Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
WHY MORMON MEN CAN’T BE TRUSTED — A ex-Mormon woman looks back at the Church. PLUS It’s fifty years since the Port Huron statement. Alexander Cockburn on the origins of SDS and one of the crucial documents of the 1960s. PLUS Two ounces of oil + a fishing boat + Homeland Security Incident #995038 = the onward march of totalitarianism in America. Read Captain Knutson’s story.
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
I think that I shall never see
A president as great as he.
A Bush upon whose bristly limbs
War hawks sit singing Gospel hymns.
A Bush which lifts its limbs to pray
No same-sex marriage gets away
From laws that halt stem cell research,
Free choice, and everything the church
Forbids. This Bush knows how to hide a
Killer bee for each Al Qaeda
Terrorist and Democrat.
Its shrubby branches’ rat-a-tat
Is heard throughout the world, and I
Am here to praise this Bush or die.
Pencils may be meant to push.
Only God has pull with Bush.
JAMES REISS is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His most recent book is Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems (Salt Publishing). He’s He can be reached at: reissja@muohio.edu