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The Handbasket Report
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
The End of American Capitalism? 5 Short Takes on Where the Financial Crisis Might Be Headed
Democracy and Elections:
Democratic Election Protection Strategy's Missing Link: Electronic Vote Counts
Steven Rosenfeld
DrugReporter:
Marijuana Is Real Medicine
Paul Krassner
Election 2008:
What I Learned at the Sarah Palin Rally Before They Threw Me out
Linda Milazzo
Environment:
How Local Governments Are Standing in the Way of Clean Energy
Kyle Rabin
ForeignPolicy:
Chomsky: "If the U.S. Carries Out Terrorism, It Did Not Happen"
Subrata Ghoshroy
Health and Wellness:
Will the Economic Meltdown Undermine Interest in Health Care Reform?
Niko Karvounis
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
Tuition Becomes Battleground in Immigration Fight
Annette Fuentes
Media and Technology:
The Growth of Talking Points Memo: A Case Study in Independent Media
Joshua Micah Marshall
Movie Mix:
The "Battle in Seattle" and Beyond
Stuart Townsend
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Our Next President Will Transform the Supreme Court
Ellen Goodman
Rights and Liberties:
Months After Boumediene, Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied
Aziz Huq
Sex and Relationships:
New Poll: Parents Overwhelmingly Support Age-Appropriate Sex Ed
Scott Swenson
War on Iraq:
The End of Iraq's "Awakening"?
Robert Dreyfuss
Water:
New Information Shows How Climate Change Will Affect Water
Tonight, President Bush delivers his State of the Union address. It will be a tedious affair, guaranteed to have at least one "surprise" simply because we've already been told, endlessly, pretty much what he'll say.
The whole enterprise would be more interesting if, like the Super Bowl -- another overhyped event dissected by far too many play-by-play network anchors -- Bush's speech was overshadowed by the expensive and creative commercials. It would certainly be consistent with the spirit of Bush's presidency; the RNC is probably looking into it for next year.
This year, Bush will deliver, for the 547th time, his long-awaited Comprehensive Case to the American People as to Why We Should Kick Saddam's Fanny. He'll urge the privatization of Medicare (though he won't quite say it that way). He'll demand a comprehensive tax reform package so that this coming April 15 we will each be assigned a billionaire to whom we will make our check out directly.
He won't quite say that unswervingly, either.
And what Bush won't say at all could fill volumes. The reasons why millions of people around the world are in the streets protesting against America each week; the reasons why many tens of thousands (at least) of Muslims have probably newly pledged their lives to committing terrorist acts against America; the reasons for the remarkably deep anger among those Americans who dislike Bush's presidency; all will not find voice tonight, either in Dubya's speech or the "reply" by yet another Democratic version of Republican Lite -- this time Washington State Gov. Gary Locke.
In his home state, Locke has enraged most legislators and nearly all voters in his own party by responding to a severe state budget shortfall (over $2 billion in a $23 billion budget) with a "no new taxes, ever" budget plan that cuts spending mostly in social services. Republicans themselves are either delighted with Locke's priorities or alarmed that even by Republican standards they go too far.
Locke has dreams of a vice presidency some day -- he's relatively young, photogenic, Asian-American, and a shoo-in for a third term next year. He's remained popular by smiling a lot and refusing to take any actions in his first two terms to respond to his state's most urgent problems -- leaving legislators to face the heat as they debate various unpopular options.
This is the national Democratic Party's idea of a comprehensive rebuttal to George W. Bush's frontal assault on what America stands for: Smile a lot, do nothing, and try to cash whatever corporate checks the Bush juggernaut might have overlooked.
Meanwhile, in the two years of his presidency -- and particularly the 15 months since 9/11 -- Bush has turned American government, and America's role in the world, upside down. It's more than the headline items, like the childish bellicosity and the massive tax breaks for the obscenely rich. Every day, far away from the public eye, the Bush Administration has been busy remaking America's relationship to the world and Americans' relationship to our government.
Regulatory and judicial appointments; end runs around Congress through arbitrary rule changes; unprecedented expansion of police and secret agency powers at the expense of both civil liberties and the Constitution itself; a direct bid to make evangelical Christianity our governing religion; runaway spending which, combined with the tax cuts, amounts not just to class warfare but to a massive, and wildly successful, wealth transfer scheme. Examples of each of these threads of the Bush crusade, and many more, ooze out of Washington each day. And the Democrats, almost without exception, have either cowered or applauded.
A favorite tactic of all presidents in their State of the Union addresses is to tell the representative anecdote. So here are a handful of anecdotes for our Handbasket Report -- because after two years, an oversized, gas-guzzling handbasket is surely what America is being taken for a ride in.
Last week, the Bush Administration selected layperson Gay Plague Jerry to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS, a prestigious panel that since the Reagan years has advised federal agencies on the best ways of dealing with the AIDS pandemic. AIDS and HIV service organizations and AIDS/HIV patient groups are outraged by Thacker's appointment. But who cares about them? God already judged them, right?
Any good Handbasket anecdote should have a pithy moral, and Thacker's personal tragedy does seem to have an obvious one. Repulsive as the man sounds, and as tragic as his personal circumstance may be, it does smack just a wee bit of a Divine Sense of Humor -- sort of like a Klansman contracting sickle cell anemia.
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| More News and Analysis: | ||
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Months After Boumediene, Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied Rights and Liberties: Months after it granted habeas rights to Gitmo prisoners, the Supreme Court's decision has yet to translate into concrete results. By Aziz Huq, The Nation. October 7, 2008. |
How Local Governments Are Standing in the Way of Clean Energy Environment: Too often people who want to install clean, efficient solar and wind systems can find themselves drowning in a sea of red tape. By Kyle Rabin, AlterNet. October 7, 2008. |
What I Learned at the Sarah Palin Rally Before They Threw Me out Election 2008: 20,000 Christian zealots, anti-abortion fanatics, and mostly white suburbanites reconnected with their high school past at the Palin rally. By Linda Milazzo, AlterNet. October 7, 2008. |