Stateside with Rosalea: Angry, Angry, Angry

Well, I've just watched the last part of President George W. Bush's Sunday prime-time address to the nation, and you should know straight off that I'm pissed off that I missed the beginning of it. I missed the beginning of it because the local bus company decided that providing service for people who live in poor parts of Oakland is less important than providing service to folks who want to buzz over to San Francisco for a night out on the town. But that's another story.

Like I needed to be in a bad mood to watch Monkey-Man, as a friend calls him in honour of Bush's increasing likeness to his simian ancestors. Oops! No, I'm sure Mr. President believes he is the product of Intelligent Design, just as he believes--as he said in his speech--that he decides what's best for the American people because that's his job. Not only that, but the whole thrust of the speech was to paint people who oppose the war in Iraq as defeatists.

Look. I've been in SUCH a bad mood for the whole week. Last Sunday on Meet the Press, the Senior Senator from South Carolina, a Republican, lambasted President Bush for his handling of the war, but did the media make anything of that? Oh, no. they had a two-hour special on whether or not The Last Action Hero would or should or could pardon a death-row inmate. Like Governor Schwarzenegger was ever going to pardon the guy.

Here's what Senator Graham said on Meet the Press, Sunday December 11:

"You just have to be blind not to understand what's going on in the country. The truth is that people in South Carolina are doing what they're doing all over the nation, they're wondering why it's taking so long. We've undersold how hard this would be. Without violence it took years to get Germany and Japan from dictatorships to democracy. Yet, at every turn we've underestimated how hard it would be. We've underestimated the actual economic cost, how hard it would be to build an economy up after the fall of Baghdad. We've never had enough troops. We've paid a price in the past for our missteps. We've assumed the best and never planned for the worst and it's hurt us. It's hurt us with our own people, it's hurt us internationally."

Graham also objected to the tone of an advertisement on the Republican National Committee website that linked Democrats to a waving white flag. Apparently, Graham's appearance last week was just an exercise in running a few flags up the flagpole and seeing what the focus groups thought of them so that the President's speech tonight could be crafted accordingly.

Folks. Things are about to get really, really nasty. The President's national address was carried on every local free-to-air channel--except for our local public broadcasting station which thought that an oft-repeated documentary about Jewish poultry farmers in Marin County was more salient. But he didn't end it, as he usually does, with the words "God bless America."

It's a very, very big worry when the President of the United States thinks he's outgrown God.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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