Tag: Bush

Yet Another Bush As Prez?

Former President George H.W. Bush said his son Jeb should run for president and blasted the New York Times for its “grossly unfair” criticism of another son, President George W. Bush.

During an interview on “FOX News Sunday,” the nation’s 41st president said Jeb, the former governor of Florida, is “as qualified and as able as anyone I know in the political scene” to be president.

In the meantime, Jeb could take another job, his father suggested.

“If Jeb wants to run for the Senate from Florida, he ought to do it,” Bush said. “He’d be an outstanding senator. This is a guy that really has a feel for people, the issues in Florida and nationally. And his political days ought not to be over, says his old father.”

Please…NO more talk about another Bush presidency–we have been punished enough by the last one.

A “Democratic” Georgia?

Yes, Irene, I am still talking about the country and not the state that made Laster Maddox famous.

One of the constant themes in the US government and media presentation of the conflict in the Caucasus is the depiction of Georgia as a bastion of democracy. The Bush administration has increasingly invoked the terminology of the Cold War by referring to “democratic Georgia” as a symbol of the “free world” and its struggle against authoritarian Russia.

The reality of political life in Georgia is far different than the media image.

Only last November, in the midst of mounting protests against his regime, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili employed dictatorial methods against his opponents. On November 2, opposition demonstrations began in Tbilisi, demanding democratic reforms and the ouster of Saakashvili. These protests, while organized by billionaire media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, gave vent to grievances against government repression and the desperate living conditions of the population. They attracted tens of thousands to the streets of Georgia’s capital city.

Saakashvili declared a state of emergency, suspending democratic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly. Independent broadcasting was halted even before the state of emergency was declared, and only the state-controlled television station was allowed to broadcast for a period of fifteen days. Imeldi was taken off the air indefinitely.

During the crackdown, Saakashivli called for snap elections to be held less than two months later, on January 5. The elections, held under conditions of political intimidation and repression, placed the opposition at an enormous disadvantage.

In fact, the “excesses” of Saakashvili in putting down peaceful protests were not mere aberrations. The US State Department, in its 2008 “Country Reports in Human Rights,” listed the following in relation to the Georgian government: “at least one reported death due to excessive use of force by law enforcement officers, cases of torture and mistreatment of detainees, abuse of prisoners, excessive use of force to disperse demonstrations, poor conditions in prisons and pretrial detention facilities, impunity of police officers, continued overuse of pretrial detention for less serious offenses, lack of access for average citizens to defense attorneys, lack of due process in some cases, and reports of government pressure on the judiciary.”

The country is not the bastion of democracy that McCain and Bush would like us to believe.  This rhetoric is beginning to sound like the rhetoric from the old “Cold War” days.

2008 Anal-Ocity

More for my readers to consider. Are they arrogant? Or just plain stupid?

Referring to Russia’s incursion into Georgia, President Bush says that invading a sovereign country that poses no threat is “unacceptable in the 21st century.” John McCain echoes that sentiment with, “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

We have co-nominees today–they sound like the same person……keep that in mind when considering where to put your vote.

Contraception Is Really Abortion

A Bush administration plan to define several widely used contraception methods as abortion is a “gratuitous, unnecessary insult” to women and faces tough opposition, Sen. Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

The former Democratic presidential candidate joined family planning groups to condemn the proposal that defines abortion to include contraception such as birth control pills and intrauterine devices.

It would cut off federal funds to hospitals and states where medical providers are obligated to offer legal abortion and contraception to women.

nsure that women can get contraception when they want or need it. It also would help protect the rights of medical providers to refuse to offer contraception.

Alrighty then, is not about time to let this go?  Stop meddling into people’s lives.  This is a decision made by an individual and in NO way should concern the government.

Diplomatic Mission To Iran?

Wait!  I read this in the NY Times:

The Bush administration is considering establishing an American diplomatic presence in Iran for the first time since relations were severed during the 444-day occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran nearly three decades ago, European and American officials said on Thursday.

The idea would be to establish a so-called interests section, rather than a fully staffed embassy, with American diplomats who could issue visas to Iranians seeking to visit the United States. But the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic rules, cautioned that the idea had not been approved by the White House and could be delayed or blocked by opposition within the administration.

The proposal comes as the White House is adopting new tactics in dealing with Iran. With six months left in office, Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appear to be looking for new ways to reach out to the Iranian people as the administration tries to bring a peaceful resolution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program.

Wait!  Is this the same president that said diplomatically meeting with Iran would be compared to the appeasement of Hitler by Chamberlin of UK?  Did I miss something while I slept?

Democrats Are Cowards!

