Compare & Contrast

Since my days at work are numbered now (and today that number was 15), I’ve been going through all the non-business electronic files I had on my slice of the company's shared drive. While everything got deleted, there was some stuff I emailed home for various reasons, and this was one of the items, which I hadn’t looked at in over 18 years. (This Word doc is so old it still has blue font.)

In April of 2007, I started compiling data for a prospective blog post (2 years before I even started this blog). I wanted to be sure I didn’t forget how big of a clown the current president was, nor the evil he was conducting.

Little did I know that one day there would be another president who would make this guy look like Winston Churchill. Still, it’s interesting to see the similarities. The principles are similar, with the differences being a matter of intensity. In other words, they’re doing the same kind of things today, only worse and more obvious.

So with that, I give you this look at a time-capsule item from 2007:

 Reasons to Loathe George W. Bush

(not including the Iraq War) 

• Firing US Attorneys for political gains / politicizing the Justice Dept.  Includes an item allowing “emergency” appointments via the Patriot Act, as to end-run Senate confirmations. (TFG upped this from installing party hacks to hacks loyal to him.) 

• K Street Project- turning the Lobbying Industry into yet another arm of the Republican Party. (In addition to the Oil, Gas, Auto, Coal, Nuclear Power, Banking, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, and Tobacco industries, et al.) 

• Ignoring the problems at Walter Reed (and problems with Vet Care in general) until it actually got some publicity. (New philosophy: Who needs Vet care? 

• Further politicizing the Justice Dept by running out anyone involved with/ Civil Rights Dept, and filling the spots with/ inexperienced cronies and hacks. (Same here, only more so. They’re running minorities and women out of the government and military.) 

• The obscene sweetheart deals that were made to benefit Halliburton. The Iraq War alone houses enough shocking, greed-encrusted deals to make even a Trump disciple blush. Worst of all, the actual troops can’t get sufficient body armor, armored HumVees, or even the minimum levels of training. (Now the deals all sweeten the president himself. The big corporations will have to make do on their massive tax cuts and leave it at that.) 

• Catchy-named initiatives that actually undermine what the name infers, like: 

• Clear Skies Initiative which was written by the oil and coal lobbies, which weakened controls on toxic emissions.
• No Child Left Behind, that creates mandated standards, but provides no dollars to pay for them.
• Death Tax, which is tearfully held up as an unfair burden to these unfortunate families in their time of need. What no one mentions is that estates are only taxed when they total over 2 million dollars, so that rich fucks can leave their fortunes to their spoiled rich-fuck kids. These are exactly the people who should be picking up the tax bill so that there can be Head Start and After School Care programs. While the “Death Tax” may be technically accurate, the “Rich Fuck” tax would be a name that’s much more in line with the spirit of the thing. 

• The Valerie Plame leak, which just shows that not only did no one in office care that they were outing a covert CIA agent as a form of political payback, but they didn't even care if they got caught. Along with the US Attorney thing, it's just another example of the Changing Story Scenario. (also see “Reasons for the Iraq War”)  The basic premise is “Yeah, we’re lying… so what are you gonna do about it?” (Personal payback for disloyalty. Sounds familiar…)

 

• Scientists being overruled on scientific matters by conservative policy hacks.  See Plan-B birth control, HPV vaccinations, “intelligent design,” and anything on global warming. Also see the appointment as manager of the administration’s federal family planning initiatives, of a guy who opposes birth control in favor of an “abstinence only” approach. On the bright side, said guy apparently resigned last week. (Now we have wholesale elimination of any department that might cost big business a few bucks by doing its job, plus the Dept of Education, without which, future president-criminals will have an even easier time getting away with the grift. And any scientist who doesn’t produce the government-desired result becomes an unemployed receptacle for death threats.) 

• The appearance of gay marriage issues (or other social hot-button issues) that predictably surface during election season as so to scare up support from the far right, only to disappear immediately upon completion of the election. (There’s always a Boogieman they use to scare you, whether it’s gays, groomers, or gang members.) 

• The unprecedented power grab by the executive branch, aided by the Republican Congress enablers. (I don’t remember what this one was about, but we sure have that now, as Congress willingly gives up any spending supervision, taking the much easier stance of “Whatever Trump wants.”) 

• The unprecedented secrecy of this administration has generated more classified documents than any president ever, including existing documents already in the public domain. (The current Administration would love to maintain that kind of secrecy, but they’re just not smart enough to keep their nefarious plans off of WhatsApp.) 

• The merging of religion with government. See Faith-Based Initiatives, or in other words, paying churches to administer to the poor, while spreading the “Good Word.” By the way, only Christian Organizations need apply. (The president doesn’t give a crap about this stuff but his handlers and donors do, plus his enablers in the Supreme Court.) 

• Cloaking voting restrictions targeted at minority, low-income, and elderly people (read “Likely Democratic Voters”) by calling it Protecting Against Voter Fraud.  While at the same time championing paperless voting machines manufactured by Diebold Inc., whose chairman declared in 2004 that he was going to do everything in his power to see that Ohio's electoral votes were delivered to Bush. On the bright side, this schmo also resigned in scandal, although a tad too late to do us any good. The voting irregularities in Ohio alone should have grounds for a national recount of every tight race.  It was Joseph Stalin that said, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” (Has not changed a bit. They know they don’t have a winning hand, so they’re working furiously to rig the next game with gerrymandering and attacks on the voting process. They will do literally anything to remain in power.) 

• The FBI using Patriot Act powers on pretty much whatever they want. And not just the ones from a couple weeks ago, it’s been going on for some time. (The current ICE Gestapo doesn’t need to rely on any Act, just the say-so from Hair Fuhrer.)

 I guess I ran out of enthusiasm before we even got to Hurricane Katrina.