Who else knew that the Bush Administration would be an unmitigated disaster in 2000?

[devilgrrl]

Who else out there can look back over the last eight years and can state with confidence I told you so!

[cyberswede]

1. Even worse than expected!

I expected him to be incompetent, but the level of damage done to the US far exceeds my expectations.

[CanonRay]

16. I thought it would be bad, but it was worse than I ever imagined.

[Carni]

35. Yes, it's worse than even I could have imagined.

I told everyone who would listen to me not to vote for bush, because of his history of corruption and driving anything he was ever involved in straight into the ground so indeed I can say to them *I told you so*

With that said, I knew things would be bad, but did not expect them to get this out of control...

I predicted he would start a war with someone (I figured that would be short lived however and never envisioned a 5 year deal)I assumed he and darth would drive up gas prices...but I had NO idea they would turn their heads to a terrorist attack when warned...wreak this much havoc on the economy--suspend all oversight of everything, gut the housing industry, spy on us, lose an entire city...license torture etc etc etc and on and on.

I knew it would be bad... but never in my wildest dreams envisioned it being this bad!

[raccoon]

68. Ditto. nt

[madokie]

2. You can count me in on that one

I couldn't even look read or hear anything gwb until after I found this place.

[ellie]

3. I did.

I was sick with worry on election night. I just couldn't believe that any american would vote for that piece of shit.

[dkf]

4. Me...

I used to stay up at night unable to sleep due to anxiety over his possible win.

Unfortunately, he is even worse than I thought. I didn't think that was possible.

[rox63]

5. Me!

I knew we were fucked when the presidency went to Bush. But I couldn't conceive of just HOW fucked we were.

[zanne]

6. I don't think most of us expected it to be this bad.

We knew it'd be bad, but we had no idea of what we were in for. Now, everybody who has buyer's remorse after voting for Bush twice can say "Well, he seemed like a good candidate at the time". I, too would like to give them all a great big I TOLD YOU SO!, but I can't afford the ad space in my local paper.

[L. Coyote]

25. I guess noone tried to kill you under Reagan! You missed Central America, eh?

[Merlot]

41. "Well, he seemed like a good candidate at the time"

No, he didn't. Any one who says that wasn't paying attention. He was NEVER a good candidate.

[devilgrrl]

51. He's as horrible as I thought he'd be. I saw this coming 20+ years ago under Reagan.

:popcorn:

[UTUSN]

7. I knew it would be bad, even the worst, but had NO CONCEPT how bad that is!1 n/t

[But....]

8. ?

I was worried, but I'm surprised any one could have foreseen this level of destruction.

[devilgrrl]

52. "I'm surprised any one could have foreseen this level of destruction."

Condi? Is that you?

[HughBeaumont]

9. * Raises hand emphatically *

Any pig that voted for him twice and plans on voting for McCain needs to be booted DEAD in the ass. No excuse for not paying attention.

[Triana]

10. ME! I screamed at so many people on and offline...

....and NO ONE listened.

I was right. And THEN some. And THEN some MORE.

[Lerkfish]

11. absolutely I did.

I even said, when he was picking his cabinet BEFORE the supremes coronated him, that his cabinent was stocked with oil people and military and that meant he intended to go to war for oil.


all I got was called a tin foil hatter.

screw them, I could see clearly.

[KansDem]

12. Include me...

The first time I heard His Royal Flatulence speak during Campaign2000, I thought the GOP had gone completely bonkers by even considering this rube. When I heard NPR's Cokie Roberts "report" on Bush's "charm offensive," then I knew something was up and the game was rigged.

But I never thought it would be this bad...

[Mabus]

13. You could tell a lot by how they railroaded the post-election process

The way they railroaded, lied and used bullying tactics to get what they wanted should have been a wake-up call to how they would govern.

Frankly, I knew that BushCo would be bad for this country and that's why my husband and I campaigned for Gore in the neighboring swing state Missouri. We also worked really hard in Kansas where many of our friends bought the "there's no difference between Bush and Gore" line. A lot of them also believed that there weren't enough of us to make a difference. We kept telling them that if every one who thought their vote didn't make a difference actually got out there and worked for and then voted for a candidate they believed in that we could change the world. They didn't believe us then but they believe us now.

[Carni]

44. OMG! "there's no difference between Bush and Gore"

You ran it that too huh?

