Broken America

When presidents Reagan and Clinton deregulated and privatized America's economy, Washington became privatized and regulated. Ms. Clinton, the leading contender in the primaries, has sworn to work with drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable. She is not willing to swear to push Congress to fix the prices of drugs. She is a Centrist, like Bob Cratchet, who is willing to work with Scrooge. Scrooge could never feel a thing for Tiny Tim, for Scrooge only thinks about money and power. Bob cringes whenever Scrooge decides to do something, but he never openly protests. The new Democratic Party is like Bob Cratchet: they are small, cowardly, forever willing to do what the Republicans want to do, like extend President Bush's spy program, but they are not willing to break the podium with a fist and do something that the White House and/or the Republicans condemn.
We are now a nation of gas stations and warehouses, a service economy. Wall Street is driven by the Military Industrial Complex, and there is almost nothing else driving our economy. War and military contracts are what keeps us financially healthy, and without these, we have no economy. Health care is a sham, and it shamelessly becomes shammier whenever a candidate decides to do something about it, because corporations own our government, and they dictate terms to our government that cannot be ignored.

political notions

Impeachment means golf courses: an early vacation. The U.S. is extremely merciful to its presidents. We don't want to think of any president as a rogue, as someone to throw into a prison. Unfortunately, many Germans didn't think Hitler was a criminal, either, until it became apparent, but too late to do anything about him.
President Bush ran for office as Bush in 2000. His stint as governor of Texas was not a secret, his stance on the death penalty was not a secret, and everyone knew that he was an ultra-conservative Christian candidate running for office. But what many people did not know was that presidents Reagan and Clinton destroyed liberalism and the Democratic Party, respectively. Reagan obliterated LBJ's Great Society with deep cuts in the domestic budget, and Clinton shook hands with Newt Gingrich before slashing what was left of Roosevelt's New Deal: Welfare. In 2000, Bush ran against a newly designed Democratic Party. Neo-conservative, no longer liberal, the "Centrists" or "Moderates" ran against the Republicans, still exploiting the GOP's themes for a quick win, as President Clinton had done before them. The voters cast their votes along Republicans, or along with a nearly identical party, the Democratic Party.
No matter who wants to fault Bush, the fact remains that enough of this country, including Democrats, supported him for seven years. They still support him. The recent spy bill passed without too many contentious sparks on Capitol Hill. The Democrats in Congress still refuse to call Bush a rogue, or a liar, or anything that might insult his office.
We exist as a two-party system, but we have one political mind. A conservative one. There is almost no difference between Republicans and Democrats at this point. The Democrats want to win according to the recipe that President Bush concocted in last two elections: say you are a Christian, that you have faith; say that you are not a liberal, that you support military buildups, that you support GATT and NAFTA and the global economy, but that you are charity-minded around the gills.

moreMentalthanCream

The sun is a fireball in the sky
The sun is not beautiful but gas,
not quality in matter, but clothing
A burning rag flung up and descending.

Once the world was void, before voices
declared its existence and eyeballs saw
the liquid universe turning dry, then cracking
like old paint in a bathroom.

World in Self-Images

If the world was populated by slugs, I'd have a slimy wife and a five slimy youngsters. We'd live happily under a rock in a Bolivian rain forest. But slugs have it really bad right now, because there are humans who will lift up the rock and sprinkle salt on the slugs: what could be a happy slug family becomes a pile of short, gooey string beans, covered in Morton's. But I'd like to be a slug in Bolivia. How wonderful to feel soft, warm rain well up beneath me as lightning crashes above my granite home.