As the Pixies once said in a noisy garage, “this monkey’s gone to heaven.” Though they were an obscure band in the late eighties, they nonetheless made a good point. Our glorious leader, Mr. President Bush, tried to shuffle out of office on a positive note, but nobody in the television audiencereally paid much attention. Thanks to the legacy of the only credible aristocratic American family, the sensational senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), announced his endorsement of Barack Obama just an hour before Bush spoke to Congress on Jan. 28.In the long wait before Bush spoke, those wonderful CNN commentators spent considerable time discussing the Kennedy endorsement, as well as Obama’s failure to acknowledge Hillary Clinton. This stole more thunder from Bush, which unfortunately meant that no one really paid a lot of attention to what the President said. While most of it was standard nationalistic drivel, some rang as harshly as a cheese grater on my mind. First off, Bush spent a great deal of time talking about the need for Congress to trust people with their money. Imploring them to trust in “expanding consumer choice,” Bush implied that privatization is the key to improving the economy. Now, this sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Privatization means more business taking the place of government programs, but while this will create jobs and stimulate the economy at first, the lasting implications are a death knell to the middle class.

That’s because the more you deregulate and privatize government programs and bodies, like the FCC, the more you allow big business to further monopolize the economy, choking the viability of successful small businesses, the driving forces behind a powerful economy. This also gives big business another foothold in government. Because of Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of the FCC, monopolies like Clear Channel have been able to buy up almost every independent radio station in America. Because of privatization and deregulation, the American media is now run by five mega-corporations, instead of the 55 corporations that entertained America during the 1950s. Considering that the average American has some amount of credit card debit and the ultra-commercial culture we live in, trusting people with their money by privatizing Social Security and other government programs will only drain money away from the people and into the hands of the corporations. Personally, I don’t want to live in an oligarchy, I don’t want to be run by a Corporation telling me I need it.

But what really drove me nuts, was Bush’s attempt to keep himself from being the most-hated President. What I’m referring to is his late, lackluster proposal of a “new” international “agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride.” Despite his vague hope that the agreement could have the “potential” to stop global warming, what he’s really doing is making up for his idiotic decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Now that global warming isn’t just a fringe issue, Bush is willing to sign a treaty like Kyoto, but because he’s so hated and disliked by most of America, he thinks that if he were to draft his own, history would remember that, instead of his Kyoto decision. So while we can thank Al Gore for trying to save the world, Bush’s desperate attempt to reach across the aisle and get a working bipartisan treaty on global warming flounders before it can take hold, as many recognize his proposal as a limp offering. That Pixies song, “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven,” is apt for Bush, as it is actually about man’s destruction of the oceans and the resulting environmental catastrophe.

Who knows whether or not Bush’s signature on the Kyoto Protocol would make a difference in the coming years, but one thing’s for sure, now that Bush has given his last State address, this monkey really has gone to heaven and not many people will know his passing.