“The Bush brothers would not be the first political family to turn government contracts into a source of political [patronage] power… Today, [Richard M.] Daley dominates Chicago politics almost as thoroughly as did his father.” Nicholas Confessore

Were Bush’s blatant lies about WMDs Worse than Watergate? No doubt they were worse than Monicagate, and not at all surprising given Bush’s intoxication with imperial power. Yet no one is doing anything about it.

“Too few people inside and outside America comprehend the ambition of the American conservative project and its ideological hostility — both internally to any conception of an American social contract undergirding social mobility and opportunity and externally to any constraint on the exercise of preemptive autonomous American power. Moreover, the conservative coalition is deeply rooted and very powerful. It is a dangerous challenge both to the well-being of most ordinary American citizens at home and to the fragile processes that legitimize globalization abroad.” Will Hutton

Sure, the Bush administration is stubborn; what it wants, from war to tax cuts, it gets. And the result has been a yawn, or muddied applause, from America. But historically (and we can only hope it will all be ancient history soon enough), it will all be for naught; short-sighted policies and ugly demagoguery do not a great presidency make. “Presidents ought to try to do what is neither popular nor principled but what is wise,” and wisdom and eloquence, much less public spirit or even truth, are scarce around the howling void of leadership at the top. Instead, we have cynical Machiavellian spin, either breathtakingly postmodern in its rejection of truth or just doublespeak. As the newsbox graffitios say, “Lies!“

“More distressing even than the president’s lies, though, is the public’s apparent passivity. Bush just seems to get away with it. The post-September 11 effect and the Iraq war distract attention, but there’s more to it. Are we finally paying the price for three decades of steadily eroding democracy?” TAP

The administration just asked for $75 billion for just one month of war. States are in crisis: Oregon hacked a month off its school year, turned thousands of felons out onto the streets, and cut off lifesaving medication to heart patients and schizophrenics; California state officials are seriously considering shuttering universities; Illinois and Massachusetts schools have laid off teachers. The House budget resolution cuts, over the next nine years, over $100 billion for healthcare for poor Americans, nearly $20 billion in food aid for poor Americans, and even $14 billion from veterans’ benefits. And yet the Senate might approve George W. Bush’s budget resolution tomorrow, slashing the average millionaire’s taxes by $100,000 a year while doing nothing (nothing! I would get

Californians! Feel attacked by the Bush administration? The obvious answer, of course, lies in history: secession. (In 1846, California declared independence from Mexico.) Heck, there might even be support from others.

1. “Well, I’m a ditzy liberal who believes in social freedoms and religious relativism!” And that’s why Johnny joined the Taliban. 2. chaos in Congo, mass murder in Indonesia, the rape of Amazonia — all troubles rooted in the rubber trade, which began with the pneumatic tires made for… bicycles! 3. Good news? Secondhand smoke is no worse for you than everyday air pollution. How reassuring.