The Difference Between Bush and Romney Policy

Some months ago I sent an email to all of you asking for the difference between Bush's policies and Romney's. The response was a deafening silence.

In the debate, when asked to differentiate himself from Bush, Romney's first item was energy policy. Romney wants to do a lot of drilling for oil. Bush was all for a lot of drilling for oil. I can't tell the difference either. I'm sure there are some somewhere, but I don't see any big ones. The similarities, however, are quite striking. Among other things, both favor:

Lower tax rates

Higher military expenditures

Reduced regulation

A bellicose, go-it-alone foreign policy

The results of the Bush years are important to remember. They included:

Massive failure of the economy

Massive failure to control government finances (went from a balanced budget to a deficit of well over a trillion dollars)

Failure to win in Iraq

Failure to win in Afghanistan

Failure, in seven years of trying, to kill bin Laden

Failure to slow or stop Iran's nuclear program

Romney advocates many, if not most, of the same policies as Bush. Why would you expect substantially different results from a Ronmey presidency?

Islamic-Region Attacks on America, by President

It is instructive to look at the history of terrorist attacks on Americans. Consider:

Jimmy Carter -- Iranian students took American diplomats hostage. 52 were held for 444 days. Eight American servicemen died in a rescue attempt.

Ronald Reagan -- Hezbollah killed 241 American servicemen, most of them Marines, with a single truck bomb. Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky by Libya killing 243 passengers and 16 crew.

George H. W. Bush -- Iraq invaded Kuwait touching off a full scale war that killed 294 Americans.

Bill Clinton -- al Qaeda blew up two US embassies in Africa killing over 200 people and wounding thousands. Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole killing 17 American sailors. The Khobar Towers attack killed 19 American servicemen.

George W. Bush -- al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and severely damaged the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000, and a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The Riyadh compound bombings in Saudi Arabia killed 35 people including nine Americans.

Barack Obama -- Four diplomats were killed in a recent attack on the consulate in Libya.

Thus, we see that Obama has, so far, the best record of protecting Americans from Islamic-region attacks of any recent president.

Obama and the Taliban

When Obama took office, the Taliban had the initiative in Afghanistan and were making major gains in Pakistan. They controlled large and growing swaths of territory in both and had just taken over Swat, which is only an hour or so from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Remember that Pakistan is nuclear armed.

Today the Taliban are on the defensive.  They have lost control of Swat and much of the rest of Pakistan.  They have lost control of a great deal of territory in Afghanistan.  Their leadership is dying under a hail of drone attacks.  Osama bin Laden is dead and the personal commitments the Taliban leadership made to him are gone.

That is about as good as it gets in that part of the world.

Obama's Campaign Promises

Like all candidates, President Obama made promises during the 2008 campaign, and like all candidates he delivered on some, partly delivered on some and failed on others. Also, like all voters we imagine he promised far more than he actually did. Right now I'd like to remind you of some of the promises that were kept and invite you to think about whether these would have happened under President McCain or Romney.

Obama promised:

• To get out of Iraq. We're out.
• To focus on al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Afghanistan. Bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda leaders are dying like flies, and the Taliban have been pushed back in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• To end 'Don't Ask Don't Tell.' It is gone.
• To enact universal health care. It is enacted. The next step: 'Medicare for All.'
• To cut taxes for the middle class. The stimulus contained the largest middle class tax cut in history.
• To support green energy. PG&E, my utility provider, just sent me a chart of energy supplies. Renewables are 18%, compared with 19% for hydro, 22% for nuclear, and 25% for natural gas. In other words, renewables are almost as big as any other supply! And it is not just California. I flew across the country last May. Looking out the window I saw an America dotted with wind farms. Wind is the fastest growing energy supply in the US and now provides 3% of all US electricity.
• To re-regulate the financial industry. Legislation has been passed, a consumer protection agency created, and government oversight strengthened.
• To increase manufacturing. US manufacturing is up about 50%.
• To turn the financial crisis around. Then the Dow was 8,000. Now it is over 13,000. Then we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, now we are gaining 100,000 or more. Then the financial sector was technically bankrupt, now it is much more stable. Then GDP was down about 9% for the year, now it is up 2% or more. Then two of the three US auto companies were headed for destruction, now GM is once again, for the first time in a long time, the biggest car maker in the world. Oh, and US companies are as profitable as they have ever been.
• To focus on bringing loose nuclear material under control. This is vital to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on American cities, the second worst national security issue we face today (the first is the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals). All around the world, over the last few years, poorly secured nuclear materials have been identified and either secured locally or, in many cases, shipped to the US for safekeeping. This may have been Obama's most important act, and one for which he will never get much credit.

