31 December 2005

Curious George Gets His Report Card...



I love this Op-Ed! However, the fact is that not a whole lot about the Bu$h Administration and their idea of SOP has changed much in the last 12 months. He was shifty lying shit-bag on 31.December 2004 and he's still one now. What's different now is that a signficant number of American citizens, as well as the American media, have begun to wake up and smell the decomp. And what righteous stench it is!

Once again, I hate to say it folks, but I told you so...

--ryan




Heck of a Job, Bushie

By PAUL KRUGMAN
December 30, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
 

 

 
A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social
Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big political
mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into private accounts.

 
A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts
permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to
budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn't acted, and
most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.
 
A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed
that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was
apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11.
According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally decided, days after
Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts
to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.
 
A year ago, before "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" became a
national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government agencies and
the rapid replacement of competent professionals with unqualified political
appointees attracted hardly any national attention.
 
A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff,
and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.
 
A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking
Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be welcomed as
liberators - although he hadn't yet declared that the Iraq insurgency was
in its "last throes" - was widely admired for his "gravitas."
 
A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few prominent figures to
question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who
warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of Baghdad, that the
occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion -
was considered flaky and unsound.
 
A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration
suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to
build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media
were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until
polls showed that most Americans already believed it.
 
A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were
Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi's triumphant tour of Washington, back in
September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney campaign. So
did his claim that the insurgents were "desperate." But Mr. Allawi turned
out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington conference rooms and
cocktail parties who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.
 
A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must "stay the
course," only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S. presence in
Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It would have been
hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey
recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better "because it doesn't
feed the notion of occupation."
 
A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's 2003
pledge that "if anyone in this administration was involved" in the leaking
of Valerie Plame's identity, that person "would no longer be in this
administration." Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has always known who
was involved.
 
A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being
deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act
that "a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking about chasing
down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.
It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think
Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing
what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the
Constitution."
 
A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.
 
A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and
pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president
isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes
to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.
 




 
 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home