Why Bush?

George W. Bush is a third-rate human being. He was a C student at Yale. He isn't capable of being president of anything. Even his business ventures failed and he had to be bailed out by family and friends. If you look closely at his body language you will see that he is a very insecure person. There's a hurt little boy look in his eyes. He is emotionally driven, not rational, but a strong believer, that's why he is “The Decider”. He isn't thoughtful or curious, not interested in learning about the world. He has a good-ol'-boy manner that communicates with people who share that emotional makeup. His lack of language ability demonstrates an inability to think clearly. When his supporters hear his often incomprehensible statements, they only hear the emotional tone that resonates with theirs' and ignore the content, just like Bush. Whether he is a puppet may be a matter of interpretation, but he is certainly heavily influenced by business and other authoritarian concerns. It's likely that he doesn't understand freedom and democracy – he has no feel for it.

President Bush is a reflection of our social dysfunction - we deserved him. A growing political polarization was tearing apart our nation. Had we been sane back in 2000, we wouldn't have elected him as our president. His obvious incompetencies were ignored. But we had economic and other worries after the DotCom bubble burst and the Clinton sex scandal in the late 1990s, so we were angry and wanted a change. When the 9/11 attack happened, we were ripe for authoritarian, paranoid manipulation from politicians who were living a delusion and devised an imperialist, preemptive agenda for the Middle East. It was certainly about protecting our access to oil, but there was a need to control other nations to force them to do our bidding. Bush also wanted to fulfill what he thought was his father's failure in Iraq, and the Neocons found he was easily manipulable to fulfill their warped agenda. This is an administration of emotionally dysfunctional authoritarians, bad for the nation and the world. That's why much of the world doesn't like us.

We must rid ourselves of this administration and its failing conservative policies to get back on a path where America can again lead the world. Whether we are coming back to rationality only time will tell. It's time for a mass healing.

"There's something that doesn't love a wall..."

Our country is very split over immigration. We fear potential terrorism, loss of jobs, that it's unfair to allow illegal immigrants an amnesty. But there's also simple prejudice, especially against Mexicans, because they're not of our predominately European culture. However, we need immigration to support low-level jobs that most Americans don't want to do. After all, our entire nation was created by immigrants. The Mexican immigrants I've met, whether legal or not I don't know, appeared to be very hard-working, nice people who wanted to make a good living for themselves and families. I don't see that as a problem. I've only wished that they could speak English better because I don't know Spanish, making it difficult to communicate. Perhaps they were newly in the country and trying to learn our language. That's a problem that's easy to solve.
With NAFTA, the North American continent was supposed to be a free trade zone. Both Canada and Mexico are participants. Whether or not you like the NAFTA rules, they should have opened the borders, but after the 9/11 attack we began to fear terrorist ingress across our borders and tightened security against what appears to be very little threat. Now, the Bush administration and Homeland Security are trying to build a real border wall between us and Mexico, from where most of the illegal immigrants come. We don't have that problem with Canada; they're much more like us, if we're white.
North America should be a more unified economic entity. It just makes sense. Canadians, Mexicans and Americans have much more in common than differences. Working together, we can build and secure a stronger tri-nation unity that will benefit us all.
The border wall is a misguided and very economically wasteful approach based only on fear. It creates more distrust and fear among our nations when we need friends. How long can it last?
Mr. Bush, tear down that wall!

A Surly Introduction continues

The Iraq war has cost us an estimated $3.3 Trillion! It wasn't too many decades ago that the entire budget of the U. S. government and the GNP was less than one trillion. Of course, we're living in a very inflated economy. But if you wonder why our economy is tanking, it's the war, stupid. Almost all the funds for social programs have been cut to fund the debacle in Iraq. If you wonder why schools, medical care, veterans' services are going down the tubes, it's the fault of our administration who appear willing to spend us into bankruptcy. Much of this money is borrowed, especially from China. And why is gas so expensive? Again, it's the war, stupid. Our military and all of the private contractors hired by our government haven't been able to get the Iraqi economy functioning. They told us that Iraqi oil would fund it. They're living an emotionally-driven ideological delusion and many of us want to follow along. Wake up, people!

A Surly Introduction

Daylight wasting time started today. According to a report on NPR yesterday, Daylight Savings Time causes us to waste energy because when we get up earlier we need more heat or when we come home earlier in the afternoon in the summer we turn up the air conditioning. If government and business want to open and close an hour earlier, they should do so, but leave the time alone. How many of you hate DST? Let's abolish this turkey and get some rest.


Now that I've gotten that irritation off my chest I want to welcome you to my new blog.

My completely revised website, The Surly Curmudgeon, hosting a large number of political and social critiques, is now online. Check it out at http://www.thesurlycurmudgeon.com