Some would say that President Bush is a lame duck, others such as U.S. News and World Report are now saying he’s a dead duck, and not only dead, but the deadest duck since Richard Nixon.
What will be said of President Bush when all is said and done? What accomplishments will he be credited for? As far as I can see, the best thing he did was the lobby shaped, problem riddled buy out to the health care industry called Medicare D, A.K.A. the prescription drugs program. This program is so full of holes seniors came to it with very little enthusiasm and have spoken of it since with the same fervor. A third of it’s budget went to the Insurance companies and other health care providers so they would come on board, that’s $4 Billion! $4 Billion just so they would cooperate, perhaps the largest payoff in history!
He also made it harder for middle class families to file for bankruptcy, and easier for corporations to collect from those same middle class families with the 2001 Bankruptcy act. We all know how hard it’s been for the credit card companies to make money!
He stacked the courts with conservative whack jobs like Alito and Roberts who so far have sided against the middle class every chance they get, making it harder for average people to sue corporations and the government, and just this week, this new twisted court sided with big corporations to pay for election ads saying that cash was free speech, and in almost the same breath sided against the kid who wanted to display his free speech with a banner that read “bong hits for Jesusâ€. Now I’m not saying that the Bong Hits for Jesus guy is some kind of hero, but it surely displays the new agenda this nation’s highest court believes in: free speech is money, and if you have more cash, you have more free speech. Strike one for the aristocratic corporate elite that rule this land, Minus ten for hard working average Americans.
Sure he cut taxes for the middle class, but not by much and dramatically for the ultra rich, which has squeezed state governments forcing the tax payers to pay more so that some rich prick from Halliburton can add a gold plated telescope to his off shore tax sheltered Caribbean Island get away. Just look at the sneaky changes they’ve made to the tax code:
Of course the over whelming legacy of Bush will be Iraq, and this will sink Republicans in ways they never imagined. It will be a legacy of utter recklessness and complete disregard for human life, that is human life with consciousness, family and what we Americans call “livesâ€, the love Bush has for single celled organisms is unparalleled. So as far as I can tell Bush and the whacko right have declared that a single cell is so valuable they’ll run off and bomb abortion clinics, hold up stem cell research and create thousands of unwanted children, while offering zip to pay for those same children when they’re born and care squat for their well being citing it as “not my problemâ€. Of course they’ll happily pay for the pointless destruction and devastation of mothers, children, fathers, sons, daughters, grand parents, laborers, doctors, “people†who are loved, people who are the sole providers of families, people blown up, with American explosives.
This is the legacy that will destroy Bush, and the halls of Washington know it. The Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Bush, and they may have some success with it, yet for decades the word Bush will become so synonymous with war, hypocrisy, dictatorial rule and failure that all a Democrat will have to do to remind Americans of a chapter most will try to forget is to simply say the word “Bush†and those images of dead children will be instantly evoked. They should sting, and should not be forgotten. We deserve to feel guilty for this war.
So how did Bush blow it? Remember all those quotes after the 2004 election that he has a lot of political capital, and he was going to spend it? Well he did spend it. He spent it on Social Security reform, Immigration and Iraq, pure and simple. Such arrogance to think you could accomplish what no one had before. Reagan allowed amnesty, and could not reform social security beyond some funding issues. This country is not interested in going the direction of Neo-Liberal economics (modern right wing pro-business ideology believe it or not, but more on that later). We want our citizens to be taken care of after a long hard life of working. We don’t like this exploitation of cheap labor, despite the fact far too many Americans enjoy the results far too much to do anything about it. We want decent wages for ourselves, health care and a strong American family, not barely enough to get by so the stock holders of some corporation are happy, and that’s exactly what Bush and the Republicans have given us.
Point is, that Bush is a dead duck now, people are walking away from him by the truck load, and his political career is finished, so it goes for everyone around him as well. It’s beginning to leave a giant power vacuum that Americans are hoping will be filled by a new President perhaps. Bush is becoming so irrelevant that I’m starting to worry that he may be impeached, weak Dems may feel emboldened by his demise. As much as I want to see the bastard strung up on the line, his impeachment will not bring us change. It will increase the likelihood of a Republican becoming Pres. Imagine, if they nail Cheney, Bush appoints Thompson or McCain or someone else who will use the position to further his election chances. The best thing we can do is wait till his term expires and prosecute both Bush and Cheney for war crimes, ignoring the inevitable calls by the Right to “move on”.
Meanwhile the rich get richer and Washington is in disarray. The Dems can’t get anything past Bush’s veto and faith in the institution is beginning to diminish. I hear Republicans talking about radical change, being extremely angry about the current state of things. What we need in this country is a resurgence of the Left, and I don’t mean a bunch of rich people who are very politically moderate (what we call Liberals), I mean a true socialist Left. It has brought us all the things that improved social conditions in this country, Progressive reform, social security (its in the name), support for unions that raised wages. Like it or not we need true balance with a strong left trying to push the envelope and a true Right trying to hold it back. We don’t need a Right emboldened to make changes, that has proven to be a disaster. The traditional pro business Right in this country have become mostly Democrats, and the Republicans have become a bunch of whack jobs. Lets realign things so that they make sense again, or else face the consequences of Right Wing rule, in the form of a stock market crash.
Anything to get us away from this horrible mistake we’ve made allowing the whacko Right to run this country right into the ground. We’ll get to watch them plop out with their golden parachutes, paid for with our dollars, while we are left to pick up the pieces.
