Life has become so personally exhausting under the Bush regime.
You know, when I started this blog, it was all about everyday stuff, amusements, and life in general. But increasingly, I have felt personally threatened by the people in power in our country — my freedoms, my way of life, and who I am as an individual. I’ve never in my life felt so scared of my own government. I’ve never felt so ostracized. And I’ve never been so politically aware.
I hope — aside from the obvious, getting these people out of power — that the unprecedented level of mud that is going to be thrown during this campaign will get a lot more people out to the polls, that they too are outraged and terrified at the direction our country is being pushed. That is, if their votes are counted properly.
I want to stop posting 10 entries a day about Bush. I want to go back to posting amusing little anecdotes and fun stuff. But every day I see something so gut wrenching that I want to scream. How can I stop?
And yes, there are going to be things about Kerry that I can’t stand. I’m already incredibly pissed off at his political hedge on same-sex marriage. Grow a couple, would you John?
But, political expediency, as many, many people are beginning to realize, means joining the “Anyone But Bush” club. Hell, even my conservative cousin confides that he wants Bush out and will vote for Kerry. It’s the lesser of two evils. I guess we’re talking about triage right now. First things first: get Bush out, then work your way to the ideal. If that ideal even exists anymore, or would be allowed to.
I don’t quite know what the point of this post is. Maybe it’s just an apology for all the anti-Bush raving that I’ve been doing — albeit justified. So, just like the Republicans in the 90s, I’ll be doggedly obsessed with our evil president. I doubt that Dubya is getting blow jobs in the White House, so I’ll have to continue pointing out the more sinister stuff. But you’d better believe that if he makes it with an intern, I’ll be laughing my ass off. Cigar, anyone?
OK, so, a couple things tonight then I’ll keep quiet until tomorrow. First, via sledgeblog by way of Go Fish: there’s a scary piece of legislation that’s been introduced that would allow Congress to overturn a Supreme Court ruling. Did we need any more evidence of the plot to destroy the constitution?
Second, the Bush administration, just like a schoolyard bully, taunts Kerry saying “Who said they didn’t like us? Tell us their names.” Yeah, uh-huh. So you can then turn around and beat up on them? I think not.
Richard C. Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton’s delegate to the United Nations, told Jodi Wilgoren of the New York Times: “It’s so obviously the truth what Kerry said, and the Republicans are just having fun with it — everybody knows it’s true. . . . In the last six or seven months, I’ve been in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. I’ve met with leaders in all of those regions, and they have overwhelmingly — not unanimously but overwhelmingly — said that they hope that there’s a change in leadership.”
Third, Time reports on the “bipartisan” panel to investigate the vaunted WMD claims of the administration:
A TIME examination of the panel members’ backgrounds reveals a web of sticky connections to the Bush team and, in one case, an alleged lack of investigative curiosity. The nine-member panel is co-chaired by a Democrat, former Senator Charles Robb, and includes at least one proven maverick, Senator John McCain, who was put there, according to an official, to provide “instant credibility.” But retired U.S. appellate court Judge Laurence Silberman, the panel co-chair, is a Nixon-era friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Panel member Henry Rowen, a Hoover Institution scholar and former Rand Corp. president, worked under Cheney at the Pentagon during the first Gulf War. In September 1990, with Cheney’s backing, Rowen cooked up Operation Scorpion, a secret plan to invade Iraq from the west, go all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam. (The plan went nowhere.) Another panel member, former CIA deputy director William Studeman, now with Northrop Grumman, contributed $250 to candidate Bush’s campaign in 2000. His wife gave the Bush re-election committee $500 just a week before her husband was named to the panel last month.
Panel member Charles Vest, president of M.I.T., has been accused by a colleague of being slow to investigate allegations of fraud at a lab that does missile-defense work for the Pentagon.
… Questions of objectivity won’t be resolved until the panel completes its task. Five weeks after being appointed, the group has not met, and it is unclear when it will.
You know, perhaps it’s the rise of the internet that’s responsible, but it seems that these days it’s so easy to learn all about people and their connections. It makes it seem that the Bush administration is riddled with “friends in high places,” but it can’t be a new phenomenon. I wonder how bad this cronyism has been in the past?
