All Things Reconsidered
February 10, 2003
by Alexander Washburn

All Cards Point to War

While everyone else rushed out to quickly write their post Bush State of the Union Address columns, over here at 'All Things Reconsidered' we were taking our time. Granted, I was actually holding out for the White House to offer a written retraction for Bush's laughable speech last week. After watching and listening to the President on Tuesday, it's clear that the White House needs to invest in two things: truth serum and a Webster's Dictionary.

The week leading up to the speech, the White House shook off reporter questions that Bush's speech would not be a declaration of war. The only thing missing from Bush's speech was the actually uttering of the phrase: 'I declare war on Iraq.' Everything else screamed this administration's shaky rationale for going to war with Iraq. United Nations Security Council violations – some ten years old – again being the "smoking gun." When Bush speaks of the tyrant Saddam, he is always quick to mention that Saddam is even so evil he "gassed his own people." Of course, Bush fails to mention that this gassing of "his own people" happened in 1988. Last summer, Bush brushed off the insider-trading accusations of the corporate-scandal that is Harken Energy because, well, it happen a long time ago, back in 1988. From this reasoning, Bush holds Saddam to a higher ethical standard then he holds himself. Regrettably, that may be the only kernel of truth in this sorry and pathetic chapter in American history. I still don't understand that when Iraq says they don't have weapons, and inspectors can't find them – how does killing thousands of innocent people make those weapons appear? Perhaps the White House should start producing commercials – like the ones that conveniently show how 'A Dime Bag Funds the Taliban' but this time 'How Iraq Financially Supports Al Qaeda?"

Tuesday speech made a few things clear: one that the White House can't bully and has no answer for North Korea, which they treated in the State of the Union with nary a whisper, as if the country announced to the world they've develop a meth lab and not nuclear weapons. Second, the White House cares very little, if at all, at any true form of a domestic plan aimed at getting this country out of recession and off the unemployment line. Last week, I made my feelings on the Bush tax cut abundantly clear and from the lack of applause received from key elements of the wealthy-friendly Bush tax cut plan, let's just say that the powers that be on Capitol Hill are reading 'ATR' even if the editors keep scratching all my references to Scott the Fed Ex guy.

For those of you keeping score at home here's the skinny on what Bush's domestic remedies. The Bush proposal to end the marriage penalty will pass. Ditto for ending the estate tax, which the GOP like to call the 'death tax.' Both have been floating around Capitol Hill since the Clinton years and the Jackass Party, fearing a continued loss of rural voters will be hard pressed to line up against the estate tax, especially now that the GOP talks of it strictly in terms of family farms getting hit the hardest. However, the big boon to the wealthy, the ending of the double taxation on dividends is dead on arrival. That's not to say that Bush, Rove and Tom DeLay won't find a way to get the rich a disproportionate share of tax cuts.

As for the President's pathetic attempt to appear "green" when he announced his administration was willing to spend $1.2 billion for clean-car initiatives. That was Bush at his most dishonest. If Bush had any commitment to the environment, which we know he doesn't, he would fight to raise CAFÉ standards, halt plans to drill in the Arctic and order up Vice President Cheney to release the documents from his energy policy meetings with Enron and others. The environmental community should have told Bush to keep his money in post-speech spin and pundit sessions.

The Straight Dope

This space was not the only one that rapped Bush on the knuckles after the State of the Union. The normal cast of Bush-haters, (the New York Times, CNN, Michael Moore) denounced the speech for the declaration of war that it was. Laughably, the institutions that came down hard on Bush regrettably gave the Democrats a pass even though the Jackass Party has yet to coughed up an even remotely decent alternative to war, nor a domestic policy that extends past "no tax cuts for the rich."

Over at The Nation things were as one sided as ever. At first the editorial entitled 'Bush's Gulf of Credibility' hit Bush on target, chiding his economic plan that "creates fewer jobs in the first year than the number of lost in the past two months alone." Then Katrina and the Gang got a little carried away and started coming down on Bush for failing to fight the fights even Democrats don't fight. 'The Nation' writes: "With his pollsters telling him to ramp up the compassion, he surprised with an AIDS initiative for Africa. But to reassure his radical-right base, he postured against 'partial-birth' abortion and human cloning and reprised his faith-based initiatives. He won't do anything to redress the racially biased profiling and prosecution that have put record numbers of Americans in jail for non-violent offenses."

Makes you wonder what Democratic Party Karina and the Gang have been seeing for the past eight years? When is the last time John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, or John Edwards have said anything significant about the AIDS crisis in Africa? Progressives and the far-left want Dennis Kucinich to get in the race but how does Kucinich's pro-life stance provide any remedy from Bush's assault on choice via 'partial-birth' abortion?" Ask representatives from the African-American community like New York State Senator

David Patterson if Joe Lieberman, John Kerry or The Senator from GQ, John Edwards, whose presidential hopes are fading fast, have called to talk about ways to "re-dress the racially biased profiling and prosecution that have put record numbers of Americans in jail for non-violent offenses." The only candidate speaking of addressing sentencing for non-violent offenders is Al Sharpton, and the Jackass Party is rewarding that dialogue by urging former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun into the race. These are the same Democrats that couldn't be found when she ran and lost re-election in 1998.

I happen to think Moseley-Braun would make an excellent candidate for President. (Full disclosure, as a young lad, I did work for the Illinois senator). She has the tools to be the most progressive in the bunch. She has just enough of that Paul Wellstone voting record (a memorable filibuster by the two for increased low-income heating finds comes to mind) yet offers up solid, forward-thinking ideas, like her women's pensions bill that colleagues like Kerry and Lieberman never got behind. Her environmental credentials are solid with all that clean burning ethanol that Illinois produces from its corn. Illinois is a farm state and she knows that terrain better than northeast Kerry and Lieberman and even the southern lawyer, Edwards. The minute she gets into the race, she becomes leading authority on education policy. Last years Democratic Party embrace of the President's failed and under-funded 'No Child Left Behind Act' will assure that.

(Alexander Washburn is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine.)