Time For Another Vacation?

I leave the country for a few measly days, and Karl Rove takes the opportunity to resign in order to take care of his family, and to take up a quiet life outside politics. (Urr-humph!*hmm-bullshit*hakk!) Sure. Now watch for his visage to appear, along about December like the Ghost of Christmas Future, behind the right elbow of presidential candidate Clinton or Giuliani. Or both of them. Gotta cover those bases.

While I obliviously strolled the grounds of kinda-sorta-foreign estates, the residents of Jackson Hole, Wyoming marched on Dick Cheney's vacation home to topple his statue (Burning in effigy being against the fire code.) Curiously, the hostile crowd was not dispersed by napalm canisters dropped from the squadron of F-22 Raptors which patrol the airspace above the erstwhile Presidente's head. Could be they got too close to the compound to safely take out with heavy ordnance; could be he's slipping. Now, I could see the Chainster having a subdued day due to poor health, maybe even dozing off contentedly while a few peasants revolted. It happens to the best of tyrants, but...he had his attack-wife Lynne with him. Speaking of Christmas, She would rather make garlands and wreaths out of demonstrators' intestines than let them engage in such doorstep effrontery. Something must be going seriously out of whack for Team Whacked for their vacation to have been disturbed in their home state.

And now this. David Walker, the US Comptroller General, came out of the closet to announce that he is...sane. He then compares US policies to that of a bankrupt Roman Empire. (Crap! I was just going to do my 300th post on that!) What's next? The masses are going to stop watching Jerry Springer's 'New Trailer Park Idol,' march on Washington, and call for a people's plebiscite? OK, no feasible way, but still, here's what Walker had to say after looking over America's balance sheet:

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”

Maybe going to Canada was a sign. Revolution by vacation. Maybe it's time to really pull out the stops and go visit most of Congress at their summer homes on the Cote d'Azur to see if more aggressive relaxation will fan these flames of weirdness into a regular Robes-Pierrean Reign of Terror. To the vineyards! Grab a cheese wheel, and man the wine-barrel barricades!