Bush's Legacy
There you go, hard stats in one handy chart to go along with all the anecdotal doo-doo. I knew Boosh's rep was heading south when I heard my 80-some year old genuine-conservative aunt say plaintively, "I wish someone would just shoot him."
Click on chart to enlarge, or you can go to Think Progress for a clearer view.)
4 comments:
Yes, I wish he would go, he's too easy a scapegoat. He lowers the level of discourse too much.
And I would expect a more honest debate by Americans about what his being still in power, or in power at all, says about their much-vaunted democracy. Is this debate happening? Is it considered acceptable (patriotic enough) to admit that either Americans are collectively no better than the person they elect, or that their system of democratic franchise doesn't work and should not be peddled to the rest of the world as an improvement on (e.g.) dictatorship?
It's really weird, Vincent. It's like the whole country has gone bonkers, no, there is not and has not been a real public or media debate about impeachment, when it is difficult to find a presidency more richly deserving. Discourse almost resembles the Soviet in its latter days, or that in East Germany.
I'm glad no one is paying me to analyze the situation, because it lacks exact, or even ready, parallels.
Ah, I had forgotten about impeachment as a method of getting rid of a President. But my point was not really so much about getting rid of him, as radically changing the system that could have brought him into power in the first place.
I don't know what you mean by "it is difficult to find a presidency more richly deserving"? Do you mean it is not point impeaching him because his replacement wouldn't be much more deserving? Or that there is no country in the world with a system of presidency any better than in US?
Certainly there appears to be a rottenness that couldn't easily be fixed.
Here in UK I despair in a similar way but in a minor key, about standards - of thought, integrity, education (spelling, grammar and punctuation being obvious casualties). Gordon Brown has been compared to Stalin, not in the gross way that he liquidates his opponents, but in telling everyone what to think and undermining everyone who has the capability of independent action: doctors, lawyers, teachers and parents for example. In all these areas the government sets targets, bribes and punishments, thus taking over the entire agenda of life.
So that the human species which evolved over, I don't know, let's say 100,000 years (I don't know much about it scientifically) in terms of how to survive, what to eat, how to behave and so on, is stifled and stymied by busybodies whose horizon is the five years between General Elections.
I don't blame our present prime minister. It was Tony Blair who declared war on "the forces of conservatism", for they were his true enemies. On his brightly lit stage, there was no room for real trees with real roots. Only the cardboard kind with wheels and strings were to be wheeled on and off to suit today's headlines.
Sometimes I think there are not many of us who are still sane. It is quite a burden to carry a clear-sighted vision.
Am I going mad?
Just meant Bush richly deserves impeachment.
Sorry to hear how you describe government extending into everything in dear old England, having watched its spread from afar. I was there during Thatcher's reign and have very fond memories. I do not recall seeing a single security camera, and often stayed at 11 Cadogan Gardens in Knightsbridge, right next to the princes' day care.
No vincent I do not think the US has the best system. Newer parliamentary structures would be harder to loophole. I live in a system which encourages all or nothing, one whose dikes are easily overwhelmed by one bad day.
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