The Political Junkies
archived: 28 May - 3 Jun, 2006 Back Next
BUSH IS NO TRUMAN
[Authored by Allen L. Roland*]
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron". H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
We have undoubtedly reached H. L. Mencken's great and glorious day where the White House is not only adorned by a downright moron but that Bush could very well be the worst President of all time – if we all live long enough to recover from his and Dick Cheney's disastrous mis-calculations.
Mis-calculations such as Iraq WMD'S, Hurricane Katrina preparation, tax cuts for the rich, Abu Ghraib, illegal spying on U.S. citizens, senior prescription health care benefit for Drug Companies, ignoring U.N. demands to close our secret prisons, stop torturing and allowing prisoners due process as well as the responsibility for 20,645 American casualties in Iraq – with 2,462 being fatalities.
Like Don Quixote, Bush has been flailing away at enemies that he himself has either imagined or created – and always under the mantra of promoting freedom.
Princeton history professor, Sean Wilentz, in a recent Rolling Stone cover story – submits Bush as the top contender for worst president of all time.
In the ultimate act of self deception George W Bush has compared himself to Harry Truman – standing alone against Islamic radicalism as Truman stood tall against communist aggression.
Will someone please tell George the truth – the truth that he will surely go down in history as by far our most oblivious president of all time.
“Like the cold war, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, questions all dissent, has territorial ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims : " George W Bush
This statement was made last weekend to the West Point Class of 2006 but is an illuminating and obvious act of projection and self- deception – for, in reality, the entire world sees the Cheney/Bush preemptive neocon agenda as a murderous ideology, that despises freedom (except corporate freedom ), questions all dissent ( NSA spying outrage ), has territorial ambitions ( Iraq ), and pursues totalitarian aims ( our current dictatorial government with Bush as the ultimate decider ).
Harry Truman was a self made man who served honorably in war time and as President. He had great respect for the Constitution and the bill of rights – whereas Bush has led an entitled life where he has never had to take responsibility for his constant failures and has had little respect for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In 1914, after his father’s death, Truman tried unsuccessfully to earn a living as an owner and operator of a small mining company and oil business, all the while remaining involved with the farm. In 1917, Truman’s National Guard unit shipped out to France as part of the American Expeditionary Force fighting the world war. The soldiering life suited Truman, who turned his battery – which had a reputation for unruliness and ineffectiveness – into a top-notch unit. Whereas Bush avoided active duty and is generally believed to have gone AWOL the last year of his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.
Truman’s legacy has become clearer and more impressive in the years since he left office. Most scholars admit that the President faced enormous challenges domestically, internationally, and politically. While he occasionally failed to measure accurately the nation’s political tenor and committed some significant policy blunders, Truman achieved notable successes. Domestically, he took important first steps in civil rights, protected many of the New Deal’s gains, and presided over an economy that would enjoy nearly two decades of unprecedented growth. In foreign affairs, the President and his advisers established many of the basic foundations of America foreign policy, especially in American-Soviet relations, that would guide the nation in the decades ahead. On the whole, Truman is currently celebrated by the public, politicians, and scholars alike as one of our more courageous and able presidents.
Whereas George W Bush's legacy will be framed by massive debt, the deadly consequences of illegal preemptive war and the severe deterioration of relations with the rest of the world.
Contrary to Bush's self-perceptions – he is likely to be remembered as the worst and most oblivious President of all time who not only refined Nixon's rationalized dishonesty but propelled executive branch abuse of power to new and uncharted heights.
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*Allen L. Roland served five years as a Navy fighter pilot and ten years as a stockbroker. He has earned a masters degree in psychology and now works as a therapist with an active private counseling practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Roland has a wonderful website, Allen L. Roland's Radio Weblog. He also publishes a newsletter that is TPJ recommended. You may subscribe here: Newsletter
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Updated: May 30, 2006
MEMORIAL DAY
[Authored by Mike Lasser]
This is no time for a jingoistic jeremiad but only for recognizing the deep sadness that's bound to result from the pending report about the U.S. Marines who willfully and wantonly executed Iraqi men, women, and children in an attempt to get information about insurgents. There's no such thing as a good way to fight a war but there are certainly worse ways.
As I type this, I'm listening to The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and then Ray Charles sing "America the Beautiful," an inspiring, heartfelt antidote to the latest dose of deeply troubling news from Iraq. But it isn't an antidote at all. Rather, it reminds me, at least, of what we're capable of as a nation -- what we've struggled to stand for over the last 200 years and sometimes came pretty close to doing and being. And thus it makes our worst failures seem even worse.
Earlier this morning, over a festive breakfast of Eggs Benedict at our favorite hang-out, Elaine and I read Maureen Dowd in the NYT. She can be sophomorically snotty to no purpose except to show off, she can address a serious issue with wit and a keen sense of ridicule and irreverence, and less often she also can write with deep and penetrating seriousness. Today was an example of the latter, as she wrote about the Marines who must stand for what they did but who also were put into a position where the pressures of warfare -- reservists on their third tour in Iraq -- broke them. Dowd understands that they must take the blame, but -- the daughter of a police detective who faced danger often in his career, and who winces inwardly every time somebody refers to the police as "pigs" -- she also understands that those who put them in this particular form of "harm's way" with the callous bravado of the chickenhawk bear much of the blame as well.
