Independence Day: 199 more days and counting...

Image by Alex Ross

It's Independence Day, and we just passed the 200-day mark on the countdown for George W. Bush to slither out of office. While I would be only too happy to see him get a sendoff appropriate to his historical position, he and his cronies will most likely stride right into corporate front offices where they can reap the rewards of eight years of raping what was once the greatest nation on Earth.

I feel like I'm getting to a breaking point. I think a lot of other people are, too. Things like not getting my old catalytic converter back and then paying eight cents a gallon more for gasoline than the posted price are just the latest straws on this camel's back. My finances are reaching a crisis stage. I just called up my Credit Union account information to see which bills I can pay this weekend and I was greeted with the notice "You have been disqualified from the Courtesy Pay program on 6/30/2008." And I don't even know what that means. I believe that's their overdraft protection plan, which I have never used and never came close to using. So what have I done to get disqualified from this program? Odds are, nothing. Most likely, the program has been discontinued, or revised to be available only to the wealthiest members - to eliminate the likelihood that the nouveau poore will ever use it.

For years I insisted on getting my cancelled checks back from PNC Bank. This was my mom's idea; she worked in a bank, and she knew that the microfiched copies of checks that were kept in extended storage were rarely legible enough to be used to resolve any disputes that might arise - and in the event of any such conflict where the evidence was in dispute, the decision usually went to the corporate entity, not the small-time account holder. So having the physical cancelled checks was a safety net - not that I ever used it. But it was something I was willing to pay for, even though I would be able to access the images online for free.

Until last year. Then PNC discontinued the cancelled check service. But - GREAT NEWS! I would now be able to access images of my cancelled checks online for the same low monthly fee! So I was now paying the same amount not to receive a service that I had been paying to receive that same service.

It's something like ATM fees. You are charged fees for ATM access - whether they are monthly, annual, or per-use, or all at once, I'm not sure. So you elect to bypass the ATM and go all old-school and conduct your transaction with a teller. For which you pay a fee.

Consumer protection has vanished under the Idiot Bush, and I don't know if things will get any better under President Obama. Obama is already backpedaling on issues he had held very strong positions on when he was doing a state-by-state fight to become the Democratic nominee, and is pandering to the religious right in a way that should be making some of his secular true believers take a step back.

I do believe that the day Obama is elected President - and by all that is good and holy, this country and this world have suffered enough under the domination of soulless Republicans, and we cannot and will not endure another four years of Bush-style crap - things will suddenly and miraculously start to get better. There are well-known and little-understood phenomena of human behavior that will, I trust, come into play on that day, and will sustain us through the next four - eight - years of healing and regrowth.*

Still, I worry that when the True Believers start to see Obama not as a demigod but as a human, and a politician at that, there will be a sudden sense of anger and betrayal that will make the reaction to Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise look like a hiccup.

But then again, all the anger at Bush and his Band of Bastards has not resulted in a serious impeachment effort, or any other attempt to achieve redress of grievances during his time in office. So maybe Obama won't have things so bad. Or maybe he won't have things any worse than, say, Bill Clinton, when the Republicans in Congress abandoned all other responsibilities and turned all of their efforts to removing him from office.

Who knows. I just hope we're all still around to see that day when Bush rides out of town on a helicopter.

I just wish it were a rail.


*For those who, in blogger parlance, just don't "get it", some terms for study and reflection:

• zeitgeist
• paradigm shift
• political honeymoon