Spring showers pelted most of the country on the last day of March, 2008. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members worked methodically and rescue operations across the country continued furiously. Reminiscent of the devastation that Hurricane Katrina had wreaked on New Orleans in 2005, the search-and-rescue work seemed to move at a snail's pace. In 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) had been severely criticized for its incompetency and slow reaction time; a year later, many New Orleans residents were still displaced and the city was still in tatters. On the first anniversary date of the storm, President George Bush visited the city, promoting his political puffery and valueless verbage about all the money his administration had thrown at the problem. Even the black Mayor of New Orleans vocally rallied against all the new "white" developments that were being planned, which he feared would minimize New Orleans' diversity and colorful culture. His city was about to become the 'Las Vegas of the South' as developers planned high-rise casinos and five-star hotels, mostly to be built using federal grant money and funds allocated for "disaster relief". The poor black neighborhoods would be bulldozed over and those cheerful people who called New Orleans their home would have to fend for themselves in other cities around the South. In the capitalist world of George Bush there was no room for impoverished people, welfare recipients (unless, of course, you were a huge multi-billion-dollar corporation applying for government tax breaks or low-cost financing), and those without wealth, status, power, or position.
Now, FEMA had been reduced to an impotent agency unable to participate in the devastation now facing America. Governors and mayors suddenly recognized they couldn't depend on government hand-outs to help them; they would have to find ways to bail themselves out of their local disaster plights. It was the first lesson in self-sufficiency, all part of an O.U.T.R.A.G.E. plan that would reduce the federal government to a slight shell of its former self. No longer would txpayers send all their money to Washington, where crazy politicians would dole it out recklessly and irresponsibly. Money would now stay in local communities, where it could be stockpiled, invested, and used as necessary at the local and regional levels. It no longer mde sense to send all those billions of dollars to Washington just so Washington could decide when - and if - they should send it back to you. The federal government was going to be put on a fiscal diet designed to cut out the obesity and bloatedness that had infested it for decades.
One of the most vociferous, vile examples of the wastrel the Bush administration had become was also a blatant exhibit of how the corporate world and the world of government had become too entertwined. The late Vice-President Dick Cheney had been a chief executive at Halliburton, an 86-year-old company that suddenly found itself swimming in a pool of excessive profits once Cheney became Vice-President and the illegal war in Iraq began. In the fall of 2003, Cheney proudly announced on 'Meet the Press" that, "Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind." Cheney overlooked the fact that he'd been given a $1.4 million cash bonus just prior to assuming the Vice-Presidency. He also failed to mention his $20 million severance package after serving as Halliburton's CEO for just five years. He apparently forgot about the $205,298 Halliburton paid him in 2001; the $162,392 he received in 2002; the $178,437 given to him in 2003; and, perhaps he didn't even know at that time about the $194,852 he would receive in 2004 or the $211,465 he'd get in 2005.
Halliburton, on the other hand, was happier than a pig in shit. Since 2001, the company had received more than $15 billion in government contracts, much of it flooding into company coffers once the Iraq war began in earnest. Apparently it was perfectly acceptble for the company to charge American taxpayers $50 a day for workers whom the company paid 50 cents an hour, or six bucks for 12-hour day. Apparently it was perfectly acceptable for taxpayers to pay Halliburton $45 for a case of soft drinks and $100 for washing a bag of the government's dirty laundry. When Senator Patrick Leahy aired more dirty laundry on the Senate floor in 2004, criticizing Cheney's ongoing ties to Halliburton, Cheney's public response - on the record - was, 'Go fuck yourself!"
The Bush administration had taken its lust for power and control to extremes. In May, 1999, when George W. Bush was still Governor of Texas, he responded to some well-rounded criticims by saying, "There ought to be limits to freedom."
Since 2000, the Bush administration had made great strides in taking away Americans' rights and freedoms. Bush manipulated the lethargic American media by leaking information he wanted released, but angrily tried to censor news reports which he wanted kept secret. Lying to the American public was commonplace. Arrogant, flummoxed, jumbled remarks became a trademark of George Bush's lack of any intelligence or dignity. He was nothing more than a spoiled, rich-kid cowboy who'd ended up in the White House because of his daddy's money, power and influence. Without the family support, George W. Bush couldn't have been elected dogcatcher in a canine-free Texas township. He spoke with a stammer, often making incomplete and nonsensical "statements". Even more so than the satirical beating President Gerald Ford took over his clumsiness, George Bush was portrayed on late-night comedy shows as a simple buffoon, incapable of forming complete sentences. Clearly, behind-the-scenes power brokers were pulling George Bush's strings. Clearly, George Bush was clueless as to what he was supposed to do as President and Commander-In-Chief of the greatest super power on Earth. A poster boy for little-pecker syndrome, Bush loved to swagger around on an aircraft carrier in a flak-jacket, pretending to be a military leader. In fact, had George W. Bush ever had to face fighting on the front lines of Iraq with real weapons loaded with real ammunition, his immediate needs for changes of underwear might have justified Halliburton's $100 fee for laundry services. Bush was more a devout coward than he was a born-again Christian.
The hundreds of thousands of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members who mingled in small 'cells' around the nation in 2005, 2006, and 2007, firmly believed in the 'Rebellion of '08' as necessary and, as the only way to annihilate the evil atrocities George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and a cowardly, incompetent, corrupt U.S. Congress had implemented. The U.S.A. needed to return to a nation of honor, integrity and morality. Wealthy elitists, corrupt politicians, special interest groups, big business power, lobbyists, wicked celebrities, and those whose demented influences had made them rich at the expense of America's moral decay had to be killed. It was the only way to keep the cancer from spreading. Now America could return to being a nation of peace-loving, decent, respectable, honest, moral citizens. This was not about religion or spirituality; those were individual matters of the soul. This was about humanity and civility, something that the animal kingdom seemed to understand much better than the raucous, raunchy society of homosapiens who had elevated killing, cheating, stealing, lying, and all kinds of other baleful maliciousness to new levels of bizarre consciousness.
To the satisfaction of millions, and to the horror of many more millions, the Bush administration, a vitiated U.S. Congress, and many of America's greediest, wealthiest, sleaziest celebrities and most powerful people were dead. All over the world, there had been vivid celebrations marking the end of an obtuse reign of terror that George Bush had inflicted upon billions of people. In some places, those celebratory dances were still going on, 75 days after the massacres. While many countries were sending aid for hurricane and earthquake victims, many of those same nations' leaders were quietly rejoicing that the George Bush "evil empire" had finally come to an end. Nuclear weapons of mass destruction didn't seem quite so important now that the schoolyard bully had been eliminated. Perhaps the idea of world peace wasn't so far-fetched afterall. Scrutiny of this O.U.T.R.A.G.E. organization seemed to confirm its intentions were straight-forward and honorable. This was no grab for power of the world's greatest nation; it was a well-devised plan to make America a better citizen of the global community. Even Colin Powell, the interim President, had made a public apology to the world.
Tomorrow was April 1st; no doubt some in American society were hoping to wake up and discover this had all been one cruel April Fools' hoax. Millions of Americans, however, looked with admiration toward O.U.T.R.A.G.E. and staunchly supported its agenda of peace, equality and humility.