Somewhere in this blog, I said that Bush might as well win in 2004, since this Presidential term is guaranteed to be a disaster.
How right I was.
Even the chief apologist for the Bushites, Alan Greenspan, perhaps mindful of his legacy, has FINALLY tut-tutted the gigantic deficit that this Presidency has created.
The savings rate in the United States is now 0%. That’s right, 0. Just in time for the new bankruptcy law to go into effect, thus guaranteeing even less of a safety net for families suffering from lay-offs or unexpected medical expenses (more about this below).
Hurricane Katrina is wreaking havoc with the oil refineries in the Gulf (of Mexico, not the Persian), thus guaranteeing 18% increases in heating oil and natural gas this winter, not to mention $3/gallon gasoline.
Katrina may be only the beginning: NOAA is predicting twice the average number of hurricanes for the season, which doesn’t end until October.
Bush’s popularity rating (if one can call it such) is now at 40% in the latest Harris poll. As noted on ThinkProgress.org, that compares to Nixon’s 39% in July 1993, when the Watergate scandal was reaching a head (the Senate Watergate Committee had convened in May).
High oil prices are a disaster in ways the press doesn’t even talk about:
builders and homeowners – roofing materials and driveways are made of oil-based products;
municipalities – think about gas guzzlers like school busses, police cars, snow plows, fire engines;
hospitals – they have utility costs like any other large facility, but what about petroleum-based plastics that are used for everything from disposable gloves to pacemakers?
My gosh, we’ll be spending $10 for a box of Glad Wrap by the time this is done, never mind medical supplies – they might become the biggest line items on a hospital bill.
Meanwhile, the nut-cases in Congress are talking about making the repeal of the estate tax permanent while cutting aid to college students. A normally sensible man like John McCain and the predictably befuddled Ted Kennedy want to give amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens as “guestworkers”, plus invite in a few more. George Bush is trying to decide if we have reached enough of a crisis to release the country’s oil reserves, or maybe he and Karl Rove are working on his next attempt to “catapult the propaganda”.
I tell you, it’s enough to make even a strong woman weep.