I cannot tell you how many self proclaimed liberal people I knew who loftily told me that very thing when I was trying to warn them about bush...they scoffed at me like I must be a moron who just fell off of a turnip truck.

The Republicons that I knew of course just loved bush, so in their eyes I was also a hysterical tin foil hat nit-wit extremist--never mind that I had always been very center of the aisle previously.

I guess they all got what they voted for... I just wish my family and I weren't forced into going along for the ride!

[Mabus]

65. I used to feel like Chicken Little

and I used to get called that too. Both my husband and I felt like we were in the "Twilight Zone" when we'd hear that. Like you, we heard it from otherwise liberal people. They'd look at us and say, "they're just alike" or "there's no difference". The scary part is that they meant it. I truly believe their hearts were in the right place. I just wish they had been able to think for themselves.

I remember finishing one day of canvassing shortly before the 2000 election. We had been walking all day with our sheets (finding out who needed a ride, telling them where their polling place was, etc.) when we stopped on the way back to party headquarters to get something drink. We found a coffee house and there were posters that proclaimed the GOP and the Democratic Party same thing that were stapled all over. It was maddening.

[acmavm]

14. The real question is 'who didn't think..."

[napi21]

15. I admit I was a damn fool. I never expected much out of Shrub, but

I NEVER expected ALL the Pubs in the House & Senate to OK anything he wanted. I've never seen anything like that before, and when I think back over the last 7 years, I still can't believe the Pub leaders had enough power & control over their members that almost nobody strayed.

I still remember when Shrub was put in office, I said "Well I detest that little b'td but really, how much damage can a President do by himself? That's why we have congress & the SCOTUS. Call me stupid if you wish, but I still can't believe all that's happened even though I lived through it!

[SammyWinstonJack]

100. Remember him saying that he might have too twist some arms and bang some heads to get his policies

passed? Right after that, he made that disgusting dictator remark. :grr:

[elehhhhna]

17. Moi.

[hermetic]

18. Where's the box?

I thought this was gonna be a poll.

X ME!

[dmosh42]

19. It runs in the family! They're fucked up! n/t

[RufusTFirefly]

20. I don't know about disaster, but I was threatened and frightened by the prospect

But like Al Gore, I was too naive to believe they'd actually swipe the White House. When I learned at about 5 p.m. PST that Florida was projected for the Gore column, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and headed home from work, convinced that we as a country had dodged a bullet.

Then, 10 months later on Sept. 11, although I was horrified and anguished as anyone about the act of violence and the loss of life, I was above all filled with a profound sense of dread. I knew then that we were totally screwed. Few experiences in my life have been more alienating than to be in a country where suddenly upwards of 90 percent of the citizens supported that fraud. I never supported him for a second. I wasn't going to let the country's need to unify conveniently erase that thug's illegitimacy.

[tnlurker]

21. Me

I knew. I thought that he would be worse than Reagan. And I really did not like Reagan.

[OwnedByFerrets]

22. Unfortunately, I TOLD YOU SO!!!

I was also in a deep, deep depression after the SCOTUS stole our democracy.

[NNN0LHI]

23. Soon as he stole the election I said we should be alright if this idiot doesn't get us into any wars

We all know how that went.

Don

[L. Coyote]

24. I predicted that all Junta Judical appointments would need to be undone eventually

to fully restore continuity of the rule of law.

[The Traveler]

26. Was I stupid or what

I was one of the idiots who thought there wouldn't be that much difference between Gore and Bush. Particularly from the vantage point of 2008, that assertion seems bizarre in the extreme.

I thought Bush would do some things I didn't like but basically manage things well. By August 01, it was clear the boy just could not find any traction. He was a loser. Then 9/11 happened, and the poser got to pose with a bull horn.

But I never thought I would see the country so systematically plundered. I never thought I would see US citizens left to drown in toxic soup like that which filled the 9th Ward. I never thought I would see them out a CIA agent and the entire network of counter terrorism and counter proliferation assets she supported. I never thought I would see war crimes perpetrated on a scale Saddam Hussein could never have hoped to achieve. I never thought I would see the Constitution so casually run through a shredder. I never thought I would dwell in a country where the highest offices in the land condoned and encouraged torture.

So yeah, you told me so.

Man, I wish we had all listened better.

