George Bush

Image by Pantone801, found at Flickr.com

This is so mindboggling it defies commentary. Up until the 1st of July of 2008, Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the United States.

Bush Removes Nelson Mandela from Terror Watch List
By VOA News
01 July 2008

U.S. President George Bush Tuesday signed a bill that allows Nelson Mandela to enter the United States without special clearance.

The measure officially removes Mr. Mandela and his African National Congress from a U.S. terror watch list.

The former South African president may now visit the United States without the U.S. secretary of state having to certify that he is not a terrorist.

Mr. Mandela was placed on the list because of his work with the African National Congress (ANC), which fought to end white minority rule in South Africa.

Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his work with the ANC to fight apartheid rule in South Africa.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 90 on July 18.

Un.

Be.

lievable.

As the flood waters recede in the Midwest, it becomes increasingly clear that this was yet ANOTHER preventable disaster that the Republicans let happen. McCain is one of many Republicans who fought tooth and nail to prevent flood control measures in the Midwest.

First, some general background. On June 8th, 2008, NPR ran a report on the decline of America's flood control dams (you can listen with Openplayer, I think). There has been a jump of 33% in the number of dams that are considered unsafe. Consider that as you ponder the impact of these floods.

Now, more specifically, the Des Moines Register carried a piece on how Republicans, despite warnings from 1993 on, refused in 2007 to fund a much-needed upgrade to the levees protecting Des Moines. Many other similar upgrades were part of the same bill. McCain fiercely opposed the bill and Bush eventually vetoed it when Democrats passed it. From the Des Moines Register:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain opposed legislation last year that included money for flood control in Des Moines, which shows he is wrong to push for reforms to the congressional earmark system, a Democratic lawmaker charged Thursday.

I have been covering to some degree the terrible flooding in the Midwest and describing how the levees breaking, leading to the flooding of towns and cities in Wisconsin and Iowa, are a direct result of deliberate Republican neglect of America's infrastructure. Republicans prefer giving your tax money to Halliburton, Exxon and Blackwater than using that money to fix our roads, bridges and levees. This morning on NPR I heard as many as two dozen levees are in danger of breaking as flood waters flow downstream along the Mississippi. A huge chunk of the Midwest has been affected. These levees should have been maintained! This began as a natural disaster, but Republican neglect of the levees is responsible for the scale of the disaster...just like in New Orleans.

Democrats vote for funding to maintain our infrastructure. Republicans vote against that funding. That means, when Republicans are in control, our levees, roads and bridges decay, leading to disaster. But the dedication of Democrats and the neglect by Republicans goes deeper than that.

As the floodwaters rose in the Midwst, Barack Obama grabbed a shovel and helped:

Where was McCain? Where was Bush?

I have already discussed at some length the dismal and DELIBERATE Republican failures to maintain America's infrastructure. The Republican Party has a stated policy of "Drowning American in a Bathtub," essentially reducing government to nothing. This is how Republican guru Grover Norquist put it:

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"

We saw the direct and tragic result of that Republican "Drown America" policy in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, in closed and collapsed bridges in Minnesota, and now...floods in Iowa this month (June 7th).

Although I have done versions of this before, this was inspired by a Daily Kos Diary:

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

It is now five years since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Five years since Bush gloated that we had won...and yet almost every day brings more casualties. We are STILL mired in Iraq, still have no exit strategy. And Osama bin Laden, who has never set foot in Iraq, remains free and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization is stronger than ever.

Bush has failed.

And John McCain has vowed to continue Bush's Iraq Quagmire for as long as 100 years. Yes...he said he would be fine with continuing this failure for 100 years. Let's look at McCain's views of Bush's failed Iraq Quagmire: (thanks to MoveOn.org)

* John McCain recently said, "No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have."1 He was Bush's strongest ally in the march to war in Iraq. McCain consistently repeated the same misjudgments made by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and President Bush. More than 4,000 American troops have lost their lives because of these misjudgments.2
* McCain says we could be in Iraq for 100 years, and has consistently opposed any plan to withdraw troops from Iraq.3 He'd rather dump billions more in Iraq than invest it in our economy back home.

John McCain can't seem to make up his mind what he thinks about the economy. Sometimes he seems to say the Bush economy is just splendorifous, don't worry, be happy. Other times he gets his serious face and tells us straight talk about things being tough. But you can't have it both ways, Mr. John McBush. You can't say times are tough without recognizing the dismal failures of the Bush economy.

The DNC is calling him on his economic confusion:

And Marc Ambinder discusses some details of the issue at the Atlantic.com.

John McCain seems to think America really is better off than it was 8 years ago. I don't know about you but no one I know is better off. In fact with unemployment, inflation, banks struggling, record level bankruptcy, decaying infrastructure, a second recession in 8 years, and a record deficit, it is hard to see how anyone who isn't CEO of Halliburton or Exxon could see these times as anywhere comparable to the low inflation, low unemployment boom times of the Clinton years.

UPDATE: Sometimes a story is too good to be true. Even though this story sounds plausible, turns out http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp ">it's been debunked on Snopes.com.

While John McCain is eagerly embracing Bush and vowing to continue Bush's failed policies, it may be a good idea to remember what Ronald Reagan thought of the Little Bush:

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

From the REAGAN DIARIES------entry dated May 17, 1986.

So this is the guy we had shoved down our throats and who John McCain wants to emulate?

Time for the voters to reject the failed Bush/McCain poli

As oil and wheat prices skyrocket, banks quite literally teeter on the brink of collapse, our soldiers keep dying, and the US deficit keeps on climbing, we may sometimes forget the monumental blunder that got us into this mess: the invasion of Iraq.

This is the number one drain on our economy, the number one reason for high prices and the number one reason the international alliance that supported American after 9/11 now barely speaks to us.

The Iraq Blunder is one of the biggest blunders ever in American History...and yet the George Bush/John McCain/Joe Lieberman axis of blunders STILL thinks we should be occupying Iraq for eternity.

But the one, single question that no Republican has ever been able to answer is just why did we ever invade in the first place. Why did we invade, what are our goals, what is our exit strategy? No answer from Bush. No answer from McCain. No answer from Lieberman.

No answer because there IS no answer. Every single excuse they ever gave us for invading Iraq proved to be a lie. I was one of those who, at the time they were making their case to the world for invasion, was dead certain they were lying. My knowledge of history and politics, everything I knew about the Middle East and Islam told me their excuses were lies. Those of us who saw through their lies were proven right. This morning I was reminded of this, on the eve of the 5th year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq Blunder, that I was right.

Remember when the senior, elected Bush told America not to worry about the economy? He told us "Don't worry, be happy." That was the old Bush economic policy. Ignore the recession, ignore people's suffering, ignore the issue.

Well, his son is no better. He is also telling America not to worry about the economy.

Wheat, oil, milk, and corn prices all are reaching unheard of highs, making it harder than ever for working class and middle class Americans to make ends meet. Hedge funds are on the brink of failing. Bankruptcies are at new highs, leading to emergency bailouts of banks like Bear Stearns and fears that those banks could fail. The deficit is at an all time high. About the only things going down are wages, employment and the value of the dollar. We have those twin threats of inflation AND recession, a combination we used to call stagflation, though people seem scared to actually utter that word. Simply put, the economy sucks and Americans are hurting.

So today George W. Bush decided to reassure us about the economy. Don't worry about it, we are told. Everything's fine.