It’s the middle of June, it’s not a general election year, so it seems like an unlikely time to be talking about politics. We should be talking about statesmanship, instead, but in this thing we like to call a democracy, we elect these people to represent us, and everything they do or don’t do ends up seen through the political lens. If any statesmanship is going on, it will take the historians of future generations to point it out for us. Still, we push ahead with our mission of imposing this democracy thing on everyone else in the world. Even while the literate world is unanimous in its denunciation of US imperialism in the Middle East, our appointed officials like Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney are crowing about bringing the grand elixir of democracy to a world suffering from whatever disgusting maladies accompany anything that isn’t US style, vote and gloat democracy. Condi had the nerve to tell the Egyptian government this week that it ought to give the opposition candidates access to the news media. I assume she means the same kind of access the Republicrats give the alternative candidates in this country.

So in the interest of that sort of equal access, lets talk a little about the Democrats. You remember them. They’re the people who are supposed to keep the Republicans honest in Washington. They rolled over on the Bushwhacker’s recent judicial nominations, but a few donkeys still talk like they can logjam the Bolton nomination as UN Ambassador. They know that they can’t stop it as long as the Elephants stick together, but there’s a hint of hope that the longer it’s delayed, the more likely it is to just shrivel up and die. To my democratic sensibilities, the Elephants’ appeal for a straight up vote on Bolton by the full Senate sounds just fine. If the Bush crowd wants to send a guy like that to the UN, let ‘em. They can’t embarrass the US anymore than they already have, but they still have unlimited potential to embarrass themselves, personally.

In California, the Democrats still control the Legislature, a situation which should give them the opportunity to actually act like an opposition party, but it also gives them plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. They’ve been complaining a lot about the cost to the taxpayers of Governor Arnold’s upcoming special election, but you may recall that the last time we had a special election, it resulted in Arnold’s election as governor. On that occasion, a bill to reimburse the counties for election costs passed the state Assembly, but was blocked in the Senate by . . . The Democrats. If this special election doesn’t go Arnold’s way, he might already be shooting his Hollywood comeback by the time the next general election rolls around.

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I know it’s too easy, but in the interest of fairness and balanced reporting, we need to slam the Republicans too. I thought Rumsfeld gave an Oscar worthy performance telling the Chinese that they had no reason to pump up their military spending because they have no enemies. It has to be tough being a superpower like the US with such menacing adversaries as Iraq. You have to keep building bigger and better weapons, and just to help pay for it all, you have to sell a few fighters and bombers to your friends like Pakistan. Much better to be a sleepy backwater like China with no such need for an army and an arsenal.

Even in the mainstream media, the reign of the Bush crowd in Washington is starting to look and sound like a runaway train, but the tracks remain clear; it hasn’t run into any immovable objects yet. We hear that the President is slipping in the popularity polls, but the only thing that’ll stop this train is an election in ‘08. All other obstacles can be flattened like the nickel a kid lays on the tracks.

All signs show that the only people who like the Bush plan to raid what’s left of Social Security are people who play the stock market and don’t contribute to Social Security. Still, those poor lackeys like John Doolittle have to go out in public and face the boos and jeers of the constituents. The Bolton nomination was supposed to be the bargaining tool, the one that Dub could afford to lose in exchange for winning all the others, but now he’s even digging in his heels on that preposterous idea. If the donkeys don’t get out of the way, he’ll send Bolton to the UN on a provisional appointment that keeps him there for a couple of years without any Congressional approval.

And even the working class jingos with flags and ribbons on their cars are starting to realize that the war in Iraq couldn’t win the popular vote even if Saddam Hussein was standing in the oval office with a pistol pointed at Bush’s head. Colin Powell got out while the gettin’ still was good, leaving Rice and Rummy and the churlish, cherubic Cheney to stand up in public and defend the war with straight faces in their crooked corporate culture. Exit strategy?! Forget it. It was all they could do to fabricate the entrance strategy. Now they just smile and pretend the Downing Street memos are just the comic relief for the news of casualties we’re not allowed to see or even to count accurately.

George the Oblivious and all his oblivious subordinates can afford to be that way, because they’ve seen the last voter they’ll ever see. They don’t have to cook the count in Florida or Ohio ever again. All that’s left for them to do is clean out the safe and keep that straight face. Has Dub committed provable, impeachable offenses? No doubt, but this country hasn’t recovered from chasing another crooked President out of town under threat of impeachment 30 years ago. It lacks the strength to do it again.

One flicker of good news. In considering whether to renew the Patriot Act, the House of Representatives has voted to delete the language allowing federal agents without a warrant to snoop on the books you’ve been buying and checking out from the library. To put it another way, 238 members of Congress actually believe you and I should be free to read whatever we want to read. Bush is even holding the line on that one, however. He’s threatened to veto the entire Justice Department appropriation if his boys can’t keep snooping on your reading habits.