Nope, this isn't about me. I'll probably stick around to keep an eye on you #&@ers. Well, that and bring to your attention an excellent piece by Paul Waldman over at The American Prospect. He's laid out the most concise litany of abject failures of the Bush Administration that I've ever seen.
But wait!! There's more!! And it's good news! We'll be saying "Goodbye" very soon to George W. Bush - and Mr. Waldman eloquently lays out pretty much all of the "Goodbyes" to be grateful for in a great, big cathartic pile.
Follow below...
It didn't hit me until after I read this that yet another reason there were tears in my eyes when Obama won last week was that we not only elected the first African American president but that - as a bonus - the regime of George W. Bush and his psychopathic cronies will finally come to an end.
The paragraphs in Paul Waldman's excellent piece are quite long so I'll only quote one for a reminder of just a few of the many reasons to be glad Bush is finally leaving ... and he's got plenty more:
Goodbye to the rotating cast of butchers manning the White House's legal abattoir, where the Constitution has been sliced and bled and gutted since September 11. Goodbye to the "unitary executive" theory and its claims that the president can do whatever he wants - even snatch an American citizen off the street and lock him up for life without charge, without legal representation, and without trial. Goodbye to the promiscuous use of "signing statements" (1,100 at last count) to declare that the law is whatever the president says it is, and that he'll enforce only those laws he likes. Goodbye to an executive branch that treats lawfully issued subpoenas like suggestions that can be ignored. Goodbye to thinking of John Ashcroft as the liberal attorney general. Goodbye to the culture of incompetence, where rebuilding a country we destroyed could be turned over to a bunch of clueless 20-somethings with no qualifications save an internship at the Heritage Foundation and an opposition to abortion. Goodbye to the "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job" philosophy, where vital agencies are turned over to incompetent boobs to rot and decay. Goodbye to handing out the Medal of Freedom as an award for engineering one of the greatest screw-ups of our time. Goodbye to an administration that welcomed gluttonous war profiteering, that was only too happy to outsource every government function it could to well-connected contractors who would do a worse job for more money.
It's just un-f___ing believable what this guy did. And he's still doing it and I'm sure he's actively planning and implementing more terrible things in the short time he has left before he goes away.
Remember how most all of us felt in November of 2004, when we lost? I try to remember that, even today, after such a great victory, I guess because it doesn't just hurt us when we lose. Pretty much everyone but the well-connected Republicans will suffer. And that includes everyone in the rest of the world - not just us in America.
I talked to my sister in London today. She said the next day after our election was just like Christmas - and she said that was how most everyone in London described it, not just her. Sure most of that's the Obama win... but there's also much to be happy about the Republican loss as well.
I think most everyone - but the Republicans in the US - knew that the very planet itself couldn't have withstood four more years of the arrogance and tyranny - the likes of which we in America have never seen before. And who among us believes the McCain/Palin ticket would've been an improvement?
We really need to try very hard to do everything we can to make sure that this country - and the rest of the world - won't have to endure anything like George W. Bush ever again. The human race will be paying for his blunders, intentional or not, for a long, long time and I believe he single-handedly and cynically shook our Democracy down like no other US president before him.
Good riddance indeed, Mister Bush.