Big Brother Bush

It has become impossible to anticipate what manner of horrific, disgusting news will come out of Washington next, simply because nobody can make this stuff up. At the center stands President Bush, now embroiled in a secret wiretapping scandal rivaling the problems of the foul Nixon Administration.

As I’ve written before, people forget that Nixon was impeached not just for Watergate, but for conducting secret surveillance on American Citizens and ordering agencies like the IRS to audit his so-called enemies. I know, because my family was on his infamous “enemy list” (for donating money to George McGovern’s presidential campaign).

So King Bush has now admitted skirting an existing law to order wiretapping on American citizens without warrants. Considering his statement in 2004 that wiretapping always required a court order, he was either a liar then or a flip-flopper now.

Bush often states that you can’t protect civil liberties if you’re dead. But he misses a much more important point: Many Americans would rather be dead than live in a country that spied on them, tortured, sold policy to the highest bidder, gave breaks to the rich while screwing the poor, destroyed the environment, or compromised our cherished values for the sake of a false sense of security.

As the saying goes, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

But this week’s bad news doesn’t end with Bush. Picture a row of fat pigs gorging themselves at a trough. That’s the best image I can find for the current members of Congress, particularly the Republican leadership. Every spending bill, including the latest Iraq war authorization, is chocked full of cuts for the wealthy, giveaways to industry, takeaways from the poor and blows to the general welfare.

One such giveaway, drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, is at best a short-term band-aid on a much larger energy problem that our so-called leaders don’t have the vision, courage, foresight or ingenuity to address. Which is another way of calling those officials shameful failures. True cowardice is avoiding substantive, long-term issues (and destroying the environment in the process).

With every week bringing yet another disclosure of a secret program, secret giveaway, indicted official or similar shameful, disgusting scandal, it has become increasingly difficult to be diplomatic in characterizing the current political situation.

I’ve heard nothing to dissuade me from the conclusion that King Bush and his piggish colleagues in Congress are failing the American People. They seem beholden to a broken, reckless ideology and to the corporate money that put them into power. They have much to answer for, and sadly, the list of horrors just keeps growing and growing.