George W. Bush

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Reference

• The New York Times
• Wikipedia

Related Articles

• 2000-2007 US Presidential Administration

Presidential Election

• First elected by a narrow margin in the 2000 election:
  • electoral votes: 271/538 (50.3%)
  • popular vote: 47.9% (Al Gore actually had slightly more, 48.4%)
• Re-elected in the 2004 election
  • electoral votes: 286/538 (53.2%)
  • popular vote: 50.7% (Bush was widely quoted as seeing this narrow majority as a "popular mandate")

There were repeated claims, however, that voting machines during both of these elections had been systematically tampered with in order to favor Bush; see US voting machine controversy.

Negative Points

"You agree that this president is one of the top two or three most incompetent in history?" - Right wing financial talk show host Larry Kudlow, to a guest, on MSNBC 2006-01-17 (unverified).

• Has repeatedly insisted on blind trust and subsequently failed to live up to it [1]
• Says one thing in public, with the cameras on, and disavows it later (sometimes quietly, or sometimes claiming that he never made the original statement)
  • On the subject of the 9/11-Iraq connection:
    • 2003-03-21 Letter to Congress: "The use of armed forces against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."
    • 2006-03-20 President Discusses War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom: "First, just if I might correct a misperception, I don't think we ever said – at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein."
  • see also #Negated Points
• Appears to have no concept of budgeting (source: [2]; needs checking & more definitive source):
  • 2002: forecast a surplus of $262 billion in 2004; actual 2004 figures show a deficit of $412 billion. As of 2002, he was still insisting that his then-proposed $2 trillion in tax cuts wouldn't cause deficits.
  • 2003: forecast a 3-year cumulative surplus of more than $133 billion; actual situation as of early 2006 is a deficit of over $1.45 trillion.
  • Total federal debt has increased by $2.3 trillion since Bush took office. It took from 1776 to 1987 – 211 years – for the United States to run up its first $2.3 trillion of debt; Bush has reproduced that feat in only 5 years. Presumably the only reason we're a mere $1.45 trillion in the hole, instead of $2.3 trillion, is the surplus left by the Clinton administration.
  • Bush continues to propose more tax cuts (about $2 trillion over ten years).
• Glibly dismisses criticism of his performance as unhelpful hindsight
• Appears to be essentially trying to destroy the democratic process in America by elevating the office of Presidency above the law; see The Hidden State Steps Forward (Jonathan Schell) (and some commentary by David Brin). Seems at times to be working towards making the U.S. a police state; just one example: "The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil. Bush began discussing the possibility of changing the law last month, in the aftermath of the government's sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina." ... "a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis." [3]. (The preceding items were noted before the wiretapping scandal, which is just another example.)
• The US Invasion of Iraq
• Created the US Department of Homeland Security, a department whose actions often seem contrary to the ideals of a free country
• Anti-science [4], as is his administration [5]
• Anti-environment
• Apparently favors insertion of an evangelical Christian point-of-view into all levels of the government [6]
• Lied about his intentions in invading Iraq, claiming there was strong evidence of WMDs when it seems clear that there was none and that this was well known to Bush and his closest advisors at the time the claims were made
• Responded to violence (9/11) with violence (unsanctioned invasion of a non-involved country, causing countless deaths to Iraqi civilians and US soldiers)
• Against same-sex marriage
• He is sometimes just, I'm sorry, really scary (most notably, search for "reality-based" and read the paragraph which includes it)
• Claimed, in 2000, to be "a uniter, not a divider", but in fact seems to play heavily on The Red-Blue Divide, both in his 2004 campaign and in his actions while in office
• Has greatly harmed worldwide opinion of the United States [7]; is uniting the Islamic world in support of extremism and against the United states [8]
• Approved warrantless spying on individuals suspected of terrorist connections; openly admitted doing so, after having lied about it earlier
  • Bush admits to approving secret spying, CBC, 2005-12-17
  • Bush defends NSA spying program, CNN, 2006-01-01
  • Democrat: White House built 'wall' around spy program, CNN, 2006-02-02

Positive Points

• In his 2006-01-31 State of the Union Address:
  • Called for increased research spending [9]
• Removed Saddam Hussein from power (into which Hussein had been placed by Bush Sr.'s administration [10])
• Disarmed Libya of its chemical, nuclear, biological WMDs.
• Signed largest nuclear arm reduction ever with Russia.

