AMERICAblog: Bush promotes free trade at final summit
TomJoad
· 1 year ago
Here in Norway, I saw the headling "Bush brags about his "accomplishments" in speech".
Smirk, after ruining not just the US, but taking down all the economies it touched, around the world, has the nerve to lecture the world on the benefits of "free market". As pointed out, we've had as much "free market" as the USSR had true communism. All of these ideals are corrupted when set in practice.
The noose gets tighter, and where we are now are in the last few turns playing "monopoly". You know, where one jerk (usually not you) has accumulated almost all money, owns park place and boardwalk with hotels all over the place, and every move you make is just to hand over your dwindling resources...
What we really need, TRUE "free market" with oversight (because if nothing else, this sub-prime and the rest has shown crystal clear that the "invisible hand" is jacking off the owner of it...business decisions are made by people, and people are notoriously "short-sighted" EVEN when it comes to their OWN self interest. If that weren't the case, all companies importing food from China or ANYWHERE would have quality testing in place for their own reputations, to know they were selling good food. They would think "long term" instead of incredibly short sighted.
We need a "reset button" for the economy. Clean slate, but with OVERSIGHT. We have always needed some oversight, and whereas Bush only knows how to use "the stick" (and usually beats US with it) at least for all his faults, Clinton knew how to use carrot & stick...to ease businesses to do the right thing, incentives, tax cuts (so they do the right thing) etc.
People are reading too much into Obamas' cabinet picks. It doesn't mean necessarily "business as usual" because the guy deciding and guiding it all is still going to be Obama. We need an adult at the helm, and have one now. Now it is to sit and watch and see what he DOES.
Bush, well...it is no different than Cheney and all the others with their time-after-time wrong headed statements about Iraq and all else. You or I would have been shamed to have said the crap they did, and then have the whole world see we were full of shit. Most people would be humbled to be wrong as often as they are...but they just get up and say more stupid, wrong shit.
Bush is just keeping the tradition.
Patrick_Bateman
· 1 year ago
Hi TomJoad - Very good to read your well crafted posts, it's been a while since I've 'seen' you.
anarchy
· 1 year ago
very well said.
Older_Wiser
· 1 year ago
"Free trade?" Hardly, when western countries are going into developing and third world countries, exploiting their labor and resources to those countries' detriment and to the gain of international corporations.
Reality
· 1 year ago
Doesn't this idiot get it? No one wants to hear anything he has to say, especially on economic theory. The current financial meltdown is the direct result of "free trade." This nation has tried free trade theory several times and it has always ended in disaster. Free trade simply does not work! It never has and it never will.
There's a way to get Americans back to work. 1) bring felony charges against any employer who is caught employing illegal aliens. It is, after all, already illegal to do so. Remove the jobs and the illegals won't come. 2) give businesses tax incentives to bring offshored jobs back onshore. Give them two years to do so. If they don't, consider their goods and services to be imports and hit them with tariffs. Also, for each person they employ overseas, hit them with a surtax equivalent to the income tax on what an American citizen would be paid to do the same job here. 3) End all "free trade agreements" and negotiate trade the way it should be.
lilybart
· 1 year ago
good ideas all
vkobaya
· 1 year ago
Of the idiot gets it alright. I believe he smirks because this is exactly what he intended, wreck the economy, screw over the nation and laugh all the way to overseas secret accounts to desposit the trillions he stole from the US economy and our treasury. This guy is a fratboy, punk, spoiled brat that the worst. Angry at the world for the fact that he is such a loser and can't measure up to Daddy's standards.
lynchie
· 1 year ago
90% of the politicians in Washington are just as clueless. They have no concept of working or being unemployed. I buy firewood from a neighbor and he was told Friday that he was being layed off. He works construction has a wife and a young girl. The project he thought would give him a job for at least a year was cancelled and so he is out on the street. He has enough money for this months rent, but has no health care, now no money to pay for gas to look for another job and not a lot of opportunities in this fucked up economy. My heart goes out to him and he is just one of hundreds of thousands of Americans who would do anything to make enough money to pay rent and feed his family. I am so tired of the American worker being depicted by the Republicans especially as being unwilling to work so that is why we have illegals, to do the jobs we won't. I think we need to throw all politicians out on the street without Unemployment beneftis and see how long it takes them to understand how really bad it is out in the real world.
anarchy
· 1 year ago
history will indeed decide, Mr Worst President EVER Bush..
don't worry - your legacy is assured: you'll be second only to Hitler in infamy.
