What do you think the biggest consequence of the Bush administration will be twenty years from now?

[More Than A Feeling]

Based on everything that's coming out: 20 years of Democratic majority government.

[bullimiami]

1. the collapse of the credibility of the republicans and the religious right.

They threw it all away on w. Bad move.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Our grandchildren will still be paying

for what Halliburton & the untaxed rich stole from the Treasury.

Global climate change will be all the worse because of our national inaction in the Bush years.

America will be a third-rate, toothless ex-colonial tiger like Britain. With luck, we will no longer be shunned on the international stage, but merely ridiculed.

Other than a few things like that, we ought to be doing just dandy.

[tabasco]

15. Enormous debt. Worthless dollars. Crumbled infrastructure.

Thanks republican voters.

[Beetwasher]

3. He Could Get Us All Killed

Is that a big enough consequence? :shrug:

[rusty charly]

4. 20 years from now?

climate change issues.

[Poiuyt]

19. Climate change could be the most dire consequence of Bush

I'm still optimistic that the next administration will be more open to solving the problem. I'm also optimistic that it isn't too late to correct our course.

[More Than A Feeling]

22. I don't know if I am as optimistic as you.

If the oceans are nearly filled to the brim with CO2...

[GreenPartyVoter]

37. I am nowhere near as optimistic as you are. I think we will lose a lot of

coastline and arable land locations are going to change.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. They are already changing

for god sakes, the weather where I live has been going nuts... and don't get me started with Mexico City where it is TRULY going nuts (Family lives down there)

[krispos42]

47. Oh, they'll find a way to get rich off that

Halliburton will be building and selling beachfront homes in Dallas and Bakersfield and Hartford.

[Demeter]

5. Civil War: the Conclusion!

The total destruction of the GOP, party of Lincoln.
The Second Constitutional Convention: Bringing an 18th Century Document into the 21st.
The Truth and No Reconciliation Commission
Passage of the ERA with the addition of language covering sexual orientation
Universal Government-paid health care
A permanent Worker/Labor party (not necessarily the Democrats, either)
2 Months paid vacation for all, and 2 years paid maternity leave for all women

Minimum wage $15/ hour and indexed to inflation
Maximum wage pegged at 100 times minimum wage.
Progressive taxes scaled with inflation to maintain proportion between min and max.
Defensible Economic Borders
The end of the Corporate Personhood Scam
Courts permanently barred from making any moral decisions, or permitting any laws based on moral issues to stand.

[More Than A Feeling]

8. Wow, a truth and NO reconciliation commission? That's about as badass as you can get in politics.

[Demeter]

10. Why, Do You Think Reconciliation Is Even Remotely Possible?

[More Than A Feeling]

11. With who? Republican voters, Republican officials, both?

I like the rest of your agenda, except that I'm a little concerned about barring the courts from making moral decisions. What counts as a "moral decision"? Would that mean the end of courts as interpreters of the law, since every interpretation can be viewed as a moral decision in light of its consequences?

[Demeter]

12. A Moral Decision Is Sex Between Consenting Adults,

Woman's Autonomy in all things, anything that is nobody's business. I expect you could add in drug laws, if you must.

[Demeter]

16. Might Also End the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and the IMF

and most insurance scam companies.

[Selatius]

27. The rest of the world's bankers will attack you on that score.

The banking system that was finally, successfully exported to the US from Europe after the US became independent now exists all across the world. Whether you believe such a fight is one worthy of being fought is up to you, but in my mind, I think it's a worthy fight.

[Demeter]

30. It's Happening Already

When these crooks overreached, they went all the way.
Viva Chavez! Viva Microcredit! All Praise to Allah's alternative bankers!

[TransitJohn]

18. Any particular reason for

2 Months paid vacation for all, and 2 years paid maternity leave for all women

the institutionalized discrimination you propose?

[Demeter]

21. Because Marriage Is Optional, Pregnancy Is Not

If you want married men to have paid paternity leave, that's fine with me!

[TransitJohn]

25. Hmmmm

....okay....I guess I wouldn't have been entitled to those 2 years which I could've used while raising my infant to the beautiful 10 year-old she is.

