{"id":111,"date":"2008-10-17T02:23:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T02:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/?p=70"},"modified":"2008-10-17T02:23:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T02:23:36","slug":"george-w-bush-our-worst-president-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/10\/17\/george-w-bush-our-worst-president-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"George W. Bush \u2013 Our Worst President Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mikepellegrini.com\/Graphics\/bush_moron.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"390\" align=\"right\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>It\u2019s hard to imagine one man creating so much havoc, but George W. Bush really takes the cake.<br \/>\nIn just a little under eight years, he\u2019s managed to:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ruin our economy, plunging the United States into the worst recession since the Great Depression;<\/li>\n<li>Take us to war against Iraq for no good reason at all (other than to steal their oil \u2013 or maybe it was because Saddam tried to kill his dad);<\/li>\n<li>Take us to war against Afghanistan looking for bin Laden, only to withdraw most of the troops before their job was done, insuring bin Laden could safely escape;<\/li>\n<li>Taken away many of our civil rights in the name of combating \u201cterrorism\u201d;<\/li>\n<li>Condon the use of torture against what in many cases were innocent civilians, again in the name of combating terrorism;<\/li>\n<li>Promote the raping of our wilderness and public lands to find gas and oil, as well as generally raping the environment;<\/li>\n<li>Allow oil companies to post record profits at the expense of consumers and the economy in general (in 2000, the average cost of gas was $1.48 a gallon; contrast that to the $4.00 a gallon we recently had to pay). That\u2019s a <em>170% increase<\/em> in the eight years Bush was President!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And those are just the high points. The bottom line: His rich buddies got richer; the rest of us paid their way. Bush and his cronies raped the world.<\/p>\n<p>Without the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, Bush would have been a one-term wonder. Pre-9\/11, he was a rudderless, bumbling non-entity. His presidency distinguished itself by creating no distinguishments. He was mediocrity incarnate. No plan to do anything. A caretaker president. His approval ratings were abysmal. Bush was going nowhere, fast.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThen 9\/11 came, and wisely, his handlers seized on this.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone rallies around a \u201cwartime\u201d president, they thought. We\u2019ll declare \u201cwar\u201d on terrorism. And then everyone will pull together around GW! What a plan (evidence suggests Bush isn\u2019t bright enough to have figured this out himself \u2013 I\u2019d guess Karl Rove was the one behind it).<\/p>\n<p>And the plan worked.<\/p>\n<p>They used this phony \u201cwar\u201d as a handy excuse to take away many of our civil liberties and to invade Iraq for no reason. The outcome: we killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians (possibly as many as<em> 96,000), <\/em>and spent the lives of over 4,000 American servicemen in this useless, un-just war.<\/p>\n<p>Plus we pissed off <em>millions<\/em> of Arabs just being in Iraq (I\u2019m not sure why, but they didn\u2019t like being invaded \u2013 talk about promoting terrorism).<\/p>\n<p>Truly, the only ones who have gained out of the Iraq war were George Bush\u2019s buddies \u2013 the oil companies and of course Halliburton (Dick Cheney\u2019s company).<\/p>\n<p>Then on the homefront \u2013 <em>surprise, surprise <\/em>\u2013 it\u2019s exactly the same: big business has won big under George W. Bush; and the American citizens predictably, are paying for it \u2013 just last week to the tune of <em>$700 billion<\/em> \u2013 for the Wall Street bailout (in comparison, the Iraq war has only cost around <em>$600 billion<\/em> to date).<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, Bush wasn\u2019t entirely at fault for the present Wall Street crisis \u2013 this is basically the end result of almost 30 years of \u201cReaganomics\u201d \u2013 the \u201ctrickle down\u201d theory of economics, coupled with de-regulation where possible and where not, lax regulation and no meaningful oversight. Capitalism run rampant. <em>Greed <\/em>run rampant.<\/p>\n<p>Bush took Reaganomics to its natural conclusion.<br \/>\nAnd so now the un-checked greed and corruption have taken their toll and the bankers (and Bush) have gone to the American people with their hands out. And <em>we\u2019re<\/em> stuck paying for their mistakes (and will be for years and years).<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s not all by a long shot.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s the matter of oil prices: Americans are paying historic record prices for gas while oil companies are making the highest profits ever. <em>Obscene<\/em> profits.<\/p>\n<p>Do you see a pattern here?<\/p>\n<p>Big business has totally run rampant for the last eight years. They\u2019ve been able to do <em>any<\/em> damned thing they want \u2013 they could act with impunity (can you say Enron?) and basically get away with murder. And best of all, if they fuck up, their buddy George Bush will bail them out \u2013 and<em> we\u2019ll <\/em>pay for it.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, private citizens have seen their rights diminish \u2013 and have come under considerably <em>more <\/em>regulation.<\/p>\n<p>Under Bush, the government can spy on us with impunity; they can hold people without due process and actually torture them \u2013 just by labeling them \u201cterrorists.\u201d The bankruptcy laws were tightened severely under Bush making it tougher for private citizens to do what Wall Street has just done. And the little guys have seen their taxes go up while rich people pay less.<\/p>\n<p>There is no doubt at all that George W. Bush is the very worst president in history. Worse than Herbert Hoover. Worse than Andrew Johnson. Worse than every other president before him.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s ruined our great country; sullied its name; he\u2019s killed people needlessly; he\u2019s wrecked the lives of thousands and thousands of people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>He ought to be impeached and tried for treason. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to imagine one man creating so much havoc, but George W. Bush really takes the cake. In just a little under eight years, he\u2019s managed to: Ruin our economy, plunging the United States into the worst recession since the Great Depression; Take us to war against Iraq for no good reason at all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}