The Big, White House of Whores

In the early morning hours of 25 September 2006, C-SPAN (Thank God for C-SPAN), broadcast a hearing investigating corruption and war profiteering in Iraq by Dick Cheney's company, Haliburton. One of the witnesses, a woman named, Julie McBride, testified that when she complained to higher ups about the vast over-charging she was witnessing with her own eyes, she was promptly fired and her superiors then assigned four security guards to keep watch over her until they could get her out of the country in order to keep her from spilling the beans to military brass. Technically, had she tried to escape, they would have been able to shoot to kill - no questions asked. Mind you, this is not a branch of the US government with any kind of (real or imagined) jurisdiction over the movements of a citizen; This is a privately owned company!

Did you just spit out your coffee?

In an earlier era, before the FCC was gutted by Ronald Reagan; Before the people's airwaves were allowed to be turned into a virtual multi-channel garbage dump in order to keep the masses distracted by MTV, FOX News and E, those hearings would have been carried, live, on all three networks. The very next morning the entire nation would have stood up, en masse, and demanded congressional action. Do you remember the infamous, Saturday Night Massacre, of October of 1973? Less than forty-eight hours after Richard M. Nixon fired special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, the desks of every congressperson in Washington were flooded with telegrams and phone calls - hundreds of thousands of them - demanding the impeachment of the president. The following summer, facing that very possibility, he was forced to resign in total, utter disgrace.

And where are we as a nation a third of a century later? Crucial congressional hearings that everyone should be watching are broadcast at three o'clock in the morning on a network that hardly anyone watches!

Sixty-four years ago, an obscure senator from the state of Missouri by the name of Harry S Truman, sitting at the head of a committee that was investigating graft and corruption within what was yet to be called, the Military Industrial Complex, equated the crime of war profiteering with treason. Remember that when George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney are finally put on trial for their crimes against humanity. Since the day in March of 2003 when the perverts within the Bush administration invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, billions of dollars in taxpayer money (that's your money and mine, kiddies!) are unaccounted for. The war was seen by these treacherous thieves as a giant cash cow; Contracts for "rebuilding" the country went to companies that had financial and political ties to the main players within the republican party in general and the White House in particular. The job of administering the complex post-war re-construction went not to people with experience in such matters, but to novices whose only qualifications were that they be registered republicans. Of this you can be absolutely sure: When all of the investigations are complete and the dusts of history have finally settled, it will be found that kickbacks - a lot of them - went to the republican national committee. Oh yeah, baby! Some seriously nasty chickens are going to come home to roost. And it's a sure bet that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney will die in federal prison (NOTE TO SECRET SERVICE: From natural causes, of course, dear boys!) Is that too bold an assertion to make? Maybe. It's just that there are too many smoking guns to even contemplate and I wasn't born yesterday. Time will tell, my friends. Time will tell. One thing I'm certain about: The next two years will make the Watergate era of 1973/74 seem boring by comparison.

The next step with regard to bringing these disgusting people to justice are the November elections. Another GOP controlled congress will not, under any circumstances, impeach Bush and Cheney. Of that you can be absolutely sure. The democrats have to win back power with enough of a margin that will make it impossible for the republicans to steal the election (as they did in Ohio in 2004) with the new computerized e-voting machines. It's a big order but it can be done.

People are starting to wake up. Just the other day a man in his mid-sixties, seeing the huge, magnetic "IMPEACH BUSH" signs on both sides of my van, came up to me in front of the Kwik Stop convenience store down town and told me that he would never vote for the GOP again as long as he lives - and he has been a registered republican since the age of twenty-one! "I can't believe I ever voted for that bastard", he told me, referring to the First Fool. I took his words as a very hopeful sign. Although New York is a so-called, "blue state", Orange County, where I live, is a decidedly "red state" region. Help is on the way.

I left the democratic party years ago for painfully obvious reasons. This is not your father's Democratic party, that's for sure. It's frustrating beyond words that we have to always remind them, like semi-retarded children, that they are, in fact, the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It gives me no amount of joy whatsoever to sit here and tell you that they are our only hope - but that is the cold, hard truth we've got to live with. We have no other choice but to make sure that they are victorious in November. The alternatives are just too depressing to even contemplate. Consider this for a minute: Another two years of a Bush White House and a sycophantic, lapdog republican congress? Do you have any idea as to the ramifications of that?? Think about the destruction they have wrought upon the planet in the last six years, bearing in mind that they always had an upcoming re-election or midterm to worry about. As reckless and as crazy as they have been since they seized power, if the GOP wins again, they'll have absolutely nothing to lose. Nothing! Are you ready for that? Have you any idea what that would mean domestically and internationally? It makes my hair hurt just thinking about it! It would probably destroy this country - if it's not already beyond repair.

Bush was, at one time anyway, great fodder for comedy. Let's face it: Someone as rip-roaringly stupid as our commander-in-chief is a comedy writer's dream. I remember during the campaign of 2000, Don Imus, pleading with his radio audience, "Please vote for this guy, I'm begging you"! The implication being that Imus' job of making people laugh would be a whole lot easier with so comical a figure sitting in the oval office. Those days are gone forever. This isn't funny anymore. I stopped laughing a long time ago. His regime must and will be ended. The day of reckoning is coming.

There. I feel better already!

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net