Quick Hit – And So The Bureacracy Begins – Wisconsin Style

Leave it to good ‘ol Jim Doyle to start the expansion of government jobs by announcing a new office in his adminstration called – The Office of Recovery and Reinvestment.  What a joke.  The President is only 3 days into his adminstration, and our Governor is already expanding the state government (even though we’re in a 5 billion dollar hole)……Gotta love Wisconsin, gotta love Wisconsin politics – They never disappoint.

 http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/38234629.html

Goodbye George Bush

I am a George Walker Bush supporter.  I know saying that is almost like saying you support the devil, but that’s a whole different discussion.  Now, I do not support him 100% mind you, considering my mantra is “The only politician I agree with 100% is me.  If you agree with another person (especially a politician) ALL of the time, I have to question your free will.”  I honestly can say, though, that I am better off now (by leaps and bounds) than I was 8 years ago.  I realize that is not the case for the economy, as it currently stands.  I also realize that there is much work to do when it comes to finding a fix for our current economic woes, but I digress. 

This is more of a post regarding the end of an era, one that was mired in many successes, tragedies, and tense moments.  This era is one that I believe will be debated for decades to come, both positively and negatively.  It didn’t start very well, considering he had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to become the POTUS, and as we see now it did not end well.  As for the middle portion of his administration, I will touch on but not expand upon the highs and lows of a President that I believe has been unfairly construed as a liar, cowboy, and overall pariah.

To accurately portray George Bush’s legacy (or anyone’s for that matter) you need to take the decisions that were made and the outcomes of those decisions and compare that to the situation at hand.  Take 9/11 for instance.  To quote an ”intellectual” on the left, ”he grandstanded over the wreckage and the dust of the dead at his feet.”  No, what he did is what any good president should do and that is show strength in a time of despair, show solidarity in a time of fear, and show support for the men and women that perished at the hands of monsters.  My first thought, after the attacks in NY, D.C. and Pennsylvania, was GET THEM, get them with everything we have.  Did George Bush (the “Cowboy”) go in, half-cocked, bombing every country that has either sponsored terrorism or turned a blind eye to it?  No, he was calculated, methodical and poised in a time when people were clamoring for action.  That action did not take place until October 7, 2001, nearly 1 month after we were attacked.  So much for the “cowboy” moniker.

Iraq;  has been categorized by scads of people as an “endless war”, “Bush’s war”, “unnecessary war” (my favorite, by the way), amongst others.  All of those could be further from the truth.  We all know that Bush’s father had already had a run-in with Saddam Hussein, but what people fail to realize is that Bill Clinton, in 1998, had signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which called for a regime change in Iraq on the basis that Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, oppression of Iraqi citizens, and attacks upon other Middle Eastern countries.  http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm  Following 9/11, there was intelligence that indicated that Hussein not only had WOMD, there was a proven willingness to attack rival nations (Iran and Kuwait for example), there were UN resolutions, a U.S. congressional Act signed by the previous president, and it was known that Saddam Hussein’s regime was brutal and aggressive to the U.S..  Why wouldn’t we go in, liberate, and expel a known aggressor to the U.S. and the rest of the world?  Once in Iraq, the intelligence was proven to be faulty, but at that point what was Bush to do?  Uproot and leave a fledging country to fend for itself.  We saw what happened when Saddam was taken out – the terrorists tried to take over.  For awhile it seemed like this was another Vietnam, but to his credit, Bush was not going to allow the terrorists to win.  He along with General David Petraus came up with the ever successful “troop surge”.  A policy and strategy that to this day, should be lauded (certainly not criticized – like Barak Obama did).  There is much work to do in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole, but to say that we not only didn’t win the war, but lost it, are naive. 

Another watershed policy enacted by President Bush in the wake of September 11th that have been ridiculed and chastised was, The Patriot Act.  An act that expanded the ability of the President to counteract terrorism with a variety of different tools.  The knock on the particular piece of legislation is that it infringes on the rights of Americans and flies in the face of the constitution (another knock on President Bush, and I quote “shredded the constitution at every turn….”).  The left LOVES to throw this back at Bush, but do you know that when the legislation came up for a vote in October of 2001, 98 out of 99 Senator’s voted YES and 366 out of 423 Congressmen also voted YES?  Wait, it gets better.  In March of 2006, when Bush’s approval ratings were plummeting, the same two groups voted in the following fashion: Senate – 89 YES, 10 NO  – House of Representatives – 238 YES, 138 NO.  If Bush’s utilization of this act was soooooo unconstitutional, shouldn’t the congress been a little more “boisterous” with their opposition?  The question isn’t whether this is constitutional or unconstitutional (it is), the question is “does it work”?  The answer to that is – YES, and it should be continued.  The other tool used in the war on terror, that has been criticized, is the use of the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold terror suspects.   Without going into too much detail, this is the absolute best place to house and detain those that choose to commit terrorist acts against the United States.  They are enemy combatants and as soon as they are released all they will end up doing is partnering up with their cohorts and start up their terrorist ways (see attached link for up to the date proof)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090123/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_yemen_al_qaida

The years between 2001 and 2007 were filled with an ever booming housing market, questionable investing, and other financial chicanery that came to roost the 2nd half of 2007 to the present.  Was George Bush culpable for the downturn in the market, housing and the like?  Sure, but the amount of criticism heaped onto his shoulders is nothing more than piling on, by the same people that allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to approve and administer loans they knew to be bad.  That in and of itself did not create the current economic woes, but it is endemic of the attitudes on the left (and the right) to just look the other way because of political correctness, or some other platitude.

There are other issues that I could discuss (Katrina – how a President can be absolutely lambasted for a natural disaster is beyond me, deficit spending, etc) but I just don’t have the time.  I am going to finish off by stating George W. Bush was not the greatest President to ever sit in the oval office, but by no means was he the worst.  Where would I put him in the pantheon of Presidents?  That’s hard to say, but given the difficult times that were layed out in front of him, I believe he did a pretty good job.  After 8 years of war, economic boom and subsequent downturn, and everything else in between, I believe everyone will agree that George Bush’s legacy (for good or bad) will always be remembered.  I guess, for me, the view of that legacy is a little brighter than the current American voter.  We’ll see in 10-15 years how history views him.  My guess is, way better than the left will ever care to admit…..