"Some Positive News"

Reader Martin is angry with me. He thinks I'm a typical gloom and doom lefty and has politely asked me to blog "some positive news." I'm assuming he means positive news about the 20 health centers we've built in Iraq (only 3 are operational and there are 120 other clinics that are only two-thirds finished due to money running out); or maybe he wants me to talk about how we've restored the Iraq energy grid to an average daily output of 4,000 megawatts (which comes to 400 megawatts less than prewar levels); okay, maybe I should talk about all of the schools that we are rebuilding (um, we're rebuilding them because we bombed them).

Okay, let me put my rose-colored glasses on: Iraq is about to get it's first modern landfill ever (well, it's being "developed"; meanwhile untreated waste is polluting the Euphrates River); oil is flowing freely again (even though the crucial Iraq pipeline has been delayed by at least two years and current output is only at 2.5 million barrels a day as compared to the 3 million bpd before the war).

I guess I should just say that at least we're trying to reconstruct Iraq (even though some $8.8 billion has gone missing) and, yes, woohoo!, Iraq has had elections (what exactly that means in the scheme of things is anybody's guess, especially once all-out civil war begins in earnest).

So, I'm sorry Martin. I've failed. I just cannot be positive about arrogance, wrongheadedness and incompetence. I even tried to go back five years (when "the whole world changed") and see if I could find anything positive about the Bush years.

Here's something positive: After 9/11, the country and the entire world were united. Oh. Right. Bush squandered that with his march to war.

How 'bout that other war? The one with Afghanistan. That was a good one, no? Well, it was...until we basically ignored it to go to Iraq. Since then, the Taliban has not only regrouped, but it "now enjoys greater political support than ever."

There are, of course, the big tax cuts (I'm not rich so I can't get too positive about that) which coincided with depleting our surplus and bankrupting the treasury (d'oh!). Still, Bush has improved the U.S. economy (well, he certainly has improved the wallets of the top 1 percent -- "By 2015, those making between $80,000 and $400,000 will pay as much as 13.9 percentage points more of their income in federal taxes than those making more than $400,000, assuming the tax cuts are made permanent"; yikes, that means higher taxes for the people who's median income has dropped in nearly every single state).

Let's get off the war and the economy. Let's talk about health. He's banned partial birth abortions (fetuses are rejoicing everywhere). He's deeply concerned with healthcare (that's why his 2007 budget "would eliminate federal programs that support inner-city Indian health clinics, defibrillators in rural areas, an educational campaign about Alzheimer's disease, centers for traumatic brain injuries, and a nationwide registry for Lou Gehrig's disease. It would cut close to $1 billion in health care grants to states and would kill the entire budget of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center").

What about education? George W. Bush is clearly committed to education. After all, he is the man behind "No Child Left Behind" (which "has wreaked havoc on our nation’s public school system, according to state lawmakers. A bipartisan panel of state legislators issued a scathing report, Feb. 23, on President Bush’s education law, calling it unworkable, inflexible, impractical and unconstitutional. The report accuses NCLB of setting unobtainable goals and not funding the demands it makes.").

Well, he's at least restored honor and dignity to the White House (if you define honor and dignity as "lying" and "cronyism").

I give up. Perhaps I should just shutup and take my soma and then, just then, everything will seem peachy and I too can act like a Shiny, Happy Republican.



In the meantime, here's something positive:



the show with zefrank