Greenpeace

I dreaded watching this State of the Union address.  Nevertheless, I felt hopeful.  This was going to be Bush’s last State of the Union address.  This country may actually survive Bush.  I can imagine again a day without Axis of Evil lists.  Made up stories about weapons of mass destruction, impish winks, chuckles and guffaws from the leader who oversaw a spike in our national debt like never before, the president who oversaw more corruption than any administration since Warren Harding’s, the President who intentionally confused Iraq with Al Qaeda.

But exactly 28 minutes into his speech he did it.  He talked about “taking it to ‘em” blurring 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tonight the President was in classic form, grinning and winking like he had just pulled off a great fraternity stunt at the Delta House… not acting like the first president in US history to start and oversee the loss of TWO wars.  A President who fueled a Holy war and put our young people in front of shrapnel with the cavalier attitude of a man who has never done an honest day’s labor.  

Tonight the President spoke of the goodness and smarts of the American people even after he undermined our government for seven years.  He weakened the agencies that were designed to protect us from lead in toys, chemicals in foods and predatory lenders and employers.  He gave this government, our government, over to ExxonMobil, Ford, GM, Peabody Coal, and he’ll still be grinning on the golf course a year from now when we try to clean up this mess for the next generation.  

Bush’s speech and his seven-year reign can be summed up as “the Great Fraud.”  He promises to help New Orleans and then doesn’t.  Promises clean government and we get corruption.  Promises economic growth and we get decay.  Promises to take care of veterans and we have more and more uninsured.  

He asked for more trade agreements to “…show our neighbors in the region [Latin America] that Democracy leads to a better life.”  This democracy did not demonstrate that.  At best, we showed that our democracy was able to withstand a completely unmoored leader with an unethical team around him willing to give our government over to the corporations, especially the energy corporations.  

He promised two things that have never happened: to effectively capture carbon dioxide emissions when coal is burned (to prevent global warming) and safe nuclear power.  Both are promises by the industries that live off of massive government subsidies, subsidies dependent upon repeating these false promises.

He offered a gratuitous nod to our men and women in uniform, the thousands he has left behind to live their lives with prosthetic arms and legs. A generation of soldiers who will have to live with the fact that this war had as much to do with finishing his father’s business and enriching the security contractors as any false statement about security in the region.  

Then he rolled out an all too familiar story line: the threat from, this time Iran, its development of long range missiles, and how the U.S. will defend our oil in the Persian Gulf.  

Then hunger, AIDs, Darfur, funding for veterans, orphans, widows…  All poured from his mouth after little action for seven years.

And then it ended.  The long, false partisan applause that accompanies these speeches finally dimmed, and I thought: Go home, you’ve done enough.  We’ve got work to do.