MICHAEL CARMICHAEL, AAPC, EAPC, IAPC

archived: 25 Sept - 1 Oct, 2005         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  September 27, 2005  

                        THE WINDS OF CHANGE 

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.  Matthew 7:27 

A destroying wind struck the gulf coast with hurricane force, and hundreds of thousands of Americans marched on Washington ushering in the winds of change. 

Titanic winds driving the forces of tumult and pathos have struck once again at the American heartland.  Texas and Louisiana evacuated the masses from their coastal cities.  People sought shelter with their friends and families away from the violence of the hurricane coast.  Hurricane Rita hit landfall at Port Arthur, Texas, a major centre for petroleum refinement in America, and she lashed outward across Louisiana shattering and flooding and ripping and destroying the fabric so recently torn to shreds by Hurricane Katrina.   

George Bush flew from hither to thither in a great show of activity.  His plans for restoring the shredded and tattered remnants left by the storming winds have revealed him at his worst.  Bush is proposing to give tax cuts to the richest and wealthiest families worth more than $1.5 million and to offer huge financial rewards to corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton who have given substantial contributions to the Republican Party.  At the same time, he has ripped away the minimum wage for the poorest Americans living in the disaster zones, and he has obliterated affirmative action.  Bush’s policy in America’s disaster zones is lifted straight out of his own utopian vision:  an America with no minimum wage for the poorest, tax cuts for the richest, government handouts for the wealthiest corporations and the eradication of civil rights and affirmative action.  This perverted policy has the unmistakable fingerprints of George Bush, Dick Cheney and their cabal of neoconservatives.  It echoes the preaching of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.  The give to the rich, take from the poor, pay the corporations and destroy civil rights formula will be very pleasing to Grover Norquist and his ilk. 

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Hosea 8:7 

Elsewhere, the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted overwhelmingly to approve the nomination of John Glover Roberts to the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Three Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee voted to approve John Roberts:  Senators Feingold, Kohl and Leahy.  The mantra about the Roberts nomination has been to this effect:  Roberts is a conservative just exactly like Rehnquist, so it does not matter whether he ascends to the Supreme Court.  What does matter is the next appointment which will be the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who is a moderate.  However, that is a patently false analogy for the following reason.  After the Supreme Court ruled on the Florida recount case in December, 2000, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist issued a peculiar personal statement lamenting the interjection of his court into the political process.  John Roberts would never issue such a lamentation, for he was the chief architect of the Republican case.   

Roberts had been summoned to Florida to counsel Jeb Bush on the post-election legal strategy.  He advised Jeb Bush to issue the certification of the initial vote tallies as swiftly as possible in order to avoid a Democratic writ that would have denied certification until a recount had been completed.  Following John Roberts’ counsel, Jeb Bush allowed the certification process to take place with breathtaking alacrity.  Then, Roberts scripted and coached the Republican attorneys who presented arguments to the Supreme Court.  John Roberts was selected for this dual mission because of his stalwart defence of the most reactionary planks in the Reaganite political platform and his prominence as a successful right wing advocate before the Supreme Court.  In effect, he was the most partisan right-wing Republican attorney in America, and he was drafted for the most partisan of legal assignments in our nation’s history. 

Soon – absent a sea change amongst the Democratic members of the Senate and a few of the Republicans who sit in that august chamber – John Glover Roberts will be in position to adjudicate upon any future presidential elections that emerge, and there can be little serious doubt how he will rule in such cases.  He is a partisan apparatchik to his core, who made a conspicuous series of political contributions to George Bush and other reactionary Republicans.  The ascendancy of John Roberts does not augur well for the health of democracy in America, but there are symptoms of a lingering pulse. 

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind. Proverbs 11:29 

The hundreds of thousands of protestors who marched through the streets of Washington to affirm their support for the end of the ill-conceived and disastrous war in Iraq are the foot soldiers of American democracy.  They are the new armies of the night, and they are growing in their strength and in their multitude.  This is just as well for the time is not too late, but there are many growing dangers to democracy burgeoning in the mists of time just ahead. 

In Iran, the neoconservatives are constructing a new theatre of war in the Middle East, and they are marking time until they can implement a broader range of restrictions on civil rights in order to launch the next phase of their plan to project America into a new century of imperial hegemony.  What they are actually doing is launching America into an Anti-American century, and, in so doing, they are in the process of destroying the remaining fragments of Jeffersonian democracy. 

The only obstacle in their path is Cindy Sheehan and her new armies of the night, who will march into history to do battle against the forces that would impose a global empire on America while denying her people the right to vote.  Bush, Cheney and Roberts should harken to the footfalls of the marchers.  A pro-democracy movement is rising up against Bush and his cabal of warmongers and election riggers, and it is buoyed upwards by a destroying wind of change and rejuvenation. 

Common Dreams / Roberts Gave GOP Advice in 2000 Recount - John G. Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, played a crucial role in the chaotic, 36-day period following the disputed 2000 presidential election.

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Last Update: 03/23/2006