I believe that the American public is being held hostage by a government that has been bought and continues to be engineered and tooled. The approval rating of George W. Bush is now at 33%, according to the latest polls. That means that a considerable amount of his "mandate" begs to differ. And then there's the rest of the county who disagreed with him before November of 2004. Not that the Democratic party is any better. They've got a spine made of overcooked spaghetti. At a time when the Administration is running willy-nilly trying to spin gasoline prices, a record war deficit, lies about public surveillance policy, lies about reasons for going to war, and lies about revealing the names of CIA operatives as a revenge m.o.- the Democrats are scratching their collective posterior trying to figure out what to do.

Hence, I claim that our beloved country is being held hostage by its political system. What do we need? I think the average American could tell you. Here is the wish list, drawn from the collective consciousness:

• Where is Osama Bin Laden? Get your hands on him at all costs. Make the current Administration accountable for its lack of results.
• Couldn't we have offered any Middle Eastern country $400 billion for its oil and not have gotten it at the additional cost of so many lives lost? What foreign leader wouldn't have jumped at that deal? And then consider Saddam Hussein, broke after years of sanctions. He would have sold out for a lot less, I'm willing to wager.
• End the lies. Really. Just stop. The average American really isn't as stupid as the President and his Administration believe they are. We are, however, disgusted and ashamed.
• Get the country back to work. This means ending the trade deficit with China. This means no more fuzzy math. This means no more jobs going overseas. Explain to me how you can cut taxes, cut income and jobs for Americans, run up a war deficit and not expect the country to go broke?
  
• We've seen what deficits can do to a country at war. The Mujahadeen did it to the USSR in the eighties, and they're doing it to the United States now. We're dumb enough not to learn from others' mistakes, apparently. I'll say it again: Get Osama and get the hell out of Afghanistan.
• Fix New Orleans. It is an unqualified failure that people are still without proper living conditions in that region almost a year after the disaster.
  
• No more oil by 2020. That's right. We need someone to step up and say, as president, that we'll end our dependence on oil as of 2020. To the scientists and auto industry, "You've got 12 years. We're going to throw a lot of money at this problem. I don't want to see anything but asses and elbows moving. Get the job done." Let the Middle East keep their dust and sun and thick, black crude oil. End it.
• Education: Schools are held accountable to a very high standard now, thanks to No Child Left Behind (see: "Harrison Bergeron") and students are being pushed through a mill of tests, the value of which is spurious, at best. Tests are only one part of the scientific equation. There is much left to examine, such as:
• Student disposition at the time of the test. Sleepy, bored, surly, depressed, or generally pissed-off teenagers don't make good test takers, but there is no scientific control or study that reveals what happens to test results under those conditions.
• Parent accountability: That's right. The most important person(s) in a child's life and they're not accountable for one iota of a student's progress in education. It will take a statesman to address that problem. We can't count on politicians.

Were these fundmental changes to be made, there would still be a boatload of problems to redress. The Administration's wholesale attack on the environment ("Global warming is a myth.") the abuse of education at the expense of one religion ("Intelligent Design") the support for faith-based initiatives which continue to errode the demarcation between Church and State, the problems with North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs (after Bush Administration's withdrawal of the US from the Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty)- just to name a few, will need to be repaired.

And then there is the problem of the of the United States' relationship with countries around the world. After nearly a decade of a renegade, arrogant, tactless President, we're going to have a LOT of work to do.