Bush/Cheney is a failed experiment.

God help us all if George W. Bush is re-elected President. I'm serious about that. Someone please explain to me how someone that has been such an obvious failure as President can hold a lead in the polls. Now, granted, I don't believe the polls hold the key to the outcome of November's election, but it's disheartening to see Bush with a lead. Knowing what we know today, he should be on his way back to his ranch in Crawford. Please, can someone tell me what he has accomplished successfully since taking office (and I truly mean "taking" office)?

OK, so he went to war in Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban. No he didn't. In case you haven't heard (mainly because the major media doesn't give it much, if any, coverage), the Taliban is back and gaining strength in Afghanistan. And the opium farmers' production is soaring. If you saw my previous post, you'll know that claims of a successful turn toward democracy is questionable. Failure.

The war in Iraq. Oh, c'mon. We shouldn't have gone there in the first place. Yes we went in on incorrect information, but I don't believe for a second that our intelligence was that bad. No, Bush wanted to go in and go in he did. And we all know that we can hardly claim success in Iraq. It's a fuckin mess. Failure.

OK, so Bush passed tax cuts. Great (please hear the sarcasm). So when we need to spend billions on a war, he cuts taxes. The only President in our country's history to ever cut taxes during a time of war. And, as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office indicated, most of that tax cut went into the pockets of the rich. Don't forget that when Federal tax revenue decreases, that means less tax revenue for the States...which means that state and local taxes go up. That's what happened to me here in New York. Thanks, George.

Bush has no successes to run on, so all he and Cheney can do is repeat the same mantra over and over. Kerry is a flip-flopper. He voted to give the President the authority to go to war, but voted against additional funding of the war. Well, of course he would vote to give the President the authority to go to war, especially based on the intelligence reports from the CIA. But did he vote against the additional funding? The Bush/Cheney claims are inaccurate and disingenuous. And you won't generally hear what really happened, because the media only print or show what Bush and Cheney say, without expounding on the issue. It's like an episode of Dora The Explorer - keep repeating the same thing over and over to hammer it into people's heads. What REALLY happened is that Kerry voted FOR the funding bill that actually made the reconstruction money a loan and that asked Bush to repeal his tax cuts on the ultra rich. Bush threatened to veto the bill. So the second bill came through, which made the $20 billion reconstruction monies a grant, which does not need to be repaid. And Kerry voted against this bill since it seemed irresponsible. Remember that the Administration told us that the Iraq oil moneys would pay for the reconstruction. Yet another Bush administration lie.

Sorry for the rambling post, but I'm just steamed. Yes, Kerry isn't doing a great job of selling himself, but good Lord people, do you want to vote for someone because he's likeable or because he can run the country. Bush has proven that he can't handle the job. We need to get him out of office.

Maybe in my next post I'll address the issue of how Bush flip-flops just as much, if not more, than Kerry. Only the media doesn't really address the issue, in the same way they harped on Al Gore in the 2000 election about how he was a serial exaggerator for claiming that he invented the Internet and was the basis of the lead male character in "Love Story." (FYI, Gore didn't claim to have invented the Internet, and he apparently WAS one of two men used as the basis of the character in "Love Story." Read Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" for clarification.