Obama slaps GOP and Rush

2 Responses to Obama slaps GOP and Rush

1. Wallboy says:

   1/25/2009 at 11:16 am

   EIGHT YEARS IN EIGHT MINUTES
   Did he do a good job? Did he make things better or worse? How was your life in 1999 compared to your life in 2009? Sure, things changed, everything changed, the world changed… things always change. I hear all the blahgging about Obama being the antichrist, but how well did your man, Gee Dub, do? Really? Overall?
   We weren’t attacked by terrorists on American soil over the last eight years, if you don’t count those Anthrax letters from December of 2001. But, there were attacks elsewhere by militant Islamists. England, Spain, Africa, India… Do you really feel safer having nearly a decade of this War on Terror?
   As for the War on Terror, that’s silly. How do you wage a war against a tool used by the ideologues of hate? That is just as ridiculous as LBJ’s War on Poverty, neither worked, nor could they have! It is just too broad a term, too loosely defined, too hard to pin down. And our actions in this W.O.T.? What are we Rambo? “To survive a war, you must become war.” (Rambo II) So, to survive terrorism, we ourselves must become terrorists? We lost our position as moral authorities when we ourselves became proponents of terror and violence abroad; see water-boarding & Abu Graib.
   Bush on the Economy? Sure, it isn’t all his fault, most of the policies and pervasive group-think of de-regulation in D.C. had been around since the early eighties. But he was at the helm of the ship of state. The Buck Stops Here… remember that one? He allowed ineptitude, nepotism and greed to further bankrupt America. His tax cuts removed $300 billion in tax revenue away from public needs annually. Iraq and Afghanistan have cost about $700 billion. Well, there’s that trillion dollar package Obama is pushing for right now!
   Veterans’ Affairs? The American Journal of Public Health found that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities. An additional 3.8 million members of their households were also uninsured and ineligible for VA care. Since then… don’t know, no new studies have been done.
   The Patriot Act? Good god! Habeas Corpus is one of the safeguards guaranteed in the Constitution. The Constitution, “that little piece of paper,” is sacrosanct!
   No Child Left Behind? Well, that proved to be the near inverse corollary… No Child Moved Ahead. Ask the teachers around here if they think it was a help or a hindrance. The Pell grants that so many relied on for secondary education were shifted from public institutions to mainly private (and Christian) ones.
   New Orleans? Bush FEMA buddy “Brownie” really screwed the pooch on that one. “Over 30,000 were rescued by helicopter,” over 100,000 were left homeless. Most still are! over three and a half years later.
   Most Republicans are beginning to throw stones at a guy who’s been on the job less than a week, (and already accomplished more than you or I will in our lifetimes), then they should be prepared to defend the man that got us here. Here: broke, divided, and distanced from the world. And stop asking how Obama is going to unify this country, it ain’t his job… it’s ours. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
   I’ll give Bush credit where credit is due. Peace talks in Northern Ireland and unprecedented funding to fight AIDS in Africa. Other’n that, he’s done dude.
   Made in America
2. Cao says:

   1/25/2009 at 1:13 pm

   Interesting cut and paste you have there.

   There is no question that Bush was a disappointment because he wasn’t really ‘our man’, contrary to what you’re assuming there. He was elected on the basis of a socialist program – the prescription drugs program.

   But with that said and how he disappointed us on a number of other issues, there are still a lot of things he did that were honorable and worthy of praise.

   George W. Bush is building a legacy based upon five key issues, all of which should be supported by conservatives. (this published in 2004 by the way)

   1) His prosecution of the war on terror. The hallmark of the left is that they believe America is essentially at fault for the attacks of 9/11. Whenever

   something bad happens in the world or here at home, the left blames the US. It’s a reflexive reaction – “Blame America first!” (And they wonder why we question their patriotism.) Look at the leftists in Congress, the media, and in the general public. It would have been easy for this nation to roll over after 9/11 into a fetal position and question ourselves in a stupor of self-doubt and guilt. The fact we didn’t is due solely to George W. Bush. I respect this man above all others on the political scene for his leadership and courage immediately after and subsequent to 9/11/01. Pres. Bush called the war on terror a war against the “evildoers.” “Evil” is not a word in the liberal’s vocabulary. Pres. Bush has shown courage, determination, and moral clarity – all conservative values – in pursuing the terrorists.

