Sorry to do this to you, my gentle hearted reader, but I must speak out now. Everyone read Maureen Dowd’s editorial in the NYT today. Its a funny satire of what is going on with the 9/11 panel and the White House’s willingness to discuss the truth. I realize that the office of the president is something almost sacred in this country. I remember discussing this with my father once during the Bill Clinton years. He was no fan of Clinton and though not very conservative, he considers himself a Republican. But he thought attacking the president was wrong. Clinton may have been an cheater, but for my father, it was not the man, but the office he wanted to see protected. And I have thought about that a lot this week. I understand what he means. But I totally disagree. I think the president should be accountable for his actions. How dare Bush hide behind executive privilege. And Cheney too (does anyone else think he is just evil?) That man is accountable to me and everyone else. He should not forget that he works for us. He is too busy worrying about getting re-elected to tell us the truth. Just come clean for fucks sake. Maybe I would actually respect you a little then. Right now, I just think you are a horrible man. You put your own interests ahead of our country’s. And you expect me to pick up the bill. Giving breaks to all the rich, while the poor keep on getting poorer. Making our environmental policy a total joke. Creating your ‘Leave no Child’ behind policy and then cutting education funding. That’s just great. God, I can’t wait for the day when you are no longer our president. God help us if that day is longer than 9 months away. I can’t go on. He makes me so mad. I just want to kick something.

Well, things are looking a little more optimistic in the whole get-Bush-the-fuck-out-of-office plan. The house of cards they built is blowing away, the crappy house they built on the sand foundation is crumbling and all those other metaphors. The 9/11 panel is revealing that the Bush admin was too lax and not ready at all for a terrorist attack, even though they had some warning (fucking dumbasses). I would insert some links, but all you have to do is check any major newspaper. Oh alright, here you go: check here and here and here. And at the same time, the Medicare Board of Trustees has announce that Medicare will be bankrupt ahead of schedule, partly due to the new prescription drug bill that Bush pushed through Congress recently. Great. If I didn’t live in this country and fear what the future held for me here, I might laugh. I am glad that the Bush posse is finally be recognized for what it is, but its a bit late isn’t it? I am tired of reading the paper everyday and wondering what new crappiness the current administration has created for me today. Did they vote on damaging the enviroment again? Or was it more cuts in education? What will happen now I don’t know. Will people finally be outraged? Outraged enough to go express their righteous indignation that the Bush posse thinks the American people are a bunch of chumps and will sit back while they destroy the future of the traditional American family (that’s one man and one women according to them), the traditional American family that they are fighting so hard to preserve by not allowing any new definition of family to come into play, the traditional family that they want to desecrate the Constitution in order to protect. Well, wait, we have sat back and taken it for a while. But I hope that all these things that are being made more publicly aware this week will make people think long and hard about what kind of leadership this country needs right now. And maybe this November a record amount of people will show up at the polls to exercise their democratic rights and Bush gets sent packing. I really hope this happens. I really do.

I enjoy my job, I really do. I am one of the few people I know who can say that. I work with great people, tons of books, make my own hours, etc. So why do I just want to go home today? Not to get all philosophical, but I do a fair amount of reading on current events. And its all depressing! It just makes me want to scream. I finished an article by Francine Prose today in last month’s Harper’s on how reality television is altering the consciousness of Americans. They lie and cheat and we get desensitized to that. So when our politicians do the same, we are not that outraged or at least that’s the simple version of her argument I think. Its just so maddening because it could be true. I don’t want to become some political blogger. In fact I refuse. You may have to hear me vent from time to time though. I used to believe that I was lucky to be an American—I know I know, its too optimistic for a pessimist like me. But its true. We have a lot of privileges here. Again in Harper’s Readings section of the March issue, they ran some interviews with Iranian brothel workers conducted by Roya Karimi-Majd for Zanan, a woman’s magazine published in Tehran. The stories the women told are truly horrifying. Beaten almost to death by her brother for wearing a colorful coat, one woman fled her home. And she had nowhere to go. She tried to sleep in the bus terminal, but the religious (!) police rounded them up and she was not only fined 30,000 toman but also sentenced to 80 lashes. And then her brother caught up with her again. This time he took her to the woods to hang her. And so, at 15, life made her turn to selling herself. The stories don’t get any better. So, yeah, I am glad to live here. I don’t fear religious police or family members beating me for sleeping with my boyfriend. I can say what I want, do a lot of things I want, etc. But they are slowly chipping away at these things. How long before I can say almost anything I want? That’s a big deal. And they (and by they I mean Bush and his admin., not some sort of conspiratorial they) keep changing things on the down-low so that we do not even notice. Its shameful. It really is. I don’t know what they are trying to protect anymore. Its all in the name of preserving our way of life, but that way of life is changing so much that its getting unrecognizable. Okay, I can’t talk about this anymore. I am getting too angry and am having problems typing now.