March 19, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH'S LEGACY

George W. Bush will undoubtedly go down as the worst president in our history. From the very start, this administration has smacked of cronyism, incompetence, lying, and outright corruption. "Highlights" of the Bush years would include the attack on 9/11, which might had been prevented with someone competent at the helm. It will include a nest of lies about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and a war that was unnecessary. It will include consistent assaults on civil liberties. It will include end runs around the Constitution with the use of "signing statements." It will include torture. It will include an outright assault on science that didn't fit Bush's ideology. And it will include total mismanagement of the economy. This article by Robert Scheer is at www.commondreams.org:


That idiotic "what me worry?" look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling.

Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture.

The totally unwarranted assurance was there this week as the once proud dollar fell into the toilet and the debacle of Iraq and Bush’s other failed Mideast policies pushed oil prices to record highs. The Europeans, who didn’t support the U.S. imperial intervention, are doing much better, not having to pay for guarding besieged oil pipelines while U.S. taxpayers are saddled with trillions in future debt, not to mention 4,000 U.S. military deaths and 30,000 U.S. injuries in a war the administration had promised would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues. Even in Baghdad last week there wasn’t enough oil to keep the lights on for more than a few hours.

THE ABSURDITY OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

Right-wingers and libertarians love the "free market." The free market is where men are men, or something like that. It's the domain of the "achievers." I have thought that, under their definition, Al Capone was an achiever. Al provided what consumers wanted in bootleg whiskey, gambling, and prostitution. The Great Depression should have provided a warning. It was no accident that the laissez-faire capitalism of the 1920's led to the Depression. It's no accident that the reactionary policies of the Bush administration have put us in economic peril. This article by Alicia Morgan is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Conservatives are all about faith. The same people who pooh-pooh evolution as 'only a theory' and believe global warming is a hoax have an almost religious belief in laissez-faire capitalism. It is an article of faith with them that if the shackles of regulation and taxation were thrown off, a perfect economic miracle would occur. Everyone would be well-off – some more well-off than others, of course. The Market would ensure that competition was fair, and that therefore there would be no need of regulation! The Consumer would decide whether to buy a company’s products, and so the company would be forced to be ethical or else be punished by the Consumer. But the twin devils of Taxation and Regulation keep this miracle from happening.

This economic theory does not need any empirical evidence to be believed in fervently. The theory is more important than the results. If the results don't pan out, it only means that the theory has not been applied properly. More tax cuts! More deregulation!

You serfs who are losing your homes - it's all your own fault! If you can't afford the usurious interest rates, then you have no business buying houses. You mean you believed what your mortgage broker told you? Hey, not our fault. Caveat emptor, baby. Don't expect the government to come to your rescue, you freeloaders!