[caseycoon]

27. I did, but.....

They went WAAAAYYYY beyond my definition of unmitigated disaster into realms I never in my worst nightmares could have envisioned.
:grr:

[SheilaT]

28. It's even worse than I thought it would be.

And I thought it would be pretty bad. Several people I know tried to console me, when he "won", by saying he'd pick good, competent people to be in his cabinet.

Yeah, right. I knew that wouldn't happen.

[zalinda]

29. I had instant dread the moment I heard

I knew it would be bad, very bad. Which is strange because I really didn't pay too much attention to politics at that time, not like today.

And, I'm feeling the same dread for this upcoming election.

zalinda

[Rob H.]

30. Yo! Over here!

I remember even before sElection 2000 wondering how on Earth anyone with any sense at all could vote for him if they were to just take a look at what a horrible job he'd done as governor of Texas. Apparently there were a lot more idiots out there than I thought. (The fact that the media was super-easy on him and looked the other way most of the time wrt his record didn't help matters any, either.) :(

[YankeyMCC]

31. I completely underestimated the

level of incompetence. I felt I knew it would be bad in a sense that it would result in a poor directional shift in the manner our government was run and it's policies but and I feared a bit about basic competence based on shrubs background but I figured like most executives he would have a support team that would be at least competent and wouldn't reap the wholesale disruption of the established bureaucracy in personnel and policy that he did reap.

So I can be rightly tagged as someone who deserves the "I told you so." admonition.

[Javaman]

32. Me. he* was my asshole governor. nt

[Marie26]

33. Not me

I thought he'd be normal-bad, like a more incompetent, conservative version of his father. But I wasn't as informed about politics then & the media never really got into his more unsavory qualities. Though I do remember being creeped out by his appearance on Letterman - he was making fun of bypass surgery? Odd.

[AndyA]

34. I can say I TOLD YOU SO!

I was SHOCKED - SHOCKED I TELL YOU - when the man won. Of course, we know he really didn't. So I guess my shock, outrage, and disgust started right after the Supreme Court decision to stick their stinkin' foot into states business where it didn't belong.

The man has been a miserable failure at everything he's ever done. His pResidency is no different than the rest of his life, except he f*cked up a lot of other lives in the process.

[lpbk2713]

36. I did.

I had him pegged for an unbelievable idiot right from the start. Only thing
I didn't figure in was Katherine Harris and the Supremes stacking the deck.

[mwb970]

37. bush has been *much* worse than I would have been able to imagine.

I knew he would be bad, but who on earth would have guessed that anybody could be this bad!

I think a lot of his support is from people who still can't grasp just how truly awful he is. I guess they never will.

[Toucano]

38. It is worse than I could have ever imagined. n/t

[gilpo]

39. I didn't trust him from the start, first time I laid eyes on him. But......

Even my jaded cynicism didn't prepare me for how bad it is. I was naive.

[Sheets of Easter]

40. I expected a subpar, uneventful 4 years.

Boy was i ever wrong.

[Richard Steele]

55. Same here. I assumed he'd just coast through, doing little except...

...taking credit for the benefits created by the policies
of his predecessors.

It never occurred to me that he would be a TOTAL puppet,
or that Cheney would declare himself Dictator, or that
CONGRESS would sit back and let it all happen.

I did not see that coming :(

[elizfeelinggreat]

42. < raises hand

(feels disgust again)

[NMDemDist2]

43. !

I literally wept when they announced the SCOTUS stopped the count.

I had a feeling of dread, and justifiably so.

:cry:

[Greyhound]

45. Here.

:hi:

[Greyhound]

76. I was saying to everyone that would listen, that this asshole has never achieved anything

but disaster and ruin in everything he's ever done his whole life, and he would do the same to our country.

Just like Raygun began the destruction of California by doing exactly the same thing there that he did to the nation.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

46. One of the biggest gut wrenching episodes of my life was realizing

that we were saddled with these criminals for four 8 years.

[krabigirl]

47. Raises hand. Any Bush, hell..any Republican, is bad for our country,

[abq e streeter]

48. Me too...knew that being republicans, they were bad news, but never would've believed

the depths that they've dragged everything down to... but even more, I never would've believed that as blatantly criminal as they turned out to be, that they'd get away with every bit of it.

