Bizarro World
In the Superman comics of the 60s there featured a planet called Bizarro World, where everything was the reverse of the way it was on Earth. It was like that children's game of having to say everything "backwards", like "No, I don't want candy." The thought of Bizarro World has been on my mind as I think about recent events in Washington.
A man who gave opinions exempting the White House from laws on torture was made Attorney General.
A man who is infamous for hiding information has been made Director of National Intelligence.
A man who has been criticizing the UN for years, and probably doesn't even believe in its mission, has been nominated as Ambassador to the UN.
A man with very limited experience in development, whose estimates on Iraq before Congress, were wildly wrong, and whom Europeans reject as a key force behind the Iraq War, has been nominated to head the World Bank, funding development and working with Europeans.
To improve popular opinion about the United States in the Middle East, instead of taking actions which people there like, they have appointed a white, Republican, assertively Christian woman from Texas who doesn't speak Arabic to take charge of "getting our message out."
To deal with what he describes as an urgent crisis in Social Security solvency, the President and others in his administration are stumping in support of a plan that isn't a plan, which he admits would do nothing to improve solvency. He is open to any ideas to fix the system except ones that actually fix the solvency issue, and those which leave out his feature that doesn't.
But the White House isn't the only branch of government that is living in Bizarro World.
Congress is holding hearings on steroid use in baseball, but not holding hearings on revelations of widespread instances of torture and even death by our military and intelligence services, the parts of pre-9/11 intelligence failures it didn't do before, financial mismanagement in Iraq that has led to millions of dollars that have just gone missing and ridiculous overcharging by contractors like Halliburton, the effect of the growing deficit and the falling dollar on our future economic security, the failure of our country to have a reliable vaccine supply, the ongoing collapse of the health-care system in general, recent reports that our educational and health-care systems are not, in fact, the best in the world, and more.
The Senate just voted to approve putting oil drilling equipment in a wildlife refuge.
(By the way, for good reading on ANWR, I recommend the Alternative Hippo.)
In the House, when a leader previously found guilty of ethical lapses remained wrapped in ethical controversy, the Chairman of the ethics committee was replaced, and people who had contributed to the leader's legal defense fund were appointed to the committee.
As you might guess, I never liked the issues of Superman that featured Bizarro World, and just wanted to get back to the normal, rightways-round stories. If only I could count on a new issue of Washington next month.
A man who gave opinions exempting the White House from laws on torture was made Attorney General.
A man who is infamous for hiding information has been made Director of National Intelligence.
A man who has been criticizing the UN for years, and probably doesn't even believe in its mission, has been nominated as Ambassador to the UN.
A man with very limited experience in development, whose estimates on Iraq before Congress, were wildly wrong, and whom Europeans reject as a key force behind the Iraq War, has been nominated to head the World Bank, funding development and working with Europeans.
To improve popular opinion about the United States in the Middle East, instead of taking actions which people there like, they have appointed a white, Republican, assertively Christian woman from Texas who doesn't speak Arabic to take charge of "getting our message out."
To deal with what he describes as an urgent crisis in Social Security solvency, the President and others in his administration are stumping in support of a plan that isn't a plan, which he admits would do nothing to improve solvency. He is open to any ideas to fix the system except ones that actually fix the solvency issue, and those which leave out his feature that doesn't.
But the White House isn't the only branch of government that is living in Bizarro World.
Congress is holding hearings on steroid use in baseball, but not holding hearings on revelations of widespread instances of torture and even death by our military and intelligence services, the parts of pre-9/11 intelligence failures it didn't do before, financial mismanagement in Iraq that has led to millions of dollars that have just gone missing and ridiculous overcharging by contractors like Halliburton, the effect of the growing deficit and the falling dollar on our future economic security, the failure of our country to have a reliable vaccine supply, the ongoing collapse of the health-care system in general, recent reports that our educational and health-care systems are not, in fact, the best in the world, and more.
The Senate just voted to approve putting oil drilling equipment in a wildlife refuge.
(By the way, for good reading on ANWR, I recommend the Alternative Hippo.)
In the House, when a leader previously found guilty of ethical lapses remained wrapped in ethical controversy, the Chairman of the ethics committee was replaced, and people who had contributed to the leader's legal defense fund were appointed to the committee.
As you might guess, I never liked the issues of Superman that featured Bizarro World, and just wanted to get back to the normal, rightways-round stories. If only I could count on a new issue of Washington next month.
posted by Paul at 8:45 AM |
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