Mishmash

I was getting the kids ready for school yesterday morning when I overheard Charlie Gibson from ABC ask someone from the White House about President Bush’s trip to Asia. I didn’t catch the entire statement, but would swear on a stack of Bibles that the White House mouthpiece said something close to, “The president is going to China to represent the interests of American workers.”

The interests of American workers! Holy cow! In China, no less, the home of thousands of manufacturing jobs once held by American workers. What “interests” could the president possibly represent? I can see Bush now, standing before a hand-picked, sanitized crowd of average Chinese factory workers, flashing his best monkey sneer while lauding the workers for doing a “heckuva job” as corporate America’s low-wage workshop.

As far as George W. Bush is concerned, things are just peachy for American workers. Wages are stagnant, health and retirement benefits have been slashed, what’s not to be happy about? Wal-Mart is always hiring, various shifts in a friendly atmosphere, not to mention that the Gulf Coast will need thousands of carpenters, plumbers, and roofers once the reconstruction effort shifts into full swing; workers can go down there and enjoy the benefits of low wages, now that the president has suspended the Davis-Bacon Act.

Bush wouldn’t recognize an average working American if one walked up and smacked him in the forehead with a rubber mallet. Bush serves one constituency and one only: the wealthy. Look at the record, the lavish tax breaks and corporate giveaways, the fat no-bid contracts given to well-heeled political supporters.

Responding to Charlie Gibson’s question about the president’s plummeting public approval rating and the cloud of scandal hovering over the Administration, the White House mouth said – and again this is a rough paraphrase – that it is irresponsible for Democrats to continually raise questions about the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, the validity of pre-invasion intelligence, or whether or not the Administration tweaked that intelligence to justify the invasion.

Let’s see, the Congress of the United States was duped into supporting an invasion/occupation that has turned up zero WMD, become a rallying point for terrorists, violated the sovereignty of a nation (yes, even a despotic one), and cost over 2,000 American lives and maybe fifty times that many Iraqi lives, and put Iraq on course for a bloody, protracted civil war. It would seem that Congress has an obligation to find out what went wrong and who is responsible so that such folly cannot be repeated anytime soon.

The Administration believes that such questions are irresponsible and give comfort and aid to our enemies, not to mention a terrible inconvenience.

I’m just a simple guy, an average American citizen trying to raise children and get along in this great land of ours, but for the life of me I can’t understand why George W. Bush is not in the midst of an impeachment trial. For lying about Oval Office hanky-panky, Congress went after Bill Clinton hammer and tongs, fangs dripping blood; but when it comes to Bush, a president who plunged the country into a useless and disgraceful invasion/occupation, Congress sits on its hands.