On edit: And I'm pretty sure getting pregnant is a choice as well....but wtf do I know...I'm just a guy.

[Demeter]

28. Well, There Are Those Who Argue That The Human Race Should End Itself

and stop reproducing, but very few of those making that argument are women...

[Selatius]

6. The EU will less likely simply follow the US but instead will strike out on its own from now on

This will mean less influence for America in the world.

[KG]

7. massive debt.

[Demeter]

9. That Debt Will Be Repudiated, and The Fraud Will Be Confiscated

There's a reckoning coming, and the white collar crook better run and hide.

[timtom]

48. I really like your choice of words

"there's a reckoning coming". I have been saying, "there will be a reckoning", for several months now.

And there will be.

[whistle]

13. I hope it will be two generations of Democratic majority government

...we really need to get the bad taste out of everyone's mouths and minds. That will take a good 50 years. The history books will also show that the Bush family was a totally corrupt and treasonous group going back to Prescott Bush, through Pappy GWH Bush and all the Bushies who were spawned from Barbara's womb. If George Dubya (Shrub*) manages to live out his last term in office, I believe he will be committed as certifiably insane and either be privately taken care of or committed to an institution. Jeb will be indited for crimes committed in fixing both ethe 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The pother brothers will all be indited for criminal corporate activities.

[flaminbats]

14. higher taxes and shrinking returns..

thats right, taxes will go up as a result..but spending will only drop. We'll be spending more to pay interest on the national debt but less on education, healthcare, and national defense.

Bush can claim that he made our country stronger and made the terrorists shake in their boots. but in reality he has only weakened our national security, while putting another heavy burden on the backs of the next generation of taxpayers.

[More Than A Feeling]

17. It would be wonderful to pay less to the Pentagon.

We could start by actually funding scientific research for its own sake rather than justifying it through potential defense applications.

[flaminbats]

33. if this continues we may not have a choice..

Republicans see "entitlement reform" as the solution to our debt, Democrats see reducing the military budget as part of the solution.

to be honest it will take both. higher taxes, less defense spending, and less funding on public education. even more importantly..the children of the babyboomers will need to be given some incentive to keep paying higher taxes into Medicare and Social Security. The only thing that will keep younger taxpayers satisfied IMO is to include them in the system. They might be paying more just to keep Medicare solvent for the babyboomers, but at least these taxpaying workers will not be left uninsured and even more angry at a government that takes more than it gives.

if it hadn't been for the Reagan/Bush years..our government would be spending $200 billion less every year in interest payments. If the current President had not taken office, we would be paying nearly $400 billion less every year in interest on the national debt. that means we would have a $100 billion surplus each year, even with this war in Iraq. if not for the recklessness of the Reagan/Bush era, these surpluses could have been used to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent..without any tax increases or cuts in defense spending and other programs to fund it.

but supply-side economics didn't reduce taxes or increase government efficiency, it increases the amount we pay while reducing what we get back from the government.

[Double T]

20. The USA will have become a third world nation with massive debt.......

owed to the world superpowers of that age. Climate change, global warming and overpopulation will continue to advance toward the ultimate demise of the human species on this planet. The USA was never able to recover from the bush economic and financial policies and America's stature in the world was never able to be repaired and regained. The United States will also be occupied by the Country of Mexico which needs the USA land to build more maquiladoras for the unemployed and homeless American workers.

[Demeter]

23. We Are There Already!

I hope that in 20 years we will have worked out some of those fundamental problems.

[Double T]

24. With our current system of government and financial world.........

you can forget it!

[DemGa]

26. Staggering debt, complete corporate takeover

of the country, inflation.

[blues90]

29. We are already seeing the effects

I don't think it will take 20 years , at the rate bush is destroying this country we don;t have long .

He has screwed up just about everything possible already and it will take generations to fix if this is even possible now . Look at what reagan did 25 years ago and still we continue to sudder from this .

Bush has done so much more to speed up this destructive process that the wheels are already coming off as we head for the cliff . Problem is it has not hit enough people who still feel they are safe from this force of swill and spoil . It is just not visable enough to really see the damage .

I do feel certain parts of the country see the effects and have the visual such as Detroit and the midwest and the southeast and the gulf states .

