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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
www.NationalView.org's Note From a Madman
November 12, 2008
First, Do No Harm
Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath before they actually become doctors. It says,
in short, "Do no harm." the "Do no harm" pledge that those who heal the sick
should also be taken by politicians before they ever take office.
And it should be an impeachable offense when they break it.
President Bush and those who would, and have, follow him blindly - a.k.a. the
former GOP majorities in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate -
have either forgotten that they are merely stewards of our nation and that it,
and us, the people of the United States - or never cared about that
responsibility.
There are no outsiders in US politics, only those on the outsiders wishing they
were insiders. They'll do anything to get inside - Sarah Palin proved that.
And when we had a true outsider as our President in the form of Jimmy Carter, it
wasn't good either.
Now we have a lame-duck Congress and a lame-duck President. Although the
Congress, for the most part, still has a vested interest in doing the right
thing (a.k.a. "No harm") due to their overall lack of turnover, the sitting
president does not.
In the next seventy or so days that President Bush has left in office, one
wonders what executive orders he will use to get something done for the good of
the few at the expense of the many. Surely his is o longer the bully-pulpit but
there is still strength in his pen. And even though his position appears to have
been diminished, what sort of things could be in the mind of one Vice President
Dick Cheney?
Surely President-Elect Barack Obama's bully-pulpit is much stronger than
President Bush's is today; and he's going to need it to make sure Bush, Cheney
and Company don't get away with the kind of things they'll probably try to get
away with.
Obama is saying all the right things when he states that there can be only one
president at a time and George W. Bush is it. But the trust we put in him was
placed there because we need him now, not only after January 20, 2009.
Members of the House and Senate will also need to be DC hall monitors for the
balance of President Bush's term. Trust-time is gone - oversight is the name of
the game now, and it's about time.
Dont'cha think?
When Bush took office, I decided that we should all give him a chance. After
all, he had a reputation as someone who would cross the aisle in the spirit of
bipartisanship while he was Governor of Texas. I figured that if we were able to
survive twelve years of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, certainly we could
survive "Junior".
Man was I wrong.
George W. Bush was left a budget surplus that he not only let lapse, but gave
away. George W. Bush was given the good will of our nation and the world, and he
threw it away. George W. Bush was given a second term in office, and he threw us
away.
What will he throw away in the next two-plus months?
And who will end up paying for it?
-Noah Greenberg
In response to the economy's true makeup, Denise writes:
To have a healthy economy you must have producers (workers) in order to have
consumers. For far too long this has been overlooked and is still being
overlooked by the big bailout receivers. The bailout is not working because
their was no oversight included in the package. An economic stimulus would be
nice but with the makeup of Congress in this 110th session I don't offer it much
hope. Also, Obama said no more shipping jobs offshore and the Columbian Trade
Agreement would not help the working class in Columbia or the United States. It
would only help these corporations that have already shipped jobs to other
countries and the governing class of the country and abusing the people that
live in them as well as the Americans that live here seeking jobs. Hopefully an
economic stimulus package could pass that would put at least a little money in
consumers pockets but I don't think the Republicans have, even as of today. seen
the writing on t he wall from the last election. I just hope I am wrong.
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-Noah Greenberg