Mark Casey Online

Referring to Senator Barack Obama’s statements earlier this year that diplomatic discussion with the leader of Iran, and perhaps other unpopular figures around the world, would be something he might consider, Bush had this to say, in ‘celebration’ of Israel’s 60th Anniversary:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

[…]

“We have heard this foolish delusion before, as Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Don’t forget that this comes on the same morning that Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said that the United States should be perusing more diplomatic and engaging efforts to deal with Iran.

All I have to say is they need to get him a speechwriter who isn’t blinded by anger that the Democrats are winning GOP congressional seats.

Other than that, just be thankful that whomever is elected after this regime, won’t turn his honorable career into eight years of partisan name-calling and squawking.

One is good, the other is bad.

President Bush, obviously heartened by all the “principled” successes of his White House career thus far, is getting a little veto-happy in his last summer as president. Maybe he resents all those GOP congressmen who have distanced themselves from him in this election year, but after spending six years as the president who didn’t even know what the word “Veto” meant, constantly signing anything the Republican congress sent him, he now is threatening to veto anything he hears about.

Two examples, relatively bipartisan, couldn’t be further apart in terms of reason.

One is a recently passed mortgage crisis relief bill for families in jeopardy of losing their homes. This is right. After bailing out Bear Stearns, the sinking investment bank whose practices played a big role in creating the housing market crisis, it only makes sense to try to help the homeowners they swindled. A shrewd President Bush has smugly called the bill “a bailout,” which it is. It’s almost the exact same sort of bailout that Bear Stearns got.

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In the latest development in the battle to not worry about anything, a federal judge has ruled that using active sonar in areas known to be inhabited by whales is not exempt from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

President Bush had initially sought to make such activity, which has proven harmful to whales, a non-issue. The judge disagrees. And as with all things this ludicrous, it really doesn’t have to be an issue in the first place–the navy has countless options in their training when it comes to avoiding whales. One such option is low-frequency sonar scanning before their training begins, which harmlessly searches for whales in a given area. It works like this:

No whales = no problem.

It wasn’t a setback for Bush or the Navy, just to people (like Bush and the Navy) who celebrate the idea of not thinking about anything but their own agendas.

I’ve said for decades that the GOP’s most devious, ineffective, and little contested strategy for ruining the world and paying themselves for it is very simple, and has been since Reagan:

1. Start foreign conflicts (War on Communism, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc).

2. Run up HUGE, but somewhat justified, deficits to pay for said conflicts.

3. Use the resulting deficits as an excuse to cut programs you wouldn’t have the support to cut otherwise (Health care, welfare, social security, even public works like roads and dams).

4. Outsource the war and the resulting vaccuum in public goods to companies that you yourself own.

The end. And guess what? It’s been that way for the last eight years. And apparently Bush wants to go out with a bang–he just presented his final $3 Trillion, defense over-spending, Healthcare-abolishing budget to congress.

You’d think that the GOP would’ve learned from Reagan vs. Clinton that the previous president can run up whatever debts he wants–the right successor will always be able to reverse it.