Liberal Voices

Walk Bush Out!

Where I used to work, security would walk out fired employees to assure that, with their privileged access, they committed no malicious acts which did damage to the company.

We should have walked out George W. Bush months ago to assure the same, for Bush and his forces are setting last-minute land mines for President-elect Obama, some of which could take years to undo and cost us billions, not to speak of being harmful to our health.

Remember these are the people who brought us false intelligence, Guantanamo, torture and extraordinary rendition. Add to that the Cheney-cooked legal doctrines, which variously exempt Bush and Cheney from constitutional constraints.

And in Bush’s waning days, as our economy totters from the results of a greed-fest he championed, do you feel comfortable with the culprit who engineered the dismantling of a standing regulatory government framework and who still says we have “too much” government regulation.

He has roughly two months to go and is in the midst of a spiteful campaign.

Pick your poison. Appropriately let’s start with the environment.

The responsibility for assessing the environmental impact of federal ocean management decisions goes to mainly a council of people tied to the commercial fishing industry.And while we sit, Bush is opening wilderness areas for oil and gas drilling, and is loosening safeguards for air, water and wildlife.

There are new rules to speed oil shale development across 2 million rocky acres in the West, even though power and water for the process is scarce. Bush agencies are scheduling an auction for drilling rights alongside three national parks. They have also set in motion processes to finalize major changes in endangered species protection.

In other areas it will be hard to name our poison, judging from added pollution opportunities. There will be eased restrictions on mountaintop mining near streams, reduced pollution reporting for large farms and weakened air quality controls near national parks. There will be attempts to ease rules on dumping coal and mining waste into rivers and streams.

And big-business-first Bush is ready to cancel the requirement for chemical companies to clean up the rocket fuel in our drinking water in 35 states. Scientists say that perchlorate impacts the thyroid’s production of hormones that are important for fetal neural development.

And BushCo has always been a champion against worker and family rights, so much so that he imposed a new rule that limits the worker’s ability to take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Another rule allows trucking companies to require drivers to spend 11 consecutive hours behind the wheel. And there is something for women, a limit on your access to contraceptives and abortions from federally funded medical providers.

Want your guns as concealed weapons while enjoying the sights in national parks? Bush ended a 25-year-old ban.

These rules can be enacted by the outgoing Bush administration with relative ease and speed, but reversing them will be far more difficult for the Obama administration: extensive study, notice and comment requirements mean that reversals may take several years, during which a lot of damage will have been done – to budgets, to children, and even our grandchildren.

Yes, after impeachment, we should have walked out George W. Bush months, even years ago. He still has almost 60 days to do damage.  

Americans and our economy should not have to suffer more because of his obstinate and spiteful ways.

Obviously, the man has no shame.

A New Day and a New Way

Watching Barack Obama’s conciliatory moves with prior opponents, his careful and logical approach to problem-solving, and his calm and unifying mantra, there is good reason for hope in our country, and in the world.

But though the Bush winter is nearly over, nightmares do recur. Perhaps they are a product of past assassinations, perhaps the memory of too many Bush years of abuse, spite and hate.

Economic deprivation can feed negative primeval forces. But what turns them to violence is the specter of abuse, division and polarization.

History shows that autocratic forces exploit the hardships or fear among the people by turning attention to a recognizable domestic scapegoat. Then too, spurring a national arrogance, superiority, and jingoism begets a nationalistic attitude, accompanied by suspicion and fear of outside forces.

We have that economic turmoil, the result of gross mismanagement of our economic resources. The cause for the critical credit crunch is the deregulation of business by a feckless Congress and an inane administration.

But the Bush administration ruled with polarization as the goal, and blame as the game. Their targets of blame became anyone they could identify as their foes.

Unfortunately the McCain campaign continued this tactic, denigrating its opponent, Obama, in any imaginable dishonest way.

Incredibly, now that the presidential election is lost for the Republicans, McCain and Palin act as though no slander, no charges of traitor were ever hurled at president-elect Obama. It’s as though, like self-serving bullies who want to save face, McCain and Palin can say, “Just kidding!”

Perhaps the media is a conspirator or at least a contributor to the slander-fest hurled at Barack Obama. Both McCain and Palin were enabled by the major media which – for most part – recorded and presented the slanderous words on the evening news each day during the campaign without condemnation.

Palin’s desire to run for president in 2012 seems to be of media importance now, not her vicious campaign against Barack Obama and certainly not her lack of qualifications. That was yesterday.

Once, Obama was derided scornfully as a celebrity. Now it’s a $7 million book deal – supposedly in the making – for Sarah Palin, as she rides the tide of media attention.

Media stories which discuss this book-deal center on Palin losing the presidential campaign, rather than her truth-challenged, mud-slinging campaign.

Regardless of the current media message, the damage to Obama’s safety may have already been done.

According to some reports, threats against president-elect Obama are much more numerous than threats against past newly-elected presidents.

So it is no surprise that before and since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

A law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that during the campaign there was a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet — traditionally such negative rhetoric has been traced peripherally to neocon think-tank sources.

But one thing is clear. Any who target Obama as an American traitor are reprehensible scoundrels who should be subjected to arrest and conviction, just like any individual who threatens candidates.

Remember, the climate of hate doesn’t disappear with the departure of a divisive lame-duck president, or it doesn’t evaporate because media attention is drawn to an attractive right-wing governor, whose hate campaign is forgotten.

It disappears with a unified populace and a respectful, responsible media

The time has come for the Obama brand of inclusive politics. It invites everyone to participate in our democracy, not just a partisan, rich few. With unity in our government, perhaps we will even get constructive change and a government that represents us all.

What a concept!

