No More Mr. Nice Guy!

United States, RIP 7/4/1776 - 9/29/2006

As I indicated last night, it's been a depressing week. Even my schadenfreude at Len Munsil making an ass of himself over Arizona's 9/11 memorial is short-lived, as today's Repulsive reveals that the memorial commission is set to cave like a West Virginia coalmine in response to the bullying and blustering of Munsil and his brutish supporters (who phoned the employers of some members of the non-partisan commission and demanded their firing). Gotta love that christian compassion!

Meanwhile of course, our elected representatives in Washington did us proud. Last week alone, in a fit of pre-election gimmicks, cheap stunts, and cowardly capitulation to the Torturer-in-Chief after he stamped his feet and threatened to take his ball home, they voted:

• To "compromise" with the Junior regime on torture. It's now official policy that the US will do a little torture, but not as much as Junior wanted, so that makes everything hunky-dory.
• To pass the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 which is designed to discourage people from suing the government when it violates their rights and promotes religion. Now, even when victims (like this family) win a lawsuit, they can't be paid monetary damages and will be stuck with a massive legal bill.
• To build a Berlin wall along 700 miles of our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Only someone as ignorant as George W. Monkeynuts could fail to see a problem here. The only action that could make a measurable difference - meaningful sanctions against illegal employers - is the one thing the corporatist rethug party will never consider. Instead we get a billion-dollar boondoggle which will cause massive environmental damage, and disrupt the lives of Native American tribes like the Tohono O'odham who live along the border, but won't make a whit of difference to the tsunami of illegal immigration.

So there you have it - a trifecta of cowardice, mindless jingoism, and good old Merkin dumbassery. Oh, and by the way, buried deep within the torture bill is a little gem defining non-allegiance to Bush as terrorism which "shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a military commission under this chapter may direct."

It's official - the US is a third-world cesspit of a dictatorship which tortures political opponents, imposes a fundamentalist theocracy and turns its territory into a prison. Maybe that border fence makes sense after all. It isn't to keep people out - it's to stop them from escaping.