No Apologies

The first 100 days are finally upon us, the End of Days for grading how good of a president we got for the other 1361 days.

Karl Rove sniffed, bloviated and snitted his way through a WSJ article on the 22nd that essentially could have been, and in fact was written by the fat, unpopular, blubbery-lipped kid who was either picked last or not at all for kickball games or chemistry lab partner.

Rove apparently didn't like it that President Obama had to go on "an apology tour" or "confession tour" all over the world. In tearing down Obama as a mere superstar rather than the best leader this nation's had since perhaps Kennedy, Rove is merely perpetuating the old McCain campaign bitching that says popularity is a bad thing (not for Reagan, apparently, whom Rove still thinks actually ended the Cold War with missiles that we wound up not using. I seem to recall the Cold War was won when Reagan bluffed Gorbachev into spending himself into the poor house over a Star Wars missile defense system that didn't actually exist).

Of course, what Rove failed to tell us on the 22nd was why President Barack Obama had some truly excellent reasons for apologizing to the world at large, or why a new president should have to spend so much of his time abroad apologizing for the blunders, brutalities and all around fuckuppery of his idiot predecessor, a man for whom Rove is still a parttime apologist.

The fact is, the "greatest" failures of the 44th president still shows more panache, intelligence and statesmanship than Bush's "greatest" successes. By September 10th, 2001, it looked as if Bush was destined for one term status just like Daddy, having done virtually nothing of any substance within his first 100 days, save for getting a head start on a recession that he later blamed on Clinton. In many ways, September 11, 2001 was the best day ever in the Bush/Walker clan's long, storied history.

We have a lot to apologize for and I saw this coming years and years ago when I said the next president will have to spend an inordinate amount of time from their administration doing damage control, starting with apologizing for what Bush had done during his endless End of Days administration.

Bush did not inherit a recession from Clinton as it's still being said. Bush did not inherit two unwinnable and costly wars that have killed close to 5000 US troops. Bush did not inherit a national economy plagued with foreclosure and frozen credit.

No, that's President Obama you're thinking of, Turdblossom. What did Bush have to apologize for? A surplus? No wars abroad? The low cost of gas and oil?

Take stock of just some of the progressive legislatiton and executive decisions signed into law by our new president:

The Lilly Ledbetter Bill that struck a blow against discrimination the workplace and garner equal wages for women.

Ordering the closing of Gitmo within the next year.

Officially banning torture.

A $787 billion stimulus package.

Lifting the ban on stem cell funding.

More troops in perennially undermanned Afghanistan.

A realistic timeline for withdrawing from Iraq.

Bush? He didn't want a timeline for withdrawal because it allowed terrorists to still be there so they can do something awful bad there when we leave according to our preannounced timeline. It was a strategy that would've failed according the Bushies because it failed to address the problem of 1) getting rid of the terrorists and 2) owning up to the fact that the terrorists weren't as endemic and ubiquitous as they'd prove to be after the 3/19/03 invasion.

US corporate greed and excesses certainly helped to drag down the global economy more than a notch or two.

The world is a filthier, more miserable and disease-riddled place in George W. Bush's baleful wake. We are still the only nation that hasn't signed on for the Kyoto Treaty, the only nation that bragged through its leader that it was "the world's biggest polluter."

It seems to me that, because of George W. Bush, President Barack Obama has to apologize to virtually every man, woman and child on earth who had been affected by Bush's poisonous slipstream, everyone, that is, except to Karl Rove or any other Republican asshat who stubbornly insists on remaining an unpaid apologist for the worst administration in galactic history.