RitornaVincitor
· 1 year ago
If I'm not mistaken, Bush is on record as saying that God wanted him to be President, or something to that effect. We know he thinks that God put him in office to see the country through 9/11. We can surmise that Bush has the whole Iraq debacle worked out in his head as some kind of just war against evil in which all those people gave their lives for a good cause. But I have to wonder how Bush explains to himself why God decided to wreck our economy and throw so many people out of work.
lynchie
· 1 year ago
He could give a flying shit about anyone being unemployed, sick, without food, no job, house burnt down, flooded out, or whatever. Those things don't enter the mind of any of the wealthy in this country. i had a discussion with a co worker on Thursday last and he could not conceive of how people complain about getting minimum wages. I tried to point out that minimum wage was $12,480 a year before any deductions. he claimed bullshit, i showed him the math, he then stated well i guess they better get two jobs. These people are totally detached from reality because we have never forced them to see the reality of trying to live in this country. Look at how long it took them to vote for a token increase in mimimum wage. The argument always being the companies can't afford it. It never stopped those same companies from raising prices, increasing profits and raising the incomes of the top 1% of earners. That part was ok, forget having a living wage.
RitornaVincitor
· 1 year ago
Well, just look at his mother and her comment about the Katrina victims being better off after having to flee their homes and take up residence in Texas. No clue. No concept. No heart.
Well, her husband was a one-term president, and her son is destined to go down as the worst president in US history. But she'll still die rich and oblivious.
lilybart
· 1 year ago
Free trade is NEVER free for workers. Companies can relocate anywhere that is good for them. People CANNOT move to other countries legally to find the jobs.
Workers have no power in all of this. Workers are left to scramble for crumbs but companies have total freedom.
time to tip the balance back to people
LeeFromHamburgNY
· 1 year ago
Dear Mr. EX-President Bush:
Would you please open your f*cking eyes and acknowledge what your "non-protectionism" economic policies have done to our country and the rest of the world. Bragging about the number of free-trade agreements that you are responsible for only proves that you and you alone have essentially destroyed the major economies of the world.
Why, after witnessing the results of your actions, you continue to press for continuation of the same, only shows that you are either too stupid to realize what you've done, or you just don't care. Of course you don't want "protectionism" in the world market, because it would only prove that free trade cannot work when left to bureaucrats such as yourself.
I'm sure in your mind, you consider your actions to be justified and sound. However, I hope that each night, before drifting off to sleep, you will continue to wonder why Republicans have lost their voices in our government and only the far right jacka$$es want your policies to remain. I also hope that someday you will eventually realize the harm you caused to this nation and the world, but I really don't expect that to happen.
An American Citizen
lynchie
· 1 year ago
He would have to possess a conscience. There is no wonder about anything because he is souless. He is totally oblivious and could care less about any suppossed harm he has caused. Washington on the whole is unaware and frankly don't care what is going on back home. They live on the best health care plan, the best perks (kickbacks, free trips, free meals, cottages built for them, golf trips and bags of cash). Going home to the constituents is a chore. Libby Dole only visited North Carolina 12 days in 6 years. Yeah she really cared.
DarkCloud
· 1 year ago
Free Trade meaning to be free to bypass labor and environmental laws, free to race to the bottom of the wage scale, free to break the Unions, free to avoid paying corporate taxes, free to be unaccountable to anyone. Seems like we could use a whole lot more "Protectionism". Accountability should be the Democrats new buzzword.
RitornaVincitor
· 1 year ago
Today being Sunday, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Evangelical Christians for their hard work on behalf of God and Country. The Evangelicals' one and only victory in this election was to rescind gay marriage in California and add a few states to the list enshrining bigotry in their constitutions. Congratulations Evangelicals. Despite your record of having the highest divorce rate in the nation, you prevented some gay people from embracing the institution of marriage. And if you get your way, 18,000 couples in California will have their perfectly legitimate marriages revoked. Nice work. As the old hymn says, "You will know they are Christians by their love." I would think that if a group of people wanted so much to embrace marriage it would strengthen the institution rather than threaten it. Before you got busy deciding who can and can not get married the biggest threat to marriage was the alarming number of people who voluntarily chose to end theirs in divorce. But now you've added a new threat by placing the existing marriages of 36,000 people on a ballot so that total strangers could cast a yes or no vote. Who knew someone's marriage was so arbitrary that it could be voted away by people who don't even know the couple? But that is the new reality you have brought to marriage. Frankly, marriage would be better off if you had never "defended" it.
