Poll: Bush Standing With Public Weakening (AP). AP - President Bush's standing with the public is slumping just three months into his final term, but Americans have an even lower regard for the job being done by Congress. [Yahoo! News: U.S. National]
President Bush and Congress's actions over the last six months have been deplorable. Let us enumerate:
1) Social Security: One of the most contentious of social programs and one of the largest sources of revenue for the federal government, Social Security is a hot potato. You can do no right with it, but the President and his supporters are completely off the reservation on this proposal to privatize. The are several reasons for this. One of the biggest is that there is no money available to transfer right at the moment - it has already been spent! Further, there is already a program in place to put money, called and IRA that was designed before 401(k) and for those that could not take advantage of 401(k)s.
The other, more serious problem, is that the Federal government will not be able to function without the Social Security revenues as they are currently constituted. With over half of all collected taxes (note here that I say collected, instead of estimated or total because what you collect is all that counts, not what you should have) going to financing the deficit, how do you propose the government continue to fund the military (at some x billion a year, including a missile defense program that keeps proving it does not, cannot, will not, work), tsunami relief, rebuilding Iraq, oh, and all those other little programs like homeland security, every child left behind, veterans benefits, roads, rail, etc ad nauseam.
2) Terri Schivo: I almost promised I would not bring her up, but I have to. What Congressional leaders did and have done since is deplorable. The founding fathers should all arise from their places of rest and beat the members of Congress about the head and shoulders with a very large copy of the Constitution. To blame, or even attempt to blame the courts is to be ignorant of their own blame on this whole sordid mess.
3) Ethics: While we are discussing ethics, it should be noted that the current Congress seems more interested in playing big man on campus than it is in obeying the laws of the land that is empowered to uphold. Tom DeLay is only the latest example of the Republican guard's downfall over key issues of moral character. Let's worry less about what people are doing in their bedrooms, or living rooms as consenting adults and worry more about special interests influencing the direction of the country and the influence of Congress being diametrically opposite to the will of the people.
4) Iraq: Why is the United States military still in Iraq? If you can explain this to me you are more intelligent than I am because I just do not understand it. I keep hearing the following, in no particular order:
a) We are bringing them democracy. So? And this is important how? Does anybody remember Vietnam? How about Korea? Both of those incursions were supposedly about democracy as well. The plan did not quite go as expected. Further, as we have seen, for every day we are in Iraq, the freedoms that we take for granted here in the United States are being eroded faster than the Iraq citizens are gaining their freedoms. Was Saddam a bad man. Yes. Did he need to be overthrow? Absolutely. Was it the responsibility of the United States government to do it? Hell NO.
b) They had weapons of mass destruction. I think we have buried that myth.
c) Saddam was responsible (or at least linked) with September 11th. Umm, no, he was not and had nothing to do with the over all plan. Go read the report, studies, news, and get your head out of your ...
5) Homeland Security: Take 20 departments that have nothing to do with each other and turn them into one department and charge them with protecting the borders. If I had suggested this 10 years ago, I would have been laughed at. I was laughed at when I worked at Immigration and Naturalization all those years ago when I casually asked why Customs and Immigration were not in the same organization. I was told it was because they had nothing in common. Now they are in the same department along with the US Marshals, the Coast Guard and FEMA (to name a few). And yet, there is not enough money for any one organization to do its job, let alone the whole department.
6) Deficit: Let's talk money. There just is not enough to run the government in its current forms, there is not enough to meet its mandates and there sure is not enough to be pouring it into rat holes like Iraq and Southeast Asia. Further, the Government in the form of President Bush decides that taxes should be cut instead of increased. I mentioned earlier that the collected taxes are feeding the payments to the deficit. What I foreshadowed is that the Federal government is not collecting all the taxes that are owed, further reducing the overall amount of operating capital. At some point the bill is going to come due and I do not want to be the one that has to explain to the American public why the country is now owned by the Koreans, or the EU, or any of a dozen other nations that currently are financing our lifestyle.
7) Religion: Most people are religious. I will grant this as a fact. Few are so deeply evangelical that they feel the entire nation needs to follow their drummer. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening at the moment. The zealous are directing public policy at the highest levels and it is beginning to chafe, badly. And if you do not think that this is a bad thing, remember all those freedoms you used to have. There was a small experiment called Prohibition the last time the bible-thumpers got out of line and managed to convince us they were right. If you prefer having sex with the lights off, that is your business, but it is not something that should be regulated by federal law or Constitutional amendment. Don't think we are heading that way? You have not been paying attention.
The biggest surprise of all of this is that anyone is surprised by it. We had four years of indications of what Bush would do in his second term. Everybody and his brother that was at least paying a modicum of attention to what was going on could see this coming. That I have to keep pointing it out mean you are still not paying attention.
8:14:47 AM 
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