Would it matter if, through private recordings or whathaveyou, we found out that Obama in his personal life is an extremely kind-hearted man, that he’s nice to his kids, wife and dogs, and that he adores the USA? As an employer, if your employee is doing a poor job, and will continue to do a poor job regardless of what you do or tell him, does it matter whether it’s because he is sabatoging your company because he’s being paid to by your competitors, or simply because he’s incompetent? The President is my employee, and yours as well: we would be derelict in our duty as managers to the shareholders (i.e., past, present and future citizens) if we treat the situations as different when both impact the bottom line similarly. There is truth in the saying that incompetence is, at its higher levels, the functional equivalent of malevolence.

I’m not inclined to see Obama as particularly enamored of the US, a particularly kind-hearted individual, or any of the nonsense that I posted above, but in all honesty I hold more respect for someone who is upfront about his hatred of the US and what it stands for, than someone who, while in authority, fecklessly stands by and allows the destruction of something he purportedly loves, or even helps out in its demise out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. McCain-Feingold, by Pres Bush’s own words, was blatantly un-Constitutional. He promised us a veto if it, or its iterations, got to his desk. When the time came for him to prove his love of the country and what it stood for by protecting the Constitution from McCain-Feingold, he signed the bill. The story of President Bush’s presidency reads like that: rather than at least attempt a return to Constitutional governance, Pres Bush chose to either go with the flow or campaign on dismantling Constitutional governance even further.

I’m certainly not asking you or anyone else to demonize Pres Bush. If I had to vouch for one or the other, I 100% agree with you that President Bush is the better man, and the better American. I’m also not asking you to agree with my second paragraph vis a vis respect — that’s purely my subjective opinion, and not something that I or anyone else should use as a guide for voting. I *am* hoping that a few of the Bush fans will look and realize that, even if they had different motivations, Bush and Obama were both taking us down the road to hell (which I hear is paved with a lot of what President Bush had). Obama may be ramping up the acceleration, but the direction is the same, regardless of what the intent was.

Obama should be kicked to the curb, and you and I (and several others on RS) accurately called him as a red (as in May Day red) Chicago pol even worse than Hillary Clinton. I’ve just gotten to the point of not caring what the motivations of individual politicians are, and what their reason for violating the Constitution is: Lord knows none of them care what our reasons for breaking their dumb, poorly thought-out laws are. I don’t need to tell you this, since you’ve been consistent in calling out Bush when he’s been wrong in the past. This is meant for the more partisan among us, who on the one hand (rightly) view Obama as a terrible, liberty-eroding President, and on the other wish we had a third Bush term for reasons having nothing to do with whether he did a good job when we employed him, and everything to do with whether he was a nice guy or cared about America while he was expanding Medicare, strangling business and increasing the power of the federal government over our lives.

Bush 2.0 was a chip off the old block. He won the Texas Governorship largely through his father’s connections, and retained most of the friendships that his father made by working and living in the East Corridor.

but it’s far from controversial to note that Bush 2.0 was far from an insurgent candidate, either in his rise in Texas politics or any of his other political endeavors. His dad’s name had a lot of cachet, many of his dad’s friends and advisors were his advisors, and there was a good deal of “insider” support for Bush. Both Bush and McCain had their insiders in the 2000 primary, and neither was “outsider” material.

then I completely agree. Conspiracy theories are silly, whether they involve Mr Bush, Obama or anyone else.