At the end of the Bush/Cheney regime, where do we stand?
They promised to protect this nation and entered office with warnings that the greatest threat to it was Al Queda but chose to ignore those warnings and allow the most deadly attack on this nation in almost twoo hundred years.
They promised to reduce the size of government. It's grown more than any time in the past several decades.
They entered with a budget surplus and promised to add to it, but are leaving with the largest deficit in history.
They put down "nation-building" and said our military would never be used for that nor would we ever engage in it under their administration. They leave with our military still engaged in a more than five-year effort to rebulld Iraq, a nation needing rebuilding because our military (under order from Bush/Cheney) destroyed that nation.
They promised to find Bin Laden and either kill him or bring him to justice. He's still at large (living in a "villa," not a cave, according to Christiana Amanpour's sources, which, as opposed to Bush/Cheney's, have proven to be reliable).
They promised to listen to their own military leaders and "commanders in the field" but instead demoted or forced into early retirement any general or admiral who disagreed with them.
They promised to create jobs and build our economy, which was already sound and had resulted under Clinton/Gore in more jobs being created than under any previous administration. They leave with the economy in the worst shape it's been in in a century, according to some of their own experts, and with job losses increasing every month.
They promised a "humbler" foreign policy. They leave having tried to bully other nations around the world into following orders from them, only to see the prestige of the U. S. government diminished to its lowest ebb in modern history and perhaps in all our history.
They promised to end partisan fights and "reach across the aisle" only to end up demanding everyone follow their orders lockstep or be branded unpatriotic or even traitorous.
They pretended to respect the Constitution, especially the privacy parts, but ignored the Constituion time and again and only fought to protect the privacy of profiteers and corporations, invading the privacy of citizens more extremely than under any previous administration even in war time.
They promised to return "honor" to the government and then overturned the historic tradition created by George Washington before we were even yet an independent country when in the Revolutionary War he set the policy which our military would maintain until Bush/Cheney of treating captured enemy combatants as we would want our troops treated, and in doing so brought shame not only on our country and our military, adding to the loss of prestige for our government and people, but also brought shame on this administration when it lied about deliberately designing a policy that not only tolerated torture but encouraged it and held only a hand full of low level troops accountable refusing to prosecute or even investigate those who designed and ordered the torture policy.
They promised to make government more efficient but instead rewarded their followers with more pork and perks and corrupt power coming close to bankrupting the economy and rendering government agencies virtually useless (see response to Katrina, warnings about Wall Street, etc.)
This list could go on for several more days, probably weeks, even months if we really got into the details, but the main point should be this—the only thing this administration and the Rovian philosophy behind it accomplished successfully was to get and hold on to power no matter how they had to lie steal and cheat to do it, and to use that power to reward friends and punish enemies, not based on those peoples' contributions to the welfare of the nation, but on those peoples contributions to the getting and maintaining of that power.
May their God hold them accountable for their deeds.
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5 comments:
It don't matta.
All you old whites mens time is over.
And we ain't havin no tokens or wiggers.
Maxine Waters will be Speaker of the House
Clinton certainly was wrong with his policy of arrest and prosecute rather than pursue and kill. Bush came belately to that policy but 9/11 changed all the rules. Contrary to all expectations we have avoided a repeat attack on American soil.
Bush has been derelict of duty in not vetoing Republican overspending. In retrospect he should have done a better job of publicising reform of the GSEs that he and Clinton proposed and congressional Democrats opposed.
Nation building was a response to 9/11 which, to repeat, changed everything.
Bush, as did Lincoln, listened to those mitlitary commanders who brought victory.
Bush inherited an economy that was in recession. The recovery from 9/11 was extraordinary. The terrible congressional lack of oversight of the GSEs, that allowed Raines to run Fannie Mae at 100 to 1 leverage and than cook the books much worse than Enron, was crimminal. We are probably now in recession. It was entirely preventable. Congressional inaction on the GSEs brought it on. Democrats blocked oversight and deleverage in order to maintain cheap and fradulent lending to people who were not financially qualified.
Humble foriegn policy is for US Liberals, who respect other forms of govenment more than the US representative democracy. I prefer a more robust forign policy when our way of life is threatened from abroad.
McCain has a two decade plus history of reaching across party lines, much to the consternation of Conservatives. Obama has never reached across party lines and has a history association with Chicago machine politics.
Mike, as usual, you get very little right.
I wonder what a "Wigger" is?
McCain is running on a slogan of "Change"; as did Bush and Reagan before him. Bush was going to be different as a "compassionate conservative". Reagan was a cowboy and supposed to be a "Washington Outsider".
These are all just empty campaign promises. If anybody out there thinks that things in Washington will be different under McCain-- just because he says he's for change-- I have a bridge to sell you.
Things will be different if we get Obama. Taxes will go up on capital and on corporations in time of economic distress. Idividiual taxes will also go up on entrepeneurs who provide the most job growth in our economy.
There will be higher probalility that infants who survive abortion will be allowed to die.
Obama has said he will meet directly with leaders who hate America without preconditions. Enemies will no longer fear us and allies will not be able to count on us.
Israel will be more at risk since Obama is the Hamas candidate. In addition to Ayers close friend and recipient of funds from the Chicago Annenberg progect that Obama chaired, he also directed funds and praised Ayers friend who was a former PLO member and obviously anti Israel.
Obama will probably continue to protect Raines, Frank, Dodd and other perpetraters of possiblilty of the worst US financial debacle in American history. US citizens and taxpayers will pay for this incompetence for a generation.
We should expect a Canandian or Cuban style of health care which will destroy the world renown quality of the American health system.
All in all the govenment will expand at a faster rate to the detriment of the private sector.
And of course free speech will be at jepordy. Obama has already demonstrated with his "Truth Squads" that his model will be Woodrow Wilson style fascism. The Fairness Doctrine will be adoped and talk radio, Fox News, MSNBC will disappear.
Obama will team with Pelosi and Reid. We will have hyper Liberal Fascist legislation that will fundamentally change America for the worse.
America will be poorer in wealth and in spirit. But, we will have the Obamasiah and not only that, he will be a black Messiah, which in the liberal mind will help make up for slavery and pre civil rights abuses.
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