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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
1) Bush inherited a recession. After the election, he tried to warn the country of an impending economic turndown. That was poo-pooed. It did not come for months, but the dot-com bubble popped. 2) Bush inherited a feckless mid-east policy. You may remember the "Cole." But then you seem to have forgotten 9/11.
As a matter of fact, you seem to have forgotten the Iranian hostage crisis and Carter's weak response, which began all this, that along with Carter's growing hostility to Israel, the strong horse in the region, for its unwillingness to accept Carter's pacifist platitudes. His secretary of state is still out there, trying to revise history.
But back to 1). Everyone seems to have forgot that from 2001-2003 the Democrats controlled the Senate, and that afterwards they with the aid of "moderate" Republicans were able to checkmate many of Bush's iniatives. His efforts, however, mild, to reign in Fran and Fred, were fought strongly by Chris and Barney, and a herd of lobbyists. Bush made many mistakes, especially in his attachment to a weak dollar and probably his bailout measures , but nothing is gained for the future by lying about the complicity of the Democrats in the present mess. A myth is being created about Bush as one was created about Hoover, which serves the Democrats and gives them cover for all sorts of things. Which is a danger, because it makes possible, Smoot-Hawley-type measures which, we now know, was the worst thing that could have been done.
So scape-goating is an exercise in rhetoric. I down save us from anything. Buchanan did not start the Civil War: Lincoln did. Hoover did not start the Depression; he just couldn't stop it, in part because he did the wrong stuff. I submit that Obama not stands in a position
that Hoover did in the spring of 1930 when his basic instincts and public pressure was telling him to "act, act, act." So he did and only made things worse by acting. You critics of Bush
say that he only made things worse by acting as he did in the Middle East. If You believe what you said, then you ill be pushing Obama to be cautious. Things are not always as they seem.
Now through the inauguration, VERSUS (http://versusplus.com) is featuring a different Bush Era parody from the VERSUS catalogue every day.
Today's parody: "S.O.S." -- to "Dream A Little Dream of Me" -- about Katrina & FEMA & Bush.
Coming tomorrow: "Guantanamo!" -- to "Camelot" -- about Bush & Guantanamo.
"Whatever Obama does he plausibly can't do worse than Bush. I guess he could proclaim himself emperor and enslave everyone, mandate we all speak Esperanto or something like that, but otherwise, it's impossible to be unable improve on Bush."
I bet a lot of people said the same thing regarding Hoover and FDR. I know they said it about Ford and Carter. Unfortunately, the policies of FDR and Carter made things even worse than they were under Hoover and Ford.
I am like the ones who not only blame Bush but the idiots who voted for him too! Not only once but twice. When in all reality they knew just how terrible he was the second time around. But, like my son went ahead and voted for him anyway because he deluded himself there was no one else to vote for. Well, there is always someone else to vote for. You can even leave it blank and have your other votes counted (I have asked before when I voted). These people bare the vast majority of the responsibility for the mess we are in today. All Bush had to was mention he was Christian and all the religious nuts flocked to him in droves. Instantly forgeting about his lies in regards to starting a unnecessary war because he was going to make abortion illegal. Now that is really a more important issue than people getting killed due to an unnecessary war. When being a Christian is literally your only qualification for the job. What do people expect? But, a economic and social disaster that is unparalleled.
What a great synopsis of what I have always considered Cheney and friends' grand strategy--a massive heist of government funds for incompetent cronies. These people were never interested in doing a good job. Their conservative philosophy declared government to be bad and mismanaged, and they ensured that it would in fact be so. Now that they are gone, have gotten their friends another trillion dollar flood of money, and can retire to their beach houses on the now black-free Gulf Coast, these fuckers can loudly proclaim themselves the proud opposition to government excess.
It is simple thievery. To honor crooks with nefarious aims other than simple stealing is to miss their true culpability and the American people's lack of clarity in discerning the real issues and aims of the Bush (Cheney) Administration.
Torture, terror, detention, habeas, etc., were all fear-induced smokescreens to hide the bank job.
Did I miss something? 2 1/2 pages of this article emphasizes insurmountable debt. Yet when referring to saving our coastal cities, we don't need to worry because of our wealth -- what wealth? If this current situation can be fixed, isn't it expected to take decades to remedy? Someone thinks we'll be wealthy enough to save coastal cities in a couple of decades?
Jim Kunstler has a better analysis of Bush and the times in which we live at http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/.
A couple of very good quotes from the article are these:
"GWB won reelection in 2004 -- running against the weak John Kerry, "a haircut in search of a brain," as Kevin Phillips put it so memorably, who was not smart enough to pander successfully (though he tried) to the dominant, Jesus-soaked Nascar fans who inhabit the Moron Crescent that runs from West Virginia south through Dixie and then west into Idaho. GWB was still riding pretty high when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the swamps and beaches east of Lake Ponchartrain, and the president failed to direct anybody to so much as air-drop bottled drinking water for survivors dying on rooftops and highway overpasses in New Orleans. The Left, once again, adopted an idiotic narrative to explain the event -- that Bush acted to punish African-Americans -- when plain incompetence combined with grandiose expectations for a televised happy ending to instead produce tragedy."
Here's another one:
" To me, GWB will remain the perfect representative of his time, place, and culture. During his years in Washington, America became a nation of clowns posturing in cowboy hats, bethinking ourselves righteous agents of Jesus in a Las Vegas of the spirit, where wishing was enough to get something for nothing, where "mistakes were made," but everybody was excused from the consequences of bad choices. The break from that mentality will be very severe, and we may look back in twelve months and wonder how we ever fell for the whole package. The answering of that question will occupy historians for ages to come."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
