Across the land there is much anticipation for Jan 20, 2009! The day of release from the Crawford Bondage. Freedom from Bush! Hallelulia!!! On another blog this morning, a commentor observed <i>...I’m just counting the minutes ’til he (the Chimp) gets the f*** out of our lives." TP, October 12th, 2008 at 8:30 am</i>

I'm sorry to have to be the one to bear the news to you, friends, but <span style="font-style:italic;">"FUGGEDABODIT!"</span> I am here to tell you that you/we will be feeling the direct effects of the Bushevik regime for the next 30 years, minimum. Because that's how long it will take all the Bushevik moles embedded in Govt over these last 8 years to die natural deaths or retire.

Not only is there the astonishing array of policies and practices needing to be repaired or cleansed resulting from Bushevikian policies (selling Nukes to India? What kind of fuuking idiocy is that? Preemptive war, economic meltdown, health care crisis, blatant corruption, war-=profiteering, the "National Security State," international terrorism, etc.) The list is fuuking ENDLESS. By design, they never touched anything they didn't fuck up.

But also do not forget there was a "Monica Goodling" at EVERY Department, Bureau, Agency, Office and Board of the Federal Government. Goodling, you will recall, was the Rightard/Xian fluff hired by Gonzales who was responsible for hiring ideological loyalists and religious fellow-travelers into CAREER positions in the DoJ, politicizing the People's law enforcers, and polluting the process with political chicanery. You can be SURE she was not the only one in the Fed with the job of ensuring ideological purity among hirees. They were everywhere, and as their legacies, they leave behind 'cells' of Bushevik parasites whose job it will be, until they retire or die, to use their positions, seniority and perqs to obstruct, or torpedo, or distract, or divert any and every reform in any Bureaucracy that might seem to undo the illegal, disreputable shit done over the last 8 years in the names of Bushevism and God...

<strong>You must realize this</strong>: The Busheviks have poisoned the ENTIRE federal bureaucracy with embedded cells of political and religious terrorists whose only job from Jan 20, on, will be to PREVENT, OBSTRUCT, DIVERT or UNDERMINE any reform to the systems they were (illegally) hired to pollute. And they're virtually untouchable, and their jobs are secure, because of the very laws that were violated to install them in the first place...

If Obama does become #44 (a BIG "If"), his first official act should be to purge the Govt of Bushie loyalists, and demand the resignations of EVERYBODY hired by the US govt over the last 8 years. Period. No exceptions. Every last swinging dick and dripping pussy, out...

The NYTimes, on April 20, past, broke a long story which focussed on revelations that the Pentagon and the Bushevik regime had embedded military propagandists, mainly former Generals, in important consultative and commentariat positions with the major US Corporate Media organizations. The NPR Ombud <a href="http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/">addressed the issue</a> at some (ultimately unsatisfying) length and delicately danced around the problem. She quoted NPR Defense correspondent Tom Gjelten:<blockquote>Gjelten: <i>"...A General wants to be a military analyst on NPR or some other news organization in order to curry favor with the Department of Defense which in turn will benefit him in his defense contracting. That's a hypothetical scenario we have to be concerned about."</i></blockquote>In reply to which, I sent the following message to the NPR Ombudsone:

"ONE of the scenarios, Tom. Another could well be that a retired general, still following Pentagon orders ("there are no 'ex-Marines.'"), slithers into the Media (NPR--You can't spell 'RePublicaN' without NPR--ABC, NBC, Faux, CNN, all the rest which, if viewed with any kind of detachment at all, MUST be understood as the semi-private, wholly-owned subsidiary propaganda arms of the Corporate State) at the behest of the "Boys" (you know, a little "Sleepin' W/The Enemy")and is rewarded with DoD largesses for his favorite firm or charity?

"Gen. Scales appeared in NPR reports, by your own accounting, some 100 times, and nobody, apparently, could EVER have anticipated he'd have an agenda? Nobody looked at who ELSE he was working for?

"Now, he says, he complained about the conduct of the operations. Okay. Very courageous, I guess. But that's what I call a 'technical' complaint. He was critical of tactics, and perhaps there were others, too; but I cannot recall ever hearing anyone above the rank of sergeant quoted on NPR with anything critical to say about the invasion, conquest, subsequent occupation--to say nothing of the rape and pillage--of Iraq. And probably no more than one or two of them, at that, and I think they're dead.

"The whole episode, including NPR's response, illustrates my long-held contention that in the corporate state, corporate media are STATE Media, and any and all reporting or 'news' or similar species of information exuding therefrom must be regarded, de facto, as State propaganda.

"This was how the Russians survived Communism. We have come to an entirely predictable, but still terribly sad place, if the People of the USofA have to take lessons from the People of the old USSR in the art of discerning what was really news in the steady diet of propaganda.

"I know that my criticisms, along with the several dozen more which I have read here (and with the substantial majority of which I totally concur) must be difficult for you to see and consider. Perhaps you are tempted to dismiss these criticisms as the rantings of fanatics and partisans. Perhaps you can taste the bile of denial behind your teeth. But often truth does indeed hurt. And that taste? Might it be self-revulsion for playing such a willing part in such shameful events, and even now trying to rationalize, excuse or justify them?

Hillary caught a good deal of (well-deserved) static for her "pandering" to the working class by calling for a summer-long 'gas-tax holiday,' which virtually everyone but she and McStain recognized as fundamentally no more than a gigantic, off-the-books give-away to Big Oil.

Will Obama collect the same obloquy, the same scorn, for pandering to the Kentucky coal-mining constituency for supporting an equally stupid, equally damagaing fantasy: "Clean" Coal? He should, on the basis of a Kate Shepard piece up now on Grist:

Hillary Clinton has been pilloried for pandering to working class voters with her gas-tax holiday proposal. But she's not the only one telling working-class voters what they want to hear.

"Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal." So reads a direct mailer being distributed in Kentucky ahead of the state's May 20 primary. (Click the image to the right for a larger version.)

Clark Stevens, press secretary for the Obama campaign in Kentucky, confirmed that the mailer came from the campaign. "Yes, it is an official mailer," he said.

Does Obama really believe in "clean Kentucky coal"?

We report; you decide.