Preparing to Celebrate

I, like many Americans, am preparing to celebrate a key anniversary on August 3, 2008. That is the 8th anniversary of the night at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia that Gov. George W. Bush accepted the party’s nomination for President of the United States.

I was really sold out on Gov. Bush back then. It sounds so corny now, but I thought he was a really cool guy. The kind of guy you would have over for a barbecue and to share a good beer. I liked his proposals for building an international community to move into the post-cold war 21st century in a universally beneficial manner. He was going to ’save’ Social Security, lower my taxes and …. bring integrity back to the Oval Office. Because we just had a guy getting serviced by a brainless intern on the Resolute Desk and we needed integrity in the White House. Our long national porno was cumming coming to an end!

From his speech that night…

“So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.”

“In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal but what is right. Not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves. In my administration, we’ll make it clear there is a controlling legal authority of conscience.”

It’s that last quote that sprung to mind when I read this on my computer screen tonight…

Bush claims privilege to withhold CIA leak records

Eight years later and Bush’s 2000 standard of “not only what is legal but what is right” is a joke. Let’s see, his Attorney General (Gonzales) is suspected of perjuring himself a number of times BEFORE CONGRESS on the little issue of warrant-less wiretaps and politically motivated firings. And how he was able to fight off those charges by claiming that the NSA’s program “may have created confusion” or that he was told to fire the US Attorney’s, but wasn’t sure who told him. One would hope THE ATTORNEY GENERAL would write those things down.

That’s not all folks! The ongoing Bush-clusterf*ck of an energy policy written by Exxon-Mobil and Haliburton,  ‘Plamegate’, the Libby pardon, the Abramoff affair, doctoring scientific reports to support all sorts of cockamamie ideas from stem cells to evolution. Oh, and my favorite! Telling the first-responders and volunteers at Ground Zero that that powdery stuff that Manhattan was covered with was just a powdered sugar coating.

I believe that Lewis Black said it best, “I watch the President and I can’t help but think that one of us is f*cking nuts. And for once in my life, I don’t think it’s me”.

Let us not forget that we have seen the end of habeas corpus, endorsing the torture of war prisoners, the politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys, the theory of the unitary-executive and the unprecedented assertion of executive privilege all show a President committed to doing neither what is legal nor right. And then there’s Iraq.

Eight years ago on August 3rd, George W. Bush promised us he would “uphold the honor and dignity” of his office. I’m calling BULLSHIT on that one!

Happy anniversary, America.