We sent these young men and women to war with much too little sense of what war is. Our leaders intoxicated themselves with self-serving dreams of roses for the liberators. Not because they were idealists but because they prided themselves too much on being hard-headed realists. Not because conviction impelled them but because their dark vision of their own people, and of the nation's rights and freedoms, in collision with our deep psychological vulnerability in the aftermath of 9/11, freed them to act with what looked to be perfect impunity.
But that means we must hold ourselves to account as well. We can vote against them every chance we get but we can't divorce ourselves from their decisions. They are ours, and that I believe is a main source of the contradiction that afflicts us -- deepening malaise coupled with willful self-indulgence. It's as if we hope a new Hummer will help us fall asleep before we start to think the most troubling thoughts that plague us.
And just as they are ours, so we are theirs, and they have betrayed the trust we gave them in the casting of our vote, regardless of which candidate received it. In the early years of the republic, we struggled for an honorific for the president. Hamilton and some of his friends preferred something grand. But we settled instead on Mr. President -- an expression of respect but also a reminder that the person who holds the office is nothing more than the rest of us.
It's a decision that embodies our common sense and our stubborn insistence on both liberty and freedom. We sometimes betray that insistence, and sometimes we allow others to do it for us. There's a reason why we call the White House, not the "President's house," but "the people's house."
"A republic," Franklin told one of his fellow citizens in 1789, "if you can keep it."
The great question of this decade is not health care or immigration or even Iraq, but whether we're capable or regaining our bearings and balance, of being a single people despite our differences so we can address global warming and restore ourselves to ourselves and thus stand for something in the world at large. We've managed to find that saving grace more than once in our history, and, God knows, we need to do it now. Alas, we have a president who doesn't even know such a thing exists. Admitting that he made a mistake -- saying "Bring 'em on" -- is nothing more than a political tactic. On this dark Memorial Day, the familiar bromide becomes a fervent and necessary prayer. God Bless America.
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SIZZLE, FIZZLE, DROP
The headlines proclaim the sizzle; a sizzling US economy:
The overall economy grew at a sizzling pace of 5.3 percent in the January-March quarter, the strongest rate in 2 1/2 years.
A closer examination reveals the fizzle; the economy is slowing as inflation rises (emphasis added):
Consumers spent at a strong pace in April, but much of their money went to fill up their gas tanks. . . .
The economic data released Friday depicted an economy slowing from the sizzling growth of the first three months of the year, but also one that was also being buffeted by rising inflation pressures.
The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending jumped 0.6 percent last month, the biggest increase since a 0.8 percent rise in January.
However, when inflation--reflecting $3 and more for a gallon of gas--was removed, the increase in spending was a much smaller 0.1 percent. . . .
An inflation reading tied to the personal spending report showed that core inflation--excluding food and energy--rose 2.1 percent in April compared with the same month a year ago. That was the biggest such increase in 13 months and it moved inflation above the Fed's comfort zone of 1 percent to 2 percent.
As inflation increases, Americans are experiencing the drop:
The government also reported Friday that personal incomes rose by 0.5 percent in April, matching the March gain, with the strength coming from the biggest increase in wages and salaries in the past year.
Disposable incomes, the amount Americans have to spend after paying taxes, rose by 0.4 percent in April, but fell by 0.1 percent after inflation was taken into account.
The personal savings rate slipped to a negative 1.6 percent, the 11th consecutive month it has been in negative territory.
That means consumers are spending all of their disposable income and dipping into savings or increasing borrowing to finance current purchases.
Rising interest rates are also driving home foreclosures to new highs:
RealtyTrac, an industry organization that maintains a nationwide database of foreclosures, says mortgage defaults between January and March of this year numbered 323,102 compared with 188,122 during the same period last year — an increase of 72 percent. . . .
Americans should consider what Republican economic policy has wrought. Americans working hard to increase the nation’s productivity, making less, going deeper into debt because Republicans have failed implement any policy to curb the cost of gasoline.
BIRTH TAX
As Americans have expended their savings and are now incurring debt, Republicans continue to spend the Federal Government deeper into debt. Every child born today in America is born into an ever growing national debt:
U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, however, thinks elected officials should be talking about "the birth burden," the $156,000 that represents each American's share of the $8 trillion federal debt, plus $35 trillion in unfunded spending promises. Every child born in America receives this dubious legacy: a $156,000 IOU. . . .
Walker puts the numbers in personal terms. The average household share of the federal fiscal mess is $411,000. Imagine if every household in America had a $411,000 mortgage, but no house.
You can thank the crew in Washington -- President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress -- for, among other mistakes, passing a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit without paying for it. America's liabilities have more than doubled from some $20 trillion in 2000 to $46 trillion in 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Republicans are intent on abolishing the inheritance tax (“death tax” ). The estate tax:
affects less than 2 percent of the richest households, those with wealth exceeding $1 million. A reformed estate tax, with wealth exemptions boosted to $3.5 million, would still generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue a year. Under such a reform, an estimated 6,000 estates a year, averaging $17 million each, would pay the tax
Democrats should be talking about abolishing the birth tax.
Last Update: 06/03/2006