January 2009... End of an Error

This is the last day of the year 2008. A year when the effects from the missteps, failures and duplicities of the tumultuous eight years of the Bush administration came home to roost. Or, should we say, were flung at him.

As Bob Herbert laments today in "Add Up the Damage" (NYTimes).... "This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job."

The invasion of Iraq is a good example of the wrecking ball the White House mafia took to our country. Herbert reflects on the devastation.... "The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

"Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: 'We cannot wait,' he said, 'for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.'

"He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.... The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz."

So just how does The Decider view this sorry Iraq-war chapter in his catalog of horrors?

"A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.' ”

Couldn't you just die laughing.

Now The Decider is trying to tidy up the record of his apocalyptic reign by rewriting history. But, we were given a more accurate image to remember him by in the form of a size 10. No, not the measurements of his ego-inflated all-hat-and-no-cattle Stetson, but the shoes of an irate reporter flung at his head during his recent legacy-burnishing trip to Iraq.

For a Bush legacy summation after eight years of pent-up frustrations, for a you-deserve-no-breaks-today job evaluation.... on the your-place-in-history scale of 1 to 10, this shoe-fly moment was a ten plus.

On January 22 Barack Obama will right the national course and restore the forward momentum our nation enjoyed before we were so rudely interrupted.

That most of all is why we celebrate the arrival of 2009, a Happy New Year!

Palin's Pathetic Performance

Last January the New York Times endorsed Sen. John McCain as the best GOP presidential nominee of the field. In doing so they said:

....there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.

We have shuddered at Mr. McCain’s occasional, tactical pander to the right because he has demonstrated that he has the character to stand on principle.....

That was then.... before McCain's cave-in to that "small, angry fringe," tactically pandering to the right with the pick of Sarah Palin.... and, this is now.

In today's NYT editorial, "Gov. Palin's Worldview," they lament.... As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking....

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin's performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things - who are blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls "the mission" that they won't even pause for reflection - shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News's Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don't want "somebody's big fat resume' maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state."

Hello, Palin!! Remember your running mate, Sen. McCain who has served decades in the Washington establishment and has a big, fat resume.

As NYT op-ed columnist Bob Herbert points out today in "She's Not Ready": With Ms. Palin, it's not about agreeing or disagreeing, she doesn't seem to understand some of the important issues.

"Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?" Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, "In what respect, Charlie?"

"Well, what do you interpret it to be?" asked Mr. Gibson.

"His worldview?" asked Ms. Palin.

Watching this unready performance, one wanted to prompt her that the Bush doctrine calls for preemption in striking countries we only suspect of things.... like Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. We're paying a heavy price for that doctrine and will continue to pay for decades to come.

Perhaps most disturbing of all.... with it's reminders of the misleading lies of The Decider.... were Palin's remarks at the deployment ceremony of her son whose unit is being shipped to Iraq. She told that audience of soldiers that they would be fighting "the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The troubling question.... is she deliberately falsifying history, or is she still clueless that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks? Even The Decider had to finally admit this....

Herbert asks: How is it this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

How, indeed.

And last, how can McCain, who promotes himself as the ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside to make this incredibly reckless choice? A choice he said was his most important one as a candidate, a choice that first and foremost must be someone ready and qualified to be president.

There no longer is any question that McCain would continue the irresponsible "George Bush style of governing"...

November.

Billary's Racist Underbelly

With all of the racial innuendos, and downright race-baiting "hard-working Americans, white Americans" utterances of the Billary campaign, the question becomes.... did Bill and Hillary ever really care about black America? Or was aligning themselves with African-Americans always just a cold and calculated vote-harvesting maneuver.

As Hillary elbows into West Virginia for today's primaries, will she once again crow that only she can attract white working-class voters, that Barack Obama just can't cut it with that crowd.... purposely fueling racism and undermining Obama as the presumptive nominee.

Bob Herbert asks, will Hillary blatantly keep sowing "Seeds of Destruction" (NY Times) for the Democratic party, and the nation, in November.

Herbert rips the scab off of the wounding Billary campaign in his hard-hitting weekend op-ed.... "Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way - any way - back to the White House" are drudging up the lousy GOP Southern strategy rhetoric....

"He can't win! Don't you understand? He's black! He's black!

"The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It's a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years."

As Hillary stands on the bones of racial progress tonight to belch her pride over her predicted divisive win in West Virginia, Americans can be grateful that the vote-garnering pretense of the counterfeit Billary feel-your-pain persona has been unmasked.

Bill and Hillary have now proven beyond doubt that they are not the nation's healers, but just the usual craven political heels.