The 109th Congress 2005-2007

There are people a lot smarter than I (MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, for instance) who have called it "the worst congress in American history". The "good for nothin' 80th Congress", as the session of 1947-1949 was constantly referred to by President Truman, was a model of legislative statesmanship by comparison. From the scenes of Bill Frist diagnosing the condition of the tragic Terri Schiavo from a distance of almost a thousand miles away, to the semi-comic implosion of the political career of the now thoroughly disgraced congressman from Texas, Tom DeLay, the incompetence and corruption of the One-hundred and ninth Congress of 2005-2007 is one for the Halls of Infamy. We can only hope and pray that their record is never surpassed.

Honestly, Did you ever, in your wildest, apocalyptic dreams, think that your once-great nation would sink as low as it has??? So help me, Mitch Miller, I never even dreamed it! Witnessing Bush try to function in any public forum these days is getting to be more and more uncomfortable to watch. At a meeting with the press last week where he was discussing the findings of the Iraq Study Group, he was audibly slurring his words. Randi Rhodes replayed it twice on her Air America Radio program and there was little doubt that something was wrong - seriously wrong. Is the hideous little bastard back on the sauce? As luck would have it, I have spent many years in scholarly pursuit of this very subject (so to speak) - I can spot another drunk a mile away - and my own considerable expert opinion tells me that this would, indeed, be the case. I was actually starting to feel some degree of sympathy for the man until I remembered the dead - at least half a million Iraqi men, women and little children - and I was quickly bought back to earth - Genocide has a nasty little tendency of doing that. George W. Bush deserves many things - no argument from me in that department - but sympathy is not one of them. He deserves only our utter contempt.

One can only speculate as to the conclusions historians will come to a century from now. Of this you may be reasonably certain: their verdict will not be kind to us, the American people. This disgraceful state of affairs would not have come into being but for the fact that the the citizens of this country were so jaw-droppingly ignorant with respect to affairs of state. That more of us voted for the American Idol than for the American President speaks volumes as to our shameful indifference and lack of basic knowledge pertaining to our government. Think about it: Condoleeza Rice is the most visible Secretary of State since Henry Kissinger's term during the Nixon administration almost forty years ago - she's also the first African American woman to ever hold that job! - And yet poll after poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans not only don't even know who she is, they're blissfully ignorant of the outright damage she has done to the USA's standing within the international community of nations. If that very fact is not enough to make you want to bang your head against a brick wall, your inner fortitude is much stronger than mine - or maybe you're just living in total ignorance - either way, take a bow.

Has it really come to this? In the thirties, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about the facsist overthrow of America called, It Can't Happen Here. The implication behind the title was that it damn well could happen here and that, given the extremist nature of America's political conversation at the moment, it very well might! As has been said before: if you're not alarmed, you're not paying attention.

As of today (December 16, 2006) there are exactly two years, one month and four days left of this absolute nightmare of an administration. No question about it: we cannot allow this situation to continue. In a piece published this week, former White House counsel John Dean speculated that the impeachment of Bush and Cheney is out of the question. His reasoning was that there are so many reactionary, half-witted, right wing loonies polluting the chambers of the House and Senate, the removal of these hideous war criminals is not even a viable option. While his point is well taken, I must respectfully disagree. My belief is that by next summer, ideology won't matter any longer. The people - WE, THE PEOPLE - will demand that the Bush administration be held to account for their crimes against humanity. Lord help any foolish politician who stands in our way.

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As for the one-hundred and ninth Congress? Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net