George Bush - 1 [the younger]

11.14.08 So many things to say... and all of them too late. You or your staff never read, believed or listened to anything I've said or written for about eight years, now, and you have now set records for "lowest confidence level" for a President. Such a legacy. Such a "place in history." The shame of it all.

So many mistakes, but virtually all stemming from one or two obvious sources: your incredible ego, which can do no wrong, and your incredible religious beliefs, where you actually use and rely on your god for guidance. Not just praying for answers, asking for them.

The arrogance to believe the lies from your supporters and believers that "the US is a Christian Country," and to try to push the country in that direction with mandates, laws and influence.

The incredible stupidity of supporting your friends and relatives to the detriment of virtually all of the people who voted for you and to the detriment of those who voted against you. Right up there with Nixon, rest his soul.

People voted for you because you sold yourself as "the kind of guy anyone'd like to sit down and have a beer with." Recently, some wag noted that, for the record, we should have voted for a more "designated driver kind of guy."

At every turn you've tried to push your personal beliefs on all of us, as if they were exactly the right fit. As if the "melting pot" model of America was accurate. Well, as another wag put it, "it's not a melting pot, it's a salad." Each element in a salad can retain its individuality, history and uniqueness. America, if anything, is the "salad dressing" that covers us all and adds a common flavor to the entire mix, without overpowering any of it.

Yes, the salad dressing should, imnsho, be a common language and flag. But I also believe it should include a common set of laws, across all of the states, for legal rights in marriage. Even if we need to use a separate word so that "religious marriage ceremony" isn't evoked when a couple says they want to "marry." Maybe "join" is a useful term. I'm not sure. Still looking. But if you had lifted one other finger on the subject, gays could be marrying all across the country today and could have inheritance, hospital visitation, financial and other rights still denied to them. But your religion got in the way, and I'm very sorry it did. It might have been a whole other direction for your Presidency. But it wasn't. Your call, not ours.

The War... Yes, Sadam Hussein should have been thrown out. But you fumbled the whole process so badly as to have become a textbook lesson in "how to not do it right." Believing evidence because you wanted to; being incapable of changing course in the light of any new data or inputs which might have become available... that's what you'll be remembered for, and that's a shame.

Not to mention selling out your country in the name of the subsidies to corn farmers and gasohol speculators who thought they'd get rich if the "government paid for the development and such..." Many of us tried to tell you that kowtowing to the eco-nuts who had no scientific background and no serious busines model or plans for the gasohol "economy" proved over and over how politics, politicians and especially Congress are powerless and brainless when it comes to decisions about the economic directions and management of our economy.

Huge blunder. And now, everyone will forget your part and your supporters will try to finger other victims as the culprits as the gasohol plants close and are sold off, and the world economy and agribusnesses go back to feeding the hungry rather than the alcohol refinery speculators.

Not to mention your "economic advisors" and people in control of the US economy. Trained chimps could have done better. Decades ago, Milton Freidman said that the Head of the Fed should be replaced by a horse which knew just two tricks. January 1st of each year, the horse would be brought out to the front steps of the Fed Building and asked one simple question: "What should the Prime Rate be this year?" The horse would stamp one hoof five times. "The second queston is: Does that mean that the Prime Rate should be 5% for this year?" The horse would then move its head up and down and whinney, meaning "Yes."

And the show would be over for another year. But no, we had Greenspan, who lowered the Prime to ridiculously low levels for absurdly long times, despite the rants of economists all over the country and the world. Result: excessively cheap mortgages for people who never should have been qualified to buy a home. Stupid of them and the lenders, who assumed that the Prime would stay that low forever and it would never go up and ... heaven forbid ... cause mortgage rates and ARMs to reset to higher cost levels!

You've let the country become economically stupid and encouraged it with ill-advised financial policies. It got to the point in the past few years that whenever I heard that Greenspan would be making a speech, I considered selling stocks and moving to bonds, at least temporarily. And Bernanke is no better. He speaks, the stock market goes down. He clarifies his speech and the market goes down some more.

You just never knew when to stop. The best possible actions on your part might have been, as John Galt says in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, "Get out of my way." Do nothing. Please do not "help." It's the last thing we wanted or needed from you.