And while you are defending "traditional" marriage, just how traditional do you want marriage to be? A few decades ago the tradition was to exclude couples of mixed race. A few decades before that a husband still had the right to beat his wife, yet divorce was unthinkable. Not much before that, right here in America a woman was still considered the property of her husband. And if you go all the way back to the Old Testament that you tout so much, polygamy was the tradition. So do you really want traditional marriage? If, as you say, you're not anti-gay, but just interested in tradition, perhaps you should give up modern conveniences like electricity and indoor plumbing. Instead of bearing false witness against your neighbors like the ugly lies spread in the pro-Prop 8 television ads, perhaps you should truly embrace tradition and join the Amish. Otherwise you're going to have to acknowledge that, like everything else, marriage has evolved and continues to evolve, and gay marriage is the next inevitable step. Oh, that's right. You don't believe in evolution. So did dinosaurs really ride on the arc with Noah, or did Satan just plant all those fossil bones everywhere to test your faith?
Well, no matter what you believe, gay marriage is coming, and we all know it. Eventually it will be recognized everywhere, even in most churches. "The Church" made Copernicus recant on his knees for his "heresy", and they put Galileo under house arrest. But eventually they had to face reality, or lose all their believers. They no longer teach that a flat Earth is the center of the universe. Everything evolves whether you believe it or not, including religious dogma, and yes, marriage.
With Thanksgiving upon us I'd like to offer all you believers my special thanks for giving us George Bush and that lovely war in Iraq. As you offer up a grateful prayer over your turkey dinner I'm sure you'll feel assured that all the thousands of Americans and innocent Iraqi civilians lying in the ground this Thanksgiving because of your war gave their lives for a good and just cause, i.e., ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Speaking of myths, do the majority of you still believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11 as you did when you reelected Bush four years ago? Or do you now agree with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that God allowed 9/11 to happen in order to punish America for tolerating homosexuality and abortion? Hey, maybe that's why God decided recently to wreck our economy and throw millions out of work.
Well folks, we're all getting older and little by little the younger generation is taking over. Interesting how they don't share your views on things. Looks like there are going to be a lot of changes coming. Too bad most of you won't be around that much longer. But I'm sure you're looking forward to meeting your Maker. It should be interesting for you to see if Jesus shares your obsession with homosexuality, especially since He Himself never mentioned the subject even once. And I do hope for your sake God isn't as vindictive as you've made Him out to be.
gwpriester
· 1 year ago
Shock therapy.
Indigo
· 1 year ago
His mouth says "free trade" but his deeds say "piracy."
vkobaya
· 1 year ago
A shame no one has commented because I think you are 100% right on. Bush is crook, criminal, corrupt, evil and thief fro m the word get go. Also coke head, pot user and drunken wastrel. He's a total piece of trash. Skull and Bones is, of course, a reference to skull and crossbones, the Jolly Roger which is the flag that should be flying over his White House above our American Flag.
Boomer
· 1 year ago
My wife's daughter lives in Lima, Peru. She said there were huge protests upon the arrival of Bush. How come we don't read about it in our newspapers?
Joe
· 1 year ago
Go AWAY YOU DIPSHIT!
qalice
· 1 year ago
Whenever I see or hear the words "Free Trade" I think "Tooth Fairy".
All Comments
Smirk, after ruining not just the US, but taking down all the economies it touched, around the world, has the nerve to lecture the world on the benefits of "free market". As pointed out, we've had as much "free market" as the USSR had true communism. All of these ideals are corrupted when set in practice.
The noose gets tighter, and where we are now are in the last few turns playing "monopoly". You know, where one jerk (usually not you) has accumulated almost all money, owns park place and boardwalk with hotels all over the place, and every move you make is just to hand over your dwindling resources...
What we really need, TRUE "free market" with oversight (because if nothing else, this sub-prime and the rest has shown crystal clear that the "invisible hand" is jacking off the owner of it...business decisions are made by people, and people are notoriously "short-sighted" EVEN when it comes to their OWN self interest. If that weren't the case, all companies importing food from China or ANYWHERE would have quality testing in place for their own reputations, to know they were selling good food. They would think "long term" instead of incredibly short sighted.
We need a "reset button" for the economy. Clean slate, but with OVERSIGHT. We have always needed some oversight, and whereas Bush only knows how to use "the stick" (and usually beats US with it) at least for all his faults, Clinton knew how to use carrot & stick...to ease businesses to do the right thing, incentives, tax cuts (so they do the right thing) etc.
People are reading too much into Obamas' cabinet picks. It doesn't mean necessarily "business as usual" because the guy deciding and guiding it all is still going to be Obama. We need an adult at the helm, and have one now. Now it is to sit and watch and see what he DOES.
