A Futures Market on Terror

"When the head is sick, the whole body faints."

Last week, the big brains of the Bush Administration floated a thoroughly absurd idea: The US government would set up and administer a Futures Market on the Internet where anyone could go and buy futures like they buy stocks. What these clients would be betting/putting their money into is whether there will be another terrorist attack on the US or anywhere in the world during a prescribed time period.

This futures idea is attributed to former Admiral Poindexter. Whether it was his idea or not, we cannot really know because nowadays everyone is falling of his/her sword after silliness is exposed. When Bush is just being Bush, and the public sees his tragic flaws, all his men and women start falling on their mea culpa swords to cover for him. Unlike others who claimed blame for the Administration's mess-ups, Poindexter resigned--the others took the blame and stayed on.

This Administration can't find Osama bin Laden or Saddam maybe because our big brains in the Pentagon are devising plans like the Futures Market. In this Futures Market the investors in the Pentagon's futures would bet on the number of terror attacks, assassinations, and other terror and horror-related events and actions in the Middle East and elsewhere. Supposedly, this sort of private sector betting would produce information and leads about events happening throughout the world because they invest their money and would be extremely cautious about their investments--more cautious than our Homeland Security Department would be. This is how our big brains reasoned this idea. Are these people really healthy or are they seeking some type of mental disability?

This Texas/Washington crowd is a group of hold-overs from previous administrations that Senior Bush gave to Junior Bush. And how junior he is! Just last week, Bush Jr., had a physical exam and was pronounced fit as a fumbler. Do these physicals include psychologicals?

If the rationale they floated for this Futures Market was really believed, what is their strange confidence in the private sector? Isn't the private sector that sector that is having so many problems with ethics and lack of creativity?

When Bush was declared the president, a young college student said, "I am really scared now that Bush is president. He doesn't know what he is doing." He has not learned much since that time. But what he knows is this: if billionaire Mayor Bloomberg of New York attained his position by investing endless sums of his own money to win the mayoral position, thereby buying it, anyone who has enough money can make Americans buy anything. And already, Bush has $100 million to spend in an unopposed Republican Primary.

This portends four more years of Futures Markets, faltering governance, cooked rationales, inability to find bin Laden and Saddam; four more years of mindless Texas swaggering, as this nation is upsetting the delicate balance of nations; and four more years of seeing nations that would not have thought about atomic weapons acquire them because the Bush Administration has taken this nation back to its crude roots of bullying and blustering. .

As it stands, we can expect to see anything come out of this White House, and the unleashed Republicans who will do anything and at any cost to stay in power--and these are the lords of Iraq? God save America first, Iraq second, and the world from America's cockeyed bandit leaders. []

Simond Griote