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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

ONE MORE VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY

February 7, 2006 by Jan Herman

So Cheney Boy’s ventriloquist dummy (the Bullshitter-in-Chief) has his own ventriloquist dummy (Alberto Gonzales). That’s been clear from the time Gonzales was appointed attorney general. But it was never clearer, right down to the crooked grin, than it was in his testimony as a star witness for the regime’s warrantless domestic spying program.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, aka the Bullshitter's ventriloquist dummy

And as long as I’m posting today — when the regime has just released a $2.77 trillion budget calling for “compassionate conservative” cuts in social programs like education and health care — how about this little-publicized piece of news? The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion.
That’s the estimate of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, which is more than four times the expected cost of $500 billion (according to congressional budget data) through the end of 2006. It oughta give taxpayers something to think about.
Here’s Stiglitz’s original 36-page paper, co-written with Linda Bilmes, who teaches public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School. If you don’t have time for that, here’s an op-ed piece they wrote, “War’s stunning price tag,” which asks: “Why were the costs so vastly underestimated?”
Good question. But I wouldn’t expect any of the regime’s ventriloquist dummies to answer it. Would you?

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Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
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