Neal Morgan
The Port Arthur News
NEDERLAND —
I get so absolutely weary — outdone — by the GOP's out and out lies about the Obama administration. I'm also full-up with their lock-step objections and threats of filibuster against any and everything this administration tries to do for the American public. I'm also smooth burnt-out with a wimpy Democrat Congress and a president without the cajones to fight them, toe to toe.
However, what may very well rile me most is both national parties ignoring history, which is especially so for spineless Democrats. And that ignored history is named G.W. Bush, George II, or “Shrub”, as Molly Ivins called him.
The history of George II is not only rather sickening, it smacks of how well that elitism works on blue collar Americans and others who should know better.
Historical facts, for instance, show that Obama inherited every gigantic problem this country today faces and George II created. It shows how those humongous tax cuts for the richest among us led to budget deficits too large to handle, a doubled national debt, rampant unemployment, and the deregulated banking that may destroy us yet.
But even a partial history of George II might be the historical facts overlooked by voters all over this country...
I cannot imagine how anyone — short of an elitist like...oh, John Cornyn, could vote for such a smug, arrogant, never-had-a-job person like GeeDubya Shrub Bush. (However, I'm forced to point out, Sarah Palin is one of Bush's ilk, and presently the leading contender to be the GOP's presidential candidate. I can't imagine anyone voting for her either. But they will.)
Elitism — money — got Shrub into the Texas National Guard at the peak of the Vietnam War in 1968. Despite a waiting list of over 100,000, to get into the Guard back then, plus an 18 month wait for pilot applicants of 150, George II got in right away. His heroic mission was to guard us from invasions across the Red River or the Sabine, I guess.
Then, in 1975, Shrub got into the oil bidness with more than $2 million of other people's — mostly his dad's friends — money. His dad, by the way, was Vice-President of the United States at the time. Didn't matter, George II went busted, but made $840,000 anyway. Go figure.
After that he bought the Texas Ranger baseball team with other people's money, forced the City of Arlington to pay for a stadium with taxpayer money, and — through his famous dad, George I — made $15 million, shortly after he was elected Governor of Texas.
He was, of course, elected governor because of his advisor, Karl Rove, self described as “a diehard Nixonite,” because Ann Richards vetoed the Texas concealed-weapons bill passed in 1973 by the Texas Legislature, and because so many Texans were becoming “born again Christians” and suddenly believed “love thy neighbor” was either socialist, adulterous, or gay. Take your pick.
It's an eerie mystery to me how millions of American voters elected Shrub twice. (But it may be a lesser mystery than millions listening to or watching Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity.)
Anyway, the truth is that all of our larger problems — up to and including the lack of BP drilling regulations — began under Bush II. Obama is not guilty of starting these problems, even though he is guilty of not vociferously pointing out when and where they began. And he's also guilty of not jumping all over the GOP that now wants the same problems to continue, at least until the mid-term elections.
Shrub's administration left a budget with a $1.3 trillion deficit, and America that was losing 750,000 jobs a month, and doubling the national debt to over $10 trillion. All that occurred, of course, after Bill Clinton left Shrub a budget surplus to screw up and spend.
In speech in Buffalo, N.Y., President Obama — finally — said, in part “... I had just inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from the previous administration, so the last thing I wanted to do was to spend money on a recovery package, or help the American auto industry ... or prevent the collapse of Wall Street banks whose irresponsibility had helped cause this crisis. But what I knew was if I didn't act boldly and I didn't act quickly ... we could have risked an even greater disaster.”
Well, yes, those are pretty much the largest things he's done — had to do — in order to keep this country afloat. Yet the GOP is still screaming holy hell about those actions, even though, I suspect, the largest stockholders in the companies whose butts Obama saved were/are Republicans. It's ironic.
It may, however, surprise folks to learn how Karl Rove, “Bush's brain”, told Bush's 1993 campaign staff to “limit GWB's public appearance.”
The worst thing I can think of is “Bush-all-over-again” with Sarah Palin as President of the United States and the Arab Emirates around with all that money that makes it legal to buy her. I didn't even believe a Bush governorship could happen, but it did — twice. I didn't think a Bush presidency could happen, but it did — twice. Beware Sarah.
She, the Tea Party group, and Republicans in general keep screaming about “Big Gummint!” But you can't vote on those huge corporations who want to govern. And, as Molly Ivins wrote “... This is the warp and woof of your life ... to the textbooks your kids study in school, to the qualifications of the people who prescribe your eyeglasses or contact lenses, to health, education, home insurance — you name it, what doesn't government touch or set rules for (or set no rules for)?
G.W. Bush's administration was the prime cause of this national — maybe international — economic train wreck we're going through right now. Let's not let it happen again with another corporately owned Republican, for it might pose the end of American democracy our forbears worked, fought, and died for.
Neal Morgan of Nederland is a retired educator. Contact Morgan at neal.morgan1@yahoo.com