Negated Positive Points

• In an announcement on 2006-01-11:
  • Pushed for return to Luna and Mars [11] [12]; as of 2006-02-16, Bush's proposed NASA budget basically pulls the rug out from under any serious effort towards humans visiting Mars [13]
• In his 2006-01-31 State of the Union Address:
  • Called for increased spending on alternatives to oil, specifically clean energy research [14] but reversed this the next day [15]

Debatable Points

• Republican
• Supportive of big business (part of the Republican Party platform)
• Pushed the No Child Left Behind Act
• Pushed for family-centric reforms (e.g., reformed adoption laws, requiring adopting parents to have background checks before getting children)
• Nominated John Roberts and Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court
• Supporters often say that he "states his personal views and governs with his morals" ... "you know where you stand with him" ... but there appears to be strong evidence that his statements and his actions are not necessarily in alignment, e.g. claiming he does not condone torture while supporting VP Cheney's efforts to remove torture-restrictive language from an appropriations amendment; see also #Negative Points "Says one thing in public..."
• Pushed ahead with reconstruction in Iraq when popular opinion was against occupation after the first few weeks (This was originally stated as a positive point, using Vietnam as an example of a disastrous early pullout from reconstruction due to public demand. The US was in Vietnam for many years before pulling out; wouldn't this be an example of the disastrousness of staying too long?)

Opinions

• 2005-10-22: Death Up; Taxes Down: Bush, an Assessment
• 2005-10-21: reader comment on [16]: "I have just spent the last four years watching conservatives throw away any and every principle they have ever claimed to have in support of GW Bush. * Balanced Budgets - out the window. * Peace - out the window. * Prosperity - out of the window. * Geneva Convention - out of the window. * 6^th Amendment - out the window. * Small Goverment - out the window."
• 2005-09-03: "My wife, a dual British-Australian citizen, says that in any civilized country, the massive failure of the Bush administration would bring down the government. It is not so simple. Emperor Bush II, after all, came into office by a coup, and consolidated power 4 years later (involving election machine software as well as more traditional fraud). In the process, he betrayed (1) the Bush family (firing the remnants of his Dad's friends from Cabinet-level and the next rung down), and recall that Bush Senior fought to SAVE the wetlands around New Orleans; (2) the rump-state of the Republican party (which had been nominally run by the technocrat Goldwater, whose election failure led to the takeover by the anti-government Reagan wing, which in turn was displaced by the current anti-Science Imperial Theocrats; (3) the country (as reconfirmed by the Gulf Coast fiasco); (4) the World (unilateralism, Iraq, Bolton in UN, etc.); (5) the universe (see Anti-Science, supra)" [17]
• 2005-09-01: "Impeach George Bush. Impeach him now." [18]
• 2004-09-10: Why conservatives must not vote for Bush
• 2004: "We invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us, and did not want war with us, to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered it did not have. We may have ignited a war of civilizations it was in our vital interest to avoid. Never has America been more resented and reviled in an Islamic world of a billion people. As custodian of the national economy and decisive actor in the management of the Budget of the United States, George W. Bush has compiled a fiscal record of startling recklessness." — conservative pundit Pat Buchanan in Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (ISBN 0312341156)

Rumors

• Bush was talked out of bombing Al-Jazeera by Tony Blair: apparently false, unless further evidence surfaces. The White House at least seems to realize how crazy the idea would be: BBC News See also Al Jazeera bombing memo at Wikipedia and more details at the Asheville Global Report and here.

News

• 2006-03-10 Memo to George W. Bush: Your presidency is in serious trouble
• 2006-02-21 Bush: U.S. on Verge of Energy Breakthrough: but wait, does he know something we don't? Stay tuned...
• 2006-02-06 Bush seeks defence spending rise
• 2006-02-04 NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness, but a Bush-appointed official (George Deutsch, a 24-year-old college dropout [19]) inserts political correctness into the information stream; see "Mr. Deutsch" on page 2: "the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang." Mr. Deutsch has since resigned his post ([20])

Links

• 2006-01-16 Al Gore speech
• 2006-01 Decoder: "How the White House edits out global warming" by Paul Rauber
• ImpeachPAC: group campaigning to impeach Bush and Cheney
• http://www.sorryeverybody.com/ : The U.S. apologizes for electing GWB
• http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html