Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Give 'Em Hell, Harry

With the president's approval ratings now at an all-time low of 36 percent, it seems he's got a lot to prove in the upcoming State of the Union address.

Too bad he can't give the prebuttal that Harry Reid is trotting out at the Center for American Progress. It's a home run:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."

It's been many years since I graduated college, but I finally understand what Lord Acton meant.

Republicans today control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. They have absolute power, and it has corrupted their Party and led to the culture of corruption that we see now in Washington.

We have the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, admonished three times for ethics violations and under indictment now for money laundering.

We have the White House, where an employee has been indicted for the first time in 135 years.

There's Karl Rove, who is under investigation... and David Safavian, the man appointed by President Bush to be charge in charge of hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts who was led away in handcuffs because of his dealings with Jack Abramoff and others.

And then, we have the Republican "K-Street Project, which has invited lobbyists inside our nation's Capitol....as long as they are willing to pay the right price.

The Republican abuse of power comes at great cost to our country, and we can see it in the present state of our union. Special interests and the well-connected have grown stronger, while our national security... our economy... our health care... and our government have grown weaker.
Reid only picks up speed from there, calling the president out for his corruption and incompetence and even outright dishonesty, until it reaches the point where the man we once knew as Harry Reid has become nothing less than a whirling dervish of fists and fury.

Read the whole thing, but be sure to set aside a post-coital cigarette for when you're done. It's that good.

5 comments:

Mr Furious said...

Yawn. What's that about trees and forests?

Who the hell is going to hear about this? Mark my words there will be ZERO coverage of this. Zero.

A PREbuttal? Reid and the party leaders fucked up choosing Kaine to give the SOTU response. THAT is the only speech that matters.

Reid's been full of feisty soundbites lately, but I want more follow-through. I called my Senators today and pretty much demanded a filibuster on Alito.

I'm no longer going to get excited about Tuesday afternoon speeches. I want some fucking action.

Al Gore should be giving the SOTU response next week, not some pro-life red-state governor nobody's ever heard of who coattailed his ass into office.

Grrr.

Otto Man said...

Hey, I agree that the SOTU response is the big deal and Kaine is a missed opportunity. (My vote? Murtha.) But you've got to applaud the Dems for rolling out an aggressive stance and, God willing, sticking to it.

Reward good behavior, my friend.

Mr Furious said...

Sticking with it is the key. There better not be any "apologies" from Reid like last week.

Otto Man said...

Agreed. That was horrible.

Thrillhous said...

Yeah, I can't believe Reid apologized. All he did was behave like a republican. Sure, that's bad, but it's like apologizing for farting in a room full of bull plop.

Murtha would've been a great choice for the response, but I think Kaine will be fine. I guess they decided to stay away from the war on terra and wanted a domestic issues guy.