Why should we hate Bush?
What has been bothering me lately is the constant accusation that I and others who think as I do hate George W. Bush. But we don’t. We look at his record, what he was doing before Sept. 11, 2001 and what he has done since, and we don’t think he has handled the job well. Toward the man himself, we have no emotional confusion, he doesn't matter to love or hate. That's a meme spread by the political right.
We don’t see that he has done anything that accomplished anything. Just the opposite. His tax cut was a temporary fix that gave the middle class a few hundred dollars to spend and gave the wealthy a lot more to park away. It is obvious by now that trickle down doesn’t work. Ronald Reagan, the great advocate of trickle down economics, only helped the economy when he poured money into government, not into tax cuts. Bush went into office with the promise to cut government and its spending. He has spent more and created the biggest budget deficit in history.
He went into Afghanistan with the goal of rooting out the dangers that Al Qaeda has posed at least four times to this country. He failed because he pulled out troops to go to war with a nation that had no WMDs and had not attacked us since 1991. Saddam Hussein said he had no WMDs, the U.N. teams couldn’t find any, yet we kept saying that he had them and invaded and haven’t found them. As his father knew back in his Iraq war, destabilizing Iraq has resulted in destabilizing the Middle East.
Domestically, George W. Bush pushed the no-child-left-behind act so that a state such as Montana where its school children have always scored high in standardized tests has schools failing because they cannot afford to hire teachers for every high school classroom that had degrees in all the subjects that they taught. Bush policies have cut down on money for environmentalism, the national parks that make Montana a good tourist attraction, the trees in his forests act. He has enabled power plants across the country to expand without adding environmental controls.
He has curtailed the money to protect our borders and has not done anything to prevent a cargo ship from carrying a nuclear bomb into the harbors of New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Seattle, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, or Portland. In other words, his report card is no more than a D average, if the teachers give him the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t hate George W. Bush. But he is not a person that I would choose to go out and have a beer or a cup of coffee with because he is even more determined and rigid in his ways than I am and he can’t blame hardening of the arteries. I don’t think he has thought through most of what he does but reacts viscerally to events and to situations, some of which have been created within his mind, and then refuses to admit he was wrong.
The idea that people who disagree with his statements and, most of all, his actions hate him is plain silly. I might suggest, however, that it is generated by a right that so thoroughly hated Bill Clinton that they think we can’t dislike his policies, so we must hate him. Be advised: a few may but most of us don’t.
We don’t see that he has done anything that accomplished anything. Just the opposite. His tax cut was a temporary fix that gave the middle class a few hundred dollars to spend and gave the wealthy a lot more to park away. It is obvious by now that trickle down doesn’t work. Ronald Reagan, the great advocate of trickle down economics, only helped the economy when he poured money into government, not into tax cuts. Bush went into office with the promise to cut government and its spending. He has spent more and created the biggest budget deficit in history.
He went into Afghanistan with the goal of rooting out the dangers that Al Qaeda has posed at least four times to this country. He failed because he pulled out troops to go to war with a nation that had no WMDs and had not attacked us since 1991. Saddam Hussein said he had no WMDs, the U.N. teams couldn’t find any, yet we kept saying that he had them and invaded and haven’t found them. As his father knew back in his Iraq war, destabilizing Iraq has resulted in destabilizing the Middle East.
Domestically, George W. Bush pushed the no-child-left-behind act so that a state such as Montana where its school children have always scored high in standardized tests has schools failing because they cannot afford to hire teachers for every high school classroom that had degrees in all the subjects that they taught. Bush policies have cut down on money for environmentalism, the national parks that make Montana a good tourist attraction, the trees in his forests act. He has enabled power plants across the country to expand without adding environmental controls.
He has curtailed the money to protect our borders and has not done anything to prevent a cargo ship from carrying a nuclear bomb into the harbors of New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Seattle, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, or Portland. In other words, his report card is no more than a D average, if the teachers give him the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t hate George W. Bush. But he is not a person that I would choose to go out and have a beer or a cup of coffee with because he is even more determined and rigid in his ways than I am and he can’t blame hardening of the arteries. I don’t think he has thought through most of what he does but reacts viscerally to events and to situations, some of which have been created within his mind, and then refuses to admit he was wrong.
The idea that people who disagree with his statements and, most of all, his actions hate him is plain silly. I might suggest, however, that it is generated by a right that so thoroughly hated Bill Clinton that they think we can’t dislike his policies, so we must hate him. Be advised: a few may but most of us don’t.
posted by Chuck Rightmire at 8:34 PM
6 Comments:
Since liberals can justify anything they want to under the guise of doing 'greater good', how do you explain the 50 million+ people that are not living under oppressive regimes now because President Bush took the action he did?
What about the women who now have rights, and the children (boys&girls both) who now go to school and are not taught hatred of the West?
President Bush saw just what a lousy job the UN has done since it's inception, just look at every conflict they've gotten involved in. History was one of my favorite subjects, and our modern UN is a paper tiger, reminiscent of the old League of Nations!
And what's our alternative to re-electing the President? John Kerry. A rich kid, with political ambitions (nothing wrong there) who served 4 1/2 months in Vietnam, cam home and protested the war, threw his medals over the fence, stood by and watched our flag being burned, and now that he's campaigning, he'll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear on that particular day.
Yes, you have the same pure hatred of President Bush as the other Democrats.
