It's Obstruction Time

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted November 15, 2005.

I spent the long weekend thinking about damage control. No, not the countless damage control operations underway within the Bush administration now. I was thinking about what we, the nearly 60 percent of Americans who believe President Bush is doing a bad job, are going to do now.

Bush has three more years at the wheel. How are we going to keep this guy from creating any more messes we, our children, and our grandchildren will have to clean up?

I'm serious. We need a damage control strategy, and we need one fast. I wrote a piece many months ago entitled "Obstructionists of America, Unite!" I suggested that sometimes obstructionism can be the passive-aggressive exercise of true patriotism. But the idea must have been launched too soon, because the response to that piece was underwhelming.

Not now, though. If ever there was a time to employ massive obstruction, it's now. After all the damage the Bushites have already done, are we really going to just let these Typhoid Marys continue infecting everything they touch, everything Americans hold dear?

I proposed back then that House and Senate Democrats stop running from Republican charges that they are being obstructionists, and instead turn obstructionism into a virtue. When Republicans accuse them of obstructing administration plans, programs or appointees, instead of launching into some convoluted, triangulated response, just thank them for the compliment.

Then use the opportunity to ask them why, in light of the administration's abysmal track record, they are not helping obstruct this out-of-control wrecking operation. In case they forgot, or weren't paying attention the last five years, hand them this list:

First-term Damage Report

• They blew the Clinton $5.6 trillion surplus
• Cut taxes by nearly $2 trillion benefiting mostly wealthy earners
• Ran up national debt to over $8 trillion -- and growing $3.5 billion a day
• Created record high energy prices and record high earnings for energy companies
• Started a war on false pretenses
• Global warming is on a tear (just ask the folks in Florida and Louisiana.)
• Treats real scientists the same way the Catholic Church treated Galileo.

And he's not done. We know now that George W. Bush is not trainable. What we see is what we get -- and that's exactly what we're gonna get for three more years unless we stop him. Under our system of government, the only legal way to stop a sitting president is to block his every move and abscess him off from the body politic.

We must especially stop him from creating damage that will persist long after he's finally out of our hair. That means stopping him from stacking the Supreme Court with right-wing Christian fundamentalists. The confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito is certain only if Democrats allow it to come to a vote.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 -- A coalition of liberal groups is preparing a national television advertising campaign against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. that seeks to move the debate over his selection beyond abortion rights and focus instead on subjects like police searches and employment discrimination, several leaders of the coalition said. (Full Story)

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

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