Whispers from the Wild

No matter who wins the US Presidential election, there is a LOT of work for him/her from day one.  In their sheltered, foxnews-fed environment, many Americans don’t realize just how bad things are.  So here are just a few things that need to be urgently addressed the moment the new President is sworn in.

1. How America is seen by the rest of the world.  Now I’ve read the right wing blogsforhat(r)ed site for some time, and the right wing definately believe in their own superiority.  Regularly they scoff at what Europe thinks about them, and they don’t care what the rest of the world thinks either.  They seem to think there is two kinds of human on this planet, Americans and everyone else, and Americans are simply a more advanced kind of human.  Unfortunately, Bushco and the neocon foreign policy have reflected that during this decade, and whenever they’ve wanted something, they’ve taken it, over the dead bodies of anyone who got in their way.  That kind of thing destroys America’s standing in the world.  For America to mean anything other than “those damn trigger happy yanks who love invading other countries in the name of protecting their own country” to much of the rest of the world, the next President has got their work cut out for them undoing close to a decade of Bush and Neocon destruction.
2. Let’s get this straight.  It does matter what other countries think about 9/11.  American honesty is assessed on that.  And the bulk of non-US people I’ve spoken to believe 9/11 was an inside job based on the scientific evidence they’ve seen.  Calum Douglas hasn’t ever been proved wrong in his Flight 77 black box recorder investigation video, the only thing the pro-official story crowd can think to say is that the black box wasn’t the one from Flight 77.  Should it turn out that Bush and Cheney were complicit in 9/11 then this means they have lied to the American people and got away with it, and continue to get away with it.  If they can kill 3,000 US Citizens with impunity, other countries are not going to feel safe about what they could do if they felt like invading someone else.
3. America IS in recession.  The sooner that’s openly admitted, the sooner it can be tackled.  You can’t remove the disease by simply treating the symptoms on their own, and no matter how much President Bush stands up like King Canute and says “There’s no recession” – that doesn’t make it so.  McCain would like to cut taxes, and therefore domestic spending, even further.  The dollar is falling rapidly, and other countries are only going to carry the US so far before they bail.  Having spent years lobbying the government for no interference, the US Banks suddenly are lining up in Washington for government handouts to save them from their irresponsible lending and consumerism.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better, the only question is how much worse.  And that depends on being honest about the situation and working to deal with it realistically.
4. Which brings me nicely to the topic of foreign wars.  Bush and Cheney have had their pride hurt by the mess in Iraq, and now they don’t want to lose face by admitting they were wrong invading.  That’s all it’s about, now, pride.  It’s obvious Iraq isn’t going to just sign over its oil, another amendment to that bill was once again defeated in the Iraqi parliament.  Meanwhile, the war is costing  a fortune.  So far, for a war predicted to cost 60 billion dollars, Bush and Cheney have borrowed from other countries one trillion dollars.  And that’s only so far.  And only the direct monetary cost.  That doesn’t take into account the human cost, which is another 4,000 US soldiers killed and 26,000 wounded, the latter who will be a drain on the economy through healthcare.  The next president has got to stick a plug in this economic hole or any attempts at clearing up the huge recession Bush and Cheney are leaving behind them is screwed from the start.
5. Domestic Spending – You know things are bad when even what Michael Moore says about something is true.  The American healthcare system, in common with many other aspects of domestic spending, is collapsing. The private insurance companies such as Blue Cross are further fleecing the US population to line their own coffers, and dumping anyone who actually needs to claim, and the Republican party seems fine with that, for the sole reason that the government isn’t interfering.  The fact is, the government can’t afford to interfere, it doesn’t have the money to run anything on this scale itself, because it’s spending it on wars and on tax cuts to the rich.
6. Which do you prefer?  Tax and spend, or borrow and spend?  Because Bush is doing the latter.  The money he’s “giving back” in rebates this year isn’t going to save the economy, because – at his urging – we’ve all been borrowing to spend.  Now the housing market is plummeting, and most peoples houses aren’t worth the cost of the mortgages, the banks are still demanding those mortgages be paid.  That’s where the bulk of this “giving back” money will go – to paying debt.  Or to saving, for those in a position to do so.  Average Joe isn’t waiting to rush out and buy new miscellaneous consumer ‘stuff’ when he gets his money, he’s going to be trying to make it last as long as possible, and rightly so.  Since Bush is relying on this money being pumped back into the direct economy, that leaves no plan B when it fails to happen.  Which means the next President is going to have to deal with that mess too.

When you look at it, all things considered, the next President really doesn’t stand a chance.  It will take a miracle to pull America out of the mire Bush is planning to leave it with when he leaves office, and with his foreign policy alienating much of the rest of the world… miracles are going to be harder to come by than Presidential honesty.