Bored with Bush
Ivins, Molly
Small Favors Molly Ivins Bored with Bush You can stick a fork in Bush, he's done. It's all over except for the next three years, and if that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, you haven't got...
...How about a country where we spend more on education than on weapons...
...A country where everyone has health insurance...
...Her latest book is "Who Let the Dogs In...
...What about instead of a contract with America we set some goals for America and talked about what kind of values we want to work on...
...What kind of country do we want America to be...
...We've already been on defense way too long...
...We have tried giving tax breaks to the rich so they'll invest in economic growth-it didn't work...
...I further think we progressives should spend the next three years talking about what kind of country we want this to be...
...Frankly, I'm already bored with the Bush people...
...It's all over except for the next three years, and if that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, you haven't got a lick of sense...
...Only ExxonMobil loses...
...The better angels of our nature may not guarantee success at the polls, but try combining an appeal there with common sense...
...The best we can hope for is that this Administration is now so crippled it cannot accomplish anything, including yet more tax cuts for the rich and yet more program cuts for the poor...
...What to do...
...The country and its people positively teem with ideas about how to fix things...
...It seems to me it would be a mistake to conclude that what we need from now on is damage control...
...The only holdup is our lack of imagination...
...I'm real upset about what they're doing to the country, but I won't spend the next three years talking about it...
...Frankly, it would be in our best interest if the Middle East didn't much matter to us...
...Trouble is, the world is not going to hold still for three years...
...I did once interview a rancher in West Texas who said about politics: "I feel like I'm about equal parts good and bad...
...As Hightower of Denton, Texas, likes to say, "Everybody does better when everybody does better...
...We reap fury, hatred, and contempt...
...Assume it's 2009 and they're finally gone...
...The most likely and saddest outcome would be a hideous three-way civil war in Iraq and the effective breakup of the country...
...Among other dandy reasons to do this is that it is unlikely the situation in the Middle East will be improved by this war...
...How many times can you dump on them before it occurs to you that it's not helping any...
...It's just that there's no one talkin' to the good in me...
...People think we're either a) insane b) imperialists or c) morons...
...Gen Van Cleve, a Texas peace activist, proposes an effort similar to John F. Kennedy's plan to go to the moon in ten years: Marshal a huge concentration of scientific and technical knowledge aimed at finding ways to make renewable, nonpollut-ing sources of energy available and cheap and to share that knowledge with the rest of the world...
...For years, politics in this country has been based on the premise that you win elections by appealing to people's fears and prejudices...
...Let's not keep doing it...
...Molly Ivins writes in this space every month...
...A country where we spend more on universities than on prisons...
...At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, I think it's high damn time we tried something else...
...Something's going to happen that needs to be dealt with while these fools have worked themselves into a position where they cannot do anything...
...This is not Hold That Line time...
...They're hopeless screwups...
...Now is the time to switch the national conversation to How to Fix All This...
...The goals happen to be making Texans the straightest, least divorced, and most ignorant people in the country, but you have to admire the display of leadership...
...They know what they want, they know where they're going, and they're moving straight toward their goals...
...Our name is mud around the world...
...Actually, I take my cue on this from the current Republican leaders in Texas, who are quite remarkable in their way...
Vol. 70 • January 2006 • No. 1
