The past is prologue

Tell you what; I want to look back – in anger. John McCain does not want us to; his mantra is that we have to clean up the problems and not look back as fixing blame is so old fashioned.

Call me old fashioned then because I want to hold people accountable for what’s happened to the country over the last eight years. If the buck stops in the Oval Office, I want to hold ***** *. **** responsible for the mess we’re in. Naturally, even someone as incurious and thoughtless as **** could not accomplish these fantastic feats of folly without help. In some respects Vice President ^^^^ ^^^^^^ made **** do it, but **** is the president, so he’s numero uno. It’s now a solid smash; he’s crushed the granite floor that James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover set in establishing their claims of being the worst presidents ever.

^^^^^^ appears to be the main man in telling **** that deficits don’t count. ^^^^^^ also gave personal guarantees on the weapons of mass destruction that were known to be all over Iraq and that our troops would be welcomed as liberators. I could list lots of other high level neocons and big time administration operators who seconded these items and many more fantasies along the way, but we’re just trying to decide who will be the next president.

**** also had help from the Congress and members on both sides aided and abetted him in Iraq and enabled him when it came to the economy. I shouldn’t forget the Federal reserve, but there are only so many people we can tar and feather with only one goose and one pot of tar. Naturally, since I’m for Obama I blame the republicans far more than the democrats, but I’ll stipulate that neither party was pure in driving the ship of state aground.

The job of voters is to determine if we’re really on the rocks and for whom to vote if we are or aren’t. Since we’ve been in a war that **** proclaimed the mission accomplished nearly six years ago and yet it still chews up bodies and treasure and since **** has spent the last ten days begging both parties to pass the largest financial bailout package since the Great Depression or the economy and the country will be – to mix my metaphors – in the toilet. I find conclusively that we’re in bad shape.

Since McCain was one of ****’s great champions on the war and now takes almost full responsibility of the success of the surge that he says is winning the war, should he be held to be without blame? As for going to war, there can be no doubt that he was one of ****’s principal enablers. I will stipulate that the surge worked, but the war never ends and there are other major causes for the reduction in violence in Iraq.

The war is not ending in victory; it appears now that the end game is an agreement being forged by **** and the Iraqi government that will call for a withdrawal of American forces in some sort of reasonably short time frame. One of the few major political operatives not on-board with this is John McCain. In the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden said flat out that Obama would end the war. His opponent called that the waving of the white flag of surrender and there was almost no fallout. Obama wins.

Obama is among the relatively few high profile people in the country who can claim good judgment in the sad process that took us to war. But I’ll stipulate that he was less than prompt in seeing on the ground improvement as a result of the surge. But there is really no contest on the war. Obama has been far clearer and better in his positions on the war and world affairs in general than McCain.

The democrats do not have entirely clean hands on the economy. Their lobbying and voting records on Fannie May and Freddie Mack over the past years contributed to the mortgage mess and the overall economic problems. But they were pikers next to the **** administration and the republicans in Congress in failing to regulate the financial community, in seeking to deregulate it even further and in bowing to the financial forces they serve as part of their economic philosophy.

The country is in bad shape in the world at large and worse in domestic economic matters. The major fault lies in the simplistic, virtually religious and thoughtless approach to government set by Ronald Reagan. While Reagan might well have been an adroit enough politician to steer away from the shoals we’re foundering on, the people who followed him were truly fools unable to do anything but blindly carry on in his name.

So, in looking back - and forward – while I find that my scales are not completely empty on one side or full on the other, there is no doubt in my mind that they are tipped against the republicans and their leader ****** *. ****. They are primarily responsible for the foundering of the ship, and therefore they must pay by being sent away from Sin City. John McCain is their candidate and he bears significant responsibility for both the foreign and domestic problems cited and therefore should be sent packing.

Vote for Obama!

And I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.

P.s. I’m attaching a cartoon sent to me by a reader of this rag that I had actually sent to others earlier. Both of us thought it summed things up quite nicely.

http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/nq/