[Gimpy]

President Bush spent this last Tuesday replenishing his party's coffers and, in the face of resistance to his Social Security plan and much of the rest of his second-term agenda, struck upon an aggressive new tone by accusing Democrats of standing for nothing but obstructionism? The Democratic leadership, he said, embodies "the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock."

The plastic word-surgeons in the Bush administration are, as we speak, doing a Michael Jackson-level nose job on the word obstructionist. And, if the past is indeed any measure, by the time they are done it will be unrecognizable ? and, they hope, just as ugly.

So, before it?s too late let?s nail down what the word really means:

Webster?s defines ?obstruct? as:
(1)To block or fill (a passage) with obstacles or an obstacle.
(2)To impede, retard, or interfere with; hinder.
(3)To get in the way of so as to hide from sight.

The first two definitions are the ones the Bush folk want to weaponize. If they can get the public to react to the term ?obstructionist? the same way they react to ?pedophile,? ?terrorist,? or ?Hillary & Bill,? they believe they can completely neuter their opposition.

But using obstruction before fixing the term poses a danger. It?s that third definition. It will have to be dealt with, it must disappear, be left on the operating room floor.

(3)?To get in the way of so as to hide.?

Yikes! Gadzooks! That?s the entire Bush administration game plan described in a single, incomplete sentence! They built their entire evil empire upon it. Someone might notice. They can't let THAT happen, can they?

After all, this is the administration that successfully obstructed public access to who advised Dick Cheney?s energy task force and what advice they gave, obstructed access of 9/11 Commission investigators to White House pre-war intelligence, and continue to obstruct access to important documents required for the John Bolton nomination as UN ambassador.

"As long as the White House is not allowing the information to come forward, there's going to be no change in the (Bolton) vote," Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last week.

Obstruction is this administration?s middle name. (Read this past weeks growing flood of stories about the "Downing Street memos." If that?s not definition No. 3, I have no idea what is.)

But who knows, they may well succeed, as they have in the past, fixing that little definitional problem with ?obstruction.? That would leave them with definitions No. 1 and No. 2. These are, at first glance, the very kind of blunt objects Republicans have successfully used in the past to beat Democrats silly. But is being an obstructionist, as defined in 1 and 2, always a negative? Bush and the Rightwingnuts wants to make it so, but IS it?

Well, not always. How nicer the world would have been if the German parliament of the 1930s had had some gutsy and effective obstructionists, eh? And how many more Russians would be alive and kicking today if the Soviet Politburo had obstructed Stalin?s purges ? his version of homeland security? How many fewer people would have died if someone in 1930's Japan had organized enough obstructionists to cripple Japan?s ill-fated imperialist aspirations? Just asking.

And no need to look backwards to find obstrutionist opportunities. I bet the Bushies would love to see some obstructionist pop up within the North Korean and Iranian governments right now. (Of course they would not call them obstructionists. They would call them ?patriots,? and ?friends of democracy.?)

History is chock-full of such missed opportunities, moments when obstructionists might have saved hundreds of millions of people from misery, poverty, oppression and death. There are probably times when obstructionists did just that, but we never hear about them. When something doesn?t happen it becomes the proverbial tree falling in the forest no one hears. Therefore, nowhere will you find an Obstructionist Hall of Fame, museum or monument. We celebrate no Obstructionist Day. There are no obstructionist medals awarded at White House ceremonies.

So the Bushies and their Rightwingnuts want to use the ambiguity around this word as a weapon against their opponents. They will paint Democrats as ?obstructionists.? And make sure you understand that's behavior that with no social upside.

But, as this new word-warping campaign gets underway the press needs to make sure it's coverage of obstrutionism is, dare I say, "fair and balanced." Because clearly there are lots of potential upsides to obstruction, as I've pointed out above.

It might be an interesting exercise to look back and see what obstructionist opportunities the Democrats missed already that might have yielded far better results than the Bush administrations they failed to stop.

Would America be better or worse off today had Democrats successfully obstructed Bush?s rush to war with Iraq?

Would America be better or worse off today had these same Democrats obstructed Bush?s $1.6 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and instead forced a payroll tax cut of less than half that amount for most working Americans?

Would America be better or worse off if Democrats had obstructed Bush?s so-called Medicare Drug Benefit program that prohibits Medicare negotiating lower drug prices, and instead insisted that government (like the VA) use its purchasing power to lower drug costs?

Would American Veterans be better off if Democrats had obstructed Bush's reluctance to adequately fund the VA Health Care & Benefits Budget? Would there be a reduction in the amount of time a disability claim languished for 6 MONTHS or MORE at a VARO?


Would the time a veteran has to wait for a physicians appointment at a VA hospital be reduced from the current SIX MONTHS or MORE(like Bush PROMISED in 1999)?

Would "concurrent receipt" be a fact instead of the less than adequate CRSC and the susbsequent "Veterans Disability Benefits Commission" charged with the cruel pretense and outrageous intent to consider fundamental changes to the VA's disability compensation program?

Would America be better off tomorrow if Democrats obstruct Bush?s energy program, block drilling in the Artic Refuge and refuse to budge until the administration commits agrees to increase higher gas miliage standards on automaters and to fund a 10-year Manhattan Project-level renewable energy research and development program?

Well, what ya think? Is obstruction always a bad thing? Come on Bush voters. I want to hear what you guys have to say. Is it?

Answer the damn questions.

Then I hope most of us will get out there and obstruct something bad -- for all of us and the common good.

Patriotic obstructionists of America, UNITE!

It's what you DO......and not what you SAY,

So let's DO SOMETHING!