Really?
On Monday, President Bush said, “Americans are watching to see if Democrats and Republicans, the Congress and the White House, can come together to solve this problem with the urgency it warrants. The whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets.” He was referring to a proposed plan to use 700 billion dollars of taxpayer's money to attempt to bail out the imploding financial sector of the nation's economy.
And yes. I said 700 billion. With a b. And I said taxpayer's money. As in, yours and mine.
Really? Really?
There is no question that Congress and the White House need to come up with some kind of plan to, at the very least, staunch the massive bleeding that is happening right this minute in the financial sector. But to "act quickly" on an untested plan that involves so much of American's tax dollars could, from a domestic standpoint, land us in the kind of mess America is currently in on the foreign front. I am referring, of course, to Iraq - another of the President's untested plans that was acted quickly upon, with no regard to the future, that has cost Americans billions more of their tax dollars.
For the last eight years, this president has demonstrated his leadership style by acting quickly - instead of acting wisely. Though it is now common knowledge that President Bush was looking for a reason to invade Iraq as early as January 2000, the plan for the actual invasion was hastily concocted, with virtually no strategy for how to handle the power vacuum that would inevitably be left by Saddam Hussein's removal. And there was certainly no thought to the consequences of removing the lid off decades of sectarian discontent that had always been boiling just beneath the surface in Iraq. And while the addition of thousands more American troops did succeed in reducing the near-anarchy of the last two years (all the while increasing the amount that we are paying for the war), no real progress has been made by the Iraqis to create a sustainable government. And why should they, as long as America continues to foot the bill?
Now the administration is using the bully pulpit to tell Americans that they need to demand that Congress "act quickly" to bail out a financial sector that has been left to write its own rules (and change them, when they want to) since the days of Ronald Reagan. They want to apply a tourniquet, when what may be needed is a radical surgery - followed by a slow, painful recovery.
And yes. I said 700 billion. With a b. And I said taxpayer's money. As in, yours and mine.
Really? Really?
There is no question that Congress and the White House need to come up with some kind of plan to, at the very least, staunch the massive bleeding that is happening right this minute in the financial sector. But to "act quickly" on an untested plan that involves so much of American's tax dollars could, from a domestic standpoint, land us in the kind of mess America is currently in on the foreign front. I am referring, of course, to Iraq - another of the President's untested plans that was acted quickly upon, with no regard to the future, that has cost Americans billions more of their tax dollars.
For the last eight years, this president has demonstrated his leadership style by acting quickly - instead of acting wisely. Though it is now common knowledge that President Bush was looking for a reason to invade Iraq as early as January 2000, the plan for the actual invasion was hastily concocted, with virtually no strategy for how to handle the power vacuum that would inevitably be left by Saddam Hussein's removal. And there was certainly no thought to the consequences of removing the lid off decades of sectarian discontent that had always been boiling just beneath the surface in Iraq. And while the addition of thousands more American troops did succeed in reducing the near-anarchy of the last two years (all the while increasing the amount that we are paying for the war), no real progress has been made by the Iraqis to create a sustainable government. And why should they, as long as America continues to foot the bill?
Now the administration is using the bully pulpit to tell Americans that they need to demand that Congress "act quickly" to bail out a financial sector that has been left to write its own rules (and change them, when they want to) since the days of Ronald Reagan. They want to apply a tourniquet, when what may be needed is a radical surgery - followed by a slow, painful recovery.
posted by Larry B | 5:23 AM
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