[A-List] Bush Declares Self 'Mega Decider'

[Leigh Meyers]

Didn't the Rand corp do a study in the 60s to investigate the
circumstances under which Lyndon Johnson could declare himself 'king'.
I know read it in one of the NY underground newspapers at the time...
at least I thinks I did... It WAS 'the 60s' after all.

Leigh

On 6/6/07, Bill Totten <shimogamo at attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> New documents ensure Dubya will rule America, should calamity strike.
> Free balloons!
>
> by Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
>
> http://SFGate.com (May 30 2007)
>
>
> It's just one of those obscure little unreported-upon conspiracy
> theory-ready hunks of floating White House detritus, a couple of odd,
> sticky, foul-smelling documents no one really wants to touch and no one
> knows quite what to make of, probably means nothing, probably being
> misread anyway, all a bit overblown and strange and not all that
> important and not all that different than the way things are now.
>
> Unless, you know, it's not. Unless the violent twinge of queasy paranoia
> crossed with that uncontrolled bout of colon-clenching sighing you
> experience is deadly accurate and your radar for all things sinister and
> Rovean is right on target as you read about the delightfully titled
> National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and the Homeland
> Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, wherein it is calmly and
> furtively revealed that, in essence, George W Bush owns your sorry ass.
>
> Or, to put it another way, it looks like the Bumbling One just gave
> himself ever more power. Power to control and dictate the entire
> government, power to really spread the gospel of happy GOP incompetence,
> power to command the entire wobbly American universe should some sort of
> epic - or not so epic, as the case may be - calamity strike the homeland.
>
> It goes something like this: Should any "decapitating event" occur in
> America that somehow incapacitates the DC power structure, should "any
> incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels
> of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US
> population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government
> functions" take place, well then, all power and decision making would
> devolve to the White House, which would then attempt to orchestrate our
> very survival and oversee all essential governmental functions with none
> other than the president himself as, well, Super-Mega Lord Decider. With
> extra crayons.
>
> You know, a dictator.
>
> Wait wait wait, I hear you moan through your first pour of wine for the
> day, a futile attempt to stave off the sucker punch of doom you received
> from that last paragraph. There is nothing really new here. Hell, we've
> had a silly, ominous, "Terminator"-tinged master plan for
> post-apocalyptic America in place since Reagan was knee-high to a
> simpleminded jellybean, plans for a scowling "shadow government" to run
> the joint should, say, Russian nukes blow up all our Safeways or China
> secretly buy up all our Skippy peanut butter.
>
> And more recently, this plan was transferred into the hairy, pockmarked
> arms of our own Homeland Security Department, which seems entirely
> appropriate, given how you like to imagine such a plan living alone in a
> dark and musty Pentagon subbasement stocked to the rafters with rusty
> Winchesters and shiny bayonets and giant shoe box-sized satellite phones
> from 1987 and a small mountain of vacuum-sealed emergency meat rations
> that will last through 2197, or at least the next season of "24". Cool.
>
> But now, Shrub has seen fit to dust the thing off and make a few, uh,
> "revisions", most notably the one that appears to shift the
> decision-making process away from Homeland Security (which was then to
> disperse responsibility to various agencies and emergency services),
> straight to the Oval Office itself because, hey, who better to decide
> who gets to do what to whom when the s--- hits the fan than the most
> secretive, warmongering, "never saw an illegal power grab it didn't
> like" administration in American history? Gives you that warm, fuzzy,
> well-protected feeling all over, doesn't it? Like a rash? In your spleen?
>
> Even more heartwarming, "catastrophe", in the vague, nearly useless
> language of these documents, could mean, why, just about anything at
> all. Hurricane? Flood? Low polling numbers for Giuliani? A bad tattoo of
> Alberto Gonzales' smirky face on Jenna Bush's sacrum? You bet! Because
> who gets to decide what constitutes a "catastrophe"? Why, Shrub himself,
> that's who. What's more, the event doesn't even have to occur in America
> (see "regardless of location"). Such a perceived "disruption" can happen
> anywhere in the world and with a press of the shiny red button next to
> his bed, Bush kicks the Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) into
> gear. Neat!
>
> I know what you're thinking. And I completely agree: Such secret plans
> are one of the most adorable, comic-booky aspects of dumb,
> ultrasecretive administrations. After all, do many 'Merkins not love to
> swoon and polish their NRA memberships as they imagine all those White
> House suits suddenly turning into patriotic superheroes at the first
> sign of a meteor strike or an attack by an alien super race or maybe
> just if Iraq gets a bit too uppity and starts bootlegging illegal DVDs
> of "The Office"? You bet they do.
>
> And then boom, the nation goes into lockdown and it's a strict military
> state and Lynn Cheney starts enjoying sweaty night visions of Dick
> lumbering purposefully through the White House halls deciding who to
> nuke next as Dubya quivers in the corner and the flying monkeys prepare
> the escape pod. Just like in that Will Smith movie! Neat!
>
> Let us now be serious for a moment. Let us hold back the sarcasm and
> step back and breathe a sigh of relief because I'm sure Dubya's changes
> to NSPD 51 mean a whole lotta nothing. I'm sure it's just another
> standard - albeit a bit weird - governmental procedural, boring and
> forgettable and just one of thousands of such indecipherable, hazily
> unconstitutional legal quirkballs in the Pentagon's creaky file
> cabinets, and Dubya's recent changes are just an honest tweak to what
> really amounts to a rather ridiculous, fantastical document in the first
> place. Yes, surely it's just a bunch of silly leftist paranoia to think
> that something dark and nasty could result from such a move.
>
> After all, Shrub only has a year and a half left in office. Plus, his
> power has been severely truncated by the Dems. Why would he care to try
> for such a thuggish, cagey power grab now? What would be the point?
> Except, you know, to savagely tilt the next election and to further the
> new 'n' brutal neocon agenda of perpetual war and as a desperate,
> last-gasp move to prove he actually has the cojones to do something so
> appalling, so perfectly megalomaniacal, it's sure to rescue his rotten
> legacy from history's compost pile? I mean, besides that.
>
> _____
>
> Thoughts for the author? E-mail him at mmorford at sfgate.com .
>
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