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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Snow Job

Now that Andy Card has been thrown under the clanky Bush bus, howzabout a little house cleaning? Not of the important positions, mind you -- no doubt new Chief of Staff Josh "Stop calling me Michael" Bolten has already been apprised that Rummy and Shooter are untouchable. So the natural next choice is John Snow, Secretary of Pseudo-economic Bullshit.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow has expressed interest in leaving his job in the next several months, a person close to him said Tuesday, as speculation raced through Washington that the White House was seeking Mr. Snow's replacement.

President Bush did little to tamp down the talk after a morning meeting about health care in the Roosevelt Room, where he responded with a tepid endorsement to a question about whether Mr. Snow would stay. The Treasury secretary was in the room as the president spoke.

"Secretary Snow is here at the table," Mr. Bush said. "He's been a part of this discussion. I'm glad you brought him up. He has been a valuable member of my administration, and I trust his judgment and appreciate his service."

When Mr. Bush has been asked in the past about whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would remain in his job, he has spoken out more forcefully and enthusiastically.


Of course. Why actually change anything, when you can simply go through the motions and cultivate the appearance of change? Whatever; they're just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic at this point, barring an unforgivable case of the stupids on the part of either the Democrats or a preponderance of "values" drones nattering on about their next crusade to protect us from gay married blastocyst manimals.

But let's be clear about this: not only is Bush not changing what needs to be changed the most, in sacking Snow and leaving Rumsfeld, but he's sacking Snow for the wrong reasons. Apparently Snow is not seen to be an effective enough cheerleader for the administration's "economic policy", which boils down to "cut taxes and pray". Meanwhile, housing starts, which have been the lifeblood of the economic recovery, are way down, and interest rates keep going up. Because somehow, after paying higher house payments, higher power bills, and higher gasoline costs, among other major expenses, we're supposed to save our disposable income.

What we really need in a Secretary of the Treasury is someone to remind Harvard on a regular basis that we peons can't just coast through life on our last names. Doesn't matter; he'd just give 'em that look he has, the one that you see in the zoo, where the chimp can't decide whether to climb a ladder or throw his feces.

I thought this steamy chunk of boilerplate was an added bonus:

"I told Josh that he is — will organize the White House in such a way that he is comfortable with and that meets my needs," Mr. Bush said. "And my needs are to have good, crisp information so I can make decisions on behalf of the American people."


Sure. How much more of that "good, crisp information" can the country endure, I wonder? You know, Harvard, having a bunch of bootlickers tell you what a super job you're doing, and trying to decide whether you're the next Churchill or the next Truman, is not "good, crisp information". What the decision-making process of this maladministration has been operating on thus far is none of those three words. Instead of "good, crisp information" he's been running on cherry-picked, flaccid bullshit, and keeps regurgitating it over and over again, as if we'll finally swallow it the millionth time he coughs it up.

The excellent movie Downfall quite thoroughly explores this utterly moronic epistemological pattern which seems to have found a comfy home in Bush's empty brain pan. Regardless, I can hardly wait to see what sort of inbred troglodyte Chimpco has in mind to replace Snow. At this point, knowing that all these guys want is a reliable sock puppet who will eat their shit sandwich and beg for more, no self-respecting Wall Streeter would take the job on a dare. There's just no way in hell it'd be worth it.

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