Why should we Democrats be thankful for George W. Bush?

Thanks for being our president, George. The Republicans stole the election for you, and with a commanding majority in both the House and the Senate, you were in the position to make all of Ronald Reagan's dreams come true.

If the votes had been counted properly in accordance with Florida state law, Gore would have been president. What would have happened with Gore in the White House? 9/11 may or may not have happened - though there's a significant chance he would have paid more attention to his daily intel briefings than you have done (and would have listened to the CIA and insisted that the facts should determine the policy, rather than your habit of demanding that policy must determine the facts).

Even if 9/11 had occurred (and we would probably gone into Afghanistan anyway), Gore would certainly not have invaded Iraq (to the ongoing tune of 12 BILLION dollars per month). Gore also would not have fired attorneys general for not (wrongly) indicting Democratic candidates and for (rightly) indicting Republicans (and thus making the Justice Department a subsection of the Republican party). Gore would have LISTENED to the attorneys general of ALL fifty states in 2003 when they sent a letter to the president to tell him that something needed to be done to regulate the housing market because of the plethora of predatory lending. Gore would NOT have sanctioned torture, and he would NOT have sanctioned the arrest and imprisonment of American citizens WITHOUT charges or even legal representation.

Sounds like America would've been a lot better off, huh? But look at the flip side.

Thanks to you, Mr. Bush, most of America - and most importantly, the YOUTH of America - can see the Neo-Cons for what they are.

Thanks to you, Mr. Bush, it is likely that the Democrats will hold the House, the Senate, and the Presidency as of January 20th, 2009...and we'll be in a position to push through legislation that Gore would never have been able to do without such congressional support.

Thanks to you, Mr. Bush, it looks like we will probably elect not just a mixed-race president, but one with a Middle-Eastern name, whose middle name he shares with the guy who you deposed in Iraq!

In other words, Mr. Bush, thanks to your bungling, you've given America the chance to show the world that even from such as you, we can rise once more to be a great nation that follows the rule of law and the tenets of morality.

Thank you, George W. Bush.

Looks like we lost the Cold War.

" If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. "Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

The above is from an AP article today.

Is this America, or is this the Soviet Union that I helped hold the line against in my Navy career? Makes one wonder who really won the Cold War....

Where is the Republican outrage?

Where, indeed? The Republican party has long been the self-proclaimed bastion of "doing what's right", of support for the troops, of patriotism.

But we have a president who now admits his invasion of Iraq was due to faulty intel, but when he was told by reliable personnel in the CIA that the intel was questionable at best, he either ignored them or ruined their careers. So it was Bush's lack of judgment - and his refusal to listen to the CIA - that resulted in the Iraq war and the deaths of over 4,000 servicemembers.

Can one imagine what the Republicans would have been doing if a Democratic president had done the same thing? They'd be howling for his head nonstop until he was removed from office and prosecuted. But it's a Republican president, so what has been their reaction? What I keep hearing from conservatives almost always falls along the line of "Well, he's just corrupt and all politicians are corrupt." No outrage at 4,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded servicemembers.

Remember when Bush claimed he'd prosecute whoever it was that leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the press? When it came out that Vice President Cheney had first-hand knowledge of it, did Bush (who also seems to have known about it all along) do anything at all? No. Was it only Mrs. Plame's career that was ended? No. It also exposed the ENTIRE CIA network of which she was a part. Dozens of CIA agents, their fronts, and their associates HAD to have been exposed. Again, WHERE is the Republican outrage?

The Republicans, instead of demanding justice for the dead and wounded military, and for the injury done to the CIA's operations that are ESSENTIAL to American security, are strangely silent.

These, surely, are among the greatest hypocrisies I know of in history. It's not the worst...but then this blog is not about religion.

Is Senator Obama an 'appeaser'?

The Cons want to call him an 'appeaser' because he says he'd have no problem meeting with the leaders of nations that desire our destruction.

Hm. Didn't the Soviet Union want to destroy us? "We will bury you!" That's what Khrushchev said...but Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I all met with them. And then there's North Korea, which we went to war with and is officially 'at war' with our close ally South Korea...yet Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II were willing to talk with them.

But if Obama wants to talk to Iran, that's appeasement!

I pointed this out to a conservative on watchblog.com, and he said the difference lay in the amount of experience the above Republicans had compared to Obama. I wonder at the value of such experience when they led to the great political scandals of our generation: Watergate, Iran-Contra, the firing of the nine Attorneys General, the Iraq War, and the unlawful imprisonment and torture of prisoners of war. There's more than that, but didja notice that Bush II has more major scandals and corruption than all the other presidents since the Korean war combined?

And the Cons' great complaint about Clinton? Monica. His extramarital sex was somehow more offensive to them than anything Bush II has done...and it is somehow a non-issue that some of the same ones who were most vitriolic in their invective against Clinton were also having a little on the side themselves.

Oh yeah, I forgot - Hillary's supposed to be the 'anti-Christ' too. So said CNN's Glenn Beck. And then Don Imus said she was 'satan'. He also called her fat, ugly, and a 'buck-toothed witch', too, which makes me wonder if he's ever looked in the mirror.

But I forget myself - this was supposed to be about Obama and his 'appeasement'. So the Cons want to label Obama an 'appeaser' like Neville Chamberlain, the most famous 'appeaser' in history. Let's take a quick look at ol' Neville: he was experienced (20-odd years in different political offices), he despised England's Labour Party (which is roughly analogous to our own Democratic Party), and he was (gasp!) a Conservative!

And Obama? He's a tall, skinny junior congressman from Illinois who happens to wield good judgment...and you know what? There was one other tall, skinny junior congressman from Illinois who happened to wield good judgment. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

That doesn't mean Obama is another Lincoln...but I feel I can safely say he'll be no Bush (or McCain (same thing)).

How Bush can still save his legacy

Two ongoing wars, one of which is an aggressive war launched on false pretenses in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and international law. An astronomical deficit (in opposition to the surplus he was handed by Bill Clinton), $12 billion per month spent in Iraq, An economy reeling under the weight of a crumbling housing market and skyrocketing gas and food prices. An administration that has legalized torture, nullified habeus corpus and used the Judiciary branch for blatantly partisan purposes.

It is not without cause that a majority of historians already call W. the worst president in American history.