GOP's Feeding Tube of Faith

In a recent appearance on “The Daily Show” to promote his new book entitled, “The World Is Flat”, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, talked about how the global economy is leveling the playing field between the United States and the developing world. Mr. Friedman expressed genuine concern about the diminishing interest among our youth to pursue science and engineering careers. Without making light of Mr. Friedman’s apprehension, I would point to a sense of misplaced priorities within the Bush Administration that have exacerbated not only this problem but several other more pressing issues of the day.

From the under-funded “No Child Left Behind” program to the over-hyped “Clear Skies” initiative, the Bush Administration has paid more lip service to the domestic economy than the facts bear out. President Bush has gone around the country for the past sixty days touting a fix to the Social Security system that might go bankrupt in 2041, while he continues to ignore a soaring half-trillion dollar budget deficit and a seven and one-half trillion dollar national debt, which are both here and now. Ironically, the President signed a Bankruptcy Bill last Wednesday – this is tantamount to the Bush Administration telling us that if we live beyond your means, we will no longer be able to escape the consequences – which is fine. But then, the Bush Administration continues to spend our money like there is no tomorrow – with no repercussions to worry about. That's the beauty of "political capital" - it's the President’s to spend now and for someone else to clean up later!

Speaking of cleaning up and “Clear Skies”, it seems even Mother Nature expressed its displeasure at the Bush Administration’s environmental policy on Earth Day last Friday. The Washington Post reported that the weather refused to cooperate with the President’s plan to celebrate Earth Day in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One wouldn’t normally have associated any sort of divine justice in this weather-related intervention, if it weren’t for the deliberate choice of the Republican leadership to play up the “faith factor” at every possible opportunity since the last election. In what seems to be an audacious power play, Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist will just not let the GOP’s feeding tube of faith be unplugged from the nation’s consciousness. New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, warns us about “A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time” about to take place tonight. With his unabashed participation in “Justice Sunday”, Senator Frist only confirms that the GOP has moved so far to the right that – if the world were really flat – most of the GOP leadership would be falling off a cliff in the next galaxy!

But this is hardly the “Revenge of the Sith” and would that we all were so lucky? The Republican leadership is turning the GOP into that awful relative – one that you cannot live with, and yet one that you cannot get rid off. Just as you begin to think that it’s only our domestic policies that are screwed up, because the Bush Administration really has the foreign policy under control, along comes this bombshell. In a report yesterday entitled, “U.S. eliminates annual terrorism report”, The Seattle Times tells us that

“The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985”.

Holy cow! I thought we were winning this thing, and with freedom and democracy sprouting all over the world, we were all going to live as one big happy family? Talk about a leap of faith!