Goodnight Mr. Bush
After eight painfully long years George W. Bush will leave office with a dismal 22% approval rating. 490 of his 2,920 days on the job were spent on vacation. That's a year and 4 months for those keeping track at home. And yes that is a Presidential record (previously held by Reagan). I guess there is little to wonder when we reflect upon just how awful his presidency was. Mr. Bush...
You took little action when warned "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" and extended an unjust and illegal retaliatory action to a country who had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. You lied about the Uranium in Niger and are responsible for the outing of a covert CIA agent who disagreed with you in Iraq's nuclear capabilities. Iraq . . . in its wake, no WMD, Abu Ghraib, Walter Reed, veterans denied health care, habeus corpus denied, Gitmo . . . and no Bin Laden.
You tried to stalemate our school systems in an attempt to move them into the private sector with "No Child Left Behind."
You succeeded (just like your predecessors) in giving a generous tax cut to those who already have plenty of money.
You have failed our environment, (Clean skies act, Healthy Forest Initiative, etc) and could care less about Global Warming.
You failed to prepare for, and rebuild after, hurricane Katrina, where many are still without adequate care.
You failed in being a fiscal conservative, inheriting a $200+ billion surplus and turning it into a $10 trillion deficit. This of course helped you to preside over our nation's largest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Glad to see that your compassionate conservatism and commitment to Christian values did us so well.
Goodnight Mr. Bush. May Dallas be as good to you as you were to us.
6 Comments:
I should let it go.
But I can't.
You failed in being a fiscal conservative, inheriting a $200+ billion surplus and turning it into a $10 trillion deficit. This of course helped you to preside over our nation's largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I strongly agree to a point. And that point is the second sentence. Would another president have been able to avoid the current economic crisis? There have been worse ones since the Great Depression, this just happens to be the one we are in right now. Forgive me if you were using hyperbole. There have been 12 recessions in the last 70 years. On average that's one every 6 years if you don't consider the duration of the recession. Probably closer to one every 4 years.
I take issue with this one too: You failed to prepare for, and rebuild after, hurricane Katrina, where many are still without adequate care. feel free to head on over to JMO and search for Katrina to read my thoughts on where the lion's share of Katrina ought to be placed.
You call me out when I hold different presidents to different standards. You took little action when warned "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" Yet Clinton is not at fault for also taking little action?
I take no umbrage with any of the other points made. (Though I thought "No Child" was supposed to help. I don't know enough about it to discuss it.)
Not trying to start an arguement, but if you are going to lambast the man, leave it to the stuff he did. There's more than enough of that.
Here's hoping that the next president will be more fiscally conservative than the last.
i for one am glad to see the inarticulate-war-mongering-fratboy-dbag go. not that i think the other bought out jack ass will be the miracle worker everyone believes he will be. but at least he is on the left side of the spectrum.
(Yeah, those were me... misspellings and bad grammar abound!)
Ready, James?
Are you really ready?
I, too, am glad to see Bush leave office. He's certainly worn out his welcome.
(the second time my word verification was "Palin". This time it's "ofigg" but I don't think that applies...)
Marc,
Would any other President have been able to avoid what we are currently in? Of course. Not saying that some economic cycles can't be avoided, but when a president begins a massive spending campaign that runs up the deficit, fails to veto a single piece of legislation in the first 4 years of his term (which included economic policy) and engages in an unnecessary war (which by nature hurts the economy) then i fault Bush. This isn't to mention the further deregulation of the housing and banking industries.
Katrina - Yes, i read your blog shortly after Katrina hit and unsurprisingly, it was all the Democrat's fault. Despite Mayor Ray Nagin's repeated warnings for residents to leave the city and eventually forcing a mandatory evacuation of the city, Bush appointed Michael Brown as head of FEMA and nominated Michael Chertoff to head Homeland Security.
"Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Michael Chertoff, whose Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for FEMA oversight, have received well-deserved criticism for sleepwalking through the early days of the crisis. Neither Chertoff nor Brown came to his job with any prior experience in disaster management. Brown was the head of the International Arabian Horse Association, and Chertoff spent his career as a criminal prosecutor.
Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, has told the Times-Picayune that he briefed federal officials, including Brown and Chertoff, in the days prior to the disaster about Katrina's potential deadliness, including warning of a surge capable of overwhelming the levees. "We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield told the paper. "It's not like this was a surprise."
President Bush had directed DHS and FEMA to "coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency." Nevertheless, it was not until the day Katrina hit that Brown requested that DHS, within two days, dispatch 1,000 of its employees to the battered region. " Sourced Here. No surprise that Brown stepped down after he botched this mess.
9/11 - I've written about this before and cannot remember if you and I have had talks on this one or not. But here's the write up only 1 year after the events. Clinton had been working on Bin Laden since '98 and passed all known info to to the incoming administration who gave it up for attention to missile defense. Clinton actually did quite a bit but the conservative-owned media doesn't really give these tidbits the time of day. Have a read and let me know what you think.
cheers.
Well, I can't say your views aren't well supported.
Though it is of little importance to the fact that you hold your stance, I "accept" your view of how Bush affected the economy and his "no action" on Bin Laden. (Whoopdee doo, right? You can sleep easier now, James.)
However, I still hold the slightest teeniest issue with the words "Prepare for" in the following sentence: "You failed to prepare for, and rebuild after, hurricane Katrina, where many are still without adequate care"
Rebuilding is totally his administrations fault. Absolutely, 100% and I don't deny that. No one other than the Federal Government has the man power or money to rebuld on that scale. Even though the Church has made a huge impact, even those voluteering their time and money couldn't get the whole job done.
But I don't see how you can blame Bush for the failure of the levies (That is what caused the flooding. Remember, immediately after the storm, reporters on the street were acting as though they'd dodged a bullet.) or for the lack of action regarding the preparations of the city and its evacuation. Regardless of who was head of FEMA, they're not going to fly down and hold up the levies or force people onto the thousands of buses that were destroyed by the floods because they weren't used to get people out of the city.
So, basically, of all of the ways that he adversely affected things, I don't add this small aspect of the huge problem that was Katrian to his stack.
The way i was thinking of it actually was not in terms of flying people down to hold up the levies or forcing onto buses. I was thinking more in terms of report report scenarios as follows:
"In a five-part special report in June 2002, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans laid out in exhaustive detail the imminent threat that hurricane-related flooding posed to the city. "If enough water from Lake Pontchartrain topped the levee system . . . the result would be apocalyptic," the newspaper presciently reported. "Adding a 20-foot storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 storm would mean 30 feet of standing water. . . . Tens of thousands . . . would be stranded on rooftops and high ground, awaiting rescue that could take days or longer. They would face thirst, hunger and exposure to toxic chemicals." Sound familiar?
In an October 2004 feature, National Geographic presented a "doomsday scenario" that it dubbed "not far-fetched." "Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste," the magazine proposed in an imaginary past tense. "Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry. . . . It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States." And today, it is."
And based on these assessments, he appoints a former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association? That's more of what i was thinking about. The warnings that were coming through of a pending disaster on New Orleans, either followed up without action or with poor choices.
Thanks for the thoughts man. Appreciate your openess.
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