   2) His defense of American sovereignty. Whenever we hear John F-in’ Kerry complaining that President Bush has pursued a foreign policy of “arrogance” and non-cooperation with our “allies,” this is code for “He didn’t ask France’s permission.” Pres. Bush said during his State of the Union address that America will not ask permission from the international community to protect America’s security. He has faced-down the appeasers in the UN in a way that no one, not even Ronald Reagan, was able to do. He told the UN that it needed to enforce its own resolutions, or “become irrelevant,” and if the UN refused to back-up it’s own resolutions, the US would do it on our own. He has been unafraid to go-it-alone when the vital interests of the United States were at stake, but fortunately he has not needed to, putting together a diverse coalition to topple Saddam and rebuild Iraq, encouraging the emergence of a “New Europe,” based on nations which were formally under the heel of Soviet oppression – nations, unlike the tired and morally ambivalent society of France, that know oppression and which are now strong defenders of freedom.

   3) His promotion of freedom and democracy as the cornerstone of US foreign policy. As President Bush said in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy this past November, “The progress of liberty is a powerful trend. Yet, we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost. The success of freedom is not determined by some dialectic of history. By definition, the success of freedom rests upon the choices and the courage of free peoples, and upon their willingness to sacrifice…” And as he said at Whitehall Palace in London a week later, “The deepest beliefs of our nations set the direction of our foreign policy. We value our own civil rights, so we stand for the human rights of others. We affirm the God-given dignity of every person, so we are moved to action by poverty and oppression and famine and disease. The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings.” His elevation of freedom and democracy as the guiding principles of our foreign policy was a radical break with the utilitarian policy of the past 50 years where we compromised those principles in the interest of counter-balancing Soviet communism worldwide. This part of the “Bush Doctrine” is decidedly conservative.

   4) His promotion of quality nominees to the federal judiciary who respect the original intent of the Constitution. For me, the most important issue we face (outside of winning the war on terror) is to reform the federal judiciary by packing…yes, PACKING!…it with judges who respect the rule of law, and the U.S. Constitution. So far, every indication I’ve seen from George W. Bush’s nominees to the federal courts is that they have been 100% stellar in their conservative judicial philosophies. This factor alone is reason enough for bedrock conservatives to support the re-election of George W. Bush.

   5) His effort to bring faith back into the mainstream of American society (the most important cultural issue, IMO). All conservatives understand that we are in a “culture war” with the left, and that this war has been going on for some time – for the better part of a generation. But it isn’t so much a culture war as it is a spiritual war – and, frankly, I believe that the wider spiritual war going on in our society has allied some on both the left and the right against the influence of faith in God in our society. To wage spiritual warfare requires using the weapons of faith – the recognition that there is a power above and outside of ourselves to whom we all owe allegiance. President Bush is probably the most sincere and public believer in God we’ve had in the White House. We live in dark days, and simple ideology will not get us through them. The light of honest and real faith in God, bringing God back as a foundational value of our society, will, more than any political philosophy, dispel the darkness. This is an important aspect of what President Bush brings to the Presidency. And it, along with the other items I’ve listed, are all solidly conservative in value, and demand that real conservatives support President Bush for re-election.

   And from here:

   Like most Americans, I think of George W. Bush as a failed President. Worse than that, I think him not simply as a President who chose unwise policies but as one who assaulted the foundations of American democracy and federalism — by institutionalizing torture, suspending habeas, violating FISA, corrupting intelligence, and politicizing the Justice Department, the CIA, the EPA and probably every other federal agency.

