Am I going away? Hell no. I took a break. A long break. I did stuff and I got my head straight.

The last time you saw me I had just been through the great YouTube blog war of 06. That was fun. What wasn't fun was when Israel and Lebanon decided to wage real war and suddenly blogging seemed sort of meaningless. I watched president pretender dismiss the most incendiary human conflict of our times with the bite of a dinner roll. I witnessed CNN indulge in a salacious display of screaming headlines, flak jackets and breaking alerts. I saw a hundred hand-ringing pundits and suffered a thousand religious revelations. In the end, there's a shaky cease-fire - no thanks to anyone in the Bush administration.

So, I took off. During my downtime, I murdered my hard drive, replaced it with a bigger better one and upgraded my OS software. I spent time with the kid before the second year of university begins. I read a few books. I saw a few DVD movies. I observed as Joe Lieberman ran the most clueless primary campaign ever. I heard the boys cry wolf for the kajillionth time and now water is the new shoe bomb. I saw backpatting and hysteria increase as the threat dissipated into yet another wild fancy. Now I sit in solemn silence as they actually tell us things would be worse if the Democrats were in power.

Worse how? No. Seriously, I want to know. Worse how?

In the five and a half years since George Bush has been in office he's turned a budget surplus into the biggest debt in our country's history. He looked the other way and terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, resulting in the slaughter of almost 3000 innocent people. He conducted an illegal spying operation on US citizens. He lied his way into a war that we're losing badly. While he ate cake and played guitar, an iconic city was destroyed and survivors waited five days for any sort of rescue. He's done nothing to secure our ports or our borders. Our economy is at an utter standstill while the upper 1-% gets more tax breaks. Gas prices are the highest they've been in decades and Oil Company executives are growing fat off their bonuses. He employs a man that outed an undercover CIA agent and he gives medals to inept cronies. Terrorism and is more prevalent than ever and the whole world hates us.

He can't protect us. He can't govern and members of his own party are beginning to avoid him like the plague. The list of GOP criminals is getting longer and all of their approval ratings are in the toilet. Bush can't break 40% approval to save his life and he's been dipping below it since he was re-elected. The GOP Congress fares worse and Vice President Cheney ain't never gonna see approval above twenty percent.

So, what's the brilliant strategery? What's the mojo these neocons plan to use to retain the House and Senate this November? Fear and bullshit. The Terror Alert color bar is back, baby! Wedge issues for all! Divert the attention of the masses from the fact that the GOP are incompetent money-grubbing, lying, hypocritical, pissy little boobs. Remember 911! Terror! Terror! Terror! They hate us for our freedom!

I'm done with it and I believe the American people are done with it. We're sick of his pinched face and his arrogant mouth. It's not refreshing anymore. The cowboy act is getting old. George Bush has done nothing but fuck us up. He's the failed businessman he's always been. He's that guy that never learns and never apologizes. What's worse, his party controlled two branches of three and here we are - a disgusted electorate.

In the next two months, the GOP is going to pull out all the stops. Frankly, I hope they continue exactly as they have so far. Expect them to tell you that Democrats have no plan and we are soft on terrorism. Expect name calling. Bank on them cranking up the fearbot. Think wolves...oh, wasn't that clever? They're going to play ugly.

What they don't understand is that America has seen ugly. We saw our fellow citizens standing on rooftops and dying in the Superdome. We see our soldiers come home dead in spite of the coffin/photo ban. We watch our tax dollars bleed out in a pointless war. We can't save because we've tapped out our savings to buy gas, pay utilities and insurance premiums. Jobs cuts are everywhere, pensions are drying up and Lou Dobbs says there's an illegal immigrant under your bed. The United States of America is in a bad way and everybody knows it.

Go ahead and play ugly, bitches. Call us traitors and terrorists. Remind us how 3000 people died on 911, because we're somehow going to forget. Attack some more widows. Jump on those Katrina victims and those people who do those jobs we don't want to do. Don't forget to clutch your pearls and gasp at nasty mean bloggers and that filthy Interweb. Throw in some gay bashing and race baiting while you're at it. Wrap it all in a sanctimonious, blathering bow. Do it. Keep doing it. All the way to November.

"We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge."

(permanent link)