Obviously, there is a lot more to do, so if you want these sorts of things to keep happening, vote for President Obama and other Democrats this November.

Romney Takes Deceit to New Lows

In a speech a few weeks ago, President Obama said "You didn't build that," where 'you' referred to business people and 'that' clearly referred to roads, bridges, and other infrastructure built by the government (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-ZO7XOpwa8). Cleaver editing of a video of the speech made it sound as if 'that' referred to businesses, which are obviously built by businessmen.  This edited video was played endlessly on Fox News and campaign videos with the inevitable nauseating commentary.

Taking sound bites out of context is pretty common in election year politics, but what happened next took deceit to a new level.  When the fact checkers called Romney's campaign out on this, instead of backing away they made 'you didn't build it' a central theme of their convention and their election campaign.

You can win elections with deceit and you can run tyrannies with deceit, but you cannot govern well with deceit.  Keep this in mind this November and vote.

Romney, England, and Foreign Policy

Romney is traveling abroad to build his foreign policy credentials.  Romney is familiar with the outside world.  He spent two years in France as a Mormon missionary and speaks fluent French.  He also had Bain invest in at least one Chinese company, in 1998 when he was very much in day-to-day control.  This particular Chinese company specialized in providing outsourcing services for American companies, i.e., shipping jobs from America to China. Although you might think Romney would be pretty good at diplomacy, he promptly insulted his British hosts on his first foreign stop by questioning their Olympic competence.  This was a major news story in the UK.

This is a good time to look at Obama's foreign policy and, closely related, military record.  It is outstanding.  Consider:

1. Our military is no longer bogged down in Iraq.
2. Large quantities of loose nuclear materials have been brought to safety.  This significantly reduces the biggest security threat we face: loose nukes falling into al Qaeda's hands.
3. Our overseas popularity is way up (for example, according to Time magazine this week, in Britain trust of the US President went from 16% before Obama to 80%).
4. The al Qaeda leadership has been decimated, including the death of their top dog, Osama bin Laden.
5. The Taliban have been pushed back in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
6. Iran is struggling under well co-ordinated international sanctions.
7. Iran's nuclear program was severely damaged by a computer virus, probably planted by the US and Israel.
8. North Korea is almost completely isolated.
9. Cuba and Venezuela are struggling.
10. Four Arab dictators have been toppled, and another (Syria's Assad) is in deep, deep trouble.  
11. A number of African countries have made significant steps towards democracy.

All and all, things have been going our way internationally.  You can think this is an accident, just luck, but if so Obama is very, very lucky.

Unlike domestic policy where Congress holds a lot of the cards, foreign policy is almost entirely the responsibility of the President.  How things go overseas is a good measure of his leadership and Obama's lookin' good.

Romney Lies Again, or Worse

Five eyewitnesses and participants say that as an upper classman at his prep school, Mitt Romney led a 'posse' of kids to tackle, pin down, and then cut a younger classmate's hair as he screamed for help. Romney says he can't remember the incident. Here's why I think he's lying:

The five eyewitnesses remember it very vividly. Some deeply and frequently regret their part in it. One of them ran into the victim 30 years later and apologized.

I got in a few fights as a kid, the last in eighth grade. I can remember nearly every detail of every one. Who struck first, where the blows landed, the expression on their face, everything. Romney was nearly an adult at the time, I was in grade school.

It is politically incredibly convenient not to remember. It avoids having to answer a barrage of acutely uncomfortable and politically damaging questions.

But what if I'm wrong, what if he really doesn't remember? What could that mean? I can only think of two possibilities:

That cruelty meant so little to him that he can't even remember it.

He did stuff like this so often he can't remember this particular incident.

Either way, that's worse.

Most likely, he's just a liar.