what he was doing when he rolled back Depression era banking regulations---he knew a lot more than Bill Clinton, who relied upon the advice of others trained in economics. The war profiteers who have spent $10 billion a month in Iraq alone have done their part. However, the mastermind, the one who selected Dumbya to be the captain and who programmed the B Ark to crash is….

(drum roll)

Grover Norquist .

I hope that everyone in America gives this man the credit he deserves. I mean, anyone who savors a good recession verging on a Great Depression owes this guy a lot. So we should not be stingy in our praise. Cheney did not think this thing up. Paulson has been a puppet. W. could not scheme his way out of a paper bag.

It was Grover Norquist who said

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Norquist must be one of those east coast intellectuals that the Republicans are always warning us about, because when he says “cut”, he does not mean “cut”. “Cut” in his vocabulary means make the budget bigger. No wonder he used to sit around and bitch and moan at the Clinton budget—the balanced one. The more money Bush, Cheney, Rummie and Paulson spend lining their own pockets and that of their friends, the happier Norquist gets. And he gets extremely upset if anyone tries to cut the deficit. Debt is very important for Grover Norquist.

Grover Norquist also approves of anything that decreases the productivity of the U.S. worker. That is why he lobbies so hard to keep people 1) smoking and 2) drinking to excess and 3) gambling and 4) away from doctors by making sure that the 40 plus million uninsured mostly working Americans stay uninsured. I will admit that I do not understand this economic policy of his. I was always taught that a sound economy relied upon a productive work force. However, Norquist has managed to get our B Ark to crash and burn, and certainly, economic despair is good for the folks who sell hard liquor and casinos and cancer sticks. Just as wealth disparity increases the number of people who become addicts, while access to health care and steady jobs and a secure future might encourage people to beat their addictions----

Oh my! You don’t suppose that Grover Norquist wants our Ark to crash and burn, because it makes the companies he represents, the ones who sell temporary solace in a bottle or in a cartoon or in a slot machine, more money?

III. Ann Coulter Plays With Fascism and Gets Burned

Baby's on fire
Better throw her in the water
Look at her laughing
Like a heifer to the slaughter

Baby's on fire
And all the laughing boys are bitching
Waiting for photos
Oh the plot is so bewitching

Rescuers row row
Do your best to change the subject
Blow the wind blow blow
Lend some assistance to the object

Photographers snip snap
Take your time she's only burning
This kind of experience
Is necessary for her learning
Baby’s On Fire Brian Eno

This one is strictly for the base. That is why they have the darling of the right wing, Ann Coulter dishing it out. She claims that if Bill Clinton had not stopped the sacred practice of redlining----you know, the way that realtors enforce God’s edict that Blacks shall continue to pay rent to white landlords until the end of time so that said landlords can afford to buy their kids Hummers and send them to Duke---then we would not have a mortgage crisis or an economic “meltdown”.

http://www.anncoulter.com./

Ann Coulter is an idiot. Or else she is a fascist.

In fact, the people who write mortgages did something much worse than follow the law which made it illegal to discriminate by denying some people home loans based upon their race, gender or religion. These unscrupulous bankers took a look at the widespread economic prosperity of the 1990s under the Clinton administration that trickled down---hell, more than trickled down, that actually percolated down to the working class of all colors. They saw that financial security in the hands of people who had never been given a fair shake in this country before. They saw single women whose salaries had risen to a level closer to that of men (but still not the same). They saw Blacks who had received better educations and had better employment opportunities. They saw new markets where they could sell homes.

And something within them got mean and ugly. Some bitter, racist, sexist part of them thought I don’t like seeing Blacks and Latinos living in their own homes the way that white folks do.

Only, instead of just denying them a loan the way that they would have twenty or thirty years ago, these greedy SOBs had an even nastier idea. You see, under Reagan, the rich had gotten richer and everyone else, including a whole lot of white bankers and mortgage brokers and middle men---you know, B Ark people---had gotten poorer in a relative sense. They were not as well off as their parents had been, and they knew it.

These dissatisfied, disgruntled B Ark bankers looked at the people who used to be poorer than poor and who now had two coins to rub together and they thought to themselves By rights, those two coins ought to belong to me.

And so, when a Black walked into a bank to get a home loan, he was given only one option---an adjustable mortgage, along with a pack of lies about how he could refinance. And when a white with the same financial profile walked in, he got the good mortgage.

