The Bush Administration: A Review

A great day for America. Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

If you don't mind, I'll quote President Gerald Ford and say that "our long national nightmare is over".

I will try to refrain from over-sentimentalizing, but I am certain that it won't shock you to know that I am excited. Excited for our future. Excited about the possibilities that this day means. Excited for my daughters, excited for my Grandmother, and excited for my parents. I'm Excited for my ancestors... all of my ancestors, black and white. I am excited for America.

I have no illusions that with the inauguration of President Obama, everything that is wrong in this country will be put right by next week. I have no illusions that with the ascension of Barack Obama that everything wrong in this country will change... even in the long term. I remain excited, nonetheless, because in electing Obama, this country has showed, enthusiastically, that it has reached a tipping point. We, the people, have had enough bad leadership from our government.

We have, by electing this man to be our leader, taken a positive step in restoring sane, responsible government. This isn't a matter of Right v. Left, nor of Democrats v. Republicans, as much as it is about making wrong things right.

Over the past eight years, a particular faction of anti-democratic reactionaries have run roughshod over the government of the United States. The government of, by, and for the people has been mightily abused and as a result, the American people have been mightily abused.
These reactionaries spent the past eight years making our national treasury the playground of largesse for any corporation or conglomerate seeking to make money... taxpayer's money, in the name of "privatization". These evil men and women engaged in the political sleight of hand of deceit and deception, and fooled the people, at least for a while, into believing that the "party of fiscal responsibility" could fight two wars, improve schools and infrastructure, create something close to a balanced budget, and cut taxes all at the same time, and maintain solvency.

While these governmental pirates had their snouts deep in the trough of Midas and were busy bribingdistracting the ever-shrinking middle class with "stimulus" checks, they were busy molesting our Constitution in ever more vile ways. These people treated our laws with no less brutality than that of a dark-alley rapist, with secret prisons, torture, warrantless searches, indefinite detention without trials or even charges. This sort of thing is wrong in any circumstances, but it is thrice-damned when you consider that these things were also done to American citizens.

The Bush administration, at the direction of their leader, and with the collusion of their party affiliates, instigated and initiated a war of aggression against a sovereign nation that wasn't a threat to this country, our way of life, or our economy. This war destroyed a nation, made it less safe and opened that country to internecine religious strife, which, until our intervention, it had never seen on this scale in modern times. Without the slightest compunction, our country, being led by the criminal clique of George W. Bush, and his lick-spittle sycophants, began a bloodletting unequaled in modern western military history. A bloodletting that didn't have to happen, that was based on distortions, lies, and outright crimes. A war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, thousands of American and allied military deaths, and untold thousands of wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Anyone who is reading this knows that Bush and his quasi-fascist gang of Constitutional thugs were unpopular, that fact became abundantly clear early in their time of national control, but they didn't care. We don't like the law? Don't even bother to change it... let's get our pet lawyers to write something that says it doesn't pertain to the Executive Branch. Don't like the fact that the Attorney General is being investigated for crimes in office? Have him refuse to answer questions put forth by Senate committees. Don't like the treaties that we are signatory to? Ignore them!

George W. Bush wasn't content to flout the laws of this nation, no indeed, his domestic policies regarding education, in the form of the "No Child Left Behind" act, took measures that could potentially cripple already struggling public school systems. Mr. Bush's one-size-fits-all view of education started and ended with teaching students to pass standardized tests, which is fine on it's face, but fails to take into account that if all you are doing is teaching to a testing standard, you are failing to educate the whole child. Further, the "No Child Left Behind" initiative was basically a cover for attacking public schools in general and public school teachers and their Unions in particular. The idea here is that the more blame and scorn we can heap on public schools, the more money the government could take away from public education in order to fund private schools, which does nothing for the education of children in either public or private school.

All of this was done in the name of "school choice" which is just another name for segregation.

The list of crimes and nefarious activities of the Bush administration is long. Certainly too long to be properly enumerated here, but I have to tell you that, Mr. Bush and his people were out of control from start to finish. Their leadership was a a nightmarish exercise in failure.

Failure.

Failure of leadership. Failure of good citizenship. Failure in every single aspect of governance. Mostly, the Bush administration was a textbook example of the failure of character.

Welcome, Mr. Bush, to the ash-heap of history, your place is well-deserved.