In an across-the-board capitulation to the Bush White House, the House of Representatives voted at the end of this week to approve another $162 billion to fund the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while also passing legislation that legalizes the administration’s domestic spying program.

Bush credited “bipartisan cooperation” for a war-funding vote that would give “our troops the funds they need to prevail without tying the hands of our commanders in the field or imposing artificial timetables for withdrawal.” The surveillance law, he added, would “help our intelligence professionals learn our enemies’ plans for new attacks.”

The congressional Democrats have given the administration more funds than it requested for the two wars—paying in advance for most of fiscal 2009—in order to avoid another vote on war funding in October, on the eve of the national elections. Their aim is to get the issue “off the table” now so that they can better posture as opponents of the war and appeal to mass antiwar sentiments at the height of the election contest.

In a pathetic and hypocritical speech from the floor of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared: “Let us hope that this is the last time there will ever be another dollar spent without restraints, without conditions, without direction. Why should we trust the same judgment that got us here in the first place in this war?”

The Democratic-led Congress has passed this legislation to pay for another year of war and to eviscerate constitutional rights less than five months before an election in which they intend to make two-faced appeals to the massive popular hostility towards the Bush administration.

What the actions this week on Capitol Hill make clear, however, is that the election of a Democratic administration headed by Barack Obama in the fall will by no means spell an end to the reactionary policies pursued by Washington over the previous eight years.

They are cowards!  Not a person of principle left in politics!  And they wonder why their popularity is at 23%.  They have done little that they were sent to Washington to do–they give everything lip service, but none have the conviction to end the crap of the Bush years.  And it does not look like the next 8 years or so will be any better.  You have my sympathy!

Republican BS On Energy

In a piece written by H. Rosenfeld, he states the following:

Remedies for soaring gasoline prices proposed by President Bush and Sen. John McCain, who the GOP prays succeeds him, would increase America’s capacity to produce more energy from its own resources.

What those remedies would not do is reduce the cost of gas anytime soon or much ever. The President’s demand that Congress immediately lift its bans on exploring for oil and natural gas off-shore and on federal lands wouldn’t be productive for at least seven years, more likely 10. The impact on world prices, and on the cost of a gallon of gas in America, would be minimal. That’s because the U.S. controls, at most, only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

Nowhere in the Bush or McCain proposals is there so much as a hint that all of the added oil and gas would be retained exclusively for American consumption, which presently accounts for a quarter of the world’s production. That’s because it wouldn’t. Instead America’s mammoth oil companies would continue to seek the highest returns, meaning the growing markets in Asia especially.

The 200 mile off-shore exploration requires the use of drill ships outfitted with the gear to exploit oil fields located deep in ocean beds. The makers of the these ships are furiously building, but the world competition for their product is severe. That adds to the time lag between finding a field and exploiting it commercially.

For his part, McCain came out in another speech for the building of 45 nuclear power plants in the U.S. by 2030, and another 55 some unspecified time down the road. At present, the 104 nuclear reactors still on line produce about 20 percent of the country’s electricity. Bush also routinely invokes nuclear power as an energy shortage antidote.

Their reasoning is why not step up nuclear’s role because it does not add to the global warming as fossil fuels do.

What McCain did not discuss was the practicality of doing so. The federal government over the years has dedicated billions of dollars in subsidies to the nuclear industry. But that would be chicken feed to what it would cost to erect new plants today. It could well be so much that any gains would be overtaken by their costs. Besides, McCain has no plan to add to nuclear subsidies, pretty much undermining his supposedly bold idea.

Dealing with the challenge of the energy crisis requires more than political tomfoolery that the Republican President and the Republican candidate have so far mustered. The solution rests in the nearer future much more on government supported conservation. On their own, Americans are beginning to drive less. They should be enabled to do so in more efficient vehicles and encouraged to otherwise modify the profligate ways energy is consumed in this country. That actually would bring costs down.

May I suggest that the voter take the time to read about the issues and vote from knowledge.  They have been voting for BS for too many years and that is why we are in this pickle now.  Lies and pandering have done nothing to improve the lives of working Americans.

Bush Impeachment And Do Nothing Democrats

Last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich stood for nearly five hours in the House chamber, reading aloud the case for impeaching President George W. Bush.

The irony is that Kucinich’s fellow Democrats, in their own act of dereliction of duty, chose to bury these 35 articles of impeachment.

It would be one thing if these Democrats thought the charges against Bush weren’t justified. Most of them believe that the president did indeed break the law, violated the Constitution and probably deserves to be impeached.

