You didn't ask me, but I occasionally read the blog Jezebel, especially when it is delivered to me via Google alerts.So I want to thank Jezebel and blogger Jessica for the headline above, a modification of their "Lame Dick's" article from Tuesday. Never has a term so adequately described the waning days of a dysfunctional presidency.
Trouble is, during this lame dick session, Bush and his lackeys are bent on doing more harm in the final 62 days than in all their years in office.These last 3 months are called the "midnight period, and it is during this time that Presidents generate tons of new regulations by fiat.
While every president since Carter have initiated these "midnight regulations," Bush's period looms as a particularly dark time.
Elizabeth Kolbert, in the current issue of The New Yorker, says that "what distinguishes this Administration in it's final days-as in it's earlier ones-is the purity of its cynicism. White House officials haven't even bothered to argue that these new rules are in the public interest."
That's because Bush's rule changes are pure megalomania and pay back to both Industry and the Administration's right-wing lap dogs.
Hundreds of thousands of pages of new rules and regulations will be issued by the Bushies before the leave office - burdening us for years to come.
And don't believe for a minute that Barack Obama will be able to make them go away with the stroke of a pen - the Bush Administration is trying to craft rules that are difficult, if not impossible, to overturn. It could take months or years to reverse these rules- and by then the harm could already be done.
One such rule could prove particularly disastrous to women. As Jezebel put it, Bush is "attempting to pee on our reproductive rights one more time." The New York Times described it best...
"A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws."The Bush administration promised not to issue any new regulations after November 1. But now, it is poised to implement a rule that could allow individual health care providers to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control — and then refuse to provide these basic services. A woman's ability to manage her own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology.
We need to speak out now before the administration implements this rule.
Click here and send a message to Bush.
