cosmic poaching

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post, along with Osama who? and Politics as Usual? Hopefully not, are a bit dated but I moved them over from a defunct political blog.

New York City, October 2007

In October of 1977 President Carter, after attending a meeting at the U.N., decided to visit the South Bronx. A NY Times photograph shows him, some reporters, officials and secret service agents strolling through a bleak, rubble-strewn lot.

“See which areas can still be salvaged,” Carter said to Patricia Roberts Harris, secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Maybe we can create a recreation area and turn it around.”

George W. Bush has been President for nearly seven years. He spent his first term trying to let his Wall Street supporters get their hands on peoples’ retirement money with his so-called “social security reform.” He also led America, through a series of gross distortions and outright lies, into an unnecessary, disastrous war in Iraq.                    

Bush continued lying to Americans in his second term and claimed on several occasions the Al-Qaeda in Iraq we’re fighting is the same Al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9-11. The Al-Qaeda group in Iraq, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, didn’t exist until 2003 and only exists because we invaded Iraq. Isn’t Bush supposed to fight terrorists, not create more?

He also said it’s up to the next President to decide what to do about Iraq and that he envisioned a South Korea-type presence in Iraq. The self-proclaimed “decider” isn’t making such great, or actually any, decisions.

We’ve been in South Korea for over fifty years. If our soldiers there faced the violence they’ve seen in Iraq after “Mission Accomplished” I highly doubt we would have kept them there for five decades. And it’s horrifying to think how many more terrorists and 9-11 attacks we would create by keeping our soldiers in Iraq for fifty years. Unfortunately Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia is just the beginning of a whole new wave of extremists we’ll be dealing with for years.

Along the way Bush has lost Congress to the Democrats and pathetically handled the worst hurricane to ever hit America (remember that Brownie guy and the “heck of a job” he did?) According to the article Bush’s Bunker (Vanity Fair, Oct. 2007) longtime Bush aide and former White House counselor Dan Bartlett had to put together a compilation video of post-Katrina news stories “in a last-ditch effort to make Bush understand what everyone else in America already knew: that the president had a crisis on his hands.”

And this is the same President who ran as a “compassionate conservative” in the 2000 election. “Ignorant incompetent” is a more appropriate philosophy in Bush’s arrogant, corrupt brain.

Bush did recently tackle one crucial, domestic issue. He vetoed a child healthcare insurance bill that had bi-partisan support. He claimed it would lead to too many government handouts and socialized medicine. Many experts and pundits disagreed. Again, “compassionate conservative,” anyone?

The child health insurance problem joins a litany of other pressing issues, like real social security reform, the falling value of the American dollar and our massive debt (we’re all basically working for China, and will be for decades to come) that Bush has done nothing about. Oh wait, correction, he did do something about our debt –  he caused it.

And remember Osama bin-Laden, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahri? Seven years after 9-11 they’re still out there, in the wilds of Pakistan (we even know where they are!), issuing videos, plotting against us and training recruits. During World War II we defeated the combined empires of Japan and Germany in less time it’s taken us to capture or kill these three bastards. It’s a shame there wasn’t any money to be made in capturing or killing them, the way there was by invading Iraq (record oil profits, a $10 billion no-bid contract to Cheney’s ex-company Halliburton, millions to politically-connected companies like Blackwater in exchange for campaign contributions) because if there was the great “decider” would have done something about them.

I wonder if Bush has ever visited the Bronx. Or Camden, Detroit or Oakland. During his two terms in office he hasn’t addressed any of the serious issues that face America and caused several scary problems we’ll be dealing with for decades to come. Bush has never even come close to being so “compassionate” that when it came to something like slums he would tell a housing official to “see which areas can still be salvaged.”

IGNORANT INCOMPETENT UPDATE, Nov. 29, 2007: You probably think I’m a liberal Bush-basher after reading the above piece. But the following comments, from Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, are truly shocking (and true!) Here’s a Republican Senator calling the Bush White House “one of the most arrogant” administrations he’s ever seen, and then some: “I would rate this one the lowest in capacity, in capability, in policy, in consensus – almost every area. I would give it the lowest grade.” Hagel was speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York. I have never, ever heard a politician talk about an administration like this. You can read the full article, from CNN, by clicking on here – full article.

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