   Nonetheless: our institutions are strong, though weaker when he took office; good people have served during his tenure; and not all of his
   own impulses and goals were warped. After seven and a half years, the Bush Administration has some accomplishments under its belt. Arrayed together,
   they look like the pillars of an impressive presidency — if you discount the incoming missiles of multiple disaster. Here’s an equivocal list:

   1. Disarmament deal with North Korea – five years and maybe 10 bombs late, but there would seem to be at least a reasonable chance that this rogue will be effectively disarmed. John Bolton may sneer, but it’s not every President that’s induced an enemy to blow up a nuclear reactor. After poking the polecat Kim Jong II and stimulating North Korea’s successful weaponization, the Bush Administration has patiently tread a multilateral path that’s yielded at least the potential of a good outcome.

   2. Bringing Gaddafi in from the cold: a long process with an array of carrots and sticks, but the invasion of Iraq may have concentrated this dictator’s mind.

   3. Massive increase in AIDS aid: perhaps thanks to Christianist prodding, Bush has showed admirable focus and follow-through on one of the greatest threats to global prosperity.

   4. Prescription drug benefit: too expensive, the donut hole is inefficient, private insurers have too great a role, and the drug companies got a giveaway. But seniors do have substantial help in paying their drug bills.

   5. No terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11: no one will ever know all the reasons why, and many of Bush’s “antiterror” measures have come at a dreadful price. But preventing another attack was probably Bush’s top priority — quite a heartfelt one. And there has not been another attack — here — on his watch.

   6. The FISA bill he wanted: Bush has to know that he’s gone all out on this front probably to hand expanded capabilities to a Democratic President. He’s probably been motivated partly by the need to obtain cover for his own crimes in breaking FISA. But again, he’s doubtless convinced that the intelligence agencies need the powers he’s obtained for them. And they probably do need most of them.

   7. Decent stewardship of the China relationship: China-bashing on the economic front is mostly demagoguery; it’s in everyone’s interest that China continue on a peaceful path to first-world economic stature and attendant global influence. The Bush crew has maintained trust and cooperation; it’s doubtful whether more pressure could have shaped Chinese economic or geopolitical decisions more to our liking.

   8. Deposing the Taliban: yes, the caveats outweigh the accomplishment: we let bin Ladin escape, we took our eye off the ball, we allowed al Qaeda
   to regroup and left a foundling government in a shattered country to its own devices. Subsequent neglect snatched protracted down-trending struggle from the jaws of victory. But who’s to say the initial campaign couldn’t have been botched? The Taliban went swiftly, with a minimum of blood.

   9. Deposing Saddam: again, the price paid and the terms chosen were catastrophic. This was not a job to be undertaken on false pretenses, without winning our chief allies’ assent or the world’s acceptance; it was the wrong war at the wrong time, and it gave new life to our worst enemies. But Saddam was a threat to stability in the middle east and therefore in the world. Iraqis would have had to cope with his end at some point, and who’s to say the transition would have been better without the heavy hand of the hegemon? There is now at least a reasonable hope that a non-monstrous national government will assert control over Iraq.

   10. The Surge: if a hedge fund manager loses $700 million out of a $1 billion, do we credit him with decisions that bring the balance back up to a half billion? A poor analogy. Money is easily accounted; lives can’t be, and actual historical outcomes can’t be compared with might-have-beens. Nonetheless, whatever you think of the decision to go to war or of the first four years of its execution, the surge was an extraordinarily difficult decision that’s worked better than basically anyone expected. It was also something of a reversal for Bush, who had lived and died by the Rumsfeld doctrine to that point. I don’t think anyone can deny that the opportunity for a decent outcome in Iraq is far greater now than in fall 2006; to deny the surge’s centrality in the turnaround is deep denial. Yes, those who designed and executed it got lucky – but they made their own luck. The surge enabled the Sunni Awakening, the Sadr rope-a-dope, and the long-delayed beginnings of legislative
   progress.

   Not to worry, though, Obama will get rid of all these gains in order to re-shape the record in his favor – and Obama has already set the stage for blaming Bush for Obama’s next 4 years in office. Because Obama, unlike George Bush, is a lying cowardly marxist who has a lot of revisionism in mind – similar to Mao, Trotsky, Stalin, Castro, etc.

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