Please Tell Me It’s April Fool’s

April 1, 2006

Dear President Bush,

Did I note several ex-Nixon Administration representatives lamenting the lack of ethics and concerns over illegal actions taken by your administration? Since when is the Presidency of Richard M. Nixon held out as the high ethical standard? That these members of your own party are expressing concern is most disturbing.

Did I catch the leader of North Korea endorsing your pre-emptive strike military strategy? How many other rational sane world leaders have adopted such a position? If the answer is none, then you and Kim Jong-il are standing alone in that field together.

Did I hear you bragging about our envious economy while growth slowed and personal savings went negative? Did I hear you encouraging permanent tax cuts in the midst of high deficits and growing needs of American citizens? As business and government continue to cut health insurance programs or switch to high deductible health plans, what will that do to personal savings, even bankruptcies as high medical bills are their number one cause?

Did I hear Congress arguing over how to keep open the campaign money trough on which you and they gorge? Did I read that to avoid the new restriction on lobbyists buying expensive dinners that corporations are flying in executives to pay for the meal?

Did I read the government has agreed to settle a sexual harassment case with employees at the Denver Mint for $9,000,000? Do you expect me to believe the rationale that this would save money on attorney’s fees? Did I read that a senior NASA manager’s computer was seized because of child pornography?

Did I read Scooter Libby’s lawyers are using the full frontal attack back method to discredit Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor?

And my lingering question is yet to be answered despite contacts with the Justice Department, Homeland Security and the FBI. Why was LifeCare Hospitals, where 24 patients died post Hurricane Katrina omitted from the White House Lessons Learned report? Did it have to do with the Carlyle Group’s purchase of the company just weeks before the storm made landfall? Does it help them to have the federal government silent as they enter a courtroom for civil suits?

Please tell me it is just all a joke, that it is just an April Fool’s trick.....