[Brigid]

49. I have to admit I didn't. Not really.

I didn't like *, and I voted against him. But I had no idea it wou8ld get this bad. :(

[timtom]

50. It's also worse than I expected....

but, in all fairness to those who voted for Bush:


I FREAKING TOLD YOU SO, YOU DUMB SHITS!!!!

I'm sorry. What I MEANT to say was,

Thank you. Have a nice day.

[high density]

53. I thought he just wouldn't get anything done

I figured he'd be lazy. Not much would change.

Boy I was way, way wrong.

[AzDar]

54. Me. Everyone thought I had lost my mind, that I was totally overreacting.

But I had A visceral reaction the first time I saw GeeDub....kind of like the zoo scene in 'The Omen'.

I'm really pretty bitter about it now.

[annabanana]

56. To all those idiots who patted me on the head.. "Oh, relax, it won't be that bad"

[Bettie]

57. I had an argument with my neo-con brother about it

I wish with all my heart that I had been wrong.

I must also say though, Bush is MUCH WORSE than I ever imagined and I thought I was pretty harsh at the time.

I do like to remind my brother though that he was all upset about gas prices at the time. I asked him recently if he knew at the time that when W said that gas prices were ridiculous, he meant that they were too low. My brother hung up on me for that one, I think he was a little mad that I brought it up. :)

[lonestarnot]

58. Raising hand, shitting in the other.

[natrat]

59. i never dreamed it would be this bad

[LSK]

60. I feared that he would have us all dead by now, so hes doing better than I expected

[NuttyFluffers]

89. oh no, i never feared that. extinction is merciful release compared to what i knew will come

we'd never be so fortunate as to escape the full magnitude of our fate... the knife must twist first, slowly.

you should have seem my dreams of the future for the past decade. tragically we're moving along quite nicely. here's a cheerful word to keep you awake at night: "aftermath." and i also think of the saying from straight to video Disney's Aladdin sequel, "no, you're right. as a genie i can't kill you. but it's amazing what you can live through..."

pleasant dreams! :hi:

[Bigmack]

61. There has got to be a stronger phrase....

then "I told you so!".

That's the phrase you use when your beer buddy says that your team doesn't stand a chance and the team wins anyway.

Dumbya has surpassed my wildest nightmares about his misadministration.

Some stronger term... perhaps "Now look, assholes, Bush has fucked the planet!" or something...

[Ganja Ninja]

62. My exact quote on the message boards at ABC was ...

"If you elect this man you are going to regret it."

[maui9002]

71. Most of my conservative colleagues

who were outraged that we Democrats were trying to steal the 2000 election (really, that's what they felt at the time) were enthusiatic about getting into the conservative/liberal debate in 2000. In fact, when Bush was first elected, if you were a liberal, you kept your head down while the conservatives were crowing about mandates and what could be done with a Republican President and Republican controlled Congress. At the time, I remember feeling like something of a lone wolf; 8 years later, the chairman of my state's Democratic Party is one of my colleagues and fund raisers for Democratic candidates receive better turnouts than Republican candidates, a 180 degree turn from 8 years ago, and none of my conservative colleagues wishes to debate any issue--it's as if they've gone into hiding. As bad as Bush has been, the incompetence of his administration has led to a revival of the Democratic Party and far more passion and activism among liberal voters.

[Ganja Ninja]

72. But I still regret it. n/t

[maui9002]

73. Ditto; I'm just looking for silver lining in the clouds. nt.

[SammyWinstonJack]

102. I sincerely wish those that voted for him and especially those that voted for him TWICE!

were THE ONLY ONES to regret it. They deserve all the crap bu$h has dumped on us all. But it doesn't work that way UNFORTUNATELY!

[librechik]

63. I knew any administration that claimed a mandate after not winning the popular vote

after basically stealing the election, in fact, could never be trusted to do anything honest and honorable, no matter what they were saying. It was a despicable, un-American act, and could never come to any good.

I knew they were bad from the beginning, and I knew they were up to no good from day one, and I told anyone who would listen.

[MotorCityMan]

66. I started getting really worried during the recount fiasco

I saw one of the */Gore debates, and thought that anyone who could vote for *, based on his performance, was an idiot. Even though I had been warned about how bad he would be from a couple I know in San Antonio, I honestly didn't think he'd be this bad.

