Well, here we are in the middle of Bush's second term as President. The first election was a complete scandal with the end result being Bush installed as President by the Supreme Court. The second election was rife with scandal, although not too much has been seen on the news, with the black box voting being a real problem.
Two of Bush's big corporate contributors own two companies that make electronic voting machines. One of these, Diebold, produced the machines that were using in Ohio. There was a big scandal because the machines can be easily hacked and Diebold was allowed to keep the guts of the machine secret thereby making it impossible for an independent audit. Oh, and Diebold's owner said it was his "duty to deliver as many votes as possible for Bush". Nice. Read more about it at BlackBoxVoting.org
What's really awful is that with the Republican majority in the Senate and House it is very easy for Bush to push through whoever he wants to these different posts. Alberto Gonzalez is now the Attorney General. While he is not John Ashcroft (Thank God) he is still pretty bad. He thinks the Geneva Convention is "quaint" and he basically signed off on the torture of prisoners. But he was a long time Bush ass sucker so, in he goes. Recently, Michael Powell left the chairmanship of the FCC. Appointed was Kevin Martin. This guy worked as deputy general counsel on Bush's first campaign and then was an economic adviser to Bush. His wife is a special assistant to the president on economic policy and has worked as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Another wonderful appointee was John Bolton as ambassador to the UN. This is a guy who simply hates the UN.
The latest is Paul Wolfowitz being put in charge of the World Bank. The World Bank is meant to alleviate poverty around the world. We now have the man who created the blueprint for the invasion of Iraq running it. Yep, I can see those poor countries getting poorer right now. My absolute favorite thing I read about this was Bush's quote:
"I've said he was a man of good experience. He helped manage a large organization -- the World Bank is a large organization, the Pentagon's a large organization. He's been involved in the management of that organization."
Isn't that wonderful? You can tell when Bush is talking off the cuff. There was no script here. First, he used the word "organization" 4 times in 3 sentences. Second he used "I've said" instead of " I said". Third... well third, Bush is an idiot.
Another very frightening item I read is that the Senate voted 51-49 to allow drilling in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge in Alaska. There was a vote to ban drilling off the coast of Florida (where Jeb Bush is Governor) and the Senator from Florida (Pete Martinez) voted in favor of the Alaska drilling. They say the oil won't flow for at least a decade and even then would possible only meet a tiny fraction of what the US uses. Gee, why can't they take the $300 Billion we're throwing away in Iraq and use it to come up with an alternative energy source and make our cars MORE fuel efficient instead of giving people tax breaks for buying Hummers?? Do you think it's the big oil companies? Or the big car manufacturers who are selling our country and earth away for some quick money?
There is no hope for America. Unless we get out from under the shitstorm of the Bush Administration.