It's all they have.
Get off it, Eric. Name the people. Those living under warlords in Iraq or afraid to go out of Kabul without armed guards? Those who are growing the opium that comes into this country? The war lords themselves who are gaining more and more power? Al Qaeda? The people in Baghdad who used to be safe if they kept their heads down and are now being ripped apart in the streets? Name the ones you mean.
We don't have to hate Bush to dislike his policies. Kerry at least had a thought in his head and lived with the war rather than hide in the National Guard. And he spent one hear and four months in Vietnam water with the navy, not just four months. The four months are just his Swift Boat duty.
Most people are safe if they just "keep their heads down" and stay out of sight. But about 200,000 Kurds in Iraq weren't, even then, under Hussein. How many Iraqis do you think will have to be blown apart in the street to reach that figure?
And at least the Iraqis are fighting for the right to stand up like a free people if we can ever root out the extremeists, mostly former Baathists who were responsible for them keeping their heads down and the Al Queda and other terrorists who know what kind of future they're going to have in a free Iraq.
Most economists acknowledge that the tax cuts have indeed helped the economy and I don't think you can prove that the failure to find bin Laden is due to shifting resources to the war in Iraq. We never had enough troops there in the first place to carpet the country over.
You also have presented a pretty warped summary of our rationale for Iraq, Chuck. What Hussein said doesn't mean diddly.He violated UN resolutions so many times for so many years that they had become meaningless and the Democrats were preaching that he possessed WMDs for 8 long, do nothing about them at all years, before Bush had to deal with 9/11 in his first 8 months.
States that meet the guidelines for the No Child Left Behind act get funding. I'm sure you're on top of that situation in Montana and elsewhere but the overriding thrust and purpose of the act was to improve education and test scores across the board. And it was well funded. Has it become just a noble experiment? I'm not sure but the thrust of the program was in line with the country's needs in delivering a quality education-which hasn't been the case for many years.
You may be right on the environment and parks, I just don't know. But I never thought you were such a border control protectionist. You were also pounding on that issue during the Clinton administration?
I don't want to flame you Chuck because I respect your integrity and your intelligence. But if what you're espousing here isn't "Bush hate" it comes mighty damned close.
But that's okay. Just call it what it is..............
" Kerry at least had a thought in his head and lived with the war rather than hide in the National Guard. And he spent one hear and four months in Vietnam water with the navy, not just four months. The four months are just his Swift Boat duty."
Sorry, I overlooked this part......
Kerry had thoughts in his head all right. But most of them were vainglorious pipe dreams. The Swifties are setting some of that straight right now.
Bush had enough hours for 5 full years--that's full years, not weekends-in the National Guard. And he became a proficient pilot in the F102s-something you just don't do by skipping class and farting around as the Kerryites like to portray his service.
No one in the Navy can seem to locate a single person who used the "3 Purple Hearts and out"rule to leave the battle front after only 4 months.Maybe you can check this out, Chuck. What do you think might make Kerry unique in that respect-thoughts in his head, maybe?
So you have to give Kerry high marks for creativity. Even if it did take wounding himself with his own RPG to get there.
Forget about the year at sea. Kerry was assigned to boiler room in a vessel that never came under attack. Bush was in a lot more danger during that time since at least 8 NG pilots spun in during training and surveillence missions during that period.
The thought in Kerry's head? How can I get my patrician posterior out of this hell hole and back to Nantucket and the good life?
4 months. That was enough to send him scurrying for the sidelines to line up opposition to a war that he never really fought. And enough to qualify him to trash the men and women who fought it in the jungles long before he came and were still slogging it out long after he got the hell out of Dodge.
People see that Chuck. Reasonable, rational, patriotic Americans see it. And no amount of DNC blather is going to keep them away from the truth. They have eyes-and brains.
The pity is that so do you-and then some. I just wish you'd kick them into some kind of objective gear and see John Kerry as the grand standing, self centered, politically opportunistic turncoat that those who know him best can certify that he truly is....
Bedrock, you and Eric can talk all you want to about the "good" things that Bush has done, but you are so blinded by your own hate of the Kerry, probably starting with Clinton, that you can't see what's going on. You guys are just dumb. That's not nice to say, but I'm tired of being called a Bush hater because I care about his record and don't like it. The man doesn't have enough presence to create an emotion. You guys are just using the "hate bush" idea so you don't have to deal with his misfortunes.
"Bush had enough hours for 5 full years--that's full years, not weekends-in the National Guard.”
The only reason I made that comment had to do with the DNC canard that he was "AWOL". But I still maintain that Kerry was in no more danger than Bush when he was at sea. The North Vietnamese had no air force, or any navy of consequence for that matter.
My comment about 4 months and out was made in the context that as far as anyone I've seen can determine Kerry is the only one to use that obscure regulation to get out of his remaining obligation in Vietnam.
Finally, he didn't "choose" the RPG, he was firing it at a phantom adversary (no hostile fire recorded) and got caught by a small piece of shrapnel when it exploded on some rocks. This is the infamous "rose thorn" scratch that he had to look hard to find someone to approve for his first Purple Heart.
But, in view of Kerry's turncoat activities and his disgraceful slander of the men who were still there fighting after he returned from Vietnam, to draw an analogy with Bush's service, you'd have to have Kerry downing his own wingman and strafing his own barracks while Bush was doing 50 pushups for missing a physical.........
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