More Than Just A Drop In The Bucket
According to an AP-AOL News poll, two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and only 44% think that George W. Bush is an honest man. Worse yet for George, 83 percent of Americans polled think he is stubborn, too resistant to changing his ways.
Is this why the expectation that after the State of the Union address, the Congress - including Republicans - will remain skeptical that Bush is serious about making his administration “accountable” for the events of Iraq? A Washington Post poll seems to suggest that to be the case, with the doubt on Capitol Hill reflecting the view of more than half of the public who are “strongly disapproving” of the job Bush is doing.
But despite this data, the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times on January 23, 2007 that Bush ignores the true cost of the Iraq war in his Quixotic Quest for Crude. Jackson feels that these costs are more than the nation can afford to pay.
Some marvel at this serious lack of presidential understanding of the consequences of these costs, including Paul M. Howey. Writing in the Asheville Citizen-Times on January 21, 2007, Howey declared:
“In my opinion, Bush is either incompetent, insane or morally corrupt. The scariest — and perhaps most likely, given the litany of his offenses — is that he’s a combination of all three.”
Howey goes on to wonder if there isn’t a connection between “all that is misguided, wrong, delusional and frequently criminal in the actions of the Bush administration” and a recent UFO sighting at O’Hare International.
But returning to ground more solid than a close encounter of the third-party kind, Dexter J. Kamilewicz, independent candidate for Congress in Maine’s First District in 2006, wrote in the Press Herald of Portland, Maine that Bush asserted “no man can escape accountability for his crimes” when commenting on the execution of Saddam Hussein. As a result, Kamilewicz himself takes the position that
“The relentless slaughter and waste in Iraq was - and continues to be - orchestrated by the president and his administration. It is right for them to be held accountable for crimes against humanity.”
But what are the odds, asks a BuzzFlash.com Editorial, when the corporate media doesn’t present any meaningful discussion of the foibles of George W. Bush? Slim, according to their conclusion that
“The American public and the world suffer dearly as a result of the refusal of the corporate press to explore Bush’s character beyond praising him with simplistic adjectives such as ‘decisive and bold.’ “
Doing so is so much easier - and more “cost-effective” for news organizations that are closing foreign bureaus (as the Boston Globe recently announced) to take the politically safe course and kiss up to the Palace - er, the White House.
The problem grows with the announcement that the Carlyle Group wants to buy The Tribune Co.’s TV station group from the struggling parent company of the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times, among many other papers.
Such a concentration of the nation’s media outlets in a few and demonstrably unfriendly hands has led Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) to reintroduce the Media Ownership Reform Act (MORA), intended to break up media monopolies and restore the Fairness Doctrine, which Reagan’s Federal Communications Commission eliminated back in 1987. New Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will introduce a companion bill in the Senate. Hinchey thinks such a move vital to prevent ‘the end of the democratic republic’, insisting that the reform bill may prevent possible ‘fascist’ takeover of US media.”
“Media reform is the most important issue confronting our democratic republic and the people of our country,” he said at the Free Press National Media Reform Conference held in Memphis, Tennessee last weekend. “This is a critical moment in history that may determine the future of our country…maybe forever.”
Time may well be running out to prevent such a calamity, for in the opinion in the world - as measured by BBC World Service in a new poll - the policies of the Bush administration are causing the image of the United States to deteriorate. Fifty-two percent thought U.S. influence in world affairs was mainly negative because of issues such as the occupation of Iraq and the continued incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. More than two-thirds believed the U.S. military presence in the Middle East provoked more conflict than it prevented.
Such opinions are not going to help a problem facing the United States as it struggles to meet the expenses of having a spendthrift president: the continued erosion of confidence in the dollar in favor of more tangible assets - such as among Russian investors and OPEC’s bankers.
So if you decide to remain asleep at the switch which shuts down this defective government, you will suffer the slings and arrows of the outrageous misfortune foisted uppon you by the Bush regime. Bush himself won’t. He’ll be down in Paraguay at his tropical ranch which sits atop one of the world’s largest aquifer systems, an important source of fresh water for Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Such a situation just screams for a corrupt former US president to exploit the opportunities for profit that this “coincidence” offers.