During the Florida recount battle, though; that's when I started getting nervous. The entitlement, the arrogance, and above all, the willingness to do anything; when the Felonious Five handed * the presidency, I started to think he may be worse than I thought.

[Uncle Joe]

64. I tried to tell my co-workers and my ex-wife he was incompetent . She said don't worry

"he can surround him self with smart people".

This is why I believe it's so critical to teach Einstein's theory of relativity in school!

I also believe this is why Bush recently attacked "The dictatorship of relativism" while the Pope was in town. If you can downplay the importance of being competent for the most powerful job in the land, any puppet can be put in charge.

I knew after Florida, not only was he incompetent, but he was corrupt as well.

[AlCzervik]

67. We were warned by many people, Molly Ivins and Lou Debose and...Paul Begala.

and many other notables. also i lived in Texas when Bush was Governor so when he announced he was running it bothered me but really i didn't think there was anyway he'd win---and i was right, too the supreme court saw it otherwise.

[warren pease]

69. I hired an immigration attorney in Vancouver, BC about a week after the court stole it for him...

Unfortunately, after a couple of months of frequent phone consultations, two trips to Vancouver, hours filling out forms and working with the lawyer to fiddle the points, trying to find a few extra somewhere, I learned that I was medically undesirable and no amount of points would matter.

Chronic, non-lethal, but occasionally expensive to treat the symptoms. The Canadian health care system decided they couldn't afford to have me. Which is kind of ironic, because I can't afford to NOT have that system or something similar here -- about as likely as snow in Death Valley in July.

So I'm country shopping again. Latin American is looking very encouraging, as one country after another goes left. I expect the US to use Columbia as a military staging area, under the auspices of the war on (some) drugs, to wage a campaign of continuous harassment and guerrilla warfare against neighboring countries like Venezuela, Ecuador maybe even Brazil.

I expect that, this time, the US war machine will finally meet its match as the entire continent -- sick of being the US' favorite place to steal raw materials, battleground for proxy wars of corporate exploitation and target of the very finest black ops the US intel community has to offer -- says "Basta" and marshals a multinational force to kick uncle sam's fat greedy ass back up north where it belongs, never to meddle again in the affairs of countries that actually believe in government of, by and for the people.

I'm hoping Lugo will seize the Bushies' 99,000 acres and turn it into a national park. And I'm hoping the new Paraguayan leftist majority will decide that strong, binding extradition treaties with the rest of the civilized world are necessary and move to establish them forthwith.

If there's any justice left, they'll eventually run out of hiding places, get busted by the police or security forces of one of the 105 countries who've signed the ICC treaty, get their murderous asses "renditioned" to The Hague, tried, convicted, sentenced and locked up for a couple hundred consecutive life terms. That's nowhere near terrible enough for these bastards, but I suppose it'll have to do.


wp

[JackBeck]

70. I can and made an eerie prediction during his inauguration.

We were visiting friends in Seattle the day that boosh's limousine got pelted with eggs as it drove past the cacophony of "boos" and hisses.

As we watched this spectacle unfold on the TV, I turned to my friends and said: "They're gonna bomb us".

Did I know who "they" were? Nope.

Did anyone "bomb us"? Well, no, but I'm sure you get the sentiment.

I just had this overwhelming feeling of vulnerability seeing that man being sworn in. Deep down I knew some sort of attack was on the horizon.

[cynatnite]

74. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine a president would be so criminal...

so murderous and so bloodthirsty.

I never would have believed that anyone would start a war based on lies for his own benefits and that of his buddies.

[leftofthedial]

75. that'd be me

[lectrobyte]

77. I must admit, I figured it would be kind of like Bush I middle of the road

whatever. But when Ashcroft was selected for AG, I knew we were up shit creek without oars.

[magellan]

78. It was the first time I cried over losing an election

I honestly never paid much attention before. But after the whole FL debacle, and knowing Bush** for the lying prick he is just by seeing him on my tv during the campaigns, I KNEW the SCOTUS had screwed this country royally.

[EFerrari]

79. Me. And on 9/11, I was more scared of Bush/Cheney than anything else.

Oh -- remember that video of CHENEY walking with his brief case on the first working day after the inaugural? That was classic. They weren't filming Junior -- they were filming Darth. We were seriously into the looking glass. :shrug:

[Initech]

80. I wish there were a way we could reverse time and go back 7 1/2 years.

And call Florida for Gore instead of Bush.

