It is a slow accumulation of things. The spark isn't really even a spark, just a combination of things. Such as:

• all the flacking about the 9-11 commission
• combined with the increasing deaths of soldiers and marines and even contractors
• with the expectation that there will be civil war in Iraq when we pull out,
• so that the deaths of the past 8 months or so will be in vain.

I didn't oppose the Iraq war. I thought that there were good reasons for going in. None mentioned by George, but still lots of credible reasons. But they clearly didn't do any planning for peace. I read articles in The Economist that predicted most of this six months before the war. They had the intelligence, I assume everyone in the planet had it, at least those that looked.

If George just said: "Look, we had a lot on our plates. We looked at the Al Qaeda intelligence and decided it was not the number one priority. Not in the top five. It was a judgement call. In hindsight, we might have done it differently. But realistically, if you roll the wayback machine to that time, I'd make the same decision on the same facts. There is no fault here. Stop looking for it."

I had a one sentence version of this the other day, that wording escapes me.

Claiming that they will still find weapons of mass destruction is bull. They got the "information" from defectors connected to Ahmed Chalabi, who wants to be King of Iraq. Chalabi funded many of the defectors. Did anyone question the sources? And why is he in the CPA now? Does anyone think that the Iraqis want this Chicago Mafioso to be in charge?

Going to war costs lives, it has to be worth it. Losing the peace to civil war is immoral, regardless of the justification for the initial action.

George has reinstituted the Draft. Only for volunteers currently in the Armed Forces, but if you are in Iraq and your term is up, you are drafted to stay. They won't even rotate out the tired troops who deserve a break. What is that going to do to re-enlistment rates? This from a guy whose dad and grandfather got him a cushy pseudo-deferment that he was too damn lazy to even show up for roll call.

Plus the minor things George gets wrong.

He is a divider, not a uniter. The only people he has united are the Democrats against him, and the Iraqis against all Americans.

There is no compassion in his compassionate conservatism. He proposes the first codified discrimination against people since the founding fathers fucked up the slavery issue. Clearly he can't see that discriminating against people because they are gay is just as immoral as discriminating against them for being black. And the INS does a wonderful job of discriminating against young Muslim men. So under George, it is OK to discriminate based on religion and place of origin?

Conservative President

Then there is no conservatism in his compassionate conservatism. First, modifying the Constitution to suit political whims is not conservative. Period, end of story.

Running up insane deficits that don't even include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is not fiscal conservatism.

Starting a huge drug entitlement without counting even an honest fraction of the costs is not conservative. First, the "expected price" goes from $400B to $550B. Once the blue hairs see how little it really does, they will demand that the benefits go up, do we hear $800B? A trillion? More?

This is without counting Medicare and Social Security, which are ponzi schemes. Together, they are contributing hugely to the claim that the current deficit is smaller than it really is. It is all accounting voodoo, the numbers are far worse than the politicians admit. Once the baby boomers, most of us, BTW, start wanting to collect, the fiscal irresponsibility will appear, even to the idiot voters..

I even agreed with many of the tax cuts, on an economic basis, corporations do not pay taxes, people do. The estate tax is insane, it was right to adjust the limits for inflation.

The whole income tax code is near death as the AMT becomes the prime revenue source. Wait until the number of folks paying the AMT and not being able to deduct local taxes hits 40% of the middle class (about four years out). It will be ugly. George is pushing for more tax cuts, and making the current unsupportable ones permanent; this is nuts.

How about free trade, a good Republican position. Opps, no, we want steel Tariffs. Didn't read what the trade wars of the 1910s and 1920s caused, (hint: the Great Depression) -- can't expect a C student to do that.

How are we gonna fight job loss to places with cheaper labor?

1. lower our wages to be cheaper?
2. add tariffs?
3. invest in education so that our engineers create great products and our managers market them well while we invest in infrastructure: roads, bridges, power nets, etc. so we can effectively communicate and transport the competitive goods?

I'm not sure if George wants #1 or #2, but there is no mention of infrastructure or colleges which costs money and someone has to pay.

Not to even get started on how the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and provides no security.

Or how George oversaw the largest increase in Federal bureaucratic employment in decades.

No Child left behind.

This may be the least popular bill that has passed into law in the past hundred years. It is at least a massive unfunded mandate upon the states. Exactly the kind of unfunded mandate that Republican politicians have railed against for decades. The states don't have the money, nearly all 50 are running in the red, and they can't just print more money.

Plus, it replaces learning and thinking with rote memorization. Just what we need to restore our ability to create, design, make, and market world leading products.

Summary

Our tax system is a mess. Our civil liberties are under attack. We are no safer from terrorist attack than we were three years ago. Foreign nations that used to be our friends think we are bad, or inept, or stupid, or corrupt. The fiscal policies are unsustainable. The war policies are unsustainable.

Some people say that our government has lied to us about a foreign war. Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara lied to us about a foreign war.

George is the one.