Bush vs. the World

Poor little guy. Things are really starting to creep up on him.

The Iranians are misbehaving with their nuclear materials. Now that Bush and his friends have been snubbing the UN for a few years, the other countries on the Securities Council have either allied with Iran (China and Russia) or they just aren't willing to invest in another Middle Eastern war. It's a sticky situation -- this time, Iran actually has some hefty weapons and they may not be too far off from nuclear arsenals. We're already engaged in two foreign wars, and Bush's supply side economics are having trouble paying for them. On the plus side, we won't have to lie about their military armaments to convince anyone that Iran could do some damage.

This brings me to the Washington Post story about two trailers that the Bush administration reported were mobile biological laboratories. Two days before the President gloated about the found weapons of mass destruction, a Pentagon-sponsored inquest found that the trailers had absolutely nothing to do with biological weapons. These findings were both unanimous and government-funded -- this didn't come from some Michael Moore theory or some crazy blogger.

Plus, there's this whole leak business. Scooter Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, just testified in court that the green light for leaking the information he leaked came from Bush himself. Remember when Bush said he'd find who leaked it and they'd no longer be part of his administration? Bush has defended himself, saying he authorized the leaking of information he felt the American public should know, but Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sees the story a little differently. Evidently, he just filed a new paper to the court saying that a number of people within the White House were deliberately trying to smear the reputation of Joseph Wilson (Valerie Plame Wilson's husband) after he discredited the WMD claims.

And this immigration thing is spinning way out of Congress' control. Bush supports a guest worker program, and, as chance would have it, we actually partially agree on something there. But then there's a faction within his party that sure hates immigrants. It's a really bizarre situation; the Republican lawmakers are funded in a big way from a whole bunch of corporations, whether it's housing developers, hotel or restaurant chains, or big agriculture, which profit a lot by the massive influx of cheap labor. Yet, many of these lawmakers are anti-immigration. No matter how high we build our walls, how many "Minutemen" patrol our border, or how much of a felony we make it to enter the country illegally, we just can't negate the simple laws of supply and demand when applied to the job markets. People here need workers, people there need jobs. So people come here. It's just going to happen that way. So why do these anti-immigration Republicans who are paid by immigrant labor intensive corporations support the "get tough" stance? My guess is that the corporations want their workers to be as frightened as possible so that they can drive wages and conditions down, save money, and sell their stuff for cheaper. It's a real mess.

Didn't you feel bad for that kid that used to bully everyone on the playground who wound up getting in over his head? When he eventually, picked too many fights, started losing a good deal of them, and ultimately wound up with no friends? I mean, you felt bad for him, but it's not like you were about to trust him.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the American public has gotten sick of all this? That maybe someone who will actually change things will get elected? I mean, I doubt it, but with all the corruption, lies, profiteering, alienation of our allies, and sheer crookedness, I can hope, right?

In the mean time, George, I'm pulling for you. Honestly. I mean, I want you out of office, but I don't want this to completely undo you or anything. Just start making some good decisions, will you? Might help you out a bit.