The Oil Drum | What the right hand giveth . . . .

176 comments on What the right hand giveth . . . .

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Don Sailorman on February 21, 2006 - 5:24pm

Steverino,
I appreciate that you do not like Bush. But obsessing on Bush is like picking at a plantar wart when you have malignant melanoma. In other words, what I am suggesting is that all this Bush bashing is a HUGE fallacy of lack of proportion. Note the following:

Under our systems of checks and balances, a president can do squat without Congress. A president may propose, but Congress appropriates the funds (or does not do so) and thus the power of the President to by himself do horrible things is very limited under our system of government. Congress and demosclerosis of Congress--structural problems, in other words, I think are about 100 to 500 times more serious than the fact that Bush is, to be polite, not likely to be remembered as one of our great presidents.
There are huge urgent issues out there: developing substitutes for fossil fuels, dealing with climate change, stabilizing population, just to name three of the big ones. The more emotion and energy and time spent bashing Bush, the less there is to go at the big problems.
Compared to the screwups of other presidents, such as J.F.K. and L.B.J. in getting the U.S. into the Vietnam War (a far, far, bigger and bloodier war than Iraq) G.W.Bush is not an especially heavy hitter as creating disasters go.

Thus I conclude that Bush bashing is counter productive.

Get over it. Get down to very serious issues.

In three years Bush will be gone. NONE of our serious problems can be mitigated much by his going, no matter who his successor is.

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prole on February 21, 2006 - 5:46pm

As Harry Truman used to say:

"The buck stops here!"

So in that vain, Bush bashing is totally appropriate. He claims to be a leader but does not set an agenda that anyone can understand or follow.

Seems like a failure of leadership to me.

It also seems that you are overly sensitive to criticism of him.

Might you be a Bush supporter that does not like facing facts i.e. Bush is a failure!

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steverino on February 21, 2006 - 7:19pm

listen,,,i know bush isn't the only problem here....but what could have been done with that 400 billion "invested" in the middle east... if just anyone in power would do one right thing with a decent fraction, say $30 billion...ie one month in iraq used for jump starting renewables in this country..blah , blah, blah ..bush controls congress , no checks and balances...i know, it's stupid to argue politics

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wkwillis on February 22, 2006 - 8:44am

I wish that was the case.
Bush Jr. can ignore the Supreme Court, ignore the Senate or House when picking which version of a bill to sign (which will give the small states fits when they figure that out), print money whenever he wants and to hell with the debt limit, move money from one appropriation area to another if Congress doesn't give him what he wants, and God knows what else he's doing that we don't know about.

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enviro attny on February 22, 2006 - 9:39am

Bush gets the blame for the destruction of america. After Sept 11, he had the opportunity to ask Americans to work together for the future by eliminating oil. Something as simple as a $5000 cash rebate for hybrid cars 5 years ago would be making a substantial impact now. Throw in actual sacrifice like (gasp) investing in rail systems instead of tax cuts, and we would be in much better shape. Instead, he decided to enter into illegal wars, make rich people richer and totally destroy our country.

Bush will be the cause of more death, pain and hatred than any leader in the history of the world, simply because he deliberately didn't do anything.

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176 comments on What the right hand giveth . . . .

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