Bush: Worst President Ever?

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Fri, 20 May 2005 21:39:13 -0700 (PDT)

Bush: Worst President Ever?

 

 

 

 

Bush: Worst President Ever?

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real

Posted on May 20, 2005, Printed on May 20, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/22057/

 

For the record, I don't like George Bush. And I don't like most of the

people who work for George Bush. So, diehard Republicans can just

brush aside my remarks as so much partisan blather.

 

But by now I suppose very few diehard Republicans ever read what I

write. So do me a favor -- e-mail this to the diehards in your family

and circle of friends. Ask them to tell me why I am wrong about this:

 

George Bush is the worst president of the United States of America,

ever. Hands down.

 

And here are just a few reasons why I believe that statement is true.

 

America the Disgraced

 

President Bush's actions and policies have destroyed America's image

as a nation that adheres to a set of core values, such as the rule of

law, humane treatment of prisoners, presumed innocence, trial by jury

and respect for international laws.

 

How do I know this? Because the world is telling us so, whenever we

care enough to ask.

 

Positive views of the U.S. in Russia have risen 11 points in the past

year. But U.S. favorability ratings in France and Germany are somewhat

lower than last year and there has been a larger decline in Great

Britain (58 percent now, 70 percent last year). Young people in Great

Britain, France, and Germany have more negative views of America than

do people in other age groups. An important factor in world opinion

about America is the perception that the U.S. acts internationally

without taking account of the interests of other nations. Large

majorities in every nation surveyed believe that America pays little

or no attention to their country's interests in making its foreign

policy decisions. This opinion is most prevalent in France (84

percent), Turkey (79 percent) and Jordan (77 percent), but even in

Great Britain 61 percent say the U.S. pays little or no attention to

British interests.

 

Nice going George. Even Richard Nixon couldn't tarnish America's image

that much.

 

George's Vietnam

 

Then there's the war that is largely responsible for that drop in our

international image. President Bush really screwed this one up. First,

everyone not drinking the neocon Kool-Aid tried to warn George not to

pull that trigger. Then Army chief of staff, Gen. Shinseki, warned

Bush that a war in Iraq would not be the " cake walk " his neocon

Rasputin, Paul Wolfowitz, promised. Instead, he warned, we would need

a lot of troops in Iraq for long time. For that piece of advice he was

first publicly embarrassed by his boss then shown the door, according

to The New York Times:

 

At a Pentagon news conference neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz

mentioned Gen. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both

men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a post-war

Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops

and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to

join a reconstruction effort. " The idea that it would take several

hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark, " Mr.

Rumsfeld said.

 

That was 2003. Here's a story from today's paper.

 

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 19 - American military commanders in Baghdad and

Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in

Iraq. ... In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals

pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that

positive trends in Iraq could allow a major draw-down in the 138,000

American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested

Wednesday that American military involvement could last " many years. "

 

Gee. Who saw that coming?

 

So, thanks to George W. Bush and the handful of Neocon nuts you listen

to. Now we are stuck in another Vietnam-type war thousands of miles

from home. All the Vietnam trappings are here for anyone who cares to

notice -- indigenous insurgents, driven by a fanatical ideology,

supported and supplied by " spoiler " nation-states with their own

anti-U.S. agendas, thousands of dead civilians, American soldiers

dying by the gross week in and week out, with no end in sight.

 

Nice going, George. Maybe because you skipped out on the Vietnam War

you didn't know this could happen. Or maybe you really are as dumb as

common road gravel.

 

Sovietization of America

 

One of the Republican party's proudest boasts is that Ronald Reagan

defeated the Soviet Evil Empire. The irony is they are now recreating

pieces of that police state here at home now.

 

Hyperbole? You judge -- while you still can. From The New York Times:

 

WASHINGTON, May 18 - The Bush administration and Senate Republican

leaders are pushing a plan that would significantly expand the

F.B.I.'s power to demand business records in terror investigations

without obtaining approval from a judge, officials said on Wednesday.

" This is a dramatic expansion of the federal government's power, " said

Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in

Washington. " It's really a power grab by the administration for the

F.B.I. to secretly demand medical records, tax records, gun purchase

records and all sorts of other material if they deem it relevant to an

intelligence investigation. "

 

Now, the Patriot Act -- you know, the law that among other things

allows federal agents to demand your local library tell them what

books you are reading -- is about to be expanded.

 

Little by little this administration has chipped away at state powers

by transferring them to Washington. And nowhere has this process been

more pronounced than in the area of law enforcement and the courts.

The FBI, which once had to defer to local and state law enforcers when

on their turf, can now barge right in and take charge. All they have

to do is an investigation a " national security " or " homeland security "

matter.

 

Federal courts, which have acted as a brake on law enforcement abuses,

are being systemically stacked with rightwing judges less likely to

side with victims of overzealous cops or invasions of personal privacy.

 

That's why this is going on right now:

 

WASHINGTON, May 18 - The Senate plunged into an intense partisan

struggle on Wednesday over the fate of stalled federal court nominees

and the governance of the institution itself as the two parties locked

in a debate over the right of the minority to prevent votes on a

president's judicial candidates. " If Republicans roll back our rights

in this chamber, there will be no check on their power, " said Senator

Reid. " The radical, right wing will be free to pursue any agenda they

want. And not just on judges. Their power will be unchecked on Supreme

Court nominees, the president's nominees in general and legislation

like Social Security privatization.

