The majority is wrong about Bush

The Charleston Gazette ^ | 4-16-06 | Don Surber

[veronica]

President Bush’s approval rating is pretty low. He is behind car salesmen, but still ahead of journalists and Congress. A recent Gallup Poll found that only 37 percent of the public approves of the job he is doing as president.

Picky, picky, picky.

Now George W. Bush is too nice to say this, but maybe the problem is with the American people. We are a nation of ingrates.

Let me give you an example. The New York Times painstakingly examined the investment tax break and came up with a list of the counties that benefited most from this change in policy.

Among the chief beneficiaries was Marin County, Calif., outside of San Francisco.

How did Marin County voters show their appreciation? In 2004, 73 percent voted for John Kerry and 25 percent voted for Bush.

Come to think of it, the five most affluent states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and New York — all voted for Kerry.

At the other end of the scale, all 10 of the poorest states went with Bush in 2004.

Increasing the child tax credit to $1,000 and ending the marriage penalty helped drop taxes by an average of $1,083 in 2003 for the nation’s 92 million taxpayers.

And people saw the results in other ways. The unemployment rate shrank from 6.3 percent in 2003 to 5.1 percent in 2005 to 4.7 percent last month.

That is pretty good considering that the attacks of Sept. 11th knocked the stock market out for nearly a week and that oil prices rose to $70 a barrel.

It is even better when one considers the United States just lost a major city to Hurricane Katrina — or rather, New Orleans failed to properly maintain the levee system given it by American taxpayers.

Indeed, the same poll that found 60 percent disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy found 59 percent of Americans rate the economic condition of the nation as good — and 60 percent said they expect that a year from now the economy will be good.

It is not the economy, stupid. It is the war.

Iraq is not so much Vietnam as it is Korea. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ran for president promising to end the war in Korea. He did.

Our troops are still there, as is our commitment. Americans surely knew going in that there would be a long-term commitment in Iraq.

In judging the Bush presidency, Americans must not overlook the No Child Left Behind reforms, which shifted the emphasis in education from the bureaucracy back to the child.

Much to my surprise, the convoluted Medicare prescription plan seems to be working. A survey showed three-quarters of those who signed up say they are saving money.

My guess is that 60 percent of them nonetheless would say Bush is doing a poor job handling the prescription program.

The war overwhelms all that, which is not surprising. I would guess that if Gallup asked, 60 percent would disapprove of his handling of the weather.

The president takes it in stride. Bush spoke at Johns Hopkins University earlier this month. He was asked about the polls and the protest.

“Yes, I hear the protests,” Bush said. “And I can understand why. I can understand why people are concerned about war. Nobody likes war, particularly me.

“I knew exactly what was going to happen when I committed these troops into harm’s way. I knew there would be — people would lose their life. And I knew I’d be trying to comfort mothers and fathers and grieving wives. I knew exactly what was coming.

“And if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t have sent them. And if I didn’t think we could succeed in Iraq, I’d pull them out.”

President Bush bet his presidency on Iraq. Like Harry Truman before him, Bush had no choice. States that sponsor terrorism must be brought in line.

Truman was not appreciated in his time. Bush is not appreciated now. Most of the time, the majority is right.

This is not one of those times.

[tsmith130]

I regret that I ever voted for Bush.

Exactly what didn't you know about President Bush in Nov. 2004 that you now know today?

[adorno]

I regret that I ever voted for Bush.

Simple-minded single-issue voters shouldn't be allowed to vote.

But, I highly doubt that you voted for Bush. Kerry and Gore are more your style.

[Mike Darancette]

Iraq is not so much Vietnam as it is Korea. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ran for president promising to end the war in Korea. He did.

Eisenhower did not end the Korean War Stalin and Mao did.

[nicmarlo]

Exactly what didn't you know about President Bush in Nov. 2004 that you now know today?

That's like asking, "What did we know about 9/11 before it happened?"

Things change; what concerned many BEFORE 9/11 has become a MAJOR ISSUE after 9/11. When the President campaigned on being "serious about protecting Americans," a logical person would believe that would lead to SECURING OUR BORDERS. A logical person would believe that, after finding multitudes of Arabic literature abandoned on the southern U.S. border, after numerous arrests of Middle Eastern men who illegally crossed the POROUS OPEN BORDER, a wise man would change his course of leaving the back door wide open.