[Stinky The Clown]

81. Me. I said it when he cheated and 'beat' McLame in SC in 1999

I feared it when the media started touring him as 'inevitable' in 1998.

I hated his old man, too.

[cascadiance]

82. I was dreading it from the moment we at KnightRidder.com were watching the returns come in!

I authored the tools for the shared election page that year for a lot of Knight Ridder's newspapers then... That was about the time we started pushing the then new Knight Ridder Washington Bureau's stories on that page and elsewhere in the network there.

A lot of us were moaning how Knight Ridder not long before that had moved its headquarters from Miami to San Jose where I was. We were wondering if just the employees that were moved to San Jose from Miami could have made the difference for Gore! :(

[tsuki]

83. Disaster, yes. Unmitigated, no. But still, we started making plans

for a crash.

[SeattleGirl]

84. I knew, but I didn't know just how much of an unmitigated disaster

it would be.

[BlueIris]

85. Didn't really hit me until the morning of the Inauguration.

When I started reading about his cohorts, and realizing he was preparing for a re-enactment of the '80s...that was when the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach began.

[NuttyFluffers]

86. knew it from the moment he announced his candidacy.

also knew that he'd win, that there'd be at least 2 wars, high gas prices, destroyed economy and world standing, and a massive terrorist attack to get the legitimacy for the wars.

yes, your reality is quite banal and predictable to me. and no, i am not kidding. there are certain advantages in being a sentient fruit.
:7

(PS: i'm still waiting for the 3rd war -- i think powers that be are still pissed at losing out on Venezuela coup and war w/ Iran. but i believe Iran's still coming up; we are on an only slight variation of the permutations alloted to this age. massive free will expressions had an effect, but it just delayed certain inevitabilities and added certain cosmetic changes. it really depends on the free will assertions upon the presidential election, and even then it's not going to be all that optimistic...)

[girl gone mad]

87. >Raises hand

Texas activist Dems knew.

[mnhtnbb]

88. I knew when Cheney appointed himself VP that we were in for BIG trouble.

[Echo In Light]

90. My wife and I

Oddly enough, I'm the one who follows politics, or issues that are categorized as such, yet it was my wife who immediately freaked over Bush's sudden "victory" in 00 ... as where I - initially - never would've imagined a Bush/Cheney regime could do - and undo! - so much in such little time. That the citizenry would simply roll over and take it like pathetic chumps time after time, especially in 04, is really a significant disappointment, frankly. Indifference and denial have ensured this country's doom.

[abq e streeter]

101. What a terrifying and right on the money last sentence..."...ensured this country's doom..."

[notadmblnd]

91. I knew in the fall of 99 when he said "some people have too many rights"

that his pretzledency would be disasterous. I read this quote in Time Magazine that fall (October issue, IIRC).

[girl gone mad]

92. The Onion knew.

I remember sending this out to everyone I knew back in 2001:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

...

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

...

The speech was met with overwhelming approval from Republican leaders.

"Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. "Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton's America."

"For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped," conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. "And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up."

An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.

"After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012," Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. "That's not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in."

...

Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

"The insanity is over," Bush said. "After a long, dark night of peace and stability, the sun is finally rising again over America. We look forward to a bright new dawn not seen since the glory days of my dad."

[ThomWV]

93. I told people he would destroy this country, I told people he would be the worst ever

He landed in Morgantown West Virginia and gave a speech, a lady I worked with asked me if I was going to hear him, I told here "I would rather go out and watch a dog take a shit than listen to that man speak". I felt that way about him then, I think that way abuot him now, except now I think he should be jailed for the rest of his natural life.

[KharmaTrain]

94. Sprng 2000...The California Energy Crisis

Well..I started to bitch about what I saw as the stealing of the election as early as mid '99 when booooshie was rolling up all the big cash and freezing out anyone from having any solid chance at the GOOP nomination. It was obvious from that point that the fix was in and that the right wing would go all out behind this stalking horse to "win"...and they wouldn't care how they did it.

The first attempt I saw (other than the constant sliming of Gore) was the California energy crisis...the one that made billions for Enron and started the price hikes on energy that have gone on ever since. I saw it as a ploy to mess around with the economy and try to force the economy into a recession by the November elections. As we learned, this "crisis" was a phony and that many of boooshie's oil buddies (and campaign contributors) were involved in this scam.

