Songfacts®:

• This song is a scathing attack on President George W. Bush, who Rickie Lee Jones felt was stifling free speech and dangerously inept. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Bush enacted the Patriot Act, which gave the government expanded powers at the expense of civil liberties, something Jones felt was horrifying. "People in America are afraid to say anything," she told The Guardian. "They are afraid of George Bush, afraid of the police, afraid of being fined, afraid of being accused. I feel I'm in the right place and right time spiritually to stand up."
• Jones doesn't limit her vitriol to George W. Bush; she also takes a swipe at his father, George H. W. Bush, who was president from 1989-1993:
  
  He'll look at you and tell you lies
  He grew up to be like his father
  Ugly inside