Bush's last...

I listened to just a few minutes of President Bush's State of the Union address last evening as I drove to chorus practice. I didn't hear anything remarkable, nor did it seem I missed anything remarkable in the parts of the speech I didn't hear. In fact my strongest reaction was simply relief that this was the last State of the Union this President would ever give. And then I had an even more liberating reaction when I realized that throughout this year our country will continue to pass milestones where President Bush in his final year goes through his last this or that.

George Bush has been a catastrophe for our nation, our human world, and our planet. After eight years of neglect and wrong actions I'm finally beginning to feel some hope that we will survive and have another chance to first, undo the damage done, and second get us back on the track we should have been: positioning the United States as a responsible world citizen and steward of the earth in partnership with other nations and not as we have arrogantly imagined ourselves as an exception among the nations that sets rules for how others must behave but refuses any accountability for our own actions.

Unfortunately we're still at least a year away from that identity shift. But at least with our President newly disempowered by lame duck status and a Democratic congress, there's little additional havoc we must endure as we wait out these now 51 weeks remaining.