December 20, 2007
The Facts
George Bush held his end-of-the-year press conference today. The hyperlink at the bottom will take you to a transcript of the conference, including questions & answers.
My View
Why the American public will continue to put up with such hypocrisy and dishonesty from a President, or any other elected official for that matter, and justify it by calling it “politics” is beyond me. Darn it, a lie is a lie and the truth is the truth; that includes hypocrisy! And you can’t justify that by calling it by some other name.
During the first 4-5 minute, Bush’s’ hypocrisy and dishonesty was in full force. He highlight the AMT bill that would protect the middle class from paying additional taxes, but he failed to mention that the same bill will also protect the wealthy and big businesses from paying an equal share of taxes. He blasted the Democrats for their “omnibus” bill and for earmarks that were added on to the spending bill. He knows very well that all you have to do is go back and look at a Republican spending bill during his own administration to find the same thing. I can recall Democrats pointing that out when the Republicans controlled Congress, but Bush didn’t seem to have a problem with that. He referred to the current Congressional leaders who ran in the last election on promises they would clean up this problem. Well, they were talking about Republican Congressional leaders at the time. I whole-heartedly agree with the hypocrite that these sorts of things need to be stopped and that the Democrats also lied to us, but it is this hypocrisy and dishonesty I refer to here.
Quote: “I’m also disappointed that Congress failed to pass legislation to ensure that our intelligence professionals can continue to effectively monitor terrorist communications. —Unfortunately, Congress made this law effective until February 1st of 2008, as if the terrorist threat is going to go away on February the 1st, 2008.” More hypocrisy; he knows the reason the Demo’s didn’t go any further is primarily because of the surveillance techniques Bush is using. But he “failed” to mention that.
Quote: “The bill should include liability protection for companies that are facing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits, only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend or nation following the 9/11 attacks.” This is in reference to his desire that Congress pass a “good” bill for combating terrorism. The lawsuits he is speaking of is the lawsuits filled against companies such as telecom companies for handing over phone records of innocent Americans to the NSA. Dishonesty at work again.
Quote: “Next year is an election year, but that does not relieve us of our responsibility to carry out the people’s business. The American people did not elect us to govern in odd years, and campaign in even years. They expect us to get things done.” That was a shot at the Democrats since they are in control of Congress. Naturally, the Republicans never did something like this. Hypocrisy at work again.
Quote: “And so I really don’t sit here and say, well, you know, he won, they lost, or they won, he lost — it’s just not my nature”. This response was to a Democratic Congress passing the spending bill that Bush wanted in the first place. I guess he could make that statement since “he won”.
Quote: “one of the priorities is to make sure they don’t run up the taxes on people. And my attitude is, if you run them up on one area, it will become a habit that will be hard to break, and then they’ll try to run them up on other areas. And the reason I feel strongly about that is I don’t want to undermine the economy by raising taxes.” He was laying the ground work for what he thought Congress should do and not do in reference to a tax bill next year. If you read between the lines here, he is saying he doesn’t want a tax increase that would target the wealthy and big businesses that would have them paying an equal share of taxes.
Quote: “—one of my concerns from the last year was that Congress initially spent a lot of time on passing resolutions and sentiment—”. Does anybody remember the Republicans “Contact With America” when they gained control of Congress. Double hypocrisy.
Quote: “See, the difficulty we face in the housing market is that the lender, the person who actually made the note, oftentimes doesn’t end up owning the note. That note could be — in the recent past has been bundled and sold as an asset.” This was in reference to the mortgage crisis. What Bush didn’t say was that this practice is a very neat way for lenders and mortgage holders to avoid accountability.
Quote: “Pro-growth economic policies work.— So I’m a strong believer that tax cuts work, and we need to keep taxes low”. Here we go again. This term has been around for a little while now, but think about its predecessors. First it was “trickle down economics”, then “supply side economics”. Now it “Pro-growth economics”. It all means the same; lower taxes and more subsidies for big business. No matter what term is used, this concept hasn’t worked since the Reagan Republicans started this up again 25 years ago. The extra “entitlements” just stay at the top of the corporations. The Republicans know this, so they keep changing the term to get a little more mileage out of it. And they always come across as defending the small business person, who is not affected by most of the tax revisions bills that Democrats put together. Dishonesty.
In reference to foreign money coming in to bail out financial institutions, Bush said he had no problem with that. I guess not. He wouldn’t like the alternative. We can’t afford to bail them out, and seeing big financial institutions fail would destroy his presidency and most likely the Republican Party, right along with our economy.
We are never going to get the respect of foreign nations or countries until our own government and leadership become respectable. Other governments look at us and see all the hypocrisy, dishonesty, greed, & corruption we have and they say if that is Democracy in action, we want no part of it. It is easy to understand that.
If you would like to ready the entire transcript, you can go HERE.
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