In not the so distant future President Bush will become an ex-President and will begin the fade into history. Its a fact that after a President leaves office they tend to be better liked. Will George W. Bush receive the same respect as say a George H. Bush? What really will be his legacy? Can we ever like George W. Bush regular citizen?

George W seems to be heading down a road that no other ex-President has ever been in (not to this extent), he is a US president who is leaving a country in worse shape than what he received. We live in a society where our rights, security, and constitutional freedoms have actually diminished on his watch. High Levels of corruption. We have lost giant chunks of major cities such as New York and New Orleans. Lost one space shuttle. Our economy is struggling with huge energy costs and job uncertainty. A out of control deficit. We are also in a quagmire with the Iraq occupation (let’s face it no longer a war).

How could anyone recover from the failures of this administration? If public service is the job how can he go to sleep thinking that he was able to serve the US people in the 8 years he was in office?

Immigration seems to be a new rallying point for the Republicans lately. The biggest idea that they can come up with is building a wall, recording the illegal alien in a computer system, and then trucking them all back to Mexico. The first illogical thing that many people think is that by building a wall along the border you will be able to keep illegal immigrants from coming across the border. This tends to defy logic by miles figuratively and in reality. The border is not just a line on a map, anyone that has visited the border will tell you that the area is massive not just an easily drawn line across the border. In many places the border crosses right through the middle towns. A wall is not a realistic solution to the illegal immigration issue. Also walls without watching will be breached. If someone is willing to walk or be trucked for miles in the desert to cross the border how much is a fence going to slow them down? Second, the system to record illegals is already out of date and inadequate to capture and validate illegal aliens. The system is run and maintained by the government, who can barely maintain their current systems without spending billions of dollars, and still not having the kind of relational data on felons that they need to make decisions on people residing in the country. The third issue is that somehow all of these illegal aliens must somehow return to their country of origin and then wait up to 13 years to be processed? What exactly is in it for the illegal alien to go through the system?

The real deal is that people are coming to the US not to escape some kind persecution, they are escaping the financial disaster that is Mexico. With massive unemployment of Mexican agricultural and unskilled workers, illegal immigration to the U.S. remains the rational option for many of Mexico’s unemployed. The incentives are irresistible: in the U.S., the average illegal makes about $60/day. The same workers make about $5/day in Mexico,when they can find jobs. So what would keep people from crossing the border? Money. With over 1.2 Trillion dollars being spent in Iraq to rebuild a country that doesn’t want to be rebuilt, if we were to invest in Mexico the kind of money we spend in Iraq immigration and our security would be greatly enhanced. Really think about it, the country that is a buffer to our very border has degraded into a wasteland and we spend money on a country 6000 miles away, these are just bad choices and twisted priorities. It’s time that we fix the problem not apply expensive bandaids.

Well if you watched the Republican debate yesterday all hope must be dashed for Mitt Romney. Mitt fit right in with the crazy bumbling white guy crowd. His answers were so off Wolf was forced to repeat the question to the next candidate in order not to confuse any of the other crazy white guys. I was hoping for more than just babbling about trading with China when asked what George Bush’s biggest mistake was. It was one of those moments that you just cannot fathom how any of these candidates could cope in a job that requires the attention on more than one question at a time. He seems to lack not just a well formed answers he actually had no original ideas. If the Republican party is looking to fill George W’s shoes they have found the empty vessel to do so. Unfortunetally I don’t think the Republican party can withstand one more Republican canidate without answers. If he gets the nomination it will not be because he has all of the answers but rather he has someone else’s answers. We don’t know where he stands on anything but he sure loves to trade with China.

Remember this picture? You should, this is after the war was won, however we haven’t left just yet. The rhetoric of the Republican party right now is one that states, “if we are defeated in Iraq they will follow us home”. The problem is not only are we not defeated we have already accomplished our mission, so why are we there? The Republicans have backed themselves into a box with the withdrawal equals defeat issue. If they simply would have said “we win” and went home they could have celebrated their “war on terror” as a victory. Instead we are stuck in Iraq with no real realistic benchmark for when the war is won. Surely the war needs to be won or lost at some point right? That whole model of a war on terrorism means we fight until there are no terrorists. Okay then what is a terrorist and how exactly do we know that they are no longer a threat? The same grey area that let the Bush administration go to war at will keeps them embattled in a battle they no longer want.” Mission Accomplished” indeed.