But they will not debate the issue because it doesn’t help their cause politically. They like the fact that Bush is president, that his blunders have killed his credibility and that of his party. He has become the best advertisement Democrats have for why the GOP should be kicked out of Washington this November.

But how do Democrats make the case that they stand for change and accountability when they fail so spectacularly to even discuss holding Bush accountable for anything?
Democrats have a great knack for engaging in political calculations that result in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. For too long they have tried to finagle, position and con their way to victory, trying to tell voters what they want to hear, even if it goes against their core principles. Voters as a group might be dumb enough to fall for Bush’s “compassionate conservative” line, but they easily can smell the fakery that has been the Democratic brand for too long.
The argument being made against seeking impeachment is that we have other pressing issues to take care of. Yes, we do. But what lasting effect will there be by setting a precedent of not acting on alleged lawbreaking by the president? Congress can’t spare a few hours to uphold the Constitution? I bet if we take a close look at their schedules, there’s plenty of time to spare on a hearing or two.

McCain-omics

This is a piece written by Jared Bernstein reviewing McCain’s stated approach to economics.

First, the gas tax holiday is smart politics but lousy policy. As Taplin aptly described, high gas prices are sending an important economic signal and jamming that signal is ill-advised. On the other hand, as one of the commenters points out, this idea could really help some strapped families.

The problem is there’s absolutely nothing to stop the oil companies from claiming a big chunk of this subsidy by raising the pretax price of gas at the pump. Prices go up in the summer anyway, and I’ll bet you a gallon of premium that they go up even more than usual, such that some of that 18.4 cents/gallon ends up back in Exxon’s wallet, not yours.

Which leaves us with a nice little transfer from taxpayers to oil companies. Nice work, John.

Also, and this is an important theme re McCain-onomics, he assiduously avoids connecting the dots between taxes and what they finance. As the AP wrote today, “The federal gasoline tax helps pay for highway projects in nearly every town through a dedicated trust fund. In the past, such proposals for gas tax holidays have not fared well as lawmakers and state and local officials prefer not to see changes in their revenue source.”

Next, there’s his idea to simplify the tax code by introducing “an alternative new and simpler tax system” that offers taxpayers the choice of staying in the current system or opting to pay taxes under “a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction” (I couldn’t find what the two rates are but I’ll bet they’re 15 and 25 percent…just a guess.)

As John Irons (EPI’s research director) recognized, this is absolutely nuts from a simplicity standpoint: McCain just gave every taxpayer a huge incentive to calculate their taxes twice…three times if you include the alternative minimum tax (AMT…more on that below). Just what we need: a whole other layer of choices and schedules, surely with their own income definitions, loopholes, etc.

Finally, and this is the most worrisome aspect of McCain’s economics, if he gets what he wants, he has two fiscal choices: deeply cut entitlement programs, especially those related to health care, or blow a massive hole in the budget.

I give the details here, but the arithmetic is simple: you can’t extend the Bush tax cuts forever, same with the war, end the AMT, finance big health care subsidies, and slash the corporate tax rate all on the backs of “savings from earmark, program review, and other budget reforms.” Like I said, you either end much of government as we know it–a standard conservative goal–or become unsustainably indebted.

This is seriously scary stuff, and Senators Clinton and Obama need to stop duking it out long enough to tell the electorate all about this agenda and its potential impacts on America. McCainonomics is threatening to make Bushonomics look reasonable.

You just thought the McCain was gonna continue Bush economic policies—-wrong!

America’s Sour Mood

These are some of the results from the latest Harris Poll of 1,001 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone between June 4 and 8, 2008 by Harris Interactive®.

Some key findings are:

  • President Bush’s latest ratings are 24 percent positive and fully 75 percent negative. Previously, his worst numbers were 26 percent positive and 72 percent negative in April of this year. His ratings are substantially worse than those of any president, except for Jimmy Carter (22%-77% in July 1980), since Harris first started measuring them in 1963.
  • Vice President Cheney’s ratings are even worse, 18 percent positive and 74 percent negative, compared to his previous low of 21 percent positive, 74 percent negative last July.
  • Secretary of State Rice’s ratings are much better than those of the President and Vice President, but also have fallen to their lowest point ever, 39 percent positive and 54 percent negative, compared to 42 percent positive and 51 percent negative last October.
  • Only 14 percent of the public think the things in the country are going in the right direction and fully 80 percent think they are on the wrong track. These compare to the previous worst numbers in President George W. Bush’s term, 75 percent thought things were on the wrong track in April. The highest number of people who said the country was on the wrong track was 81 percent in June of 1992 during the term of the first President Bush.

With the mood in the US being so bad, will it translate into a for real change of government in Washington?