The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #67120   Message #1123064
Posted By: Strick
24-Feb-04 - 08:51 PM
Thread Name: BS: worst president ever?
Subject: RE: BS: worst president ever?
Well, Amos, I've read the Trifecta article. Answer me honestly. While I can appreciate it would be satisfying if you already hate Bush, do you really expect anyone to take something from such an obviously politicized site seriously? I mean, look a their first argument:

"Hoover presided over a major stock market crash. Clinton resided over a major stock market crash. We like Clinton but we don't like Bush so let's compare Bush to Hoover instead."

Did I miss something? At least the author had the decency to admit that most of the late economic troubles began in an earlier Administration. Even the basic premise is fairly week. Large, prolonged deficits can be detrimental to the economy. The negative symptoms are inflation and high interests rates. Please call me when you see inflation and high interest rates.

Considering the source (reading this kind of crap makes me tired), I'm going to just mention a couple of the obvious nonsensical arguments.

Corruption: Decimation of the electric grid? Bush alone is responsible for 50 years of negelict? Enron's main finanical crimes were commited prior to 2001. Where was the SEC then? No one has shown the slightest evidence that anyone in the current Administration aided Enron in the least. Who is more responsible, the person in charge when the crimes are commited or the person in charge when they're discovered? Halliburton got exactly the same non-compete kind of contracts going into Iraq it got when we went into Bosnia. Were you complaining then? No, Clinton kept it a secret.

Constitution: the worst violators of the principles of the Constitution were actually Lincoln who suspended habis corpus and FDR who interned hundreds of thousands of US citizens without the slightest due process. The Patriot Act was originally proposed during the Clinton Administration passed by an outrageous majority in both Houses immediately after 9/11. Most of the provisions aren't that different from what I experienced in Britain during their problems with the IRA terrorists (sorry, freedom fighters). Got a problem with it? It's only a law. Work to revoke it. As for the enemy combatants thing, it's no different from when a military court marshall sentenced the Lincoln assasination conspirators to death (well, and a couple of folks now thought to be innocent) or the way Jefferson and other presidents dealt with pirates. Or the way the British dealt with insurgents in any number of places for that matter. Don't go into battle with any nation if you're not officially a combatant.

Global Contempt: Horse hocky. No one likes any of our conservative presidents. LBJ and Nixon was more hated than any presidents when it comes down to it. FDR was hated in South America for the imperial way he treated countries there. In fairness, so what? We didn't like De Gaulle.

Military Madness: I know it's commonly held that the US never started a war. It's a lovely myth that originated to help vilify the Japanese after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Sadly it's not true. The US has been the aggressor or attacked other nations with the flimsiest of provocations numerous times. What did the Mexicans do to start the war of 1845, own land we wanted? The Spanish-American War started even though many in government knew the Maine was an accident. Think of the thousands of transgressions against Native Americans or the way the US invades Carribean and South American republics at the drop of a hat. FDR waited to enter WWII but did not only because he had to politically. It's a bald faced lie to say that "no one ever advocated attacking countries that hadn't attacked us."

Messianic Delusion: Riiiight. Bush is a Methodist, a denomination that, as you may know, is an offshoot of the Anglicans. Here in the US it's considered a liberal tradition, meaning that, as a rule, Methodists are technically neither fundamentalists nor evangelicals. That's right, they're theologically the opposite. There are exceptions, but the exceptions are rare. Not once has anything Bush said varied from the standard Methodist doctrine. The most liberal Methodist Biships might oppose Bush's politics, but they can't fault his religious beliefs. I know, I'm a Methodist and I have them here in front of me in writing. To say that Bush has some kind of Messiah complex is so ridiculous it doesn't really bear answering. Only someone completely ignorant of religious matters could believe it.

Hell, there's more, but I've wasted too much time on this already.