He hasn't.

You're excusing Bush's continued and consistent encouragement of lawbreakers, both to illegal aliens AND to their U.S. employers.

I don't.

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, Republican President

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

C. S. Lewis

[TheDon]

One reason is that Bush is constantly bashed by the mainstream media. A steady stream of negative news stories has to have a impact on Bush's popularity with the general, non-political minded public.

I have found polls are often more a reflection of how well the Demorat MSM has influenced those being polled. This is one of those cases.

President Bush is one of the best presidents the nation has had.

I wonder if he will await the outcome of the next election to see if Republicans will maintain control of both houses of Congress before committing the nation to a war on Iran. If the Rats get control of Congress, I'm not sure President Bush will think it wise to correct ex-President Carter's catastrophic foreign policy blunders regarding Iran, and it will be left to some later President to respond to a nuclear attack by Iran.

[buck61]

I regret I voted for Bush.
Seems you have forgotten the 911 event.
Had John Kerry been elected there would have been more 911 in America and, in perhaps other countries.
How can you complain about President Bush when it is obvious
what the left has done and would do if they were in control?

[thoughtomator]

If you count up the actual damage done by illegal Mexicans, they are pretty darn competitive with the Muslims. Just because they tend to do their damage one person at a time doesn't mean that overall they constitute no significant threat.

[Williams]

Sadly, this article points out that the American people are often misled and flat out wrong. "We" are easily fooled. How else can you explain the following. We go to war with 90% support, knowing that we have to stay the course, that our enemies expect us to falter, that we can't repeat the mistakes of Vietnam.

Then within 2 years all one hears everyday is discordant voices attacking the war, convincing us it was a "mistake" and you have more and more Americans who "tire" of hearing about it and would abandon our allies. Very disheartening..

Yes, MSM and dems are the worst culprits, but many people listen to them.

[bkepley]

--Come to think of it, the five most affluent states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and New York — all voted for Kerry.

When I was married I saw some of the seedy underbelly of the wealthy and it changed my perspective on America for a time. Luckily I always knew Churchill was right when he said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. I did become more cynical though. I'm happier now as a simple middle class working stiff with no connections to the grubby little dealings of the rich.

[tsmith130]

A logical person would believe that, after finding multitudes of Arabic literature abandoned on the southern U.S. border, after numerous arrests of Middle Eastern men who illegally crossed the POROUS OPEN BORDER, a wise man would change his course of leaving the back door wide open.

Do you have a reliable source for this?

It's not that I don't agree that we should secure the border...we should. I just don't think that it's something we didn't know about Pres. Bush in 2004. I think his stand on illegal immigration has been clear for quite awhile, much to many's dismay.

Our southern border is a threat to our treasury and our penal system. I think the threat of terrorists coming here is much more of a possibility from our Northern border.

[Tom Bombadil]

I regret that I ever voted for Bush.

So, in prioritizing threats, you would vote for the side that wants to do both things that you don't like. Handing Iraq over to Al Queda AND NOT building a stupip fence on our southern border are sure to happen if you have your way with Bush.

If you are successful, my children are going to have two problems instead of one.

[navyguy]

While Bush has been quite poor about communicating his message, and he has made mistakes, I think its important to recognize 2 basic facts here...

1) Most polls that are discussed on TV are done by liberal outlets, such as CNN, Time Magazine, Newsweek, etc... The majority of their consistent viewers are liberal and this skews their polling results.

2) Frankly, when it comes to politics, economics and world affairs, most of the american public is flatly clueless (Note: the same applies in Europe). I see this all the time at work... people just don't keep up with the news, they know almost nothing about economics and they couldn't find Iraq on a map of the middle east. Most of them can't even name the 3 branches of US government, and I am surrounded at the office by people with university degrees. When these people go on rants about Bush its pretty easy to shut them up.

[RichInOC]

The more polling "news" I read, the better I understand why Hannibal Lecter ate the census taker who tried to quantify him.

[1066AD]

Ahmadinejad .. thanks again Jimmuh.

[nicmarlo]

This is just SOME articles. If you google, you can find plenty more. There's many also posted in FR.

