Tag: George Walker Bush

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

A lot of liberals won’t like this post. Please don’t read it if you are a liberal because you will get mad. It hurts when facts smack you in the face, so you should avoid doing that. This article points out that liberals completely failed to help the US prepare for a pandemic.

To be fair, conservatives shouldn’t read this post either because that same brick wall of facts is going to hit you in the face as well. Don’t read it as conservatives haven’t prioritized preparing for a pandemic either.

This is an article from 2009. It is from NPR, so no one is going to say it right-wing bias. Conservatives will say that it is MSM, but the facts on the ground have proven this article to be very accurate. 

Here is another article by Sheri Fink that covers the various studies in 2006-2009 about how woefully prepared the US is in handling a pandemic.

In 2007 and 2006, the country did studies that showed that during a pandemic, NYC would be short 15,000 ventilators, and 150K people could die. Sound familiar? There were probably studies since the publication of these articles. So did Bush or Obama do anything? Not much, and I will suggest they did zero. Trump didn’t come into office with any insight and initiative to fix this known problem, so he is just as guilty as Bush and Obama.

There has been a total lack of leadership by Bush, Obama, and Trump on this issue.

And Governor Cuomo? Nope. He didn’t fight for it either—more lack of leadership.

And neither did Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Schumer, or any other leader of our Congress. A complete lack of leadership for a situation that everyone knew would eventually happen.

BTW, the current candidates for POTUS in 2020: Biden, Sanders, and Trump – nope. None of them did anything when they were in positions that could have influenced this.

All of our government leaders failed us on both sides of the aisle. They taxed the hell out of us. They whined and complained about other stupid shit. They gave incentives for solar energy, oil production, buying stuff on the internet, buying health insurance, fighting bad guys in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. But prepare the country for a pandemic? Nope. 

They all said, “Hopefully, that pandemic will happen when I am not in office, and the next person can worry about that.” Guess what, we are the next person. We are now worrying about it, and our bickering Federal government messed up big time.

The Federal government is really only good at two things

  1. the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands or millions of people rely on
  2. the defense of our country and people.

To be honest, the government isn’t all that good at those two things, but it is the only entity that can do them. The government shouldn’t be doing other things. It should focus on doing those two things and do them as well as possible, giving the inefficiencies of an organization that has no competition.

It is woefully incapable of doing anything else well. In just about every case other than the two cited, private industry that competes with others will do a better job. Will the private sector screw something up? Absolutely! But then that private enterprise will be displaced by a competitor that will perform better. 

Pandemic relief falls into both categories. It is the defense of our people, and it is the infrastructure to support that defense. We did both poorly for pandemic relief, and it is now costing us dearly.

What is the solution? Throw the bums out. Every damn one of them. They failed us. They screwed up. They should be rewarded with losing their jobs.

We need politicians that are focused on just doing the two things that only the federal government can do. We need politicians to look at a bill and say, “Is this something that ONLY the federal government can do and therefore is in the above two categories?” If the answer to that question is NO, then the politicians need to vote it down. If the answer to that question is YES, then the politicians need to approve it and give it the appropriate funding and oversight that it is done as well as possible.

Header Photo by Parentingupstream (Pixabay)
It is no longer someone else’s mess

It is no longer someone else’s mess

Every President, except for George Washington, inherited something from the previous administration. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is bad.

President Barack Hussein Obama has been talking for quite some time about the “mess” that he inherited from George Walker Bush. He has made references to mops and other allegories to describe the challenges that he has faced. While that is all well and good for the first few days of the Presidency, at a certain point BHO needs to own the problem.

That day is today.

There is no defined time for the honeymoon period of a new candidate. Most people felt that September 11, 2001 was close enough to the inauguration of George Walker Bush (just under 9 months) that the attacks on that dreaded day were at least partially the fault of William Jefferson Clinton. The honeymoon is certainly longer than the first 100 days that are all the talk at the beginning of a term. Everyone seems to agree that it doesn’t extend beyond a year from the date the person is elected.

For the past 12 months, BHO has been the President or the President-Elect. Every day he has received security briefings. Every day he has had access to and influence over thought leaders on a wide range of issues. Every day, he could pick up the phone and call any world leader, banking leader, Senator, Governor, or Representative.

When a person inherits a farm or house or china from a parent, from that day on the item or property belongs to the heir. This is the same now for the issues within the United States. The mess no longer belongs to GWB – it is the sole ownership now of BHO and he better get to work fixing it and stop talking about mops!

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East

This is a great book.  Everyone should read it (or listen to it). 

I just finished the Audible version of this book.  It was excellent.  Here are some learnings:

  • James Earl Carter was more incompetent than even I thought he was.
  • William Jefferson Clinton was not as incompetent at Carter, but he was close.
  • George Walker Bush did a pretty good job with most of the Mideast, did a plausible job of getting rid of Saddam (which the book admits had to happen) and then bungled the reconstruction.  Okay, this really wasn’t a big learning but it was worth noting.
  • Ronald Wilson Reagan did an excellent job with the Middle East as did Nixon and Ford.  George Herbert Walker Bush barely gets a mention which is surprising since he put together the coalition to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
  • Saudi Arabia has to be part of the solution, they are not part of the problem. The book correctly identifies fools like Michael Moore as screwing this up.
  • Winston Churchill made a real mess of it.
  • The Ottoman empire showed the way that the Mideast needs to be dealt with.

