Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Our President is a Lying Scumbag

How's that headline for stating the obvious?

It's difficult to pick any one day when George W. Bush is worst than another. He's clearly the sorriest excuse for a president in our country' history and yet, amazingly, he still finds ways to be even worse almost every day.

He hit another low on Monday when, while speaking at a Republican rally in Texas, he spent the majority of the speech saying that if people vote for Democrats the terrorists win.

"Some say, immediate redeployment. Some say they wouldn't spend another dime on our troops in Iraq," said Bush. "Some say that the idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong. Well, however they put it, their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."

Aside from the fact that no Democrat in Congress has ever proposed not spending "another dime on our troops in Iraq," this slime is coming from the same man who has often said how important it is that we all pull together in "a time of war."

The office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) issued a quick response saying "Contrary to the president's intentions, Americans are just saying no to his administration's no-plan, no-end approach to Iraq."

Then we have Senator John Kerry discovering the painful lesson many politicians should lean about trying to tell jokes -- they shouldn't.

At a Democratic rally in California attended primarily by college students, Kerry had a joke written into the speech in which he makes fun of Bush's weak intellect and tells students to stay in school and learn history, lest they someday get our country embroiled in a stupid war with no meaning. The line was meant to be delivered like this:
“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”
Kerry blew the line, deviated slightly from the prepared text and it came out like this:
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
No matter what Kerry truly intended to say -- and it's his intent that Republicans immediately began attacking -- the GOP from Bush right down to the local Republican dogcatcher went on the offensive, saying that Kerry had insulted the troops in Iraq and implied that if you're dumb you end up in the military.

Of course, that's not what Kerry meant and, within an hour of bungling the joke, the Republicans all knew that.

But that didn’t stop them, armed with the facts of what Kerry really meant to say about our idiotic Commander-in-Chief, from going out all day and misleading people about what Kerry believes.

There was the Republican party's chief liar, George W. Bush, knowing full-well what Kerry really meant, telling people the opposite in a speech: "The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology," he said, to resounding boos from his sheep-like audience.

Kerry, who received a similar bashing from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Republican Senator John McCain, fired back in a way many of us were dying to see when he was attacked by the Swift Boat Liars in 2004.
“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic GOP playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

"I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have."
Kerry also correctly said that it is Bush and his entire administration who should apologize to military families for everything they've done to them.

"The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it," said Kerry. "These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor."

And Kerry is so right.

It is indeed our crooked president who should apologize to all Americans for lying our country into a war. And he should really apologize to the families of over 2,800 troops who have died for nothing and tens of thousands who have been wounded in the GOP's war of choice. He might also want to toss in some remorse for the Veterans who have seen their benefits cut under this administration and the children whose future has been mortgaged for a war that did not need to happen.

And what's so galling about this whole thing is that George W. Bush demands that John Kerry, a highly-decorated Veteran whose shoes Bush is not fit to shine, apologize to military people for a blown joke.

Kerry said it well in a thrown-together press conference in Seattle after the gaffe in California: "I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy" saying that the comment was "a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops ... and they know that's what I was talking about."

Since the president and his people claim to love plain-spoken folks so much, I will be remarkably plain-spoken. George W. Bush is a lying, craven, scumbag and an embarrassment to our country and the presidency.

If we didn't know that already, he's proven it beyond dispute in the last two days.