Dictator George

I was listening to C-span radio yesterday, and I caught a bit of a talk show. I'm not sure who the talker was, I was on my way to the grocery store because I had this craving for some Cherry Garcia ice cream, and the store closed in like ten minutes. The guy on the radio was saying something about a National Security Presidential Directive that would give President Bush some serious emergency powers in the event of a "Catastrophic Emergency". I was trying to hurry, and only half listening, but I thought I heard the voice on the radio saying something like "and the President will oversee all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, until the catastrophe is over. A catastrophic emergency could be a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a terror attack". Wow. The end of America, just like some futuristic thriller, only the future is right now. I wanted to sit in the car and hear all about the end of the world as we know it, but my craving intensified, and I bolted into the Safeway to get my ice cream.

Back home, I flipped through the cable news channels, but all of them had stories about Rosie O'Donnell and some skinny blond chick. If our country was in danger of turning into a dictatorship during the next hurricane season, then why wasn't anyone talking about it? I was having a little anxiety, and I unintentionally scarfed down the whole pint of Ben and Jerrys while I was searching for the terrible news. My partner A. was looking at me in amazement, as I shoveled the ice cream. I casually asked her if she had heard anything about this pending power grab, and she told me that she had. It was called NSPD-51 and HSPD-20, and the White House had announced it on May 9th, like two weeks ago.

And there it all is, in black and white, on the White House website.

It's amazing. How do they do it? It's almost like slight of hand. Bush signs a paper, nobody reads it, (just like the Patriot Act) the press never mentions it, and all of a sudden, we are a nation that detains people without charges, spies on our own citizens, and tortures enemies. And now apparently, the next time we have a major hurricane or a flood, we hand over all of state, federal, and local authority to a government (with all of it's resources) that couldn't even handle a natural disaster in one American city. I don't know about you, but that makes me pretty scared.

I think I need some more ice cream.

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