King George Has The Guano Touch

That is to say, everything he touches turns to fertilizer. And I'm not just talking about the stuff that comes out of his mouth. With less than a year left, I thought that Mr. Bush had applied his Guano Touch to just about everything that he could. Turns out I was wrong.

But first, let's review a small sampling of his highlights:

• He turned a $236,200,000,000 budget surplus into a $263,000,000,000 budget deficit.
  
  
• The war in Iraq has gone on longer than World War II, World War I, or the Civil War and by the end of 2008 will have cost more than 800 billion dollars.
  
  
• US casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom approach 4,000. The Army according to their own experts is stretched and troops over the course of the war have received inadequate armor, substandard water and poor medical care when they return.
  
  
• Through the use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding our standing in the world community has been damaged. These violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, specifically; Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.
  

On these points alone Bush's touch would put King Midas to shame.

And that's the edited version. But it turns out that all of the, miscalculations, manipulations and acts of malfeasance were merely the appetizer and entree'. For dessert, Mr. Bush is serving up the coup de'grace:

Recession

Now I'm not talking your average, sluggish economy type of recession. I'm talking about a "holy crap, one of the major investment banks went down for the count, better fasten your seatbelts it's going to be a bumpy ride," type of recession.

The evidence:

• Energy prices, both for crude oil and at the gas pump, are at an all-time high.
  
  
• The value of the dollar against foreign currencies has dropped dramatically. As this is written, one U.S. dollar will get you; .63 Euros, .49 British Pounds, 99 Japanese Yen (the lowest it's been in 12 years) and get this, .99 Canadian Dollars. That's right, our currency and that or our neighbour to the North is essentially equal!
  
  
• A 738 billion dollar trade deficit, which is not the record. 2006 holds that honour.
  
  
• The collapse of Bear Stearns, a top five global investment bank. Why is this important? These are the organizations that move capital into the economy on a grand scale.
  
  
• The delinquency and foreclosure rate for home mortgages is 7.3 percent, the highest it's been since the Mortgage Bankers Association began tracking it in 1979.
  

Now the Bush White House will tell you now that we're in a severe economic downturn and the truth is, whether it's technically a recession or a downturn, it's getting ugly out there.

Here's why:

The President largely ignored developing a cogent domestic agenda. And when he was paying attention to domestic things at all, he focused on hot button issues; defense of marriage acts, stem cell research, immigration.

While some of these issues are worthy of debate, they tend to be emotional issues that don't really impact the average American on the day to day. What does affect the average American is the rising cost of healthcare, rising energy prices, jobs that are heading out of country, etc., etc., etc. These are foundation blocks of a modern economy and they impact a nation's long term fortunes.

In the end analysis, had the President put effort into developing sound policies instead of throwing a small amount of money at people through tax cuts, we would likely be in a very different economic situation.