I don't have a clue on how to stop this spoil now let alone fix it , it just is not the same world with similar solutions as we had in the past .

Now that the huge corporations have control who's to take it from them ?

[Demeter]

31. The Workers and the Customers

that's all it ever takes. They can't hire enough mercenaries to protect themselves, they have destroyed the employer/employee relationship, and we simply outnumber them. They could nuke us, but that would destroy them, too.

[MN ChimpH8R]

32. We will be a wholly owned subsidiary of

the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans and they will call all of the shots.

[nevergiveup]

34. The veterans of this war

We love them when they fight but ignore them when they come home. The support they are going to need will be monumental and have lasting repercussions. The price these men and women are paying for Chimpy's unnecessary war will haunt us for 50 years.

[MissWaverly]

35. the end of the oil age and a new isolationist America

I believe that we will create new engines for the future, steam? bio fuels?, who knows, we will have some bad times but our prosperity will come back but I think the US will no longer want to be a "superpower" and meddling like we have done in global issues with little knowledge and no foresight. There will be no more preemptive strikes, renditions of foreign nationals or warrant less wiretapping and we might even find Osama Bin Forgotten in 20 years.

[Sal Minella]

36. A civil society honeycombed with veterans driven mad by what they were expected/commanded to do.

My friend's Viet Nam vet uncle is still living under a bridge somewhere, very occasional contact with family, no way to connect with society. He hasn't gone on a shooting spree but I expect some of the Iraq vets will, and it's not their fault.

[FVZA_Colonel]

38. Ecological devestation brought about by inaction on the issue of global climate change.

I only hope the consequences won't be as dire as I fear.

[Odin2005]

39. The collpase of the Neo-Cons and the Religious Right.

The Dems will become the dominant party for a generation and the Paleo-Cons and libertarians will turn the GOP back into a sane political party.

[More Than A Feeling]

40. If there are enough of them.

Neither the Neo-cons nor the Christianists are going down without a fight. Where are they going to go? Dems won't take them, and they'd have to start from scratch with a third party. There's a reason why they took over the Republicans instead of going third party in the first place.

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. The US is a has been Empire

this will be realized by our decendants

[More Than A Feeling]

42. I don't think I'll miss it, really.

Ironically, at the height of our power, the Republicans proved that, for all the squawking they did on foreign policy for all those years, they had no idea what the fuck they were doing. Now we do it our way. Again. They can try again in, oh...a century or so, perhaps.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. China will not accept that

reality is... they own us, another reality that we will realize

Now on the down side, the US might not even be around. A civil war and breakup of the country into at least three successor states is very real

[Demeter]

49. Nobody In His Right Mind Would Want to Own the US

and that's the truth. This place would be like Afghanistan, with nukes.

[omega minimo]

44. Failure to impeach President Limbaugh

:thumbsdown:

[Peace Patriot]

46. Potentially, loss of the planet. End of all life on earth.

The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years--at present levels of consumption and pollution. 50 years to the DEATH of the planet.

The loss of biodiversity has already been catastrophic--most of it from massive deforestation over the last 100 years.

The severe decline of ocean fisheries is another harbinger of doom. Parts of the ocean are now dead. Probably a cumulative effect of overfishing, and various kinds of pollution.

Fresh water is also at risk. Many rivers and lakes polluted, and water tables depleted. And melting of glaciers is severely disruptive and will cause droughts, probably permanent droughts, in formerly lush areas. North Africa was once the "breadbasket of the Roman Empire." Look at it now--desertification is almost entirely due to human impacts. That's what many areas are headed for. That's why greedy asshole global corporate predators are trying to privatize as much fresh water as they can--so they can charge money and drive up the price as it becomes scarce.

Loss of forests as a carbon sink has direct impacts on global warming.

Releases of pockets of methane in the Arctic may occur at the result of the melting of the polar ice cap. This may cause earthquakes (I just learned) in addition to further contributing to global warming.

