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Jewish World Review May 8, 2001 / 15 Iyar, 5761
James Lileks
If the rules were so important, why did Clinton wait until the last
minute to sign them? Hmm? The Dem response has firmed up: the studies
weren't complete until the very end of his term. Clinton stood in his empty
office, checking his watch while the moving van driver honked impatiently.
Meanwhile, a young aide races down the corridors of the White House holding
the new regulations aloft. Make way! I have life-saving last-minute
particulate concentration regulation!
Tragedy strikes; her heel snaps. Desperate, she stuffs the regs in a
shoe, removes her pantyhose, shoves the shoe in the hose and whips it over
her head like David winding up to bean Goliath. The package flies through
the door and lands at Clinton's feet. What's this? Women's pantyhose? Why,
if my eight years in office have taught me anything, this means there must
be an important domestic initiative somewhere in here. And so he finds and
signs the regulations, just as the barbarian hordes of Bush boys swarm over
the gates like a wave of chattering locusts.
It's plausible.
For all these accusations to work, you have to believe that
Republicans want poisoned water. You have to believe they drink different
water than everyone else. And, of course, they do. Doubt it? Switch
parties. Join the GOP, and see what happens: cheerful clean-cut uniformed
men show up the next day, and take you off the city water lines. They'll
connect you to the special Republican water system that crosses the nation,
supplying pure clean perfect water to GOP households. You can get it without
Flouride, too, as a sop to the Birchers and Goldie holdovers.
And there's more! They'll also install special GOP "screens" for your
windows - they'll trap airborne pollutants as small as three molecule
across. You'll also have access to rich, satisfying Republican sunshine,
which tans you twice as fast - just look at Bob Dole! - and you'll enjoy
even-tempered Republican weather all year long. This is why Republicans
don't care about pollution, or bad water, or the ozone layer, or global
warming: for all practical purposes, they're not living on the same planet
as the rest of the people, so they don't care at all what happens to you.
True! All true! Invite a Republican over and hand him a glass of water.
Watch him avoid drinking it - sometimes they spill it, sometimes they just
say "I had water earlier today, thanks anyway" - and sometimes they sneak a
little sponge out of their cuff, put it in their mouth and pretend to drink.
Oh, they're clever.
Well, if this isn't true, then perhaps . . . maybe . . . there's another
side to this arsenic debate. Is it possible? Could it be? Well, didn't that
one episode of "West Wing" seem to indicate that there were, theoretically,
multiple viewpoints on a variety of matters? Could it be that the the
Democrats are lying to attract members of the Stupid-American community, the
people who don't know that eighteen Dem senators including Tom Daschle
voted to delay the EPA's new arsenic regs by six months? That's right: Tom
Daschle wanted INFANTS to drink POISON for half a year so some Beltway
bureaucrats didn't have to hustle.
Tom Daschle wants to kill your kids!
Of course, he wants to do nothing of the sort. He knows that these
pollution issues are just a handy club with which to beat the GOP. If an
environmental reg causes 10,000 people to lose their jobs, then that's
10,000 people who need the government more. If a reg is defeated by
Republicans because it'll cost jobs and do little good, then it's more proof
that the GOP wants to poison everyone for money. Can't lose! Plus, Daschle
is hooked up to the special Congressional grid, which has much better water
than you'll ever get. That's right: it's not what's IN the water that makes
politicians act so oddly. It's what isn't in the water.
A little more arsenic, and perhaps they'd act like normal
04/23/01: We bleat as we're sheared
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