I am not a liberal either and I agree with you much of the time.

No doubt the contempt we have for Bush is powerful… but I’m note sure “it pales in comparison”… To be sure, it is a more widely held sentiment - there are certainly more people that keep abreast of current events and despise Bush for any one of a million reasons (he’s given us so many)… and the hard-core Clinton haters were always a small minority of extreme wing-nuts… the poll numbers will bear that out pretty readily.

But… let’s examine the reasons for this.

1) Bush gets a PDB entitled “Bin Laden determined to attack in US” in August 2001, and despite this, never convenes a terror meeting as Richard Clarke had been pressing for

2) After we are hit on 9/11, Bush refuses to back a Department of Homeland Security until it becomes apparent that it will happen with or without him. Then he creates a fight by writing into the bill the denial of civil service protections for any new DHS employees. When Democrats stand up for workers, Bush paints them as anti-Homeland Security, runs ads against Max Cleland (a triple amputee vet) comparing him to Osama bin Laden, and stakes a claim to the “ALL POWERFUL PROTECTOR OF AMERICA”. The cynicism is breathtaking, but…

3) We shouldn’t have been surprised because after John McCain beat him handily in the 2000 NH primary, Bush’s back was against the wall going into SC. There, his campaign began the smear of John McCain by whispering that McCain had a coupla loose screws - the result of being tortured in Vietnam prisons, dontch’ya know - and can’t be trusted to run this great country… When that didn’t work, McCain, who had adopted a Bangladeshi child, was accused of fathering a mixed race, out of wedlock child… You can figure out for yourself how that went over with the brilliant hillbillies that spend their days watching the 700 Club…

4) Before he was President, he had failed at everything he tried. Beginning with Yale, where he was a C student (how does a C student get into Harvard Business School, anyway? oh, yeah, the same way he become President - on the power of his grandfather’s name), and moving on to EVERY SINGLE ONE of the oil companies he ran into bankruptcy. The only talent he ever had was trading on his family name to put together the Texas Rangers deal… a deal in which thousands of people were cheated out of their properties through eminent domain proceedings.

5) The man never learns his lessons. “Bin Laden determined to attack in US” might’ve been a wake up call for those of us that take our jobs seriously. We mighta second-guessed ourselves and decided that, in the future, we’d be a little more hands on. Instead, what do we get? “heckovajob, Brownie”…

6) The man’s administration has undermined science - sometimes to catastrophic ends. What’s up with telling the people at ground zero that they can move back into their homes - that air quality was okey-dokey? The instructions came from the WHite House and were passed through the EPA. The science didn’t matter to them, even when it was people’s health at stake. I won’t belabor the point, but we could talk all day about abstinence, global warming, environmental concerns, budgetary projections, WMD/post war projections and half a gazillion other things…

7)The constant propagandization of the American people… Our tax money has gone to conservative “team players” that have agreed to write glowing reviews of failing programs (like NCLB)… I dunno about you, but that pisses me off…

Probably most divisive of all was the entirely dishonest way in which we were led to war, the way the war was cynically used to accomplish political goals and the incompetence on full display in terms of the way the post-war period has been managed… How many times have we been told that “we’ve turned the corner”, the “insurgency is in its last throes”, etc. Meanwhile, reservists that thought they’d be managing hurricane recovery efforts are seperated from their families for extended periods to fight a “hot war”. A war that was completely unnecessary (see http://www.callingallwingnuts.com/index.php?id=3)…

9) Probably the most maddening thing of all has nothing to do with Bush, per se. All of this has occurred against a backdrop of an intimidated press that has created a mythological figure in Bush. I’m not aware of a single mainstream media outlet that has been willing to call Bush a LIAR. After enduring years of bullshit scandals like Whitewater, Travelgate and MonicaGate - in which the press was all to eager to smear an incredibly competent and engaged President (and I say that as a Clinton hater - I really do think he was unprincipled and bad for the country) - anyway - this guy has gotten a pass for his incompetence and lying that goes way beyond anything I had ever imagined possible in a country that values freedom of the press.

I’ll come back and edit this later - there is more to your comment that I wanted to post on… but I hope this gives you an idea of why there is so much frustration and anger amongst Democrats - somehow Republican’s have come to construct an alternate reality in which their President is infallible… It reminds me of what happens in totalitarian states as despots rise to power… a bunch of lemmings create a cult of personality around their hero.

It’s something I never thought I’d see in American politics

As for hating gays, I don’t. I just don’t believe the government should force me to equate a women being married to a woman with a male/female union.

Affirmative action? Its not only illegal, despite O’Connor’s tortured logic in Bollinger, but pointless in that it’s focused on the wrong problem. The beneficiaries of affirmative action are mainly the elite among minority groups, not those living in poverty.

Public education in large urban areas will NEVER EVER be effective or responsive to the needs of its constituencies as long as there are teachers unions and tenure. I am pro union, with one huge exception, teachers. If they want to be treated and paid as “professionals”, than they also need to face reality, which is that professionals do not have guarnteed jobs or the ability to dictate employment terms. And dont tell me money, at leats for salaries, is the answer. Any money should be spent on capital improvements, not the absurd pension guarantees teachers in places like new York have. I am all for providing a first class basic education to every kid from every background and it would be feasible if there were some accountablity among teachers. But there is not and affirmative action is never going to inspire some poor inner city kid to learn to read.

Lastly, the Dems and black leaders NEED a permanet victim class to stay in power so they have little incentive to ever truly want to change that.

As such, if it is the President’s job to protect Americans, how can he justify NOT tapping the lines of a dangerous militia?

The fact is, he can’t. He goes to FISA, gets a warrant and gets the job done. Just like every President before and every President in the future… The difference between this President and all the others is that this President claims that his Constitutional Authority trumps statute… In other wrod, if the President can call his actions part of the war on terror, anything goes. And that, as Justice O’Connor has stated, is just absurd.

Hate gays if you want to. I believe in equality under the law. Everyone has a right to love who they want and to marry who they love.

Hate affirmative action if you want to. I believe in equality under the law. Until we are willing to imrove schools and living conditions in the areas of concentrated poverty, overcoming such challenges deserves a little added benefit… It isn’t predudicial – it is recognizing achievement… And, like any government program (like the death penalty), some mistakes will be made.

And as far as unified goverment goes, you are barking up the wrong tree – the UN has never threatened our sovereignty… the corporation loving WTO, on the other hand, is exactly such a threat.

Yes, Bush is an elitist ass who worhsips big money interests and has gone overboard in wiretapping US citizens, but until the rabid left abandons its repugnant stances on issues like gay marriage, affirmative action and a unified world government (meaning the UN), the Dems will remain a minority party, despite disgusting whores like Tom Delay. Its a choice of lesser evils. Bush and Delay are AWFUL, but the looney left is so much worse!