Hamstrung and Shackled: The State of Bush's Union

Tomorrow night the Obfuscator in Chief will once again regale us with a fairy tale about the greatness of the neocon agenda. He'll tell us how well we're doing in Iraq, spreading the good word of democracy and freedom even as we spy illegally, jail our citizens without access to courts and reserve the right to torture prisoners via signing statements. He'll tell us how well the economy is doing as stocks soar to the backdrop of Ford and Kraft laying nearly 30,000 Americans off. He'll tout tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor as a way of increasing the stock market's performance. There'll be some bone about health care in there, some problematic solution to the wrong problem, in short, it'll be another bit of Shrubbery.

The state of Bush's union is grim. We're limited in our economic prospects by the largest deficits in history, by a futile war that's costing us nearly two trillion dollars, by the fact that we're now economic hostages to the Japanese and Chinese. Our economy is soaring, if you own stocks. Real wages are declining, the number of people in poverty is increasing, prices, particularly for heating homes, are rising. Yet we'll hear tomorrow night that we need to cut taxes even further for the rich, making the tax cuts on capital gains and dividends permanent. We have no money for new initiatives, it's being thrown down the five sided dollar drain, the Pentagon, into the septic tank of Bush's wars to spread democracy.

How are we doing there? Like Hamas? It's a foretaste of what will eventually happen in Iraq. We are encouraging democratically elected governments in an area dominated by Islamists who hate us. It stands to reason we'll get Islamist governments. Bush's foreign policy bore fruit in Palestine, all right. We have a democratically elected government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. We also have the hypocrisy of the Bush foreign policy evident in the drive to deny aid to a democratically elected government. The people of Palestine have spoken and our reaction to their statement proves that we're all in favor of democracy, as long as the right people get elected. So what happens when Islamists vote themselves into power in Iraq? Ready to invade again, this time with Iran backing the Iraqis up? It seems the "shock and awe" came at the ballot box this time around.

And how about the state of our union? We're facing the largest corruption scandal in Congress since I can remember and, despite attempts to rebrand it, the problem is a Republican one. Come on, folks, there's no reason to bribe the minority! So much for the morality of the party of the Christian majority, unless you like earmarks in exchange for bribes and "campaign contributions", thinly disguised bribes themselves. Yet there are no real cries for reform that will make a difference. There is no attempt to rein in earmarks, the Republicans say "we need business as usual". So Colorado taxpayers pay for bridges to nowhere in Alaska and no one in Congress gets to debate or even know they've been had. There is no drive to publically finance elections, instead corporations, legal entities to be sure but still owned; therefore, property, cry out for First Amendment rights property should not be allowed to have. Lobbyists and corporations reserve the right to bribe congressmen and call it campaign funding. That needs to be gone. Yet in the Shrub's corrupt union, this business as usual, the K-street financed Republican culture of corruption will endure.

The state of our union is grim, yet the Prevaricator in Chief will attempt tomorrow night to tell it differently. He will be believed by some who want to believe. It's been proven that political thought is emotional and facts have little sway over emotions. People will still try to believe. The Christian Right will somehow attempt to believe that killing, sixth commandment be damned, is doing God's will, that they're Christian Soldiers and the United States is the new Israel. The Neocons love what's happening as we drive toward a dictatorship with a dictator referred to as "Mr. President". They'll find reasons to believe.

After all, twenty five percent of all Americans supported Nixon the day he resigned.