Bush with Lipstick

Sarah Palin has proven that she is vicious, ruthless, and truth-challenged -- a Machiavellian seeker of power who loves the limelight.

What’s my point?

My point is that too many coincidences regarding the Alaska vote last week point to some kind of vote-tampering. Most science, when there is no certainty and no direct evidence, uses probability – probability based on past evidence.

The Republicans for the last two presidential elections have a history of vote tampering in the Florida presidential election in 2000 and in theOhio presidential election in 2004. Both resulted in a Bush victory.

Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain’s running mate in the past election and demonstrated that there was no lie she wasn’t willing to tell, no character assassination in which she wasn’t willing to engage, and no crowd she wasn’t willing to incite to rage. She did this in spite of the media disputing her lies, in spite of some members of the McCain campaign trying to reign her in, and in spite of the element of human decency.

During a campaign in which polls had been right on and with voting at 61% nationwide, Alaska is showing 55% voter turnout, this compared to 66% of Alaskans voting in 2004. We are asked to believe that fewer Alaskans voted, when their own popular governor was on the Republican ticket.

Furthermore, the Rasmussen poll had Ted Stevens down by 8 percentage points in late October. The actual count now has him ahead by a few thousand votes with the number of votes counted and to be counted at 11% less than the 2004 election.

Palin has not hidden her interest in running for president in 2012. In fact, she suggests this to anyone who will listen. She knows that exposure won’t come with the Alaskan governorship. It will come, as a U.S. Senator from Alaska.

It is as simple as this: a Stevens victory gives her the opportunity to be the Republican Senate candidate, in a state where her popularity rating is very high. A Stevens defeat keeps her from the national stage.

Is this coincidence or just Bush with lipstick?

The Ruins

Tyranny was tried and rejected but not by much, and not soon enough to soften the steep climb out of the Bush ruins. 

We see President-elect Barack Obama already starting this climb.

The Book of Revelation describes the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. Metaphorically, this is close to the Bush legacy.

And while the hurdle of racial prejudice was cleared in our presidential election, other hurdles were raised. Some were imposed by religious radicals forcing their values on others; others imposed or raised by an obstinate frat-boy president who is leaving office in failure.

The first was a curtailment of gay rights imposed by a vote in several states, the most bitter was a 52% vote for proposition 8 in California.

Proposition 8 enshrined bigotry in California’s Constitution by preventing people of the same sex from marrying. Many California voters were duped by a “red herring” propaganda technique, financed substantially by Utah's Mormon Church.

Proposition 8 proponents did not want to make it a vote for human rights or a vote supporting love and marriage between same sex partners. They made it an imagined vote against spreading that view to the children of voters.

Republican political consultant Wayne Johnson said like a deceitful con man, "It was masterful of the campaign to raise the implications of what it could mean in terms of the school system."

The most lethal weapon of the Prop 8 proponents was a thirty-second television ad blitz which spread the fear that the gay life style would be forced on children. The supporters, knowing they could not sway voters to vote against human rights, made it a bogus vote against educating children in this life style.

Restraining gay rights has always been a major wedge issue for the Bush regime, but Bush attention is focused on imposing a last minute policy stamp that is more like a wrecking ball, targeting human rights, a clean environment, and using taxpayer money to disburse more privilege to business.

Adding to the violation of human rights in the name of fighting terrorism, just last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed more strict guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Relaxing environmental standards has always been a pet project of Dick Cheney. To this end, the Bush regime has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and that protect endangered species.

Even after the corporate greed-fest, a parting Bush-Cheney kiss for their business buddies involves the I.R.S. restoring tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions.

For example, JPMorgan Chase and others are planning to use our bailout funds for mergers and acquisitions, transactions that will be greatly enhanced by the new tax subsidy.

Bush’s international parting shots saw his regime illegally and unilaterally breaching Syrian and Pakistani borders, leaving the mess for Obama to clean up. The only discernible motivation here seems to be borne of spite.

So justice and fairness in our society is still give and take. You get more racial equality but less gay equality. You get an autocratic regime, threatening the very core of democracy, and suddenly its over-reaching arrogance swings the pendulum toward reform.

With the election of Barack Obama as president, the fresh and the new are promised. And as palpable as the arrival of spring, there is change in the air.

Restoring our rights, our global stature, our economy, our equality, and our environment is and will be a herculean effort, made worse by each remaining day of the tyrannical and ethically-impaired Bush regime.

Can we wait just over 70 days?

Reason for Rejoicing

I just watched John McCain’s concession speech. It was very gracious and provided the healing message that America now needs.

But now as I wait for President-elect Barack Obama’s speech, I can’t help feeling a sense of dread. After all, like most older Americans, I have lived with assassinations of great charismatic leaders: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.

The common thread motivating the assassins is the same -- hate, division and fear. In spite of McCain’s healing words, I can’t forget or forgive the extremely polarizing tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign.

Their name-calling, their slander, their lies, and their derisive sneers could easily plant the seeds of violence in the breast of some follower who has mentally transferred blame – with the help of McCain and Palin rhetoric – to president-elect Barack Obama.

I know that this is a time of healing. I thank God for the emergence of a thoughtful and intelligent leader to help heal our nation.

But the malevolence of the Bush administration is still present, and the fetid stench of the McCain-Palin campaign is still in my nostrils.

I hope the hate, the fear, and the transference of blame, first nurtured by the Bush regime, then fed to so many vulnerable Americans by McCain and Palin will dissipate as Obama succeeds the worst president that the United States has ever had.

I apologize for my divisive words, for unity and healing should be the theme after hard-fought elections, especially when we’re blessed with a unifying figure like Barack Obama.

Let’s just hope that negative opponents haven’t sown the seeds of violence to spoil our celebration.