I will say that no matter how bad I expected this regime to be...and I expected the worse...they exceeded by expectations many times over.

[Kitty Herder]

95. I didn't know it would be THIS bad. I knew it would be a disaster,

but I didn't expect this.

And I expected him to be impeached by now, as well.

[Bluenorthwest]

96. I expected exactly what we got

And this is a great time to remember that those of us who did comprehend were forced to fight with all sorts of blather from Michael Moore on down about how Al Gore was exactly the same as GW Bush. Remember that? People said it, thought it, and voted for Nader or just did not vote. They are the same in every vital way. Michale Moore has made penance, but he was very much anti-Gore.
All of those who claimed a Democrat was the same as Bush delivered us Bush. How many people now think Al and W are at all similar? Please try to remember through your candidate' rose glasses that the media made it possible to see Gore and Bush as the same thing.

[Solly Mack]

97. When he announced he was running...I knew.

but I told you so is cold comfort

I'd much rather have been wrong

[MadHound]

98. I can, I can!

I was predicting before election day that if you put a Bush in the White House you can expect a ME war and a major economic downturn. OK, I didn't think that it would be quite this bad, but still and all, I saw the writing on the wall and making preparations.

[SammyWinstonJack]

99. I did but he has surpassed even my worst expectations.

[tabasco]

103. The way they exploited 9-11 to take over an oil-rich country

that had nothing to do with 9-11 and the Democratic cowardice is the only thing that really surprised me.

The US Army still sits on top of the oil. Record profits for the oil companies.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! THANKS BUSH!

[ProfessorGAC]

104. I Did. And You Can Look It Up On The Archives, Here At DU

The Professor

[Laura Fran]

105. WHO KNEW?

Me, that's who....I told people repeatedly that Bushie Boy would be an absolute disaster to this country! I KNEW he would kill the economy, get us into at LEAST one war, and be totally incompetent! What I DIDN'T know was just how bad he would be.....:grr:

[ensho]

106. me

nt

[Proud Liberal Dem]

107. I thought he'd be a one-term loser like his father (at best)

And before 9/11/01, he seemed to be heading that way too with Jefford's defection from the GOP (due to his unfortunate "snub" thereof) putting the Democrats back in control of the Senate, the stalling or defeat of most of his major initiatives, and the willingness of the Democrats to stand up to him politically, and his low poll numbers. And all of this was happening within just the first few MONTHS of his (P)residency when Presidents traditionally enjoy the highest approval ratings and the most influence and ability to advance their agendas. Of course, a lot of people, from the beginning, viewed him as being an "illegitimate" leader based on how he ultimately became President. So, at the time, I wasn't too terribly worried. I hated Bush and what happened in 2000 but I believed that he would be gone in 2004 and that it would mostly just be "business as usual" (if just a little more GOP-ish). I was wrong.
Things, of course, changed (for the worse) starting on 9/11/01. I must admit (ashamedly) that I was supportive of him for awhile post-9/11/01, at least in terms of his aggressive (and seemingly flawless) military campaign against the Taliban and Al-Queda in Afghanistan but I started getting really concerned about him when, in early 2002, he started advancing his "Axis of Evil" and "War on Terror" ideologies that, at least to him and his supporters, boldly justified his new policies such as indefinite detention (and torture) of so-called "enemy combatants", "pre-emptive" military actions, unjustified incursions on the civil liberties of American citizens and the Constitution, and later, of course, his illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. I was also increasingly disturbed, particularly then, about the apparent failure of the Democrats to stand up to Bush politically and challenge his new policies, and the seemingly relentless campaign by Bush and his fervent supporters to attempt to squelch and smear any and all dissenting viewpoints about Bush and his policies.
Ever since around 2002-2003, I have lived in real fear of Bush succeeding in his apparent goal of transforming our country into some kind of dictatorship and, to some extent, our country HAS been transformed into something other than that which most of us almost certainly would've found acceptable (at least before 9/11/01). Thankfully, the transformation of our country into something even more sinister than what it's already become under Bush seems not to have been completely finished by Bush and his supporters, probably because of the mess he made in Iraq, his dramatic loss of public support since 2004-2005, and the loss of his "rubber stamp" Congress in 2006.
With Bush having less than a year left in office and his poll numbers now so low (by historical standards), I'm not nearly as concerned as I was before about the prospects of him assuming dictatorial powers (or at least I can't conceive of how it might happen without a major revolt among the American public) but the fact that I or anybody else should ever have had to worry about such a prospect dramatically highlights just how much I severely underestimated George W. Bush and the damage that he (along with his minions and supporters) has wrought on our country and, more importantly, our constitutional system of government. I hope and pray that our next President (Hilary or Obama) forcefully repudiates the aforementioned Bush policies (and others) and actively works to ensure that they all end up in the "dustbin of history".

