June 02, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

WE NEED SMART PEOPLE

I like smart people. I like people who read and write books, who write and perform music, who write and perform in movies, and who do research in science. We owe a lot to smart people who have preceded us, the people like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. Why is that people think a smart person in the White House is such a bad idea? You wouldn't want a bumbling fool performing surgery on you. You wouldn't want a bumbling idiot to represent you in court. You don't want fools teaching your children. But people voted for George W. Bush because he was the kind of guy you'd have a beer with. In the complicated world we face in the 21st century we need the smartest and most able people we can find to address all the problems we face from global climate change, to terrorism, to AIDS, and global poverty. This article by Eugene Robinson is at www.washingtonpost.com:

When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don't see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. Iraq is the obvious place he or she will have to start; I want a president smart enough to figure out how to minimize the damage.

I want a president who reads newspapers, who reads books other than those that confirm his worldview, who bones up on Persian history before deciding how to deal with Iran's ambitious dreams of glory. I want a president who understands the relationship between energy policy at home and U.S. interests in the Middle East -- and who's smart enough to form his or her own opinions, not just rely on what old friends in the oil business say.

A HOLLOWED OUT ECONOMY

We get lots of rosy economic statistics from the Bush administration. But the real economy where most of us live isn't very good. I know, like millions of others, I'm making less money than when Bush came into office. That's in real terms, not just with inflation factored in. Everything else is more expensive, from gas to groceries to health care. In the Bush economy wealth "creation" is moving money around. On paper it looks great, but in the real world it doesn't do anything to create jobs or build anything. This article by Larry Beinhart is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

* Jobs: During Bush's first term the US actually lost private-sector jobs.

It finally improved in 2005, and now job creation is almost keeping pace with the increase in population. Still, over all, it's the worst record since Hoover, the fellow who presided over the onset of the Great Depression.

How do you have a recovery without creating jobs?

* Income: Yes, average income is up during the tenure of the current administration.

The joke about average income is: Bill Gates walks into a bar. The average income of every person in the room immediately goes up 10,000 percent.

But median income, the amount that people in the middle of the group earn, barely budges. So let's look at that figure. Median income is down. The average person makes less now than when Bush came into office.

Not only that, the downward pressure on wages is no longer just a blue-collar issue, it's moved up to white-collar workers, the educated classes, even doctors.