One person's ramblings, can be another person's insight.
Posts tagged Bush
A President for Change
May 16th
Obama After Bush: Leading by Second Thought
The president for change was what everyone said about President Obama. He will change the way we do our business, on how things are run. A noble thought.
In April of 2009, President Obama sought additional “emergency” funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He used the same tactic that he blasted President Bush for doing. Instead of going through the normal budget process, politicians can claim it is an emergency and deserves the funding now. You can read about this here.
So after reading both articles, I wonder if he is still for change, or maybe the decisions made were the right ones. Maybe, the path we were going down was the best choice.
Rice: Bush wouldn’t approve illegal interrogations
May 4th
Rice: Bush wouldn’t approve illegal interrogations
Is the headline on CNNPolitics.com. I personally believe that to be true. I do not believe any president of the United States would stick their neck out there unless they knew they had some ground to stand on. At least any president in the last few decades.
George Bush, said it was a war on that night shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and unfortunately when at war, ugly things need to get done. Is this “torture” tactics as bad recording beheadings of non military personnel and broadcasting it on TV? Is waterboarding worse than strapping a bomb to a 17 year old boy that has been brainwashed to believe that this act will send him to heaven?
President Bush did seek legal advice, and the advise he received said it was alright. Now I am no expert in Law, or do I even try to say that I understand the pain or stress these tortures can cause, but everything was done right. No one hid the fact, or tried to cover it up.
I guess the question is, did it work? Did it yield enough information to prevent another attack on American soil? We may never know the answer this.
Does that justify the action? Does anything justify the action? More questions we may never get an answer too.
One thing is for sure, you can bet that the terrorists bank on us, and have taken advantage of, our nature to be a free society. This even extends to the enemy combatants. Our freedoms have made us great, and greatest weakness can be our downfall if taken too far. A war cannot be won if we are not in it to win.
Bottom line for me is, I do not know if the torture techniques were successful, it could be they were at the time when our nation was very scared, and it could be time to move on. I think we need to do just that, move on. Nothing evil was done here, maybe it was a mistake, maybe it wasn’t, but so far there is no smoking gun.
Gas Prices, Remember When…
Dec 20th
One thing that annoys me about the news, is the lack of attention. For months all we heard was how the sky was falling all because of gas prices. Well now gas prices national average prices is $1.66 per gallon in the United States. A year ago it was over $2 a gallon, 6 months ago it was over $4 per gallon, and only three months ago it was still over $3.50 per gallon.
Now look at it.
I have yet to see a front page article saying, “Gas prices falling, boon for economy”. It certainly helps us in these tough times that we are not paying $4 per gallon.
Check out this historical chart from www.gasbuddy.com located here.
I also came across this article, during the presidential race when gas prices were such a hot topic. Everyone was blaming each other, and each said they had their plan to fix it. In this article Obama blamed it on the old political structure, you can read the article here.
And it was not just Obama, even McCain said he would act immediately to lower gas prices, this was on his own polical website located here.
Hillary Clinton also had her spin on how she would fix things on her website located here, she squarely blamed the Bush administration.
Well here it is, almost a month before Obama takes office, and it looks like it is fixed. Down the prices go. No real major policy changes, Bush is still in office, none of these people are in office to effect change and it happened anyway. Could it have anything to do with how much we are paying for a barrel of oil?
Now of course, the theories will fly that it was a conspiracy of some sort, or that the impact of a new president coming to power influenced the prices to go down. Or they will say Bush got so rich off the oil, that he does not need it anymore.
Me personally, I think it is just part of the cycle. Economy and prices always go up and down, things change, there are so many factors that are likely involved that we will never know the reason the prices went down. Too often we look for the one answer, but life is not that simple. But someone will take credit for it.