It’s astonishing that so many Americans failed to see George Bush as the disreputable fraud he is. A stacked Supreme Court foisted him off on Americans and the nation has paid dearly ever since. After eight years of incalculable damage the shiftless, irresponsible Bush, will ride off into the sunset to retire to Crawford. He’ll leave a ruined economy and an endless war behind. Vladimir Putin will sail into the Gulf offering his services as a peace negotiator and major trading partner. Putin will get a very real chance to supplant the U.S. and claim Russia the world’s only superpower. Such is the incalculable damage Junior has visited on the U.S. “Boy, I bet this is the kind of stuff that would keep a president up at night,” said the president. You don’t worry? Loose sleep? “Nope, everything’s fine here!” Thus spoketh George.
When the U.S. backed Iraq in its war with Iran it was to maintain the balance of power in the Middle East. When Iraq invaded Kuwait the first Bush chased Saddam back to Baghdad but stopped short of forcing him from power. The balance was maintained. Enter the moron. After destabilizing Iraq enough to augment a civil war and fracture the nation into regional sections, the U.S. now wants to withdraw. When it does, and there’s not much choice in the matter, the vacuum left behind will be filled by Iran. Iran will welcome Iraq’s Shia majority as brothers who have been lost to one another. If Iraqi’s are ever going to restore their fractured nation it will almost certainly be Iran that leads them there. The majority, Shia Islamic fundamentalists, with Iranian backing, will steadily rebuild and bring together a shattered nation. To keep Iran at bay, and to try and postpone the inevitable, Bush would like to bomb Iran and destroy their military. But Bush is finished with his disastrous forays into places and events he has no understanding of. He, and the U.S. are net losers of this war.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, as a broker for peace, will contrast nicely with the self proclaimed “War President.” Putin will get a very real chance of supplanting the U.S. as the world’s only superpower as he negotiates new trade agreements with Iran and its close friend, Iraq. Russia’s oil wealth, combined with the net production of Iranian and Iraqi oil, will represent a huge portion of the world’s oil reserves.
Republicans, when they deregulated business to clear the way for faster and easier profit, predetermined the nations decent into financial hardship. Bush with his enormous tax cuts and war on borrowed money has kicked loose the already shaky underpinning of the U.S. economy. Putin will bargain with advanced weaponry and consolidate Russian, Iranian and Iraqi oil to bring a new dynamic to the world’s oil market and, as is always the case, there will be winners and losers when the dust settles. The U.S, unfortunately, is hardly in a winning position.
This is the dilemma faced by would be, U.S. presidents. A new consortium of oil wealth will suddenly begin dictating who gets how much and at what cost when the U.S. pulls out of Iraq and Iran fills the vacuum the U.S. left behind. Bombing Iran is out of the question. The first thing Iran would do is sink a few tankers in the straits so marine traffic could neither come or go. World depression anyone? The news media rarely, if ever, links Iraq and Iran as eventually coming together as allies against the Great Satin. To point this out to Americans would go too far in exposing Bush as the dummy he is. To destabilize the Middle East so he and his pals could sack the U.S. Treasury is the work of a traitor - an enemy of the U.S.
Bush will get someone to write his memoirs. The book will be a best seller. George will explain how he tried to save the world but was foiled by liberal, bleeding hearts. The next insult will be the Bush Library. “Everyone else got one so I want one too.” After it’s built Bush can pretend to scholarship. The vast ignorance that Americans have of the U.S. Constitution and their Bill of Rights is the rot that threatens their nation and way of life. It guaranteed that someone of Bush’s abbreviated intellect and low character would eventually rise to the nation’s highest office.
The most important thing that Bush has done is illustrating the fragility of democracy - how easily it can come undone. Any reasonable person may ask why there was no one to stop Bush from making his catastrophic decisions. Congress went along with the Bush program and Congress was the only elected body with the power to oppose him. A few Congressional members tried to introduce sanity but were shouted down, and by inference, threatened with treason. Dick Cheney, gone to fat and resembling nothing so much as a slug, is other living proof of how easily the corporate entity can usurp government and threaten democracy.
