Two names. One party.

The Democrats in congress are pitiful. All signs indicate that they are going to help pass Bush’s version of the FISA bill that will give telecommunications companies amnesty for past wrong doing, and Harry Reid is leading the way.

The cowardice and capitulation of the Dems in congress is well documented. Americans are told that they live under a two-party political system, but that is simply one more Washington-chopped-down-the-cherry-tree myth in a long line of American myths. Our country is governed by a single political party shackled to the money and influence of major corporations. The one-percenters who run corporate America decide which candidates get huge donations and which do not based on a rather simple formula: How compliant will the candidate be to the industries’ wishes (Clinton, very. Kucinich, not so much).

I think this could explain the FISA vote. Congressional leaders have decided that the 2008 election is the most important priority on the planet, and everything they do is weighed and balanced against this singular event. Obviously, holding the Telecomm giants responsible for their evil deeds would make them very unhappy, and much less likely to pull out the checkbook when a Democrat comes knocking.

George Bush is a dangerous idiot who has brought this country closer to implosion than any other president in our history, but he is also a beneficiary of the same corrupt system that lands Democrats in the White House from time to time. Sure, I’ll vote for a Democrat next November, but I view it as a choice not between competing ideologies, but between the flu and the Black Plague.

Done pissing in the wind

I have no more capacity for outrage.

Bush could soak a kitten in kerosene and set it ablaze in the Rose Garden and I’m not sure I could manage much more than a sigh. The Democrats would feign shock then vote to support the president’s bill weakening laws against animal cruelty. The press would unquestioningly accept the White House assertion that the kitty was in league with terrorists. The American people would be apoplectic for a day and then go back to sleep.

We handed over the reigns of power to a lunatic and his enablers with predictable results—America is in shambles. But with a year to go before Bush leaves office, things could get worse. Much worse. Pakistan is on the verge of exploding. Limp-dick Cheney wants yet again an opportunity to prove his manhood by blowing Iran off the map. Bush continues nominating imbeciles to the nation’s highest positions. Yet this past Sunday I gave the opinion page of my paper the same breezy fly-through that I usually reserve for the classifieds.

I just don’t care that much anymore. The president will continue to do as he pleases and congress will not stop him. The voices for justice are simply too weak to be heard. The Democratic candidate for president a year from now will most likely be Hillary Clinton, who, like her husband, knows how to speak “liberal” during campaigns, but votes conservative when the lever is actually pulled.

And I’m getting sick of writing letters to my representatives. It really is an exercise in futility. My Democratic senator seems to have no qualms about voting with Republicans on key issues, and my stream of embittered e-mails certainly hasn’t resulted in any epiphany on her part.

Resistance (even the quiet kind) requires energy and my batteries have been drained over the last seven years. I’m tired of pissing in the wind.