Before I close, I MUST ask, why was impeachment declared "off the table" again?????

[Hidden Stillness]

108. Knew it Would be Horrible; It was Even Worse (More Widely Destructive)

I remember warning people against Bush, fearing what would happen, even warning good people against voting for Ralph Nader, knowing full well that Nader was actually the best candidate, I can remember talking to people about how "You don't dare let Bush win, because then it'll be a disaster"--I remember saying these words once--and yet I, like others on this thread, never in my wildest dreams, imagined that it could turn out this cryingly horrible, if that is a word, because I thought we had modern civilized protections. As soon as Al Gore was declared the winner months later, though, and nothing changed--Bush and Cheney did not have to vacate and Gore was just installed, for example--because there was actually no law covering it, then I started to get a really scared, creepy feeling.

My worst fears were that Bush, like so many Republicans, would steal everything, bust unions, deregulate the economy, kill the court system, and destroy all, that way, sending us into a Depression with no help this time. That was a huge fear, and it has happened. What I did not expect was the way all of the agencies and departments of Government, the armed forces, EVERYTHING, would be commercialized,and replaced by shadow Republican-contributing corporations, lawless and corrupt, and no one would even be able to track the operations of anything anymore, and this new corporate-fascist cartel would then move from area to area, killing it. I was surpries by how violent and mean they were, as the usual procedure for people who are hated and who did not win, is to grin and be every now and then publicly conciliatory, to cover up their crimes and dismantling. There was none of that, and instead a real, fascist, heavy-handed, "you'll take it or we'll kill you" approach, that has never worked here before.

Growing up with Nixon, the previously most-hated criminal bastard, you would get occasional "tricks" or distractions like price-controls, or developing the EPA--popular things the people wanted, "liberal"--that Nixon was actually against, but things that would keep positionong Nixon as "winning on the issues," (John Dean has explained this; Nixon opposed all the good things). Again, none of that here; only the most violently ruthless lying, character-destroying, phone-jamming, U.S. Attorney-firing, Government Inspector-threatening, open, right out in the open, evil--and nobody did anything! Nobody fought it!

This was the most shocking and unexpected part of the whole thing: I would never have predicted it, and sometimes it still surprises me to think about it. I can still hardly believe it, and cannot explain it. When Bush and Cheney barged their way inot the White House, lied that the Clinton Administration had "trashed" the place, when they had not, were shown to have stolen the election after the stopped count in Florida, the fake Republican-operative "riot," etc., to see then Congreassional leaders Daschle and Gephardt hugging Bush, grinning, smiling, announcing that they "supported our President" and would work with "the new Administration," my jaw dropped; I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I actually screamed at the TV set, "What are you DOING?? What is WRONG WITH YOU??" Immediately, both were kicked out of office, and Gephardt anyway, (unlike Daschle), always had a great voting record. I don't think they ever understood what happened. The most shocking the thing of all was the complete and total way the "Democrats" caved, crawled, agreed, were stymied and flummuxed, then grinned and crawled again. They themselves fought us--"too liberal for America," "naive," "interfering," etc.--and colluded with Republicans; they still do. How much might have been avoided of Democrats had just done what they always did every single time before, when Republicans have tried to destroy the country, and fought it?

Everyone knew, because of Bush's, Cheney's, Rumsfeld's, etc., backgrounds, and because of the horrific thing the modern Republican Party has become, that it would be really bad and threatening; I never would have guessed, though, that they would be totally successful at every single anti-Governemt dismantling they tried, that it would be so easy, that they people were cut out and could not stop it anymore, and that the "D"LC shit that took over the Democratic Party at that time, would actually turn and fight US. This was a fearful era, beyond merely being "bad," and like a lot of people, I feel as a Nation, that "we have sinned."