COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
THE BUSH HONEYMOON - Americans are very forgiving people. That's the reason I have to give myself, ya'll, for why Dubya is gettin' treated with such kid gloves by the media during his first days in office. We tend to do that with all new Presidents. (Except for Dollar Bill, who had to come in with his Gays-in-Military crusade.) But I find it impossible to ignore the fact that this new President is not like any other in my lifetime, based on the fact that a lot of us ain't really sure we really elected him.
And that's why I find it unsettling, if not sinister, that Mouthpiece Media organizations like the Noo Yawk Times seem to be bending over so far backwards that their spines might snap to legitimize this Presidency, while PBS's "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" panders like it is goin' outtah style. I can understand media organizations playing nice because they want access to the seat of power, but all of this lovefest has been dadblamed whorish!Worse yet, almost like an extension of the political campaign, they are allowing the Bush folks to use the bully pulpit to set their news agendas --- now OBVIOUSLY the "theme of the week." Education, then Tax Cuts, then Military Policy. I bet Wolf Blitzer got an e-mail about the air-strike in Iraq before The Shrub left for Mexico!
Let's call it like it is: Bush II is all about providing some vindication for Bush I, which ended on a sorry note.
You don't have to be a Texican like myself (though it helps) to already see the scenario playing out where this country takes a number of steps backwards, while its people silently seethe, during what is shaping up as a custodial Presidency. The last best hope we have right now is that the midterm elections of 2002 send the message we have been deprived by the Supreme Court of sending today.
Otherwise --- well, as my pal Cleavis says: "Hell in a handbasket, Bud. Hell in a handbasket."
What's Wrong So Far
In case you've only been payin' attention to the dang pablum the Mouthpiece Media has been dishing since the inaug', let me share with you what a card-carrying Libertarian like Mrs. Hart's ornery son finds wrong with The Shrub's administration thus far:- Day One in danged office he signs an Executive Order cutting all foreign aid to any country that offers counseling on abortions to their women.
- John Ashcroft is the Attorney General of the United States who is supposedly gonnah uphold laws that he has spent his entire career trying to overturn. If you don't see somethin' wrong with this picture you must be more blind than Ray Charles.
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From the moment The Shrub was seen as having a lock on the White House the drumbeat of economic downturn and possible recession started. Whoa! What happened to our longest period of prosperity in history? Who pulled the danged plug? The Shrub goes into the White House in January, company after company after company announces laying off THOUSANDS of working people. Isn't this reminiscent of when another guy named Bush was in office?
- We gonnah open up Alaskan protected areas to drill for more oil, proposes the Shrub administration. To Hell with pristine wilderness, the rolling blackouts in California dictate that we get what we can while the gettin' is good. (No, it doesn't matter that the California utilities have spun out the very companies sending them into bankruptcy, with the same boards of directors, just to gouge the public. So shut up!)
- "Son of Star Wars," the missile defence system initiative that every scientist worth his salt has been callin' a boondoggle, is back on the table. The Shrub is totally committed to this corporate welfare program.
- Institution of a White House-level office of "Faith-based" government-funded social programs. No problem with separation of Church and State there, by golly!
- A tax cut that gives the lion's share of its benefits to people making over $100,000 a year. Why? "The people who produced the surplus should benefit from the surplus." Okay. I get it: If you were well-off to start with, it's the duty of the government to make sure you are better off. Hell take the hindmost, they wouldn't be poor and suffering unless there was something wrong with them
- The Shrub's recycled Cabinet.
That's just my short-list. If I went into chapter and verse --- after the man has been in office less than a danged month! --- this here article would be longer than War and Peace.
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My biggest problem with all of this, ya'll, is that ONCE AGAIN the apparachiks of both the Democravik and Republivar parties are focusing on what matters to them and NOT what matters to average working folks in this country.
They are in collusion with the conglomerated Mouthpiece Media to sell us more stuff we DON'T need while chiding us for not having any savings, ignoring the fact that you can't save a guldurn dime when it takes maxing out your credit cards just to keep the kids in orthodontia, the mortgage paid, and grandma's medical bills covered!I don't think I'm the only person that feels this way.
Yet, check into an major news outlet in this country, newspaper, television, radio or Internet, and you'd have the feeling that there was not this rolling, roiling, festering discontent in America that is palpable when you talk to any average person you run into.
I used to think it was because all these media folks was in Noo Yawk, Washingtoon, or El Lay. Now I'm not so sure. I've been thinkin' lately that the reason the Mouthpiece Media is disconnected from average working people is that they have to go to the same cocktail parties and hang with the same folks they talk to and about. Their bosses, meanwhile, sit on the boards of the various corporations they cover and depend on these corpies to pay their damned expense accounts and salaries.
So what happens? They slip on the miniskirts and the do-me pumps and won't be caught dead hangin' with a truck driver or a cube-farm grunt because WE DON'T MATTER. We the unwashed and unworthy have no power over their fates. We are just "consumers." They shovel it down and we are supposed to swallow it whole. They have no vested interest in our everyday concerns. When they do talk about us, it's only as the victims of a local house fire, a shooting, or the latest round of lay-offs. The only thing we are good for is poll-results, focus-groups, and calling in to talk radio. We all thrive on a cute pet story at the end of newscast. Period. End of story.
I don't know about you, pardner, but I don't like being treated like a danged child or thought of as one either. It chaps my ass.
QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? Go ahead and email Tom.
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