distortions and outright lies during his one constitutionally mandated
report to Congress; the State of the Union address. Predictably, the
partisan Republican majority in Congress interrupted his speech with
hysterical applause and standing ovations on occasions too numerous to
count. Predictably, news analysts parsed the speech afterwards, with the
inevitable sophists reporting dutifully that "the president hit a home run"
and other metaphors for brilliant success.
But also predictably, not one of the nation's paid punditocracy in our
mainstream media - the "watchdogs for our democracy" and the "guardians of
truth" -- would state the obvious fact: the state of our Union is nothing
short of disastrous.
In every area of federal governance - foreign policy, national security, the
military, the economy, the balance of trade, budget deficits, unemployment,
health care, energy, the environment and response to natural disasters, the
Bush administration's incompetence has been of truly historic magnitude. And
why should we be surprised, since the only two imperatives for this regime
has been a) tax cuts, and b) personal loyalty to George W. Bush.
Consider the enormity of both the misfeasance and malfeasance of this
administration:
their irrational tax policies have resulted in trillion-dollar deficits
· Ignored repeated warnings of impending Al Qaeda attacks, but were
asleep at the switch (at best) on the morning of September 11
· Has facilitated the decline of America's manufacturing capacity
with the loss of millions of high-paying American jobs
needs of Katrina evacuees
· Has protected the interests of the pharmaceutical and health-care
industries instead of the increasing number of Americans who lack health
insurance
· Has cut funding for education making college more unaffordable for
millions of young Americans.
· Has enacted policies that have made the middle class poorer and
more indebted while further enriching the already wealthy
· Allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora
· Spun false rationales for going to war with Iraq, with the result
of thousands of Americans GIs killed, tens of thousands maimed for life, as
many as a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis killed and as much as $2 trillion
wasted
· Created new cadres of anti-American resistance fighters (aka
"terrorists") in Iraq where none existed before, and is now threatening to
do the same in Iran
· Employs the routine use of torture against suspected terrorist
sympathizers
· Engages in surveillance and wiretapping of American citizens in
direct violation of the US Constitution and federal law
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