Are the Tides Turning?

As a political junkie I scour the Internet(s) for all things politics, reading at least 3 to 4 dozen articles a day. I have a laundry list of favorites I check, and there are great web sites like www.dubyad40.com which compile headlines & stories from many different sources that make the process very easy.

Over the last year, since the 2nd stolen Bush election, I’ve seen a massive amount of coverage, op-eds, articles, and altogether signals that the tides in Washington are beginning to turn.

The Repuglicans have been in power as long as I can remember - for about 90% of my lifetime. Even when Clinton was in office, Gingrich had his ‘Contract with America’ and they continued to own the Senate & House (except for a short while after Senator Jeffords came to his senses). Then they attacked Bubba relentlessly in his 2nd term for outrageous National Security breaches such as a blow job in the Oval Office, or a private real estate deal gone bad from 15 years before.

W’s 2nd term is having a profound effect on many millions of Americans. He may have squeaked by in November of 2004 having owned the Secretary of States in both Ohio & Florida, and having the manufacturer of the paperless & unverifiable electronic voting machines in his pocket, but the American people didn’t just give him a free pass for four more years of neo-conservative fascism. The dung started to hit the fan when he went on tour promoting his Social Security Privatization scheme, and all spring, summer, & fall I’ve been literally barraged with news of scandals.

Ladies & Gentlemen - what I’m seeing is the Republican Party imploding within itself. It’s very entertaining to watch and I think we’re just getting started. The best part was when the Harriet Miers nomination went down the toilet and it was the Republicans who shot her down because she wasn’t conservative enough.

Yes, it’s open season on scandals and they all seem to be Republican!

• Tom Delay is a walking scandal – he has so many scandals up his ass, I feel like running a pool to see which one will bring him down first. As it is he’s been admonished by the House Ethics Committee three times. Did I just hear that the House is going to ‘delay’ reconvening in order to give him more time to work out his legal ‘issues’? How corrupt is that? Sure, let’s put the country’s business on hold until Tom Delay is out of prison.
  
• Bill Frist is clearly an inside trader having manipulated his own ‘blind’ trust fund and selling his stock at just the right moment. Can you imagine this putz has the audacity to even consider running for President? Oh… then again, insider trading doesn’t really preclude you from being President. Isn’t that right, George?
  
• The Jack Abramoff scandals might possibly take down dozens of politicians. Yes, there are several... scandals, that is. Aside from the lavish trips that were kicked back to Congress people, there’s a little matter of Indian casinos being pitted against each other as Congress people write letters to the Secretary of the Interior (Gale Norton) & receive huge political contributions. I heard this scandal could encompass up to 60 lawmakers. There are a few Democrats, but mostly all Republicans. Even Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is in up to his eyeballs for six figures. Does it matter that our elected leaders are being bought and sold by special interests? I guess that’s just good Democracy!
  
• The Valerie Plame Wilson / CIA outing scandal still has plenty of life left in it. This scandal may yet bring down Cheney AND Rove. Go Fitzy!
  
• The Downing Street Memos backed up what many of us had been saying all along – that the Bush Administration LIED us into the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, it looks like this scandal has lost its momentum, but the whole pre-war Intelligence debacle continues to loom big.
  Congressman Duke Cunningham from California was forced to resign and come clean on kickbacks he was taking. He’s looking at 10 years for bribery.
  
• Torture was (and IS) prevalent at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and who knows how many other secret prisons around the world. This has outraged just about everyone… except Dick Cheney who continues to battle for the right to do it. Someone needs to ‘splain me why Darth continues to fight for this, while AT THE SAME TIME Chimpy & Condi say it’s not happening… “We don’t torture!!” they say. … Riiiiiiight.
  
• The Katrina debacle exposed many facets of the Bush Administration’s incompetence AND corruption. The fact that Bush has made appointments based entirely on loyalty and completely ignoring qualifications is only one of them. The hurricane highlighted the economic divide in that city, and it serves as a microcosm around the country. Then, Dubya suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in order to help his big business buddies make more money by hiring illegal aliens to do much of the work and pay them diddly. Let’s see now… Halliburton, Bechtel and the like getting big-ticket, no-bid contracts… hardly any oversight… lots of waste & mismanagement…. sounds familiar.
  
• The 2004 Election. It seems like on a daily basis there’re new stories and information about the shenanigans that transpired in Ohio (and elsewhere) in the last Presidential election. I still fantasize about one of these getting some legs and nullifying the election. You know what they say if the election were held today?
  

This is just a small sampling of the sh*t going down in Washington. The bottom line is that George W. Bush and the Republican Party are in big trouble right now. Clearly, well over ½ of the people in this country feel it’s going in the wrong direction.

For now, I’m just gonna sit back and enjoy the show.