This Comes As No Surprise

Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania and former Reichsfuhrer of our Homeland Security Department, now alleges that he was pressured to raise the country's alert level from Puce to Cerise in advance of the 2004 Presidential election. He eventually didn't, but that's beside the point right now.

The fact that he was pressured reinforces my contention that the Bush Administration was an aberration not unlike the reign of The Mule in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Had it not been for the attacks on Black Tuesday Bush would have been a one-term President. Public opinion was running against him after the bitterly contested and still-fractious 2000 campaign, the economy was slumping and we had just concluded a minor diplomatic incident with China that left us looking weak.

But, as Burke opined, "The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," and such was the case. Robert Clarke notified the President and others in the national security apparatus that Osama bina Badboy was planning on striking us, but it was blown off in exchange for fantasies about how bad Saddam Hussein was.

With predictable results.

And anyone with even a gram of common sense could see during 2004 that the Bushies were manipulating peoples' fears in such a way as to drive them, lemming-like, to the polls so they could re-elect a genuinely stupid man and his cabal of war profiteers, warmongers and authoritarians.

Of course, all the current GOP apparatus knows how to do at this point is to exploit and play on peoples' fears (but in this case it's health care).

So Reichsfuhrer Ridge's allegation at this late date comes as no surprise whatever.