Bush's Presidency is Over

That's it -- I'm declaring Bush's presidency over. He's no longer got the initiative, it's all going to be the world spinning out of control from here on out -- and his efforts to spin the spin.

Social Security is over this year, as made obvious by the NYTimes Magazine's interview of the leader of USA Next --


This week's meme of "Democracy in the Middle East" is a sham -- if a hopeful sham. Lebannon is no better off than it was 3 weeks ago; the Prime Minister who resigned in the face of protests of hundreds of anti-Syria Lebanese is back in power, after his parilment re-appointed him. Syria says it will pull out

The democratic advances in Iraq are real; but they employ the definition of "serendipity". Because, what Bush was really looking for -- WMD -- didn't exist, thus offering all of us the ability to declare that the President is delusional -- that is, he sees things there which are not there. Rather than a President who has vision; we have a president who has visions.

The trade deficit in January came out at $58B, instead of the estimted $55B -- which means that more money is leaving the US. With this, Japan -- which buys a big chunck of our TBills so that we can then send the money to China to buy shoes -- has declared they're going to diversify. China will follow, and between them, they by 80% of our TBills. That means the cost of borrowing will go up -- I'll guess, before June -- and with it, everybody's floating interest rates on their home loans. How to fix that? The US Government has to stop deficit spending. That's not going to happen this year -- or next year, the year after that, or the year after that either. And, oooo, hey, thanks to new bankruptcy laws just passed through the congress, watch everybody's consumer debt follow them to their grave.

Oh, hey, the NYTimes wrote an interesting article about how, because Bush's tax cuts didn't alter the alternative minimum tax, all those cuts that went to people making >$1M will reappear between 2010 and 2014 as new taxes on the middle class who, from normal wage inflation, will be hitting the alternative minium tax, and paying $100B more in taxes. Whooopdedoo.

This all sounds bad, but it could turn around -- right? Well, sure, except that Bush's cabinet has it's eyes on the future. Condi Rice came out wiith a firm denial that she's considering a run for '08. Wrong answer Condi. The correct answer is, "Gosh, my time is now firmly dedicated to enacting the President's foreign policy agenda." Period. The Republican party is looking at '08 already, and people are positioning themselves. So, Bush's agenda is being ignored.

This Presidency is over. The best he could hope for is a catastrophe that he must react to by -- say -- imprisoning thousands of Americans or something like that. Mebbe Cheney will resign in 2006 so that Bush could appoint the next president.