The Bush administration did not attempt to measure for racial, gender or other disparity in loans as they should have. They did not attempt to stop predatory loans. Instead, when the states tried to stop predatory loans in the early 2000s, the Bush administration modified a Civil War law and used it to trample all over states rights to keep them from regulating banks which engaged in illegal, fraudulent and economically unsound practices.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

If Ann Coulter is too stupid to understand this, then she has my sympathies. If she wrote what she did despite knowing the truth, then she is a fascist, for a fascist attempts to exploit economic crisis by blaming its victims—usually an ethnic, religious or racial minority, in the west often Jewish people, in the east often the Chinese(outside China, of course)---for the crisis in hopes that the workers will surrender their freedom to the elite class which is actually the cause of their ill fortune.

It did not work in the 1930s when Morgan, Bush, Mellon and Ford tried it. I am not sure why their descendents think that it will work now. Coulter may get a few soft “Here, here”s from the base, but she is much more likely to anger everyone else.

IV. There Is No "U" In B Ark, But the B Ark Is a Lot Like Toys R US

"Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?"
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Here is how you can spot someone from the modern American B Ark. They are like greedy children. They look at what other people have and they think to themselves How can I take that and give little to nothing in exchange? In order to do that you have to refuse to acknowledge the humanity of anyone except a tiny circle of close friends and family. Like John McCain, you can not look a rival in the eye, because if you do, you might not be able to stab him in the back.

The NeoCons are 100% B Ark. For thirty years they have been plotting to take the oil of other countries like Iraq and Iran. The Europeans who gave beads and trinkets for Manhattan were B Ark. The way that European settlers acquired territory in the New World, through murder, broken treaties, the Trail of Tears had lead to an enormous karmic debt that still haunts us to this day. You can see it in the way that we shit all over our own country, squandering our resources, treating the land as almost disposable. We didn't work for it. Why should we value it?

B Ark does not work together, except maybe in small groups that conspire to steal from the whole.

"Hey, let's sell the engine to the highest bidder."

"Won't that make the ship crash?"

"So what? We'll escape before that happens."

Chances are, one of the conspirators will leave the other behind to die.

When someone on the B Ark is asked to turn over records to a Congressional committee, he says "No. You might find something in there that would embarrass me, and I have a right to protect myself first and think of the country second, even if I am an elected official of this land. It's every man for himself on the B Ark." Every single person in the Bush White House has used the B Ark excuse. Dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest. You can't make me. The law of the schoolyard.

When the economic recession which they have caused hits, the denizens of the B Ark see it as an opportunity, the same way that school kids see a crisis as a chance to act up, get out of their desks, run wild. Already, there are ads on television, promoting the "soundness" of certain financial institutions in this troubled time. Casinos have increased their advertising. John McCain, the very model of a B Ark player, all flash and no substance, keeps trying to exploit the crisis by running around on a white pantomime horse, declaring that he is "fixing" something. Yes, he is trying to fix the election. We saw his intense egotism in the debate when he would not even agree to find common ground at the end, when Obama praised him for taking a stance against torture. John McCain, staunch advocate of deregulation, helped the B Ark to crash, and now he intends to rule the ruins.

[REP]

1. Kick for a Magic Christian reference

"Try to tear your face apart"

[ContinentalOp]

2. Here's the plan Congress obviously needs to pass ASAP:

1. Print one trillion dollars (in singles)
2. Seal all of the doors and windows of the NYSE
3. Fill the building with steaming manure
4. Smash a giant hole in the roof and lean a long ladder up the side of the building to the opening
5. Once these measures are in place, hold a press conference announcing the plan

[Scurrilous]

3. K & R

:thumbsup:

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Fiscal policy, 'B' Ark style:

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT:
Um listen, if we could, er, for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy -

FORD:
”Fiscal Policy”?!

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT:
Yes.

FORD:
How can you have money if none of you actually produce anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know!

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT:
You know if you would allow me to continue!

CAPTAIN:
Yes let him continue.

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT:
Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt leaves as legal tender, we have, of course all become immensely rich.

FORD:
No really? Really?

CROWD MEMBERS:
Yes, very good move…

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT:
But, we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability. Which means that I gather the current going rate has something like three major deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut. So, um, in order to obviate this problem and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on an extensive defoliation campaign, and um, burn down all the forests. I think that’s a sensible move don’t you?

MARKETING GIRL:
That makes economic sense.

(Murmurs of agreement from crowd)

FORD:
(Yells) You’re absolutely barmy! You’ve a bunch of raving nutters!

http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio6.htm

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Excellent. And on the topic of war....

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided though here the phases are retribution, anticipation, and diplomacy. Thus, retribution: “I’m going to kill you because you killed my brother.” Anticipation: “I’m going to kill you because I killed your brother.” And diplomacy: “I’m going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.”

[crickets]

5. Excellent synopsis. K&R -nt