The Urban Elf

The U. S. Senate has just spent three days attempting to assess whether John Roberts should be our next Chief Justice. Roberts was at best a questionable choice to replace the retiring Justice O’Connor but is a still less appropriate choice for the role of Chief Justice. What has been made available of Roberts’ record is a fractured mirror with serious threats to equal voting rights, reproductive choice, and protections for workers glinting menacingly in the jumbled image. At the end of three days questioning the picture is no clearer. In the course of his confirmation hearing, Mr. Roberts has refused to answer over 100 questions from senators, and ran an Olympic class slalom around a myriad of others reaching the end of three days with several fundamental issues unresolved. This may well have been the last chance for clarity or revelation to enter into this process of choosing someone who could theoretically be the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court for the next forty years. For in addition to Roberts’ nimble performance before the Senate committee, the Bush Administration continues its tradition of classifying everything short of the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Hymnals by stamping its feet and refusing to turn over any records from his time as Deputy Solicitor General under Bush the Elder. If nothing else, Roberts’ involvement in Iran-Contra shows an unscrupulous bent and contempt for the separation of powers. The more deeply the president and his nominee hide the facts the more sinister this picture becomes and the less suitable a candidate John Roberts’ becomes. We must ask ourselves who is this shadowy figure and what hidden face will he reveal if and when he is confirmed. Can we afford that risk?

The monkey prince once again reaches for the opiate if the people to evade his own callousness and ineptitude. This time he blows soma up the ass of the American people by declaring today a national day of prayer. He puts forth that we must pray for the victims and survivors of hurricane Katrina as if it hadn’t already occurred to us. I’m quite sure that those who do pray have been. So once again the amoral disingenuous simpleton has delivered too little too late by trying to paint himself as the spiritual leader of a nation to cover his failures as the political, civil and military leader of that same nation.

But regardless of whether Junior thinks he’s making us do it or not, these people do need our prayers. Please bow your heads.

Oh (insert name of deity or deities here), we ask that you bring strength to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Please help them to rebuild homes lost because the government felt the levies were sufficient and Homeland Security needed the upgrade money more. Please help them to survive the rescue effort hindered and delayed for lack of National Guard personnel present on this soil because the president has sent so many of them to die in a war halfway around the world. Please help them to forgive the government for having no plans or resources for coping with a major natural disaster because it has been cutting the taxes of the rich while squandering the taxes paid by the rest of America on waging a war based on lies and terrifying Americans into submission with lies about terrorist boogiemen. Please give them the patience and charity not to kill every last Christianist extremist putting out press releases blaming them and their sinful ways for this horrific disaster that has taken the lives of so, so, many including children, the elderly, the infirm and the poor, people whom the Christians’ own holy book says were very dear to Jesus. And please, give them strength when a month or so down the road the President of the United States callously uses their suffering and personal tragedy as a cheap prop to justify waging war on a county that had nothing to do with it. And please help them to forgive the Republicans in Congress when they create a sham committee and cover it all up.

Amen.


http://www.redcross.org/
http://www.rainbowfund.org/

You can't hide your lying eyes and your smile is a thin disguise. I thought by now you'd realize, there ain't no way to hide your lying eyes.

from "Lyin' Eyes" written by Henley & Frey