"The best one we've had so far"

I was eating at a taquaria in Pasadena, Texas yesterday with my boss, Larry, and two of his other employees. There was a picture of "The Mexican Elvis" on the wall; I didn't catch what his name was but the story about his alleged assassination by a past Mexican president led Larry to start talking about how "everyone wants to hang Bush". He actually said that President Bush is the best president that our country has had so far! Then he went on about how we should ANNEX ALL OF MEXICO.

He didn't explain why Bush is the best, so I'll explain why Bush is the worst.

1. The tax cuts that "help the economy" are really only helping the corporate elites who benefit from them the most. A glance at some of the numbers may tell you that the economy is strong right now, but a glance at any current personal bankruptcy statistic will show you that something is very wrong. If the economy is doing so well, why are so many people filing for bankruptcy these days? Why hasn't the minimum wage increased since 1997?

2. King George has changed the purpose of the war in Iraq twice now. Before 9/11, he was perpared to go to war because of the whole "No Fly Zone" thing. Immediately after 9/11, Iraq was supposedly stocking up on nukes. Now after thousands of our troops have already died not to mention a countless amount of Iraqi civilians, we're there to "promote democracy" in the region or "restore peace/freedom/stability", whichever sounds right at the time. How he has gotten away with this is completely beyond me.

3. His first veto of his career squelched research that could likely find cures or treatments to currently incurable diseases. His explanation was that stem cell research kills innocent life, even though the research would be done on stem cells that were never going to live in the first place.

4. Lets not forget that whole "Mission Accomplished" fiasco. That was just stupid. (He's the first president to appear in military uniform while in office, only preceded elsewhere by people like Castro and other totalitarian types).

5. He has not shown any kind of concern about the coruption of the Mexican government--corruption which forces so many Mexicans to flee here (sometimes legally). In fact, Bush's relationship with Vicente Fox (Mexico's current president) is quite a friendly one.

6. His administration's shaky consistency on getting permission for domestic wire tapping (which has always been approved when they actually ask for it) is suspicious at best.

7. His old "Axis of Evil" remarks jeopardized relations between South and North Korea, as well as secular progress in Iran. There was a tremendous amout of normalization being made, but North Korea shut its doors to the South after Bush put them in his Axis of Evil. Also, many people in Iran were becoming religiously tolerant and non-violent, but after Bush's remarks they fled back to the Ayatollas and other Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

Need I go on? You could find just as many bad things about every president that we've had, but in no way could anyone in their right mind truely believe that Bush has been the best.