November 08, 2004
He didn't get it before he was elected, but we Blues knew that. Now the Reds are going to have to start recognizing that he doesn't get it as well. From msnbc.com:
WASHINGTON - As President Bush mulls what to do after winning re-election, voters say his first priority should be resolving the situation in Iraq, where the fighting is growing more intense.
They also want Bush to cut the deficit, which ballooned under his watch, rather than pushing for more tax cuts, according to an Associated Press poll taken right after the election.
The voters’ concerns stood in contrast to the priorities Bush cited after he defeated Democrat John Kerry. Bush pledged to aggressively pursue major changes in Social Security, tax laws and medical malpractice awards. Terrorism was a chief concern both for Bush and many voters in the poll.
“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush said a day after becoming the first president in 68 years to win re-election and gain seats in both the House and Senate.
Some 27 percent of respondents named Iraq as the top priority for the president’s second term, ahead of issues such as terrorism, the economy and health care.
Only 2 percent named taxes as a priority. By more than a 2-1 margin, voters said they preferred that the president balance the budget rather than reduce taxes further.
And...AND...AND!!!
I went searching for information on this after I caught a mention on my local news tonight. I found it in an Associated Press piece in the Seattle Post, which says:
Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.
The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records.
[snip]
Vice President Dick Cheney was a vocal critic of trade embargoes while he headed Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate, from 1995 to 2000. Under Cheney, Halliburton expanded its trade with Iran through an offshore subsidiary. That arrangement is now being investigated by a federal grand jury.
Nineteen executives or directors of companies fined by OFAC for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism were top campaign fund-raisers for Bush. [emphasis mine]
One example is Joseph J. Grano Jr., chairman of the federal Homeland Security Advisory Council, which the president created by executive order and whose members he selected. Grano formerly headed the U.S. subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS AG. It paid more than $100 million in fines for trading U.S. currency to Iran and other nations and for transferring funds to Iraq during Saddam's rule.
Ummm. And aren't ethics and morality kind of intertwined? So how can our morality-emphasizing leadership purport to be "moral" if they're so obviously unethical.
Well, we know the answer to that one, don't we.
[snip]
The AP used publicly available OFAC records to compile a database of penalties paid by companies for doing business with terrorists or their state sponsors. The database includes entries for more than 500 such cases since 1996.
Analysis of the database showed average penalties for violating the embargoes fell for every terrorism-sponsoring country after the attacks.
And this is the leadership from your scripture-quoting, terrorism-fighting president?
Throughout the whole fiasco of the past four years, I always wondered why the Rapture-awaiters don't see all the parallels between our current president and the anti-Christ of fundamentalist belief. (Bush-supporting Catholics, please be sure to follow this last link.)
Under the many-tendriled Bush, America is a country of lambs being led to the slaughter. That's what an anti-Christ would do, right? Make everyone believe he's the Saviour, dupe us all into believing in him instead of using our god-given intelligence to see through the deception?
I'm no sheep.
I'm a dragon, by birth. And, on top of that, I'm a Metal Dragon:
Watch out, Dumbya, you can't fool us Dragons, can't lead us down that illusary garden path to destruction.
We breathe the fire of dissent.
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