Repost: “Bush Success” DVD Contest continues.

September 1, 2006 by mugsy.

Last month, almost tongue-in-cheek, I decided to see if ANYONE could name JUST ONE positive policy success to come out of the Bush Administration in its six years, and win a free DVD paid for by me (out-of-pocket as I have no advertisers).

I posted my contest idea on “Democratic Underground“, which quickly revealed that no one else could think of a sucessful Bush policy, either.

The meme is quickly spreading. I just heard someone challange Washington Times conservative columnist Tony Blankley visiting “Air America Radio” to answer this very question, and he basically couldn’t do it either (I’ll get the audio, but he said, “better economy… but only since 2001… and taking terrorism seriously… which we all know has been a “catastrophic success”). That’s the best even a major Bush supporter can come up with!

THINK ABOUT THAT… in more than SIX YEARS, people can not name EVEN ONE success to come out of this White House! That’s astonishing.

The meme also reached Tom Tomorrow’s comic-strip:

So I’ve decided to keep the contest going. I will repost this contest announcement at the start of every month until the November election. First indisputable answer wins. And if no one can come up with even a reasonably arguable answer, I may just extend the contest till the end of his term (SO GREAT is my confidence that no sucessful policy is likely to emerge in that time).
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On Monday, August 21, President Bush conceded once again that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, yet, according to him, invading that country was necessary to stop an “emerging threat”. How exactly a country with no “weapons of mass destruction”, that had been disarmed by years of intrusive inspections and careful monitoring, was “a threat” isn’t clear. And any argument that we “liberated” the Iraqi people from the oppression of Saddam falls flat in the wake of the daily violence, tens of thousands dead and a raging civil war that has gripped that country since we invaded almost four years ago. I never really bought that “justification” anyway because, as far as I’m aware, Saddam didn’t set up roadblocks at the borders to stop people from leaving. If life under Saddam was bad, apparently, it was tolerable because the only mass exodus of Iraqi’s was the Kurds that moved into Northern Iraq to live under the protection of the U.S. “No Fly Zone”.

The invasion of the first of three countries in Bush’s “Axis of Evil” has reinvigorated the nuclear aspirations of the other two. Iran’s stock is soaring while the U.S. and Israel’s are sinking like a stone. Al-Qaeda is larger, more widespread, more proficient and more admired in the Muslim world than ever before, and now, the Bush Administration has even managed to make Hezbollah look “heroic” and “respectable” in the wake of last weeks bombing.

Unrest in the Middle East due to Bush’s aggression has sent oil prices skyrocketing, making these Arab dictatorships and theocracies absurdly wealthy. It is American oil dollars that allows Iran to help Hezbollah in looking like the benevolent savior of the Lebanese people.

Even those few things that some people may begrudgingly give the Bush Administration credit for… fighting AIDS in Africa for example, suffer from stipulations that those African nations may not use that money to purchase cheaper generic drugs to help more people for the same money, or distribute condoms to help prevent spread of the disease, because the Religious Right would scream bloody murder if they did.

And “No Child Left Behind“, their educational program, is under-funded, discourages critical thinking and innovation by forcing students to memorize stale facts and figures, then ties those performance results to funding, providing schools with incentive to cheat, fudging scores and declaring an inordinate number of students to be “challenged” and exempting all but their brightest students from those very tests.

Add to that an exploding national debt and a “War on Terror” that even Bush himself admits has been a complete and total failure, I issue my challenge:

Name JUST ONE thing the Bush Administration has done right and WIN A DVD, your choice:

o “Why We Fight” - a documentary on Republican President Eisenhower’s parting words regarding the growing “military industrial complex” he saw coming in the wake of World War II.

o Syriana - Four intertwining stories revolving around the merger of two fictional oil conglomerates in the United States and their involvement in the Middle East.

o All the Presidents’ Men - The quintessential political docu-drama about Wordward & Bernstein uncovering the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon Administration.

o “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” - Documentary about the most catastrophic corporate meltdown in history.

o “V for Vendetta” - From the creators of The Matrix, the 2006 hit movie set in England about a vigilante that seeks revenge on the fascist dictatorship that destroyed his life and ruined his country.

Post a comment if you have an answer. First irrefutable answer wins. (”success” here is defined as a positive outcome from a positive agenda put forth by the Bush Administration.)

Contest ends election day, November 2, 2006.

PS: Special props to “ClassWarrior” on the DU message board for coming up with the best contender so far: declaring 3.5 million acres of reefs 1,200 miles NorthWest of Hawaii last year as “protected” land. Definite props to the Bush Admin here, but lacks only in that the overal enviornmental policy of the Bush Administration in balance has been destructive: wanting to drill in ANWR, the “Clear Skies Initiative” and other horrendous environmental policies. And as I noted, “if oil was found there tomorrow, do you have any doubt they’d retract its status tomorrow?” Props anyway for this deserving answer.)

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