Snake oil salesmen, modern versions of carpetbaggers, hucksters and scam artists of all stripes, found themselves in like company in Bush’s White House. Oil companies became champions of the environment, and global warming was dismissed as liberal hysteria. Corporate scandal and greed, of formerly unknown proportion, fed at the public trough while Bush excused corporate tax obligations. No bid contracts were awarded to corporations that drooled at the prospect of war. It made no difference that some of those corporations, such as Cheney’s Kellogg, Brown & Root, operated behind shell companies with foreign addresses and charged American taxpayers $45 for a can of soda. Hey! It’s only bidness. Profit is the motivation that allows business to believe there’s something worthy in jacking up the price of a cancer drug because someone who is very sick must have it, or die. The perfect customer.
Americans bought into this insanity not once, but twice, and in November are very likely to sustain the national train wreck with John McCain. If there’s one thing that republicans have learned it’s that millions of Americans ain’t too bright. They’ll buy anything if it’s wrapped up colorfully enough, and tied with a pretty bow. Here’s a quote from a typical Bush supporter.
“More people voted for George Bush than voted for any president in U.S. history. More people in America believe that he's doing the right thing. And the fact that he won the majority of the vote suggests that the majority of America believes that we, as a nation, are on the right path.”
Right wingers, in league with the bidness community, have kicked the legs out from under the nation’s economy. Grover Norquist, that quintessential, right wing moron, saw his vision come to fruition - that government be shrunk “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Grover, like many right wingers, lets fantasy get in the way of fact. Foreign lenders, tired of hearing right wing ideology from republican troglodytes, wonder how Americans can be so stupid. Don’t they see their nation is being sold out from under them? Americans borrow money like there’s no tomorrow while a contrived war and the suspension of corporate taxes suck the life from the American economy. How, lenders ask, will the U.S. pay for its wars and tax giveaways? How will it repay us? Here’s another quote from a Bush voter. “Mr. Bush is right when he claims that his re-election vindicates his policies. That's exactly what elections are about. The people of the USA have chosen to continue his policies. Whatever the rest of the world thinks is immaterial.”
As the nation prepares to elect a new president, democratic delegates are debating among themselves whether or not they should bend to the will of American voters and nominate Barrack Obama. They say, according to news sources, that their interests lie in nominating the candidate most likely to win. The same news sources say that Limbaugh’s Ditto Heads, and many other republicans, are crossing party lines to vote for Hillary in the primaries. Republicans understand that Hillary will be much easier to defeat than Obama in the general election so their artificially inflating Hillary’s support in an attempt to get her nominated. The DNC and other national power brokers will, as usual, shoot themselves in the foot and bend every effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Hillary has many new friends. One of her newest is Rupert Murdoch, owner of a media empire that includes Fox News and promotes right wing ideology, or, more accurately, the obsessive compulsive need to suck the life from anything that may be remotely construed as having the potential for profit. This is a form of mental illness, and should be recognized as such. Murdock wants to see Hillary win the nomination too.
In 2000, Republican thugs interrupted the vote counting in Florida. They shouted, pounded on the door of the precinct house, and finally managed to intimidate the vote counters disrupting the democratic process of electing a president. Instead of being arrested and frog marched to the nearest jail, they were cheered by millions of Americans who apparently saw nothing wrong with their behavior. Another example of the ease with which democracy can be compromised. Of course, it requires the rest of the nation to look away and pretend there’s nothing wrong. Many Americans, happily suffering Junior, have watched as their Constitutionally guaranteed rights have been whittled away. They’ve watched as the U.S. has embraced torture as an interrogation tool. They’ve watched like dumb, blind animals, as their nation changed from a beacon of hope to an inspiration of fear and hate among the world community. “While you may disagree with some of his tactics, he is a man of conviction that does not shape his beliefs around public opinion. Bush represents a great number of Americans in his fundamental beliefs. Is there anyone in the world who has demonstrated more support for human rights and freedom?” - Bush voter
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