The Workday Liberal

After reading that title I'm certain several of my readers broke into giggle fits. What I'm posting about today is the Presidents reaction to the news that the NSA spy program is monitoring the domestic communication of tens of millions of Americans. (Click the above link to whitehouse.gov at your own risk as we all know how concerned this crowd is about your privacy rights.)

The first four words of the Presidents statement are: "After September the 11th". So we now can rest assured that our phone calls need to be tracked because we might be plotting the next 9/11. Frankly I'm sick and tired... Sick And Freaking Tired, of having this date of national grief, this date that united not just the American public but the entire world in common voice against our terrorist enemies, being used for the partisan political purposes of this disaster of an administration. In my pipsqueak of a voice on the internets I call for the President to cease and desist in his continued hijacking of this shared national date of unity and pain. He sullies the memory of those victims by continuing to bastardize the meaning of that day. This behavior reminds me of the craven ghouls who roam a battlefield immediately after the slaughter, plundering the dead bodies of the hero's for their own short term enrichment. Politically speaking, the President has thrived by plundering the memory of that horrid day, and he will not stop until we as a people rise in righteous indignation and demand that he stop.

The purpose of the Presidents statement this morning was to in effect, ask us to trust him. Ask this most cowardly, dishonest, and untrustworthy of failed Presidents to give him our trust one more time. As the President so famously misspoke, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... fool me twice... We can't get fooled again!"

The same failure of a President who once declared that he was a uniter not a divider wants your trust. The man who promised to halve the deficit wants your trust. The man who promised to capture Osama dead or alive wants your trust. He promised to restore honor and integrity to the White House, to be a President of all the people, not just those who voted for him, claimed to have actually found WMD in Iraq, lied about them being there in the first place, has signed laws which he clearly states he does not intend to follow while claiming to protect the constitution, I could seriously make this sentence into one of the longest on record if I continue in this vein... this repeatedly proven dishonest failure wants you to trust him! We can't get fooled again Mr. President.

I have one final point in this (anti-Democratic ballotbox hope crushing Cohenesque) diatribe. I must respond to the oft used talking point that the President regurgitates with the second to last sentence in his statement. In defending his unconstitutional spy program the President says: "So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil."

I would like to try a bit of an experiment with any reader who cares to play along. Consider the following scenario. On September 12th 2001, you are visited by a time traveler (play along!) who tells you that the Presidents response to the terrorist attack then so fresh in your memory, would result in the deaths of thousands of Americans then living, while the ranks of the very terrorist organization responsible for that smoldering pile of rubble on your T.V. would be flushed to overflowing. Would you then consider that under any circumstance such an outcome would be a success? What if your seer also told you that even though nearly the entire world you lived in then stood in support of America, that in a matter of a few years we would be disdained and hated by large majorities of foreign populations and blatantly scorned by many foreign governments. If you still think that you could then consider that knowledge in such a way as to think we were being successful, how would you feel if you were told that America would become notorious for the abuse and torture of prisoners in our control, in the name of the war on terror. If you still think now, that with that knowledge then, you would think we were successful in our war on terror, then you my friend are a confirmed koolaid drinker of the 1st order.

So no, we have not had another attack on American soil. But 2,600 of your fellow citizens have been killed half the world away. Ask those families if they think the fact that they died there and not here makes their dying less painful. The intrinsically cynical and uncaring attitude that gives more importance to a persons life because they are in America than any other U.S. citizen sent overseas ought to be striking to anyone who truly considers the matter. Once the death toll in Iraq climbs over 3,000 and we have sacrificed more lives than were taken in the September 11th attacks, are they still going to talk about fighting them over there rather than over here? Those dead and wounded soldiers are Americans too!

I haven't even touched the outrage the average Iraqi must feel at having to be the front line in the war on terror when they had absolutely ZERO to do with September 11. But they aren't American so who the freak cares right?!

I reject this administrations rationales and unprincipled con games. We simply MUST check this with a Democratically controlled chamber in Congress (preferably both) and the removal of this disastrous failure of a Presidency as soon as legally possible.