Our Web rambles in recent days have taken us to a couple of sites wherein someone expressed uncertainty about what to call the decade we’re bidding a not-so-fond farewell to.
After some thought, we suggest the “aughts” be nicknamed The Bushwhacked Years.
It was a time when America was not only Bushwhacked, but Roved, Cheneyed, Rumsfelded, Scootered, Greenspanned and DeLayed. Oh, and let’s not forget what a heckuva job Brownie did for us.
No surprise, then, we’re crawling out of this abyss still bogged down in two costly, deadly, no-win wars in the Mideast, a collapsed economy, bankruptcies and home foreclosures rampant, the national debt ballooned like its never been ballooned before, and one in six would-be American workers without a job.
As the man who presided over most of this worst decade in recent American history once remarked, “Elections have consequences.”
Some are dissatisfied that it’s been a whole year and President Obama hasn’t put everything back to rights yet, and so are considering voting Republican next time around. The first four paragraphs of this post should make their blood run cold.
President George W. Bush’s uncharacteristically honest and accurate statement should echo in their ears when they fill out their ballot.
Why do you hate shrubbery?
And there’s the problem. As true as it is, SW, I hate the idea of a name that will continually remind us of the idiot-in-chief. I have enough difficulty not digging up all the shrubs in our yard.
And yet the Republicans are trying to rewrite the Bush years, saying he inherited a bad economy, and Mary Matalin said on CNN said last week, that Bush inherited the 9/11 disaster from Clinton too. Unbelievable that the media allows to get away with that crap.
Randal, if you mean Shrubry, my post explains it.
Jeff, IMO the fallout is so awful and the stakes are so high that a discomfiting longterm reminder is called for. We can’t afford another Reagan or Bush 41, much less another W type. And if you somehow doubt the GOP bench doesn’t include anyone that bad, take a closer look at Sen. Jim DeMint, Reps. Steve King, Joe Wilson and Joe Barton among many, many others.
Holte, one of the reasons I rarely watch CNN and afford it little credibility is that it’s SOP for network anchors to bring on right wingers, toss them a convenient question and then let them spout GOP talking points, typically without challenging falsehoods, opinions stated as facts and other nonsense.
Holte – which is exactly why it’s up to bloggers, who are beholden to no one, to sound the constant reminder of just what happened during those 8 years. For that reason, I’m totally on board with The Bushwacked Years.
Bushwhacked is a good description. I also like the Uh-Ohs, as Leonard Pitts christened that wacky decade.
Holte, thanks. I agree on the need for bloggers to do what we can to keep how bad it was, and how bad it can easily become again, in people’s consciousness. The media will move on, soon enough joining the right in cutting off and belittling any mention of the Bushwhacking of America with put downs about being stuck in the past. Once that happens Democratic politicians will all too soon feel too inhibited to mention it. I’ve seen this movie play out before.
Tom, Pitts is my candidate for America’s Best Columnist, and Uh-Oh’s fits. I will suggest “Oh No’s” might fit even better.
Elections have consequences.
Except, of course, when it’s really an illegal Supreme Court decision that has consequences.
How about the ‘Double naughts’?
True enough about the Supremes’ cravenly political mischief in 2000, but then there was that election in 2004. That was the one when the electorate well knew what a complete abomination the Bush-Cheney crime family was.