COMING TO AMERICA Arabic diary found near border
Couple discovers book in backpack dropped on their property Posted: February 13, 2003

An Arizona couple has discovered a diary written in Arabic in a backpack apparently dropped on their property by an illegal alien entering the U.S., reports the Sierra Vista Herald Review....

Resident Finds Backpack w/Arabic Notebook (short Title)

Hereford, AZ -- It is not unusual to find backpacks near their home, but a local man and his wife were surprised to find one that contained a diary written in Arabic.....

TERRORISTS DON'T STOP AT THE RIO GRANDE
By Michelle Malkin · July 28, 2004 04:39 PM

Ok, all you open-borders Pollyannas on both the left and right. Here is yet another example of terrorists traipsing across our southern border that you will no doubt ignore.

Meet Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. Federal News Radio reports:

She was stopped at McAllen Miller International Airport on July 19 headed to New York.

Eddie Flores of the U.S. Border Patrol office in McAllen, Texas tells FederalNewsRadio.com that a review of her papers raised some concerns.

"In looking at her documents, they did not find any entry documents in her passport where she was legally admitted into the United States," says Flores.

Ahmed produced a South African passport to the agents with four pages torn out, and with no U.S. entry stamps. Ahmed reportedly later confessed to investigators that she entered the country illegally by crossing the Rio Grande River. Ahmed was carrying travel itineraries showing a July 8 flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to London. Six days later, Ahmed traveled from London to Mexico City before attempting to travel from McAllen to New York.

* * *

The Tombstone Tumbleweed reports "that a flood of middle-eastern males have been caught entering the country illegally east of Douglas, Arizona. The increased patrols in the Huachuca Mountains area of Cochise County, seems to have diverted the flow of OTM's, "other than Mexicans" east to the Chiricahua Mountains." While a Border Patrol information officer publicly denied the reports, another agent told the publication that "the men were suspected to be Iranian or possibly Syrian nationals."

"Other than Mexicans"
By Chris Kelly · May 23, 2005 07:16 PM

...there are uncorroborated law enforcement reports suggesting that associates of al Qaeda used smugglers in Latin America to travel through the region in 2002 before traveling onward to the United States...

...One smuggler, Salim Boughader-Mucharrafille, smuggled Lebanese nationals sympathetic to Hamas and Hizbollah into the United States and relied on corrupt Mexican officials in Beirut, Mexico City and Tijuana to facilitate their travel...

Other Than Mexicans

PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2004

Are terrorists entering the United States through Arizona's border with Mexico?...

It's been a summer of media whispers that keep getting louder.

· In early August, the Washington Times reported that al-Qaeda is allying with Mexican organized crime groups to infiltrate the United States via Mexico.

· In late July, ABC News reported that the Border Patrol had arrested a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. The arrest was made at McAllen-Miller airport in South Texas, where Ahmed was attempting to board a flight to New York. She acknowledged that smugglers brought her across the Rio Grande from Mexico; the FBI declared Ahmed a "person of interest."

· Congressman Solomon Ortiz, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, was quoted in the Brownsville Herald as saying that Mexicans with possible terrorist ties have been detained after entering the country from Mexico, but are being released for lack of jail space. "It's very, very scary," said Ortiz.

· On Los Angeles radio station KFI AM's John and Ken Show, Congressman John Culberson, a Texas Republican, said federal prosecutors had told him that Middle Eastern men with al-Qaeda links are adopting Hispanic names, acquiring fake Mexican ID cards and mixing with the stream of illegals coming across our southern border. They're choosing this route, he said, because the screening process for incoming airline passengers is increasingly effective.

· The Chicago Tribune recently reported on the arrest of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a Tijuana, Mexico café owner, on charges of smuggling Arabs into this country. The Tribune wrote that the case set off alarm bells among U.S. security officials, because it illustrated the vulnerability of the U.S.-Mexico border.

· Two Arab men, Ali Safia and Can Azif--whose names scored hits on U.S. watch lists--arrived in Mexico City in the winter of 2003 on one-way tickets from Europe, reported the Dallas Morning News. While in Europe, they also had purchased one-way tickets for a flight from the western Mexican city of Culiacan to Los Angeles. The pair failed to show up for the flight and have not been seen since, the paper said.

