Mission Accomplished!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

[mdmc]

1. the more things change

The more things stay the same

[patrice]

2. Another bailout: it was costing domestic oil more to get it out of the ground than they were making

on it in the 2003 market. Even with all of our tax money as subsidies, they were going broke.

Doin' just fine now.

[Faygo Kid]

3. Bush is far from a "failed" president. Look at his successes, at our expense.

He has destroyed the Constitution, the middle class, the poor, our reputation in the world, the federal deficit, thousands upon thousands of lives - all while driving the wealth of our nation into the hands of a very few.

By his lights, he is a success.

[unblock]

7. his only real failure was in being a bit too obvious and in-your-face

he so consistently went for the right-wing / corporatist policy that it became too obvious that that was what his agenda was. he didn't really even have the pretense of obfuscation. previous presidents preserved power for the wealthy, but they always knew to pretend to be ashamed of it, to hide it, to confuse matters around it, etc. shrub is just too simple and arrogant, which made it easy for the rest of us to know where his true allegience was.

if obama wins, it will be seen as a major rebuke of shrub's policies. he will have had his 8 years, his legacy will be a serious setback for the republican party and the people he aimed to serve. of course, they're willing to pay that price, 8 years of serious bonanza is worth putting up with a centrist democrat for a while, especially if they can pin bad economic times of him. and don't think they won't try....

[Faygo Kid]

9. I agree. One other Bush failure: The social safety net.

This was his biggest failure, by his reckoning: His number one goal going into a second term was to destroy Social Security.

Despite a concerted effort, he was stopped. Last week, with the veto override, his campaign to privatize Medicare was also ended. These were among his top goals. He has won much, with Iraq, tax cuts and oil. But he didn't win these, and they are his greatest defeats.

[unblock]

11. well, yes and no.

it's true that his first term was a resounding success as far as the domestic evil-doers are concerned.

however, the fact that he didn't get EVERYTHING on their wish list doesn't mean he's a failure. i honestly think that the powers-that-be didn't want him to win in 2004. i think they knew that they could get away with ONE term of blatant corporatism, but that two terms would just be too obvious and would lead to a backlash, as appears to be the case. had kerry won, they might have been able to pin our economic woes on the democrats and 2008 would have played out quite differently. i think shrub just couldn't say goodnight gracefully and got his goons to rig the election for his-self despite the greater thinkers among the powers-that-be.

the corporatists' only real hope for the second term was that shrub would babysit the beloved tax cuts and give them 4 more years of not paying their fair share. i don't think they realistically expected anything further.


on the other hand, it is true that his only real STATED goal for the second term was destroying social security, and indeed he has failed at that.

[4_TN_TITANS]

15. "if they can pin bad economic times of him"

Of course they will try. I'm just grateful that things have hit the fan before he gets to just walk away from the trainwreck. Since I have to suffer along with them, I want the people who voted (twice!)for the * administration to feel a lasting twist of the knife. So many people here are about to break, almost to the point where they will have to make embarassing changes in their spending that scream "I fucked up".

[liberal N proud]

4. We need to keep reminding the people of this

and the that this is why the economy is so fucked up.

[formercia]

5. Oklahoma City in the early 70's

Gas 18 cents a gallon. In my 70 VW bug, I could drive to the West Coast on pocket change. All you could eat TexMex was $1.98. Being a student back then was easy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. I paid 25 cents a gallon and cigarettes were 50 cents a pack

I remember when gas went up to 50 cents and people were outraged. But that was still affordable. I too had a VW bug and put a dollar's worth of gas in it and that lasted for days.

You bet it was easy back then. I also paid $150 a month rent for a beautiful 2 bedroom house 3 blocks from campus. :)

[lpbk2713]

8. Here's another graphic that should explain a lot ...

The Dow-Jones is up a whopping 27 points over the past six years.

While at the same time Halliburton is up 627 points.

Anyone see something wrong with this picture? :eyes:

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. It was a brilliant plan, wasn't it?

In the chaos, it looked like it was an accident.

[boomerbust]

12. Lets not forget

His failure to pillage ANWR.

[bdf]

13. Yet!

These guys are not stupid. Dubya may be, but the rest of them (especially Darth Cheney) are not. Evil, yes; stupid, no.

Those who still foolishly believe that the Bush maladministration is trying to do its best for America see stupidity because it's clear that everything they do harms America. Those who believe that the Bush maladministration is making a naked grab for wealth and power knows that these evil men (and woman) are doing fine. There's a few objectives they haven't yet achieved, like ANWR, Social Security and Iran, but they'll get them eventually.

Their surrogate is unlikely to be able to steal the election because even Republican-controlled states are decertifying Liebold machines. Sure, they'd like to continue using them so they can steal another election but they've found out just how insecure those machines are. Any unscrupulous liberal with a little knowledge can steal the election right back. The Republicans would rather switch to something less easy for them to manipulate than risk the Dems doing their own tampering. Not that Dems are likely to, but it's a human tendency (a short-cut in evaluation) to assume that others behave much as you would, so the Republicans will assume the Dems will tamper with the voting machines.

Now look at the powers Cheney has arrogated to himself under the theory of "unitary presidency". Best summed up in the Nixonian statement "it's not a crime if the President does it" (Cheney served in the Nixon maladministration and admires the fucker). The most important ones are the "Commander in Chief of a perpetual war on terra can do any damned thing he wants" and the wiretap powers (you can bet your life that these are being used to gain blackmail material on congresscritters and probably explain why "impeachment is off the table"). There is no fucking way Cheney would let Obama have those powers. As I said, it's a human tendency to assume that others behave as you would in a given situation: Cheney abuses those powers massively and therefore believes that so would Obama. Obama will (in their view) take all the money currently going to their own obscenely-rich cronies and give it to his cronies). Obama might even expose some of their many crimes, or wiretap them and blackmail them.

Hell, they wouldn't even trust McInsane with those powers. He would certainly (as a "look out for number one" Republican) cut off the funds for Haliburton and the like and give it to his own favoured corporate cronies.

The answer is another false-flag operation along the lines of 9-11. That allows them to declare martial law and use yet more of the powers that Cheney has arrogated unto himself via the misnamed PATRIOT Act and other legislation. The best way to achieve that is a terraist nukular attack on Washington DC. Wipes out anyone who might challenge the declaration of Martial Law - Congress, the supremes, the generals in the Pentagon. Note that months ago arrangements were made to move critical federal functions to 30 miles outside of DC in case of just such an event. Note that Cheney and Bush have established a behaviour pattern of spending much of their time away from DC - it wouldn't be surprising if Dubya were in Crawford and Darth were in his undisclosed secret location when the nuke went off.

Which terraist group will get the blame for the nuke? Obviously, Iran, because Cheney is itching to invade Iran and steal its oil. The US army is broken, so this would be impossible using conventional means. But a nuke in DC would mean the US could retaliate in kind and nuke all the places Iran might be hiding its nukular facilities? Where would that be? Obviously, all its military bases. Two birds with one stone. It's the way these evil fucks operate.

[indepat]

14. Only time will tell how much junior's and Dick's solely serving the interests of big oil will have

undermined our national security, but at a minimum, it will be greatly imo. :D