COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Crushing Leadership


Lou Dobbs says President Bush has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further.

Dobbs: Beware the lame duck

By Lou Dobbs
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Diehard GOP faithful, the dwindling number of Bush loyalists and political pundits of every stripe and medium seem obsessed these days with defining or discerning the "legacy of George W. Bush."


Lou Dobbs says President Bush has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further.

Frankly, I spend more time worrying about whether or not the United States can survive the remaining 15 months of his ebbing presidency.

There is little mystery about what future historians will consider to be the legacy of the 43rd president of the United States. Those historians are certain to describe the first presidential administration of the 21st century with terms such as dissipation and perversion.

Bush campaigned for the Republican Party's nomination eight years ago, styling himself as a compassionate conservative. He's amply demonstrated that he is neither.

Although many conservatives refuse to accept the reality, George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights while embracing faith-based economic policies that perversely require only blind allegiance to free markets and free trade, without regard for consequence.

This president pursues a war without demanding of his generals either success or victory and accepts the sacrifice of our brave young men and women in uniform while asking nothing of our people or the nation at a time of war.

Sadly, this president has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further.

President Bush has pressed hard for the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the first step toward a North American Union that will threaten our sovereignty. This administration has permitted American businesses to hire illegal aliens, encouraged the invasion of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and has given Mexico and corporate America dominion over our borders and our immigration policy.

Were it not for an outraged public, the Bush administration would have been happy to cede control of our ports to a Dubai government-owned company.

The assault on our national sovereignty continues: At a time when public approval of the White House and Congress is near historic lows, the president is urging the Senate to act favorably on our accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

One hundred fifty-five nations have ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, which essentially codifies into law detailed rules about freedom of the seas and the extent of territorial waters. The treaty also establishes an international bureaucracy to regulate deep-sea mining.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently heard arguments on the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty, which President Ronald Reagan rejected but President Bill Clinton submitted to the Senate in 1994. A vote is likely in the weeks ahead, and this Democratic-controlled Senate is the same institution whose leadership sought passage of the disastrous comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation.

And just as this administration trotted out an Army general to support the Dubai Ports World fiasco and a Marine Corps general to support the administration's immigration proposal, it's now pressured the U.S. Navy to support this treaty.

Bush says the treaty "will secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain." The president could not be more wrong.

This treaty will submit the United States to international tribunals largely adverse to our interests, and the dispute resolution mechanisms are stacked against the United States. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, astutely argues that nearly all the signatories "have voted against the United States over half the time [at the United Nations]."

This administration can do nothing straightforwardly and perverts language at every turn. Take, for example, the words of Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arguing in support of the treaty. "As a non-party," he argues, "We are not currently in a position to maximize U.S. sovereign rights over the shelf in the Arctic or elsewhere."

Negroponte's tortured reasoning is entirely consistent with this administration's intellectual performance over almost two terms in office, but it serves neither the truth nor the national interest.

The Law of the Sea Treaty would undermine our national sovereignty and act as a back door for global environmental activists to direct U.S. policy.

It would hold the United States to yet another unaccountable international bureaucracy and constrain our national prerogatives. Aside from that, the treaty is wholly unnecessary. The U.S. Navy already enjoys international navigation rights by customary practice.

Our elected officials in both political parties and the national media should worry less about the legacy of this lame-duck president and far more about the future of a great nation and people debilitated by his ruinous leadership.



10 comments:

  1. Lou Dobbs ....

    George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights while embracing faith-based economic policies that perversely require only blind allegiance to free markets and free trade, without regard for consequence.

    Golly ...

    I know the first half is correct, a neo-liberal ... Boner.

    I know Mr Budh has neither compassion for the coming generations of native born US citizens nor is he conservative in a historical sense.

    As to the rest, perception and perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  2. APNewsAlert
    10-17-2007 7:58 AM

    ANKARA, Turkey (Associated Press) -- Turkey's parliament approves cross-border military offensive against Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

    The PKK should have been dealt with, by US, years ago, that we have not, another sign of failed war time leadership

    ReplyDelete
  3. WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said.

    Blackwater's work escorting U.S. diplomats outside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad expires in May, one official said Wednesday, and other officials told The Associated Press they expect the North Carolina company will not continue to work for the embassy after that.

    It is likely that Blackwater does not compete to keep the job, one official said. Blackwater probably will not be fired outright or even "eased out," the official added, but there is a mutual feeling that the Sept. 16 shooting deaths mean the company cannot continue in its current role.


    What the Iraqi want, the US submits to

    Good thing that the "War" is over

    ReplyDelete
  4. What the Iraqi want, the US submits to

    That's a good thing too. Otherwise people might think the democratically-elected Iraqi government doesn't really have sovereignty.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Latest poll numbers:

    24% approval for Bush

    11% for Congress

    Even Rush said yesterday, the Republicans do a better job blocking legislation in the Minority, than running the Majority!

    Pelosi and Reid? Thankfully ineffectual!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yup,
    Woulda been better to have a liberal Dem in the WH with the Congress in opposition, than a liberal superglobalist outlaw with a compliant Congress.
    ...and NOBODY would have been as bad on the border after 9-11 as Bushboner.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Duncan Hunter reports on the Fence on Miller Show:

    Hunter's Bill:

    Called for 854 Miles of DOUBLE Fence, signed by the outlaw.

    Built so far:
    70 Miles of SINGLE Fence,
    5.15 Miles of Double Fence.


    Texas:
    Hunter's Bill called for 400 Miles of fence in Texas.
    Not ONE linear inch of Fence has been built.

    Bill has deadlines

    Arizona Deadline
    May 30 '08
    Only 5.15 Miles of 392, so far!

    Hunter says you just contract it out 2 miles at a time to multiple contractors working simultaneously, and it could be built in 6 months.

    ReplyDelete
  8. These two Pics show the RIGHT way to build the fence.
    ---
    So far the Outlaw and his Faggot Homeland Security Gelding have built nothing but a scraggly, spindley POS cyclone fence!

    ReplyDelete
  9. February 7, 2005: House passes H.R. 418, which grants Secretary of Homeland Security the ability to waive all laws necessary for the construction of the border fence.

    September, 14, 2005: Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff announces that he will exercise the authority granted to him under the REAL ID Act and require the completion of the San Diego Border Fence.

    October 6, 2005: House passes H.R. 2360, the FY 2006 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which appropriates $35 million for completion of the San Diego Border Fence.
    ---
    What's that?
    About an hour's worth of Iraq spending?

    ReplyDelete