Hang in there, America: Competent leadership is just 600-plus days away

[EV_Ares]

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers

As of May 17th, there were 613 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.


So much of what they talked about doing in a new century and a new and different world never came to pass. So much of what they did to grow the power of the presidency and prune the constitutional safeguards crafted by our Founding Fathers, they never talked about.


The American people have turned their backs on George Bush and his dreams of planting the seeds of democracy in Mesopotamia at the point of a gun and seeing them spread like kudzu across the Middle East.


He's failed in his quest for victory in Iraq and for a world put in order by a new and stronger United States, and his brash blundering into a dangerous land has made us all much less safe.


The president's approval ratings are below his knees, sinking to 28 percent in one recent poll, and he cannot recover short of the kind of miracle that parts seas and feeds the multitudes.

(((rest of the article @ link below:)))

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17240097.htm

[Waya]

1. Hopefully..............

[ThomWV]

2. Bush Will Be Gone Before That ... IB

Impeachment

[DKRC]

3. Believe it when I see it

The author says, "President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history." That's wishful thinking in my opinion.
This crew has systematically raped the Constitution and stripped Habeus Corpus from every person on the planet based solely on the President's word. The Posse Comitatus Act was marched over by Blackwater in New Orleans. The Geneva Conventions are "quaint" according to Gonzo. Torturing your children in front of you is a Presidential power according to Yoo. Congressional subpoenas for testimony & records are being ignored. After consolidating this much power into the hands of the President and his inner circle I will be supremely surprised to see them hand it all over to anyone else, most especially to a Democratic President.

I think we're all whistlin' by the graveyard hoping that nothing nasty jumps out at us in 2008.

[irish.lambchop]

4. My balloon just escaped my grasp,

my rose-coloured glasses just broke, and the bounce in my step just lies there now. :)

[Golden Raisin]

5. Given their track record of

fascistic arrogance I find it difficult to discount that there will not be some sort of large, domestic terror attack (genuine or stage-managed) or other national crisis within a few months or weeks of the 2008 elections which will be used as the excuse to suspend elections, impose martial law and to officially gut the few pitiable remains of our Constitution. I hope I am wrong and hate being paranoid but I would put NOTHING past this bunch.