Mission Accomplished

[filkertom]

It's all over the blogosphere, and even the mainstream media, so I'm not even gonna bother with a link: Today is the fifth anniversary of Dubya declaring "Major combat operations in Iraq are over".

Our entire country has been broken because of these bastards. Military, economy, treasury, reputation, etc., etc., etc., etc. The only thing BushCo has ever cared about is money and power for its loyalists -- a sick dream of American empire on the broken bodies of anybody stupid enough to get between the neoconservatives and their "rightful" plunder. And they're likely to get out of office, if they don't finish suspending the Constitution before the election, with their money and their power and the huzzahs of a fawning mass media and adoring punditry, rather than the criminal charges and war crimes trials they deserve.

Unless, of course, you think we're better off than we were eight years ago? Four years? One?

Anybody here still think anybody in the Bush administration has done anything right? Please provide links.

Comments

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Maybe President Obama will have them rounded up and sent to the Hague next year. A man can dream.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Word.
The sad part is that I suspect they aren't even any good at looting and plundering, at least in the sense of getting away with retiring on some remnants of the loot after your piracy days are done.
I think all that misappropriated $$ has ended up in the pocket of third world warlords and smugglers, scattered to the winds, not even of use to the guys who stole it. (Halliburton, dumb schmucks of Wall Street...)
Further, IMHO they're really not very good at power, either. If they were, we'd never notice what they were doing, it'd be a done deal and no shouting, things would just continue to run smoothly while pumping just the right amount of lolly into their pockets, not too much, not hogging so much that it breaks the whole con game. Again, dumb.
The fact that they gum up the works so badly and make the rest of the the whole machine break down is just a little-discussed part of what's so infuriating.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Anybody here still think anybody in the Bush administration has done anything right?

Some of them have resigned. Does that count?

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I'm about to say this . . .


I don't blame Bush for the economy tanking. It is often attributed to his fault because of the war and other factors. The fact is, the circustamces that attributed to the war (something I went into depth into on one of my last three LJ entries if your curious) have been around for some time. The economy is a beast of its own nature.

However, I do blame Bush for not doing anything about it. The warning signs have been around for long enough that action could have been taken on it. The war has also tied most of Bush's hands when it comes to the economy as well. You can't improve the economy if you have every cent you don't have going to a pointless war. Bush has turned his back on Americans and favors corporations. They get bail outs and tax cuts, we get jack. I'm also sure that somehow Bush is raking a fortune off of the oil thing but the "follow the money" principle.

I don't really blame Bush for causing the economy to tank. I blame corporate greed. It just happens that Bush is a product of corporate greed and happens to be best buddies with them. That is almost as bad.

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

Heh. I must admit you are correct.

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

And I wonder if Bush will re-extend unemployment benefits to a year so that Gonzales can get a job.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

The best comment on the whole sorry mess I've seen was on a bumper sticker plastered on a lamppost in downtown DC:

The Emperor Has No Flight Suit

[delazan.livejournal.com]

When Bush was appointed pResident, he did only one right thing: he appointed Tommy Thompson to his cabinet, thus getting Thompson out of the governor's mansion in Wisconsin.

Other than that, no, Bush has done nothing good.
-L.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I actually did find myself agreeing with BushCo about two weeks ago when they went up against Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas. And after Carter came out of the meeting making all sorts of claims that Hamas immediately denied, it just cemented that BushCo was right and Carter was wrong.

[adamselzer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how well it worked, since you could drive a truck through the loopholes, but I suppose that if I'm being entirely unbiased, I can at least give them the No Call List in their "good" column. That's about all I can think of, though. Warren G. Harding is lookin' pretty admirable right about now. Even Andrew Johnson seems more like a pest than a real villain, though I suspect he could've given W a run for his money if he were alive today.

[jss]

> [...Are we] better off than we were eight years ago? Four years? One?

On a purely personal level, despite what this administration has done, I might actually be better off (looking forwards) now than 8 years, 4 years, or 1 year ago:

• May 1, 2000 — My company was going through round three of layoffs and like Donna Summer I managed to survive. I got hit in round four in October and spent the next 9.5 months out of work.
• May 1, 2004 — In my fourteenth or fifteenth month of unemployment since the January 2003 layoffs (not counting the 1- and 2-day consulting gigs or the 5-week backfill). I do get a job at month-end, though.
• May 1, 2007 — Employed by a bank as the economy begins to tank noticeably and the subprime lending debacle begins to make itself known. Wind up getting let go 4 months later and spend about 8 months out of work.

