Tuesday

Tuesday got swallowed up, Bush. I honestly don't know where it went. A blur of office work, a heated session with our contractor about why the job was never getting finished, a tour of the garden with the dog, maybe a bite of lunch in there somewhere... and at the end of the day, fatigue. Ah, but did I mention this, Bush? Our new little place has a sauna! Tucked way in back, behind the bedrooms and the closets, a beautifully crafted Swedish sauna. Turn the heater on, leave it to do its work for fifteen minutes, then pour some water over the hot rocks... Bliss! Then a cool shower, and a man begins to feel like a human being again.

Still, no blog, for which I apologize. I guess I could have found, or made the time, but the spirit simply wasn't willing. I thought for a while about your Cheney's duplicity, complimenting that bold House Representative, John Murtha, on the one hand--and on the other, savaging Democrats for their "corrupt and shameless revisionism" in questioning your good faith and wisdom at the start of your Iraq war. As a letter writer in today's New York Times pointed out, "Is it not the vice president himself, and the president and other administration figures, who have shamelessly revised this country's justification for going to war?" To which I add a hearty British parliamentary "Hear, Hear!" (Or is it "Here, Here?" I was never entirely sure.)

All of which seems frankly trivial beside the enormity of the problems we are facing, both here at home and out there in the world. These political games are getting more and more tiresome, Bush. And worse, they are cynical distractions from those things we should be paying attention to: the escalating deficit, and the effects it will have on future generations; our disastrous health care system--or the lack of it--at the cost of countless of our less fortunate compatriots; an education system which is shamefully inadequate, ignores the plight of those disadvantaged by it, and leaves high school "graduates" unprepared to read a newspaper or balance a check book; a deteriorating infrastructure of highways and power systems; a reliance on fossil fuel energy and a refusal to offer more than a token (and politically-motivated) glance at alternative energy sources; a rapidly self-bankrupting and often plainly corrupt big business sector, with major corporations failing their employees, their customers, evend their shareholders, while their top executives pocket billions and party on; a communications media that chooses endlessly to celebrate--and feed--itself rather than broadcast inconvenient truths; an entertainment industry that makes no discernable distinction between "reality" broadcasting and the "news"; a Congress that kisses up to powerful lobbyists and butters its own bread whilst ignoring the needs and opinions of its constituents--not to mention the good of the country and the world.

And if that weren't enough, there's the mess abroad: Iraq. The Middle East. Africa... My God, Bush, last night the BBC World News led off with a report on the famine in Niger. You might not have heard about this one, I suppose, in your daily briefings. Not a high priority for your staffers. Caused by a combination of locusts and drought, it's been going on for months now, with the whole world looking on. Children starving to death, or dying of disease. Mothers unable to feed them. Men disempowered, desperate, at the mercy of a situation way beyond their control. Months now, and the world--our world, including our America, Bush--has not seen fit to send in enough food or medical supplies to scratch the surface of the need.

And in the meantime, we sit around and bicker about politics. That's what's corrupt and shameless, Bush. Tell that to your Cheney. Tell him to quit his bellyaching, get off his duff, and do something constructive for a change. Revisionism, my ass! Oh, and yes, I am, in case you should be wondering, yes, painfully conscious of my own complicity in all this, sitting blissfully in my sauna. I comfort myself with the notion that I do at least make the effort to pay attention, and be heard.