Most of these impacts are reversible. But with the Reagan and Clinton regimes, both of whom eroded environmental regulation, followed by the disastrous Bush Junta, we are have lost 25 years of mitigation. In a sense, it is the failure of democracy--most especially the failure of democracy in the U.S. (since we contribute 25% of the world's pollution)--that may lead to planetary death. Americans strongly favor government regulation of the environment, but their will has been thwarted. With Reagan and Clinton, the Corporate Rulers bought the White House and Congress--with the steady encroachment of the filthy campaign contribution system, and filthy lobbying system, combined with the war profiteering (and oil profiteering) corporate news monopolies, over several decades. But now, the crisis is upon us, and so, they have installed electronic voting systems all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, in order to directly control election outcomes--to prevent a change of course, and any significant consequences to Corporate profits via reform. Democracy cannot work in these circumstances. And that is the idea. The Corporate Predators and the Super-Rich are on an almost suicidal greed binge, perhaps thinking that their money will insulate them from the death of the planet. And it may, to some extent. Most of the people who hold all the wealth, are making these decisions, are old--60 to 70+ years old. They will not see the end. And they will be able to buy some splendid perches from which to watch the suffering of the poor, who will have no insulation. They don't seem to care about their children, or the rest of us.

I can find no other way to account for their irresponsibility. Capitalism has produced lethal spawn--in out-of-control predatory capitalists, who seem not to give a damn. But human beings are more complex than that. How can any human being--except the most insane (like Bush and Cheney)--not care about the death of the planet? I think it's suicidal. We have seen hoarding throughout history. But we have never seen anything like the amount of hoarding that is going on now, with the super-rich grabbing everything they can, even as their very greed destroys their only home. They're engaged in one of the worst environmental disasters of our era: The Iraq War itself--purely for profit, both in oil contracts and war profiteering. They're gas gouging. They're looting our treasury, and, thus, the resources we need to recover from the Bush disaster. They're profiting from vast pollution of water and air. They're utterly resisting--even scorning--all efforts toward the public good. They are dismantling even our already meager environmental controls and agencies--like the EPA.

It is mind-boggling. So, twenty years from now, when the planet is in environmental chaos, headed toward planetary death, people will look back to the Bush Junta era and probably judge us all to have been insane.

However, if we were to rise up, as a people, and throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' where they belong, and start electing REAL representatives of the people, we might salvage the situation. The earth is amazingly resilient, given only a little loving care. Put an old tree trunk in a stream in a deforested area, and you instantly create fish spawning habitat. Plant a few willows along the stream bank, and you start recreating the cold water conditions that fish need. It doesn't take that much to stoke the earth's healing powers. We've done enormous damage, but by a million small actions like these, we can start reversing the damage very fast. Plant a tree, and, collectively, plant more trees than the Corporate Predators are chopping down right now, all over the world. Drop one trip in an oil-driven vehicle per week.

As to CO2, as Al Gore has pointed out, just changing one lightbulb in your house or office to fluorescent, has a significant impact. Add a few other measures--if we all did them--and we can stop the increase in CO2 and start reversing it, without inconvenience to anyone. With proper leadership, we can get off coal and gas in five years, in my opinion. (If we can put men on the moon in ten years, we can convert to non-polluting energy in five.) Then there is the impact of the U.S. joining with other nations to solve the problem--rather than resisting and undermining all international efforts. If, if, if. A lot of ifs. But the American experiment has been iffy all along. A real rollercoaster ride. Can democracy work? Will it survive even a decade? (The Founders wondered this. "We've given you a Republic. Now we'll see if you can keep it."--Ben Franklin.) Can a people govern themselves? Can "the people" take the place of a king, and assert collective sovereignty? Will the oligarchs and business cartels kill it? Can a nation half-founded on slavery abandon slavery, and respond positively (eventually) to the slaves' demand for full citizenship? Will slavery kill it? As the democracy industrializes, can labor rights be added to Constitutional rights? Will the robber baron/worker conflict destroy democracy? Can a democracy militarize itself, to defeat a great evil like Nazism, and remain a democracy? (--still in question.) Can we throw off the Oil Cartel and its puppet president, and all the colluders in Congress, and save the planet?

Maybe. I think we have the basic ideas and tools we need--thanks to a lot of courageous people who came before us. But it is going to be a mighty fight. American Revolution II.

[malaise]

50. The divide between different sections of

the US.