George Bush is no lame duck. You aren’t lame when you’re
getting your way on everything. At a press conference this week, instead of
quacking like a duck, he was strutting like a peacock, and warning the world
of how relevant he still is. The Decider Guy is dancing with the stars. A 24%
approval rating, a (still mostly) lapdog press and Orwellian delusions
continue to assure him that he can do as he damn well pleases. In other
words, he has another18 months to take this country farther down a rat hole.
And the one thing he knows for sure is the gutless opposition has no serious
plans to stop him.
Yesterday, the president and his party succeeded in
denying millions of poor American children healthcare by vetoing a bill to
expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Never mind that the
money spent on forty days in Iraq would have paid for at least ten million
poor kids to be insured for an entire year. We have the money for funding
perpetual wars, but not for our nation’s poor, sick children. This
administration, with the help of Congress, killed the bill.
Even more appalling, Bush and the Republicans fought to
get legal immunity for the telecommunications companies who helped this
government engage in spying and criminal phone tapping of innocent, private
citizens. Never mind that protecting the criminals who colluded with the
right-wingers will destroy the individual privacy and hitherto protected
freedoms of all Americans. So where did Congress line up on this despicable
piece of legislation? Right behind the Republicans, of course.
Most alarming, however, was another bizarre “Bring-It-On”
display when Bush seemed jacked up when alluding to a possible third world war
involving Iran. (Excuse me, “nukyuler armed Eye-ran.”) Jocularly chuckling at
questions regarding a potential engagement of war with another country in the
Middle East, he sounded more and more like a petulant, dangerous child.
While Bush was flipping off sick children, ripping up the
Constitution and rattling war sabers, where was the opposing party– the
majority party that was sent to Washington last year explicitly to stop Bush
from doing further damage? Pissing up the proverbial rope, as usual. Since
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared impeachment of this president
to be off the table, it is the Democrats who are quickly making themselves
irrelevant. Bush and the Republicans control the agenda, determine the course
of action, and dictate the outcome. The Democrats continue to believe that
simply keeping their heads down will somehow propel them into an electoral
landslide in 2008! While Bush continues to gain relevancy by finding new and
novel ways to continue his campaign to expunge the planet of any life form
that disagrees with him, the congress merrily assumes the
earthworm-on-dry-pavement position.
In all this mess, it is the American people who seem to be
the least relevant to the politicians. Predictably, the president will continue
to carry on the Iraq war, but the one thing voters were counting on last year
when they elected a Democratic majority was having that majority use the
Constitutional powers available to them to stop the funding of the war.
And while Bush continues to destroy our Constitutional
freedoms, the Democrats astoundingly still cower in fear of being called
unpatriotic. This administration has flagrantly flouted the will of the people,
but the people figured out a long time ago not to expect anything different from
Bush. Congress, however, in its failure to confront the president, is also
ignoring the will of the people; so it is no surprise that they, not Bush, have
the lower approval rating.
-Make no mistake, Americans are sick and tired of Bush and
the Republicans, but they are more exasperated with and sickened by
Congressional Democrats who claim to be Bush’s adversaries, yet act like never
ending enablers. Like parents offering nothing more than repeated empty threats
to a destructive, out-of- control adolescent, the Democrats are the ones who are
becoming increasingly irrelevant and dare I say –lame? Perhaps they should heed
the words of the last Democratic President who said the American people would
rather support someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is right and
weak.
