Bush (Over And) Out?

I know, I know. I am neglecting this blog. But I am focussed on getting rid of my own Bush-loving government in Australia.

I mean, what more is there for a non-US blogger like me to say about Bush? Everything you need to know (and much more) is available somewhere on this blog, or via the links (like TPM, Juan Cole, ICH, Alternet, and antiwar.com).

From my point of view, the case against Bush and his cronies has been closed for some time. Bush is polling in the gutter now, largely thanks to years of scrutiny from blogs like this one (and this one!), plus the blatantly obvious failures of his own policies. Bringing such public attention to Bush's criminally immoral administration was my original intention when I started this blog: now it's up to the people of the USA to deliver the coup de grace.

Bush doesn't give a shit about his low poll numbers. He and his Big Money friends are doing just fine, thank you very much. It's now up to the people of the USA to do something! Get off you ass, get active, and make sure the NEXT administration (and the NEXT, and the NEXT...) is not just as bad as this one.

If you are looking for a place to start, I suggest y'all take a good long look at this link. Explains a lot, doesn't it? Now what are you going to DO about it?

Come on! Bush is the symptom of a very sick society: you guys have a lot of work to do!

The USA remains (for now) the world's only superpower. The collective failure of the US people to act against the criminal Bush administration has had an extremely negative ripple effect around the world. Conversely, if the USA can get its own house in order, and show the world what truth, justice and real Democracy is all about, then perhaps - just perhaps - the inspiring dream that once was "America" might yet live again.

Sanchez: We Can't Win, Bush Sucks

Funny to think that four years ago, when I started this blog, General Ricardo Sanchez was in charge of the US military in Iraq:

"I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time.

We've got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years, better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done."

Cheney v. Rice

Cheney challenges Rice on multiple fronts. Given how often we are told that Rice has Bush's ear, does this mean that Bush and Cheney are now at loggerheads (again)?

Bush Heads Off On Another Disastrous European Tour

This one looks real bad. And it hasn't even started yet.

President Bush is to arrive in Europe on Monday faced with a long to-do list, and one over-riding obstacle in the way of all of it: For Europeans, he's the least popular U.S. president in history.

Bush's problems extend beyond public opinion. He's at odds with the leaders of countries east and west, whom he's to meet during a summit of leading industrialized nations at a Baltic seaside resort.

Bush disagrees with the major Western European governments over global warming, and he's at loggerheads with Russian leader Vladimir Putin about the U.S. plan to deploy a ballistic missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. He doesn't appear willing to compromise on either issue...

Bush's plan is to call a conference of the world's biggest 15 polluters, who'd devise a plan to combat climate change through voluntary actions. Even departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's staunchest ally in Europe, said it isn't enough. "I want to see us now go further from what President Bush laid out," he said while traveling in South Africa.

Merkel noted, without being explicit, that "no one can avoid the question of global warming anymore." But her top global warming negotiator, Bernd Pfaffenbach, rejected a key element of Bush's plan, which is to shut the United Nations out of a leadership role on the issue. Pfaffenbach told German reporters that the U.N.'s role in combating climate change is "non-negotiable." ...

On every issue, President Bush's unpopularity makes success seem unlikely.

"Bush is so disliked that he's not even considered anymore," said Franco Pavoncello, a leading analyst of Italian politics. "He's part of the past. Italians have moved beyond him, and now care only about who will replace him."

Opinion polls typically put Bush's approval ratings in European nations between 10 and 20 percent, but they're higher in Italy and much lower in France and Germany. When asked last autumn if the United States should be in a position of world leadership, 37 percent of Europeans said yes, down from the 64 percent who approved of a U.S. leadership role five years earlier.

Michele de Palma, who organized protests for Italy's Communist Party when Bush arrived in 2004, said the dislike is so deep that he doubted he could get people even to protest the president's arrival in Rome.

"Here, we just want to forget he exists," he said. "In 2004, we had 100,000 protesters. This time, I'll be lucky to find 10,000. People don't see the point, Bush is last year's news."

This Is Your President Speaking

Bush says he is "going to hang Bashar by the balls" - that's President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Robert Fisk is not so sure:

The problem, of course, is that Mr Bush is in no position to do that. Indeed, it is the army of Iraqi insurgents who appear to have Washington by the balls and it is Mr Bush who may need President Assad's help to relieve this terrible pressure. For at the end of the day, Syria and Iran are the two countries which the US needs so it can extract itself from Iraq.

Elsewhere, a grieving mother explains how Bush gave her a presidential coin to compensate for her son's death, then told her: "Don’t go sell it on eBay.” This lady doesn't sound too educated, but she sure ain't no fool:

"So a couple of days after that they called me and said that President Bush would like to meet me. And I said well okay, only at his cost because I was not spending my money to meet him. So he flew about a hundred families back to Fort Carson.

"And in the room that I was in it was only me and four more other families. And I asked him questions you know, on um why we were over there? He couldn’t answer that. I said, well what are we fighting for? He said to finish a mission.

...

"But you know, they so brilliant, they up there in D.C., now, that a mother with a high school diploma can sit down and say, okay, now I won’t send them over a hot spot without protection.

"President Bush, he just didn’t see that, and he told me I was kind of, seemed like I was kind of hostile. I said, ‘yes I am hostile, because you sent my son over there.’ So my thing is -- all the questions that I asked him, he didn’t know nothing then, and he definitely don’t know nothing now, because the United States is in worser shape now that it was in 2003 that my son died.

"When he told me -- I said what’s, what’s the mission? He couldn’t give me an answer. I says, well I’m going to tell you what: I’m on my mission now. My mission had just begun. And my mission is to fight to bring these troops home, to take care of these troops when they get home.

"Then he gave us a presidential coin. Now you check this out: He gave six of us a presidential coin, tell us not to tell the rest of the people that was there, and then after that he told us don’t go sell it on eBay. Now you tell me how insensitive that can be? What kind of caring person is that?"