America is Great but...

Printed on: Thu, Jul 05, 2007

Bush has sullied our great nation

By Kelvin Wade

This great nation is 231 years old, but I haven't been much for celebrating. I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance over the fact that while this week marks my beautiful country's birthday, at the same time, I'm living under the worst president in our nation's history.

Let's face it. George W. Bush isn't a lame duck. He's a dead duck. It was strangely amusing to see him fiercely pushing that immigration bill and castigating his right wing brethren in the pitiful hope that he could mount some kind of legacy at this late stage.

After his amnesty bill received a smack down in Congress, Bush realized he needed to do something to mend fences with his right-wing base, the dead-enders keeping his numbers from falling to child-predator levels. Enter Scooter Libby. One commutation later and the integrity-challenged president is back in vogue with the far right. In the process, Bush delivered an Orwellian message to the American people: all Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others.

It's also kind of ironic that the same crowd denouncing amnesty for illegals has no problem supporting amnesty for Libby. What happened to the rule of law?

Let's keep it real: Bush has unleashed harm on this country the likes of which al-Qaida merely dreams about. In a metamorphosis that would leave illusionist Criss Angel perplexed, he transformed massive surpluses into enormous deficits. He signed a gargantuan Medicare entitlement bill that turned out to be a giant soul kiss to pharmaceutical companies. He proved he wasn't smarter than a fifth grader by undermining science at every turn, whether it is stem cells, climate change, intelligent design or birth control.

He learned the hard way that putting cronies in life-and-death positions wasn't a smart thing. Almost two years later, parts of New Orleans after Katrina look like Al-Anbar province.

Speaking of Iraq, he's spent over $439 million of our dollars in that country and our intelligence agencies say we're creating more terrorists than we're killing. Four years ago this week, he invited the insurgents to "bring it on." Over 3,300 troops have been killed since then. Mission accomplished?

Thanks to Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, the shelving of the Geneva Convention and reinterpreting torture, the U.S. enjoys about the same moral authority as Iran around the world. We've gone from that shining city on a hill to Pompeii.

And the thing is no one even defends this presidency anymore. We're all sleepwalking through it hoping we'll wake up and it'll be over. If we had some kind of national recall power like California employed in 2003, we'd be all over it.

Last week, even right-wing harpy Ann Coulter said of Bush: "We're all just waiting for this nincompoop to be gone." And that's one of the nicest things she's said about anyone.

Frankly, I can't understand why so many Democrats and Republicans are running for president after George Bush. It's like competing to see who gets to push the mop after the elephants at a Ringling Bros. show.

Next year's 4th of July celebration will probably be muted, too. But I'll make up for it by throwing the mother of all parties on Jan. 20, 2009.