Post by gopackgo2000 on Sept 30, 2009 2:04:53 GMT -5
Sept 29, 2009 11:08:46 GMT -5 @amoeba15 said:
Sooooo what you are essentially saying is that you agree and/or support all of the following which Bush was responsible for?:
-No Child Left Behind. Forget about abolishing the Department of Education. Bush made the federal government a much more intrusive and costly part of local schools.
-Project Safe Neighborhoods. A draconian law that further guts the 2nd Amendment, like 20,000 other unconstitutional gun laws before it.
-Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. This the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ and will cost the already bankrupt Medicare system trillions more.
-Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Possibly the most expensive and restrictive change to the securities laws since the ‘30s. A major reason why companies will either stay private or go public outside the U.S.
-Katrina. A total disaster of bureaucratic mismanagement, featuring martial law.
-Ownership Society. The immediate root of the current financial crisis lies in Bush’s encouragement of easy credit to everybody and inflating the housing market.
-Nationalizations and Bailouts. In response to the crisis he created, he nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and passed by far the largest bailouts in U.S. history (until OBAMA!).
-Free-Speech Zones. Originally a device for keeping war protesters away when Bush appeared on camera, they’re now used to herd.
-The Patriot Act. This 132-page bill, presented for passage only 45 days after 9/11 (how is it possible to write something of that size and complexity in only 45 days?) basically allows the government to do whatever it wishes with its subjects. Warrantless searches. All kinds of communications monitoring. Greatly expanded asset forfeiture provisions.
-The War on Terror. The scope of the War on Drugs (which Bush also expanded) is exceeded only by the war on nobody in particular but on a tactic. It’s become a cause of mass hysteria and an excuse for the government doing anything.
-Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush started two completely pointless, counterproductive, and immensely expensive wars, neither of which has any prospect of ending anytime soon.
-Dept. of Homeland Security. This is the largest and most dangerous of all agencies, now with its own gigantic campus in Washington, DC. It will never go away and centralizes the functions of a police state.
-Guantanamo. Hundreds of individuals, most of them (like the Uighurs recently in the news) guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are incarcerated for years. A precedent is set for anyone who is accused of being an “enemy combatant” to be completely deprived of any rights at all.
-Abu Ghraib and Torture. After imprisoning scores of thousands of foreign nationals, Bush made it a U.S. policy to use torture to extract information, based on a suspicion or nothing but a guard’s whim. This is certainly one of the most damaging things to the reputation of the U.S. ever. It says to the world, “We stand for nothing.”
-The No-Fly List. His administration has placed the names of over a million people on this list, and it’s still growing at about 20,000 a month. I promise it will be used for other purposes in the future…
-The TSA. Somehow the Bush cabal found 50,000 middle-aged people who were willing to go through their fellow citizens’ dirty laundry and take themselves quite seriously. God forbid you’re not polite to them…
-Farm Subsidies. Farm subsidies are the antithesis of the free market. Rather than trying to abolish or cut them back, Bush signed a record $190 billion farm bill.
-Legislative Free Ride. And he vetoed less of what Congress did than any other president in history.
The worst shame of Bush – worse than the spending, the new agencies, the torture, or the wars – is that he used so much pro-liberty and pro-free-market rhetoric in the very process of destroying those institutions. That makes his actions ten times worse than if an avowed socialist had done the same thing. People will blame the full suite of disasters Bush caused on the free market simply because Bush constantly said he believed in it.
And he’s left OBAMA! with a fantastic starting point for what I expect to be even greater intrusions into your life and finances. Eventually, the Bush era will look like The Good Old Days. But only in the way that the Romans looked back with nostalgia on Tiberius and Claudius after they got Caligula. And then Nero. And then the first of many imperial coups and civil wars.
Without going through line by line...about 80-90% of what you wrote I would agree that Bush never should have done any of it! From the Patriot act to Prescriptions drugs....no child left behind (Kennedy helped write this farce!) and bialoiuts...Bush sucked!! But at the same time you can disagree with the Wars but at least Bush allowed his generals to run the show and he was willing to listen to them...Obama is leaving our soldiers out to dry while he tries to get the Olympics to Chicago to pay back some of the Chicago coruption that helped him get elected. Bailouts under Bush were rediculous, but Obama makes them look small!!! Again bad and really bad aren't good and both are bad. I guess my over all point is that I don't see a lot of difference between the two, yet many still act like he is so much better and different than Bush. I just don't see it.
BTW, I agree that Bush did much harm to Capitalism by being a fan in words and a destoryer of it in actions.
Couple of comments on a couple of things that I take issue with...
Katrina was a debacal I won't argue that, but the local leaders and that idiot mayor has plenty of culpability on his hands too. All around mess here from both sides.
Fannie and Freddie. Bush and Republicans in congress wanted to put stronger regulations on them and investigate them, but they couldn't get it done. Both sides have a lot of blame when it comes to the credit and mortgage crisis. I refuse to pin the whole thing on BUsh, however he was a part of it jsut like many other Republicans and Democrats were a part of it too!
Torture...when we are dealing with prisoners whom we know shot at our men and are part of the enemy, then I am not opposed to torture. I am not in favor of extracation, but water boarding some arabs that would like to see our nation in flames doesn't bother me....especially if it can get us needed intell to further our fight against terrorists!
