POLITICAL ASYLUM ANYONE?

We used to have a system of government that relied upon checks and balances. The Executive Branch had to work with Congress because the Senate and the House of Representatives had been given oversight powers to review the president's agenda. The Supreme Court was, for the most part, above politics. It simply ruled on the constitutionality of issues that arose from cases that could not be resolved in the lower courts.

Enter the Bush administration. In what can only be labeled as a genuine conspiracy with Corporate America, the rich and the powerful few now do pretty much as they please. They dictate the rules of the game to the Congress, which willingly abdicates its oversight responsibilities to a point where I for one do not even recognize the country in which I've lived all of my life.

Whether it's the energy bill for the oil companies, the Medicare Prescription bill for the drug companies, awarding no-bid contracts in Iraq to their "bedfellow" companies, hoping to turn over our busiest ports to a United Arab Emirates company, outsourcing our best jobs to China and India, leaving our borders wide open to terrorists and illegal immigrants, spying on Americans without first obtaining warrants, preventing high-ranking officials at the Defense Department from telling the truth about "Operation Able Danger," and doing the same at NASA to make sure that the scientific facts about global warming do not get out, issuing "Goldilocks" reports on the economy which are patently false, outing a CIA undercover agent as revenge when her husband publicly caught them in a lie, presiding over the greatest transfer of wealth from the many to the few in the history of the country --- I could go on forever.

The point is that this conspiracy (and that's what it is) goes unchallenged because, having been appointed instead of elected, the Bush-Cheney dictatorship feels no obligation to represent the people. (That was obvious in New Orleans). With most of Congress and the journalistic community in the same corporate hip pocket as the Executive Branch, and the American people willing to swallow whatever they're spoon fed, the Republicans look to have a lock on this year;s mid-term elections. How can that be, you say? Because in a year when you'd think we'd kick the bums out, the Democrats offer nothing.

Political asylum anyone?

02/18/2006