My Political Voice is Back

In my desire to celebrate all things Christmas - ie count my blessings, be grateful for the little things, yadda yadda yadda - I feel as though I may have lost my edge; Become a bit saccharine if you will.

Well, have no fear. While I may not have been blogging about it, I haven't been blind, deaf and dumb to the monotonous propaganda coming out of the Bush Administration. No, even when Dubyah's on vacation, which he is an awful lot, the sludge just keeps flowing.

No, I've been watching. I've been swearing at the TV. (Just ask my four year old) I almost threw up when I saw Cheney over and over again at former President Gerald Ford's funeral looking sullen, as if he actually had a heart and cared about another human being. And it didn't help that PBS ran a previously-aired Frontline about how Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuvered and schemed and conspired to send us into Iraq by cooking intelligence or just plain repeating, over and over and over again, intelligence reports they already knew to be false. If my two year old hadn't been sleeping on me at the time I probably would have exploded in a rage and possibly thrown something at the TV!

But there has been some good news, too. Yes, I did a Happy Dance when Bob Woodward came out with some unkind words from former President Ford regarding the mishandling of Iraq by none other than two of his former colleagues - Don (Rumsfeld) & Dick (Cheney). Yes, I enjoyed reading that Ford believed that the Bush Administration made a "big mistake" in invading Iraq.

About Cheney, who was Ford's White House chief-of-staff, Ford said, "I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious," as VP and told Woodward that he agreed with Colin Powell when he previously stated that Cheney had developed a "fever" about Iraq and the War on Terror.

So I guess it's not just me. I mean, a former Republican President, a majority of the American people, not to mention the international community at large, and me - We can't all be wrong!!! Which brings me to the other good news of the day . . .

Today, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took hold of the gavel as the first woman to be elected as Speaker of the House. Yes, that's right. I know it sounds crazy, but it's 2007 and finally we have a female Speaker of the House. What's most notable here though is that there is now a female standing third in line to the Presidency of the United States of America. Of course, it is a rare circumstance that the line of succession is necessary, but, hey, it was good enough for Gerald Ford, right?

So like the Ying and the Yang, we must take the good with the bad. Since 2001 there's been a lot of bad (at least coming out of Washington, D.C.), but it looks like a new day is dawning. Let's just hope that Pelosi and her comrades can follow through on their promises of raising the federal minimum wage, fixing the Medicare prescription drug plan by negotiating directly with drug companies for lower prices for Medicare patients, loosening the grip of lobbyists and their influence on legislation, cut student loan interest rates in half, put all recommendations by the 911 Commission into practice, broaden stem cell research allowed using federal funds - and that's just the agenda for Pelosi's first 100 hours.

Now, if only she would put impeachment back on the table . . .



P.S. We have a daily calendar of "Bushisms" which is pretty hilarious (even though it's only been four days!) And I must share this doozy from yesterday uttered by Dubyah in September of 2002: "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."
It's OK to laugh . . . I encourage it. It helps release the rage.