Now, despite having to go into the hole on the calendar year (most of which amounts to the jobhunting expenses of the CA, IN, MI, and NY trips and the unreimbursed part of the moving expenses, all of which can be deducted from my 2008 taxes next April), odds are I'll be in a more stable IT job (it is in an educational institution instead of corporate Amerikkka, after all) with a certain degree of layoff protection, at least after the 6-month probation is over with.

[adamselzer.livejournal.com]

That flight suit was the funniest thing ever - like he just blew up the death star or something.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

I believe his disapproval rating is about 70% His actual circle of cronies can't be bigger than, oh, let's go mad and say a hundred glutted multimillionaires.

That means that 30% of the country is not paying attention.

No, the administration has never done one good, right, or moral thing. I long ago said that Chimpy is way past Warren Harding bad and well into Nehemiah Scudder bad.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Not soon enough, sadly. *tsk*

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

There is one thing I can point to that Bush did right. On 9/11, when advised of the attack on the Twin Towers, he did not immediately bolt out of the classroom. Rather, he waited a few minutes for the book to be finished, then left calmly, coolly, and collectedly. That, to me, is exactly the right thing to do with a class of kids that age, especially when, in that few minutes, more information can be gathered for you to be advised of and you will still be right on top of the situation. That is the *only* thing I will give Bush credit for.

I will agree with hanabishirecca, but only to a point. The deficit, when Clinton left office, was $0. That's right, zero. There was a surplus. Not saying the national debt was gone, but it was declining for once because the budget had a surplus. Look where the deficit is now. I point to Bush's illegal war on this one, and to corporate greed.

Am I doing better? Oddly enough, at this moment, signs are positive, but only because I moved to a lower cost-of-living area of the country, cut my monthly rent to under half of what my mortgage was, and still managed to find a job that is near enough to parity with my previous job in pay that the difference doesn't really matter. tarsa and I might actually have a small budget surplus ourselves every month. I am overall *far worse off* than I was eight, or even four, years ago, and my credit is gonna suck rocks for the next seven years, but I truly believe I'm now on the upswing.

No thanks to BushCo.

(Edited to get hanabishirecca's name right, and to clarify one sentence.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

A small thing, but when the government of Iraq was handed over to the Iraqis, the date was moved up. This probably prevented terrorist attacks, but if the whole thing weren't a mess, futzing with the schedule wouldn't have been necessary.

You may not think it was worth the cost, but the Kurds are a lot better off and the rescue of the marshes that Saddam Hussein had drained was a tremendous ecological win.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, consider that logically, half the country is below average intelligence, then consider just how dumb that bottom 30% must be...

I WIll Survive

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

It wasn't Donna Summer, but Gloria Gaynor. (I have worked as a commercial musician for most of the last 40 years and tend to track these things.)

Nate

Re: I WIll Survive

[jss]

d'Oh. And I knew that, too. <Sigh>.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Two years ago today, I was 15 days away from being laid off (my job was moved to India). The following year was hell on me, stress-wise. One year ago today, I was struggling in my new job that I was in for 2 months at this point, worried I could make it at this company. The new job pays more than the old one, so I was really hoping to keep it. Today, we found out last week that a new India office has been opened and all new positions will be filled there for the forseeable future (including replacing anyone who leaves here). So I think things are on another downturn here, and I will not have a job here by end of year again. So this past year has only been a break between unemployments.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

The only thing Bush has gotten correct was his announcement of an intention to land manned missions on Luna and Mars. Of course, considering that he's since cut NASA's budget and placed political operatives in charge, I'm taking that intention with a grain of salt comprised of all the minerals in the Pacific Ocean.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

And yet, somehow, it's STILL the liberal's fault.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

...a fair point.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I think Halliburton's no bid contracts and the amount of money Georgie Boy still probably has invested in the oil industry have assured that they do indeed know some things about looting.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I think it's that roughly 1/4 to 1/3rd of the country doesn't live in the same place as the rest of us.

Like my in-laws, George Bush is doing God's work. Period. Can do no wrong, if he went on TV and ate a live baby, they'd blame aetheist lieberals for making him do it.

They're nice people... but they don't live in the same world we do.