· In mid-August, the Arizona Daily Star reported that officials had issued an alert for al-Qaeda cell leader Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, who they thought might cross from Mexico into the United States through Arizona or Texas. Two days later, the alert was jerked back. Maybe he's not coming after all, but Shukrijumah is still missing. A reward of up to $5 million is out for his capture.

Arab terrorists 'are getting into the US over Mexican border'
By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 15/08/2004)

Over the past month, border agents from Arizona and Texas have anonymously reported recent encounters with dozens of Arab men, who have made their way across the 2,000-mile Mexican border.

Patrol agents told one Arizona newspaper that 77 males "of Middle Eastern descent" were apprehended in June in two separate incidents. All were trekking through the Chiricahua mountains and are believed to have been part of a larger group of illegal immigrants. Many were released pending immigration hearings. According to Solomon Ortiz, the Congressman for Corpus Christi in Texas, similar incidents are "happening all over the place. It's very, very scary".

Investigators: Terrorist Alley
First aired August 13, 2004 at 11:00PM MST

In August, The Investigators on Eyewitness News 4 first reported the possible threat of terrorists crossing the Arizona/Mexico border into the U.S. Now, we've uncovered more evidence the threat along our border is real.

Illegals from terrorist nations are crossing the border into Arizona.

Tom McNamara and the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators have spent the last three months talking to experts and eyewitnesses.

The stories are compelling and the evidence is frightening, and just this week, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report showing that the problem is worse than anyone thought.

Here's what the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators uncovered.

"It's a Muslim prayer blanket. It was found about a mile and a half west from the Douglas port of entry in 2001."...

Al Qaeda-Linked Middle Eastern Men Infiltrating Via Southern Border, Using Fake Mexican ID, Names
John and Ken Show, KFI AM640, Los Angeles | July 16, 2004 | John Jorsett (me)

Posted on 07/16/2004 5:51:28 PM PDT by John Jorsett

Congressman John Culberson (R - TX), speaking on the John and Ken show in Los Angeles, tells the hosts that he's now authorized, for the first time anywhere, to disclose that Middle Eastern men with Al Qaeda links have been mixing with the stream of illegal aliens coming in via the Southern US border. Having changed their names from Islamic to Hispanic ones, and having obtained authentic Mexican Matricula Consular ID cards using faked Mexican birth certificates, the men are paying up to $30,000 to obtain entry into the US among the flow of Hispanic illegal aliens crossing....

Border Security: Apprehensions of "Other Than Mexican"Aliens [PDF FILE]

"According to a Border Patrol spokesman from the Del Rio Sector, 'word is out that we are unable to detain the other than Mexican crossers, and they are exploiting a bottleneck in the system.'"

* * *

Over the past three years, OTM apprehensions have more than tripled nationwide and have been concentrated along the South Texas border. The reasons for this dramatic increase, and its geographical concentration in Texas, are not altogether clear. [ONLY TO IDYOTS and PRO OBL]

[The South Texan]

Ver good read

[catholicfreeper]

So right about the threat of the "immigration only" people. I have noticed so many threads that have nothing to do with immigration turn into anti illegal immigration threads. Its like there is some conspiracy afoot to flood conservative alt media and take it by force. We have seen many of these folks call for Bush's impeachment for goodness sake.

This article makes a great case for what I have believed for some time. If people have a problem with Bush on immigration then I must say he never hid his position from them. Its time after this immigration debate ends and we have some sort of conclusion for all to get behind this President.

[nicmarlo]

I just don't think that it's something we didn't know about Pres. Bush in 2004. I think his stand on illegal immigration has been clear for quite awhile, much to many's dismay.

He's supposed to have the BEST INTERESTS of AMERICA FIRST. Not HIS agenda. Things have changed. Much to MY DISMAY, he isn't. He's bound and determined to continue to let in millions of illegal aliens, including terrorists.

It only took 19 Middle Easterners, who were all here illegally (whether through false or expired documents), to kill thousands of Americans.

I'm not giving Bush a pass. It's a shame so many Americans are so willing to sacrifice innocent American lives, American jobs, its health care system, education, Social Security benefits, and law enforcement officers to further their blind idolation of a man.

[Muleteam1]

>>I am a lot less concerned about Mexicans than I am about Muslims.<<

Amen to that!