 

The Bushites are on a neocon roll and the federal judiciary is their

final obstacle. If they can stack the appellate courts and appoint two

rightwing Supreme Court justices before the end of Bush's final term,

it will be " game over " for civil libertarians -- and America as we

knew her.

 

Peasantization of Workers

 

Over the past five years we have seen the biggest transfer of wealth

in the history of money. The already wealthy have become

mind-numbingly rich under George Bush. Where did the money come from?

It came right out of the pockets of working Americans and the poor.

 

I heard that groan from the right. Same old liberal, bleeding-heart

bullshit, right?

 

So, you judge.

 

What the right has accomplished in just five years is the creation of

a low-wage economy -- a management wet dream -- a country filled with

high-skilled workers so desperate for jobs they will work for peanuts.

Once powerful labor unions have been powerless to stop the flow of

once high-paying blue and gray-collar jobs to cheap overseas venues.

The jobs that replaced those lost to outsourcing pay an average of ten

grand a year less. (As I said above, the money came straight out of

workers' pockets.)

 

Deflating Inflation

 

The administration likes to boast that it has kept inflation in check.

Yes they have, at least somewhat. But the reasons inflation remains

low are all bad reasons that will result in very bad news down the road.

 

First, consumers have less money to spend, as noted above. Since

consumer spending power is a prime driver of price inflation, prices

on many core consumer products have remained low. And many of those

now low-price products keeping inflation low are no longer made here

but in cheap-labor countries like China.

 

But inflation has many causes, not just consumer spending. Raw

materials, shipping costs, currency fluctuations. And deep inside the

bowels of the economic gut, rumbling can be heard.

 

WASHINGTON -- Consumer prices jumped again last month, primarily

reflecting sharp increases in food and energy costs, the government

reported today. But prices for items other than food and energy were

flat in April, while oil and gas prices have fallen since then, the

Labor Department said, boosting hopes in financial markets that the

recent inflation flare-up may be fading. Food prices climbed 0.7

percent last month, largely because of the rising costs of fruits and

vegetables. But the so-called core-CPI, which excludes food and energy

costs, was unchanged in April and is up 2.6 percent from April of last

year.

 

Inflation is not as benign as the government figures pretend. This is

because of how they calculate inflation on individual items in the CPI

and can fiddle with the facts. For example, if HP replaces a printer

with a new model that might include a few modest enhancements over

it's predecessor which sold for $100, but prices the new model $125,

government economists can claim the price really did not go up because

the new model is better than the old model.

 

Trouble is you can't buy the old model any longer, but never mind

that. Even though you have to pay more for basically the same printer,

the price did not go up -- because " they " say so.

 

How much of that is going on in calculating the CPI? Plenty. And if

you shop you know it. They keep saying inflation is in check, but the

checks I have to write for everything from my utilities to the food

keep getting larger.

 

The point -- figures don't lie but liars can figure -- and they are.

 

Keeping Up Keeping Up

 

If things are so bad, why hasn't the economy slipped back into

recession? Because it's been running on credit. During Bush's first

term the economy perked up because Bush pumped $1.6 trillion in tax

rebates into it. That was like giving a dying patient an injection of

meth and then claiming he was cured because he was up and jerking

around in bed.

 

Once consumers consumed their paltry tax rebates and the wealthy had

deposited their hefty rebates into family trust accounts, the economy

would have slowed again -- had it not been for low interest rates and

easy credit. Consumers turned into home-equity vampires and credit

card addicts in order to maintain the middle-class lifestyle their new

low-paying jobs could no longer finance.

 

And, the government as well went on a borrowing binge running up a

national credit card debt of just over $7 trillion.

 

All that damage in just five years! It's almost unimaginable, but

true. And the negative long-term implications stagger those who

understand that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, that

deficits do matter, be they government deficits or consumer's.

 

Christian Jihadists

 

I will not belabor this point, except to say that, at the very time

Bush berates religious fundamentalists abroad, he has breached the

wall between religion and state here at home. He has jimmied open this

Pandora's Box and there will be hell to pay for it eventually -- as

there has been everywhere on earth where this was done.

 

All the above, and more, is why I contend that George W. Bush is the

worst president EVER. Hands down, no one else even comes close.

 

Herbert Hoover may have triggered the Great Depression, but he didn't

invade another nation on false pretenses, authorize torture of

prisoners, or try to stack the courts. Franklin Roosevelt did try to

stack the courts but Congress said " no " and he said " OK, " and went on

the save the world from fascism and secure the lives of America's

elderly by creating Social Security -- which Bush now wants to subvert.

 

Johnson and Nixon did fight an illegal and immoral war but Johnson

lifted millions out of poverty and got the Civil Rights Act passed,

much to his own party's determent. Nixon tried to subvert the

Constitution but was caught and thrown out of office before he could

succeed.

 

But I fear it's too late to stop George W. Bush and his band of

right-wing revolutionaries. We have let them get too far along now to

stop them. We have let them neutralize too many constitutional checks

and balances. And once they deep-six the filibuster it truly will be

game over.

 

Yes, the Democrats have begun to fight, but too little and now too

late. The only recourse soon will be public demonstrations of the kind

and size not seen here since the 1970s.

 

The only question is, are there still enough of us out here who give a

damn.

 

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job:

The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, " which was nominated for a

Pulitzer.

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/22057/

[Guest guest]

Great posting,

Its encouraging to know that there ARe people in Americe who notice

and and disagree with whats going on !

I live in London UK and indeed I can confirm that America's image has

changed drastically over the last few years for the worst.

They are now considered dangerous bullies here.

Lets hope more people like you raise up to change this!

May the Force be with you

Ewa x