I recently took a couple weeks off from everything to decompress a little. My work life has gotten much more hectic, with endless deadlines, and now I’m being asked to do some work for another department (over the weekend, of course — can’t let this interfere with my “stated” job, whatever that is). Over the holidays I really tuned out from all the political talk, with the exception of the McLaughlin Group, which is the only form of religiousness to which I subscribe on a weekly basis. Spent some time with family, something I hadn’t done nearly enough in the past year, and generally tried to set my mind straight to enter 2006 with a positive attitude. It was working for the most part until I started listening to the radio and started reading the news again.
Last year I purchased a copy of The Hunting Of The President, a film based upon a book of the same name. One of the bonus features was a taped recording of Bill Clinton giving a speech at the film’s debut. Perhaps the most encouraging thing that I’ve heard in the past few years was something he said about how, given a choice throughout the decades, when America has been confronted with a question of moving backwards or moving forwards toward progress and equality, America has always eventually moved forward.
Over the vacation, I started reading The Age Of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Haynes Johnson. I had no idea how many times throughout the history of the United States that forces had gathered to severely curtail rights guaranteed by the Constitution, to stir up paranoia of enemies in our midst, and to spread suspicion on and ruin the reputation of otherwise honorable men and women. People were deported simply because someone suspected them of being a communist. Ordinances were enacted that allowed capital punishment for speaking out against the government. The age of McCarthyism starts to look like a few years at Disneyland comparatively speaking. Needless to say, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The lesson to be learned is that, like Bill Clinton said, America eventually comes to its senses. This is just one of those times that happens every fifty years or so where honorable people have to stand up to derision — if they’re calling us anti-American, we must be doing something right. It’s just strange how the same tactics work time and again. McCarthy holds up a piece of paper that he claims contains a list of known communists, a journalist reports the speech verbatim (asking no questions), and America becomes terrified and believes the stories simply because of events that took place in its recent past. The only difference today is that we have outlets like FOX News, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Times and NewsMax that are all too willing to function as amplifiers for the GOP talking points of the day. After that, it’s easy for almost any local news outlet to pick up on the “news” and report it as truth.
If you put together all the alleged crimes that have occurred with this administration and those in power right now, it’s just really staggering that they’re still in power. White House pays reporters to toe the line on faith-based initiatives and education vouchers. White House employee (Rove, Scooter, maybe Cheney & Bush) expose a CIA operative because her husband has the gall to write a column disputing the White House’s assertion that Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger. Paul Bremer reportedly keeps a $600 million slush fund for Iraq, and another $9 billion has gone missing according to a watchdog group that conducted an audit of Iraqi funds sent from the US. An expanding Halliburton probe reveals all the no bid contracts given to Bush contributors. Let’s not even talk about all the tax cuts given to the richest Americans and wealthiest corporations in the United States. The right-wing talking heads like to claim that they’re not for “redistributing wealth.” I guess that means they’re all for redistribution if it means more money in their pockets. As long as it doesn’t go toward college grants, programs for the poor, or the middle class, they’re all for it. Why aren’t tax cuts for the wealthy considered “wealth re-distribution?” Is it a matter of how much people get back from their paycheck? Seems to me that if a millionaire gets an extra hundred thousand dollars back from the government while a minimum-wage worker who only gets a couple hundred dollars back, there’s not a whole lot of redistribution to the working class going on there. And if the majority of the so-called “surplus” went back to the richest Americans in the form of tax cuts, don’t those same people now have a larger obligation than the rest of us to help pay off the deficit? I mean, you can consider that the present deficit was largely caused by the massive Bush tax cuts to “stimulate the economy,” as well as the elective war in Iraq, plus the huge ballooning expense of creating the largest government agency known to man — the Department of Homeland Security, the funding of which now also includes lots of extra spending on all kinds of covert activities like the “Presidential Spy Plan” which I’ve yet to talk about. With the richest Americans seeming to benefit the most from the war as well — gasoline companies, defense contractors, etc. — shouldn’t they contribute a greater share toward reducing the deficit? But I digress…
A couple days ago on Sean Hannity’s show, he was bragging how he “told you first about the left-wing and the ‘I’ word (Impeach).” He said that lefties have been looking to impeach the president [sic] for years now, and they’re looking at this Jack Abramoff scandal and to tie the president [sic] to it. Not so, Sean. First of all, there’s no brilliance in predicting that liberals want to impeach Bush. That’s like saying Cheney is pure evil incarnate. We all know it’s true. The thing is, Sean, there is FAR more out there for which Bush deserves to be impeached than merely any distant or close relationship he had with the King Lobbyist for GOP Misadventures. How about lying to the nation about enriched Uranium being sought by Saddam Hussein? How about trying to claim that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were partners-in-crime as a reason to go to war? How is it possible that guys like Sean call the “lying into war” argument a farce? How many times has Bush’s reason for warmongering changed?
And now he’s responsible for the greatest domestic spying program since, well, since I have no idea when? With today’s technology, I’d gather it’s probably the greatest domestic spying program EVER. How about that for a call to impeach? And then Dick Cheney has the nerve to go in front of the Heritage Foundation and claim that “If we’d been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon.” Yeegads. Well, Dick, how about if you, Rummy and Condi had listened to Richard Clarke, 9/11 would never have happened? How about if you hadn’t stolen an election, there would’ve been no need for a transition team, and the Gore administration would’ve “shook the trees” when getting the news that “Osama determined to strike within the US,” as Clinton’s administration had done when dealing with the Millennium Bomb plot or Project Boijinka? Yeesh.
OK, I’ve been working on this article scatteringly for a couple days now. I guess it’s time to just post it.
Interestingly enough, while searching for a link to another subject, I found this right-wing site that features an ad claiming that “we predicted everything the liberals would do regarding Alito.” Strange how proud these Neo-Cons are of their accuracy in predicting what we do. What about predictions for millions new jobs and a robust economy if Congress passed Bush’s tax cuts? What about the prediction that we’d be “greeted with flowers and candy” by Iraqi civilians?
I guess one out of three ain’t bad, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.