by
Mickey Walker - January 18, 2009
During
the 8 dark years under Bush, we have seen it all: Torture, wiretapping citizens illegally, granting immunity
to the phone companies who helped Bush break the law, the loss of habeas corpus;
it’s a mess. I don’t know how we
will ever clean up the broken pieces and stench that defined the Bush
presidency, but with Obama’s determination, perhaps we can. In time, maybe we can repair the
damage. Every damned day that goes
by where an American president in this land can eavesdrop on us without lawful
court orders, diminishes our greatness as a free nation. Each day that
passes where America condones or allows torture (without objection) is the
day we need to stop hypocritically calling ourselves Christians and/or the
champions of our fellow man. We need to stop breaking our Constitutional
laws and close Guantanamo now. Each
day we allowed Bush to "sign away" our lawmaking body (Congress) is a
day of infamy not unlike the one FDR coined. The power of each of the
three parts of government in this land must be restored now, and Bush’s
infamous “signing statements” should be banned as an unconstitutional criminal
act. For every day Bush bypassed
the courts by abolishing habeas corpus and circumventing the FISA Court in
gathering intelligence, is a day that put us closer to living in an absolute
police state where citizens have no rights, whatsoever. With the rising
of each new sun we, as a people without liberty, freedom to privacy, and
the moral will to provide national healthcare for our children
burns our spirits and dumps the remains on the ash heap of broken hopes
and dreams of a once great nation. We must change. We are
better than what we had to endure from those bastards in the White House who
were sworn to protect the Constitution. After 8 long years in power, they are about to leave. No more stacking of the US Attorney
rosters with Bushites who would filet and debone our laws under the
Constitution rather than to defend and protect them, and the people for whom
our Founding Fathers wrote them. No more unscreened security clearance, live-in White House reporters
like Jeff Gannon who sponsored his own websites for gay male escort services
while living in and embedded in the White House (no pun intended). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3e9paM_hYo
For
the past 8 years I wrote Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R.-Texas,
many times. You got to do something when the moral conscience of our
nation is on fire and burning down with each day that passed under George W.
Bush. She seemed nicer and more
approachable than Senator John Cornyn, R.-Texas (Bush’s
own Corn Dog). But she had a rattler, too. I found myself writing
her on many issues, and I always got a response. I complained Bush
suspended the Davis-Bacon Act of ensuring that wages (for cleanup work) would
be commensurate with the prevailing New Orleans area labor rates during
Hurricane Katrina. I thought it hitting below the belt to give Halliburton the
ability to hire illegal’s at below minimum wage rather than pay local American workers
the prevailing wage of around $12.00 per hour. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 mandated that a higher wage be
paid to local workers in a storm-ravaged area. But smooth as silk, Kay
Bailey said that the president did it only for a short while to save us taxpayer’s
money with cheaper wages (yeah, right). Sounds like Disaster Capitalism
to me where Bush's cronies like Halliburton cash in on the misery of others
during a disaster to make big bucks without having to submit competitive
bids. Oh yeah, and they win big time by the actions of a miserable human
who would suspend the Davis-Bacon Act so that Katrina victims could suffer
even more while Halliburton and Blackwater raked in the big bucks on the backs
of illegal’s who flocked into New Orleans by the thousands. In our faces. Was this America or a banana
republic? I hope we can clean up
the damage done by Katrina and by Bush’s ongoing apathy in doing the right
thing and helping the victims of Katrina, not the Fat Cat Cronies of his who
made billions on it all.
It
burns me up to think about it. I thought of the differing comments
of those interviewed who lost homes in the fires of
California to those in New Orleans who lost everything during the Hurricane
Katrina disaster. Those in California were generally affluent compared to
the poor blacks and whites whose homes were destroyed in New Orleans. The
Californians lost it all, too, but did they really? They had the money to rebuild because the insurance covered
them for fire. The insurance companies screwed well over half the Katrina
victims because they claim flood destroyed the houses, not wind or fire.
Some still haven't been paid for their losses. Just ask the people of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi whose city
was leveled and the unreimbursed mayor still lives in the jail because they
won’t pay him for his house that disappeared in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
the storm of the century.
It
made sense for Bush to try to pull his dismal failure during Katrina from the
written annals of history and blame it all on Governor Blanco of Louisiana.
And Ahnald should be ashamed that he supported Bush on such trash and
lies. No morals, no conscience. He should at least have stood up to
Bush and said, "Don't compare us. Even if you think I'm a
fast-responding governor to the fires and destruction here in California and
want to hand me a compliment with political innuendos." But then
they are both Republicans. And neither one of them has much class. How our very idea of good and bad
suffered so at the hands of Bushites! And that goes without even mentioning, “Brownie, yer doin’ a great job.” We must clean up nature’s broken lives
and homes. And we must clean up
our own conscience and souls as Americans and human beings in the aftermath of
George W. Bush.
The
way Bush lied about WMDs and then attacked Iraq showed the world the ugly face
of another America, one that nation-builds and
occupies countries (with oil, it should be added) because we have the military
might to pull it off. Now we must
leave Iraq and let the Iraqi people govern. What does it take, a shoe in the face of the American
president to get the message about how Iraqis still feel about us occupying
their country?
We
must be accountable as a nation for the horror of Abu Ghraib instead of
scapegoating a few of our own soldiers and forgetting that we Americans
believed in and allowed ourselves to torture other human beings. http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444 All this was done under a president who believed water-boarding
was not torture, but, nonetheless, it is on our own conscience. We must own it and change who we are as a people. We must forget torture. We must close down Gitmo. Our nation pledged to abide by the Geneva Convention
articles on torture when Bush was in diapers. We must restore our good image and support the Geneva
Convention articles defining and rejecting torture. And stop emulating the styles of those mean nations in
history who were famous for trampling on humans and human rights.
We
must commit ourselves to real change from the rotten principles of the
Bush administration whose wanton disregard for people has cut out and stolen
pieces of America. Bush’s legacy
began with his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, who sold steel to Hitler before
our own government shut him down. For hours of reading on the subject go
to the following link and decide for yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=steel+prescott+bush+thyssen&spell=1
If
Prescott Bush had been tried, convicted, and locked up and not allowed to keep
the Hitler war profits and spoils, maybe Poppy and Dubya Bush wouldn't have had
the tuition to go to Harvard and Yale, you think? Skull and Bones Society,
no chance, dudes. Poppy might have
been a Lobsterman up in Kennebunkport, Maine. Perhaps Dubya would
have been drafted during the Viet Nam War and if he made it, today, he might be
running a specialty clothing store for
cheerleaders somewhere in Connecticut.
But
for now we must change our collective conscience as a nation
which has strayed from the right path. We must regain our identity as a good people, a good nation,
and once again, show the world and our own that the past 8 years were a nightmare
and not a part of the American spirit. We will remember these times and never allow ourselves to lose total
control of our Constitution and country again. And be mindful of:
“Those
who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana