There's Got To Be A Morning After

Soooooo.... the Diner Review was conspicuously silent on this years election.  In 2008 I had to have 20 posts or more related to politics, the election, Obama, Mc Cain, Palin... it all seemed like high drama.  This year it just seems... or seemed...silly.  It still does.  6 billion spent so we can have the same general people in place as before.  A prospect of more ideology, more doctrine, more purity of political purpose and more gridlock.  I could of voted for either of them for President.  Part of me definitely wanted someone else to blame and wanted a new shot at something different.  Our President powerfully disappointed me in his first term.  Yes, he inherited an economy that had fallen off the cliff, and a world economy that was just about to go.  Hard for us to be healthy in a much touted global economy when the globe is not so healthy itself.  But still, he disappointed.  He was elected the first time with a real mandate for real change, and he failed us.  he might have tried to be the opposite of George Bush which was welcome but he was the opposite side of the same coin.  He had an opportunity to lead us in a bold new direction and redirect the conversation about what it means to be the greatest country in the world and the responsibility that comes with it.  Not to live in a million dollar house and drive a hundred thousand dollar car and provide your children’s every whim, but to be a leader of the world based on our famed Judeo-Christian beliefs.

But he screwed the pooch.

He stimulused us in an old fashion way feeding the Democratic pork and running up more debt. He failed to regulate seriously his friends in the banks and “too big to fail” is now policy whether we admit it or not.  People are still focused on themselves and their things and getting rich.  Class warfare became the re-election theme and it worked.  The Democrats ran a really good guy, a religious guy with respectable values and a history of success.  But he was wooden, and he was so damn rich and ultimately 51% could not relate or did not want to relate.

So we are now in worse need than we were 4 years ago.  We spent our way down the road and doubled and tripled up on the debt.  The world economy is still teetering on the edge.  We still have an un-swallowed rat of housing debt rolling and roiling through the snakes stomach and the student loan bubble is about to burst.  There are some positive things but they all pale in front the mountain of debt.

So.... fortunately for the President I have it all mapped out.  here is a way to really make a difference and make things happen.  To be the aspirational leader you were orginally elected to be when each of us pinned our hopes and dreams on your Muslim, not born here, community activist ass.

1. Ask (tell) Harry read and Nacny Pelosi that they must step down from leadership.  They have been divisive and are spectacularly unsuccessful.  They taunted when they were in control and skulked and connived when things didnt go their way.  they are polarizing and they represent the old way that brought us here.  Be polite, throw them a nice party and get them out of the way.  The Republicans have the same problem but Boehner is a human being.  The little guy, Eric Cantor should be fired to as being a divisive, smug little prick but HE is not your problem.  Pelosi and Reed are.  Do the right thing.

2. Go to Mitt Romney and apologize for the ugliness of the campaign and the tactics of attack you used to beat him.  Mean it when you apologize.  You should be embarrassed.  You demeaned your office and the country when you allowed your dogs to go after him.  Hire him in a job that is scheduled to disappear at the end of your presidency as (and I know everyone hates the word) Tsar oe Czar of the balanced budget.  Bring back Simpson and Bowles as his Lieutenants.  The orders are simple.  Do as little damage as possible while right sizing entitlements and the military. Put Colin Powell and Petraus on the committee also to assist in getting the military what they need and not what they want.  Taxes will have to be raised through a new tax code.  Give this group carte blanche and support their recommendations.  

3. Be humble and go to Israel.  Sit down with their jack ass Prime Minister who treated you like a school child and tell him that you will commit 100% of Americas military might and financial stability to an Israel that agrees to a two State solution, NOW.  If needed bomb Iraq and send troops in to find and destroy suspected atomic sites.  Then leave.  If Israel balks explain to the American people the bargain you offered and put it to a vote to stand by them with a deal to guaranty their peace, or let them stand alone.  Explain to the Palestinians that they must control their own people and then when rockets fall on Israel that we will support Israel to massively retaliate totally out of proportion to every attack.  Move the Blue Helmets from the UN in between and finance them.  Tell Israel that it is their business where their capital is but it cannot be on Palestinian ground or interfere with their right to visit their holy sites.

4. Leave Afghanistan and make clear to them and Pakistan that the world is sick to death of them.  Make clear our support is behind India and that we will assist the Russians, Chinese and Indians in dealing with their countries if terrorists are harbored there.  Pakistan is the real problem because they have the bomb and are moving towards extremism.  We must have a new UN Security Council resolution wherein everyone agrees that if Pakistan or it’s cousin South Korea use a nuclear bomb that their country will be annihilated.