Great book.  Everyone should read or listen to it.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Middle-Guides/dp/1596980516

Audible: http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_BLAK_002466&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes

RANT! Mexico attacks!

RANT! Mexico attacks!

A lot of noise was made about how George Walker Bush ruined our relations in the international community.  I have discounted this since international relations are always opportunistic and this is a perfect case in point. 

Mexico has been a close friend to the United States for decades.  The President of Mexico was always warmly greeted by GWB and I am sure that Barack Hussein Obama will greet him warmly as well.  But the confusing signals that BHO has sent on NAFTA combined with the foolish blocking of Mexican trucks (surely a concession to the politically powerful Teamsters) have triggered a needless and foolish international crisis and show the lack of multi-dimensional thinking that is required to run this country.

Now this foolish move is going to cost us billions in tariffs on goods that we ship to Mexico.  Hurting our economy by violating NAFTA in a down economy is not something we should be doing.  Offending our international friends is also something we shouldn’t be doing.

The good news is that international relationships are opportunistic, as i said above.  If we drop this stupid mistake and stop violating our treaties then Mexico will surely drop the trade war. Then we can all go back to being friends again – at least until our resume-lacking President screws up again.

DEMOCRATS IN POWER: STOP BEING THE LACKEYS OF THE UNIONS AND UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS IS GOOD FOR AMERICA!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Obama has set the standard as the Great Communicator

Obama has set the standard as the Great Communicator

For the past decade or two, Ronald Wilson Reagan set the standard as “The Great Communicator” while he was President of the United States.  There is no question that he excelled over the many bumblings of George Walker Bush as David Letterman has so aptly recorded for us!

However, it is already clear that President Barack Hussein Obama is going to take the mantle of the Great Communicator if he hasn’t already done so.

Here are some of his accomplishments so far:

Congratulations to BHO and his staff on all of this.  I am sure that it has been quite difficult! Our government has never been the center of excellence for the use of technology. Clinton’s team was extremely frustrated at the lack of technology when they moved into the building.

Let us hope that all of this will result in a better run government, although the various missteps on getting nominees approved has been a bit disconcerting.  And like all Presidents, he needs to stop exaggerating the truth.

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Should we take a decade long break regarding George Walker Bush?

Should we take a decade long break regarding George Walker Bush?

I have written about the legacy of George Walker Bush several times on this site.  Most notably, I did a 5 part series that tried to answer the question if GWB is the worst President ever.  Now I read an opinion by Thomas Fleming, who is one of the most respected and well written presidential historians that we should all take a long sigh and relax for a bit before grading the man.

I respect the work of Mr. Fleming (and the WSJ) to quote too much of his article on this site.  Please go to their site and read the full opinion but here are some highlights that I thought were interesting.

Several polls of historians have named George W. Bush the worst
president in American history. This baffles me. I’ve been writing about
presidents for a long time. What I know, and what I presume these
gentleman know, doesn’t connect.

Is Mr. Bush worse than John Adams? When a shooting war at sea started
between the United States and revolutionary France in 1798, Honest John
wrote a letter to George Washington, offering to resign so that George
could resume the job. How’s that for presidential leadership?

The American economy came to a horrific standstill; smuggling became
New England’s chief industry. Someone described the embargo as “cutting
a man’s throat to cure a nosebleed.” Nonplussed, Jefferson quit,
telling only James Madison, his secretary of state, who was de facto
acting president for the last year of Tom’s term.

Next, Wilson talked Congress into declaring war on Germany on the
assumption that we would not have to send a single soldier to France.
Before the war ended, we had 2,000,000 troops overseas, and in three
months of fighting lost 144,000 men.

Warren G. Harding confessed to reporters that he was not up to the job.
He told one newsman that he wanted to make the U.S. tariff higher than
the Rocky Mountains to help Europe’s industries recover from World War
I. The appalled reporter realized the president had one of the biggest
issues of the era exactly backward.

Worse than Jimmy Carter, the self- proclaimed Washington “outsider” who
presided over the most horrendous stagflation in our history? As his
poll numbers sank, Mr. Carter had the temerity to lecture citizens on
their “crisis of spirit.” His approval rating had plummeted to 22% when
Ronald Reagan defeated him.

In this light, however wavering, maybe it’s time to suspend the rush to
judgment on George W. Bush for 10 or 20 years. I suspect we will decide
Mr. Bush’s first term, with his decisive response to 9/11, deserves
some praise, and that his second term succumbed to an awesome amount of
bad luck, from his generals’ disagreements on how to fight the war in
Iraq to the Wall Street collapse of 2008.

So does all this mean that I will stop trying to figure out his rank among his peers.  Probably not, but at least I know that my final opinions should wait 2020 or later.  Stop by then and see what I think.

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