More than twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan, the Republican saint, said "government isn't the solution to our problems; government IS the problem." He was guided in his thinking by a neo-con twerp named Grover Norquist, whose ambition was to shrink the size of government until it was small enough "to drown it in the bathtub." These were the same people who believed in "trickle down economics," where lots and lots of money was given to the richest 1% of the population with the idea that some of that money would trickle down on the rest of us.

It hasn't worked out too well for the country, but the Republican Party took those notions to heart, cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and ensuring that government was ever more inefficient and costly, so as to prove their point that privatization was better. Under Bush, they spent more taxpayer dollars than ever, and we got much less bang for our buck, unless you count those very loud bangs we exploded over Baghdad. Those explosions signaled the start of a war that cost about $12 billion a month, for more than 60 months, so you can do the math for yourself, if you care to. Meanwhile, we had more civilian contractors in Iraq than military people, all of them sucking up tax dollars in a scheme that "privatized" lots of jobs and procurement once done more cheaply by the Department of Defense. And, when you can head up a private company that can exceed even the waste at the Defense Department, you've really hit the jackpot. Hundreds of Bush and Cheney cronies have done just that, cashing in like crazy while billions of tax dollars remain unaccounted for.

The waste and theft have been enormous, and those conservatives who didn't believe in government have now run the national debt up to $10 trillion, having made government bigger than ever to better serve the interests of a very few people. Meanwhile, more American working stiffs have found it harder to get by, have seen their buying power plummet, along with the equity in their homes, if they were lucky enough to have homes.

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, umpteen billion dollars in bail out money for Wall St. has gone to undisclosed recipients, and the Federal Reserve refuses to reveal just who got it. Hank Paulson became head of the Treasury Department after a long stint at Goldman Sachs, and his little request for $750 billion to bail out his former colleagues was contained in a three-page memo, with no details as to how that money was to be disbursed, and what conditions might come with it.

The Republican Party, repudiated in the last two elections, continued with its mischief, stalling on a bailout for the auto industry. They rushed to give a vague number of billions to the financial wizards on Wall Street, with no strings attached, but a government rescue plan that would save jobs (and perhaps the entire economy) was blocked by Republicans who represented states, mostly in the south, where foreign auto makers build cars in non-union shops, aided by subsidies and tax breaks from state and federal government.

Barack Obama will inherit a huge mess from the worst president this nation ever had. Whenever the U.S. has had a really bad president, the thieves run amok, stealing with both hands. An inattentive and/or sub-par chief executive creates a climate that invites such theft, as witness the Grant administration in the 1870s, or the Harding administration of the 1920s. But Bush was the worst of all, a really dim man who had little interest in minding the store. He spent a full one-third of his time in office on vacation. Bush was on vacation the entire month before the 9/11 strike in 2001, a month in which intelligence reports were predicting that bin Laden was intent on striking the U.S. soon.

And while Bush was cutting brush on his ranch, the guys he'd put in charge were busy making hay. 98% of the people Bush appointed to regulate industries were formerly employed as lobbyists for those industries, as clear a case of putting foxes in charge of the hen house as one is likely to find.

Once we were attacked, our friends around the globe rallied to our support, but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld actively alienated our allies, arrogantly dismissing them as "old Europe," and exhibiting colossal failures of diplomacy that drew down the world's good will toward the U.S.

Now, with the election of Barack Obama, that goodwill is once more on the rise, and the U.S. is reclaiming its image as the last best hope of mankind.

But it will take a lot of scrubbing to remove the Bush stains, from Abu Ghraib to the treatment of our vets, and from torture and secret rendition to the corruption of the Justice Department. Most of all, we will have to fight our way back from an enormous national debt, an economy in ruins, a real estate market in which a record number of homeowners are facing foreclosure, a fact that not only threatens those in danger of losing their homes, but also threatens the value of every home in the country. Already, most of us have taken a huge hit, to our equity, our investments, and our sense of personal security.

Meanwhile, erosions of our rights have taken place alarmingly. The USA Patriot Act violates half of the amendments to the Bill of Rights. People have been imprisoned for years without ever having charges filed against them, and Bush signing statements have put his administration above some 1,069 laws passed under his signature that now only apply to everyone but those who work in the Bush administration.

We must not forget the legacy left us by Bush and his band of crooks and incompetents.

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19653

I'm just amazed at how quickly a flash game came out after the shoe incident, it's quite fun to play

He will be dodgeing shoes the rest of his life