Bush, well...it is no different than Cheney and all the others with their time-after-time wrong headed statements about Iraq and all else. You or I would have been shamed to have said the crap they did, and then have the whole world see we were full of shit. Most people would be humbled to be wrong as often as they are...but they just get up and say more stupid, wrong shit.
Bush is just keeping the tradition.
There's a way to get Americans back to work. 1) bring felony charges against any employer who is caught employing illegal aliens. It is, after all, already illegal to do so. Remove the jobs and the illegals won't come. 2) give businesses tax incentives to bring offshored jobs back onshore. Give them two years to do so. If they don't, consider their goods and services to be imports and hit them with tariffs. Also, for each person they employ overseas, hit them with a surtax equivalent to the income tax on what an American citizen would be paid to do the same job here. 3) End all "free trade agreements" and negotiate trade the way it should be.
EVER Bush..
don't worry - your legacy is assured: you'll be
second only to Hitler in infamy.
Well, her husband was a one-term president, and her son is destined to go down as the worst president in US history. But she'll still die rich and oblivious.
Workers have no power in all of this. Workers are left to scramble for crumbs but companies have total freedom.
time to tip the balance back to people
Would you please open your f*cking eyes and acknowledge what your "non-protectionism" economic policies have done to our country and the rest of the world. Bragging about the number of free-trade agreements that you are responsible for only proves that you and you alone have essentially destroyed the major economies of the world.
Why, after witnessing the results of your actions, you continue to press for continuation of the same, only shows that you are either too stupid to realize what you've done, or you just don't care. Of course you don't want "protectionism" in the world market, because it would only prove that free trade cannot work when left to bureaucrats such as yourself.
I'm sure in your mind, you consider your actions to be justified and sound. However, I hope that each night, before drifting off to sleep, you will continue to wonder why Republicans have lost their voices in our government and only the far right jacka$$es want your policies to remain. I also hope that someday you will eventually realize the harm you caused to this nation and the world, but I really don't expect that to happen.
An American Citizen
And while you are defending "traditional" marriage, just how traditional do you want marriage to be? A few decades ago the tradition was to exclude couples of mixed race. A few decades before that a husband still had the right to beat his wife, yet divorce was unthinkable. Not much before that, right here in America a woman was still considered the property of her husband. And if you go all the way back to the Old Testament that you tout so much, polygamy was the tradition. So do you really want traditional marriage? If, as you say, you're not anti-gay, but just interested in tradition, perhaps you should give up modern conveniences like electricity and indoor plumbing. Instead of bearing false witness against your neighbors like the ugly lies spread in the pro-Prop 8 television ads, perhaps you should truly embrace tradition and join the Amish. Otherwise you're going to have to acknowledge that, like everything else, marriage has evolved and continues to evolve, and gay marriage is the next inevitable step. Oh, that's right. You don't believe in evolution. So did dinosaurs really ride on the arc with Noah, or did Satan just plant all those fossil bones everywhere to test your faith?
Well, no matter what you believe, gay marriage is coming, and we all know it. Eventually it will be recognized everywhere, even in most churches. "The Church" made Copernicus recant on his knees for his "heresy", and they put Galileo under house arrest. But eventually they had to face reality, or lose all their believers. They no longer teach that a flat Earth is the center of the universe. Everything evolves whether you believe it or not, including religious dogma, and yes, marriage.
With Thanksgiving upon us I'd like to offer all you believers my special thanks for giving us George Bush and that lovely war in Iraq. As you offer up a grateful prayer over your turkey dinner I'm sure you'll feel assured that all the thousands of Americans and innocent Iraqi civilians lying in the ground this Thanksgiving because of your war gave their lives for a good and just cause, i.e., ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Speaking of myths, do the majority of you still believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11 as you did when you reelected Bush four years ago? Or do you now agree with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that God allowed 9/11 to happen in order to punish America for tolerating homosexuality and abortion? Hey, maybe that's why God decided recently to wreck our economy and throw millions out of work.
Well folks, we're all getting older and little by little the younger generation is taking over. Interesting how they don't share your views on things. Looks like there are going to be a lot of changes coming. Too bad most of you won't be around that much longer. But I'm sure you're looking forward to meeting your Maker. It should be interesting for you to see if Jesus shares your obsession with homosexuality, especially since He Himself never mentioned the subject even once. And I do hope for your sake God isn't as vindictive as you've made Him out to be.
She said there were huge protests upon the
arrival of Bush. How come we don't read
about it in our newspapers?