Part 4 might be a bridge too far.  Shit, Part 3 likely is as well.  Israel is in an untenable position long term.  Not just Iran but the whole Muslim community when they speak frankly speaks of their extermination.  I am not sure the situation can be salvaged but it certainly cannot be done without significant give and take.  Anyway, how about 1 and 2.  Do it for me.

Diner Review Pics Bush As Worst Ever

Sooooo... if your lucky enough to be reading this then you will one day in the position to tell your children and/or grandchildren that you had the blessing of living through the eight year term of the worst President...ever. Seriously... I mean I didn’t live through the Harding (supposedly he was fabulously corrupt as was his administration which frankly seems like an upgrade on where we are at now) years so I cannot really comment on them one way or another. I also missed out on James Buchanon (Presided over secession of the the south), Andrew Johnson (presided post Lincoln and took the side of the South in reconstruction and Franklin (Doughface) Pierce who tried to expand slavery to the western states. I have been however been conscious for Lyndon Johnson (14 who would have thunk it?), Richard Nixon (32), Jimmy Carter (28 tie), Gerald Ford (28 tie), George H.W. Bush (25), Ronald Reagan (15), Bill Clinton (21) and now this putz. According to historians this group in my life has been a pretty middling, muddling bunch. I mean, we have had 42 Presidents and if my math is correct they average out to about a 20+ and that is pretty much right in the middle.

But think about it. This guy won (some say stole but that is a whiny weak response because if he stole it we ALL watched it happen) an election by the barest of mandates inheriting a White House at peace, a robust economy with projected budget surpluses (whoever those guys were projected that need to be treated the people who put together Communist China and Russia’s much vaunted 5 Year Plans) and was off to just being a screw up, a caretaker President busy figuring out how to make the rich get richer with tax cuts for the rich and tax breaks for business, trashing the environmental laws and ignoring global warming. He did not believe in interventionism of “nation building” since they were bad for business. He was trying to be a good dogmatic, pro business republican. he paid lip service like a good business republican to abortion issues and gay marriage which helped elect him but did nothing because they had nothing to do with getting his friends richer.
Then we have 9-11. A disaster, devastates a mentally weak nations psyche and he becomes a hero. He invades Afghanistan with massive focused force and although he fails to get the bad guy, he and the folks he surrounds himself with suddenly see the vision...a stable democracy in Iraq. Lets clean up dads screw up there not unseating Saddam. It can all be ours...the oil, the glory, the no bid contracts... That is when his Presidency teetered and then fell with a thud. Either he lied us into the war or led us into war relying on such fantastic incompetence that he and his cabinet should be water boarded and executed in short order. WE WERE THE ONLY SUPERPOWER! We had a moral gravitas and a budget surplus to do so much good in the world and...he and Cheney literally...pissed it all away.

Perhaps we judge our recent Presidents too harshly because their failings are apparent but their long term victories are not yet judged. Lyndon Johnson at 14 seems like a stretch and Nixon at 32 seems unduly harsh for just being a mean spirited greed head. I mean he opened up China and that took a little guts and forethought. He messily got us out of Vietnam which was not his war. Makes you wonder how we will treat Hillary or Barrack for what will be a very messy retreat from Iraq (and it will be a shameful retreat). I think when comparing Bush to Nixon that Nixon comes out very favorably. Sure he surrounded himself with hustlers and crooks but they were used car salesmen type crooks. Fast talkers with wide ties and white shoes and bad teeth. Perhaps they were trying to screw us but it was a kinder gentler time.

Bush has surrounded himself with Haliburton type neo-con crooks who are looking to rape not just us, but the world in favor of lining their pockets, their family members pockets and implanting their “vision” all over the map. I guess the difference is that these guys are smarter, meaner and more dogmatic then Haldeman, Erlichmann, Mitchell and Dean could have ever mustered. Nixon had his enemies “audited” by the IRS. Bush sends his to Guantanimo. Nixon listened in on phones, Bush “data mines”. Nixon at least genuinely liked pro football (according to Hunter Thompson) and I do not think Bush likes anything. Since his PR Campaign of coming to Jesus he no longer has any public use for vice and that is just wrong on so many levels that it makes me queasy.


Sure Clinton was banging his aides (only to fulfill his Kennedy fantasies) but it is comforting to see the man in the White House has human failings, even very public ones. It really was not until Clinton that we knew it was wrong to carry on such dalliances because the prior guys since Kennedy were all to old and mentally screwed up to have sex anyway and I suspect sadly that the same is true of George now. There is something meaner about Presidents who are not getting laid regularly while in the White House. That is my theory. Hell, Kennedy was all smiles even when invading Cuba and enmeshing us in Vietnam. Perhaps that is the key lesson of the Bush Presidency. I would like to be able to draw at least on lesson out of it because this guy is going to be sitting in the bottom 5 sooner rather then later.