The why of “why” things have gone so wrong under Bush
Read the whole thing but here are my favorite passages:
The staggering losses we’ve sustained from three decades of increasingly authoritarian, non-reality-based, Daddy-knows-best deciding are mounting up. On 9/11, in New Orleans, in Minneapolis, in Iraq, in a planet-sweeping range of diplomatic failures, in the debacles around a Homeland Security department that was apparently designed for theatrical impact rather than actually securing the homeland — we’re seeing what happens when you put government in the hands of people who believe that the only use for government is to arbitrage it (and they can’t even get that right: you’re supposed to auction assets to the highest bidder, not give them away to your favorite cronies). We look, astonished, at our shattered infrastructure and know that something has gone horribly wrong. We listen, stunned, as China — which is now far more serious about planning its future than we are — announces that it has beat us by years in completing the national backbone for its second-generation Internet network; that North Korea has nukes; that Europe has better, easier, more effective airport security than we do. We feel ashamed, and we wonder where our vaunted technological greatness went.
. . .
“Nobody could have forseen” this? Bull. All these events had been predicted, in considerable detail, by the people whose job it was to pay attention. The only reason the Bush Administration couldn’t foresee it is that they live in their own little ideological bubble, devoted to creating a future that benefits everyone except the taxpayers who pay their salaries. The bubble deafens them to all warnings, and blinds them to the evidence provided by experts. For 25 years, anybody who could forseee a future other than the GOP’s preferred one has been systematically run out of town. Their “we didn’t see it coming” whine is nothing more than their own feeble admission of the way their ideology has finally betrayed us all.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
If you want to really get angry, (not that you needed that), listen to this episode of “Democracy Now” featuring Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston talking with Amy Goodman about his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill).â€
Here is an excerpt:
You can read the transcript, but it’s best to hear the audio which are both available here.
That Bush scam smacks of a local stadium issue we had here recently, unless I’m missing something.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:27 am
The Democratic Caucus has put out a chart that summarizes Bush’s legacy in terms of the US economy, quality of life, and national security. The next president won’t have a legacy, it will be all about undoing the damage from the Bush administration.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Would not the loyal oppositions’ miserable failure to reign in bush and his team be the main reason we are so stuck with the guy?
They should be embarrassed to be so rode(sp), and put away wet, by the cowboy.
Well if you can’t do anything effective…bitch. Bush is the symptom, of an entirely diseased body politic.