Jeb Bush, another moron throws his hat in the ring

The comedy of errors

And they say the Iranian Mullah's are a threat to world peace.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

You can sure understand why Americans hate politicians so much.  Bush the imbecile II, the younger brother of the war criminal George W Bush would like to keep the family dynasty going and increase the riches of the Bush family in the process.

Jeb Bush would like to be the next Republican president of the United States and he’s already got his knickers-----and no doubt his knackers------ in a twist. It’s nice to see them struggle when they have to face the public and the script has not been fully developed, but at the same time, it makes me seethe with anger as these insane market madmen wreak such havoc and violence on the populations of the world and the environment along with us.

Poor old Jeb has been in hot water all week for his in brain out mouth comments.  First, he was asked in a Fox News interview last Monday whether or not he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq given what we know now, that the claim Hussein had WMD’s was false. “I would have” said Jeb with all the confidence of someone who is sending someone else’s son or daughter in to conflict.

His handlers immediately had a word with him and the next day he responded that he, “Interpreted the question wrong, I guess,”. That’s better than wrongly interpreting the warning messages for incoming nuclear warheads I suppose. But he still never said whether he would have done anything differently than his imbecile brother did, regardless of the information that came to light.

The politicos in the other Wall Street party saw a weakness and waded in calling poor old Jeb the “Undecider”. Ouch!

So after his handlers tried again to steer him in the right direction Jeb came back Wednesday with more gobbledygook. He refused to deal with the issue again and hoped that an attack on Barack Obama might take the heat off. Better still, he would play the old patriotism and love for the troops card. “Going back in time and talking about hypotheticals, what would have happened, what could have happened, I think it does a disservice to them,”, he told an audience in Reno Nevada. (my added emphasis)

Bush added that, “What we want to be focusing on are the lessons learned.…I think the focus should be on that, on the future.”

The politicians of the 1% are in permanent campaign mode between bombing runs of course. The elections, between candidates representing the 1% and other candidates representing the 1% are a farce.  There are differences of course.  The Republican Party has fascistic elements in it and religious fanatics, a sort of US Taliban. The Democrats have their wishy washy whining about being fair and all that and their share of corrupt characters not to mention the Clintons, both of them bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs.   The trade union leadership also supply this party with lots of s’ money in return for a slightly less aggressive assault on their members, the source of the funds.

And we wonder why millions of Americans have abandoned the political process completely. Not only that, but there is a hatred fort all politicians and politics, no matter what the form or character of the participants which, while understandable given the pathetic choices we have, , is a serious mistake.

But nothing is more cynical than these politicians of the 1% claiming any love for working people. Bush says that he called, “…at least 100 people whose relatives have died” the Wall Street Journal reported this week.  What contempt these characters have for working people when we think about it.  They are launching an all out assault on living standards but Bush claims he doesn’t want to do a “disservice” to the families of young people killed in their corporate wars? 

As for lessons learned, it is us that should learn the lesson that neither of these parties represent the interests of American workers or the middle class. The reality is that those that have died in these wars have died for nought.  But of course, Bush can’t say that. He can’t admit to the families of slain Americans that we were conned, that US military ventures have nothing to do with defending our freedoms, the freedoms both parties are undermining.  And what would they say to the millions of victims whose children have been slaughtered, homes destroyed, country bombed in to antiquity in order to make the world safe for US capitalism?

The fact is that the world is less safe despite Bush and others claiming one million or so Iraqi lives are justified as the world is safer without the US’s old friend Saddam Hussein.

They do fool some though.  At the town hall meeting in Reno one attendee defends Bush, “He’s going to take a million questions, and there may be one or two that he flubs, but I’m not going to hold it against him,”, he adds that as far as he is concerned, “I think the jury is still out on Iraq.”

If he’s like most Americans he probably couldn’t point to Iraq on a map prior to the invasions. And what jury is he talking about?  The Iraqi jury is very clear that the US invasions have meant nothing but a horrific and violent experience for them. 

Another guy who confronted Bush in Reno didn’t let Bush off the hook, “Of course the war was a mistake,” he said. “Iran was the threat, and it’s still the threat.”, he tells the WSJ.  It’s not exactly rocket science to draw the conclusion that the Iraq invasion was not just a mistake but a war crime, but he then spouts parrot fashion the same US state department line on Iran.

We can prepare ourselves for a lot of personal slagging one another off and thirty-second sound bites over the next 18 months that millions of Americans will simply shut out. The candidates shirtsleeves will be pulled up, ties loosened, baseball caps will be dragged out of the closet as the representatives of billionaires, some of them millionaires in their own right aim to convince the electorate they’re just ordinary folk.  Bernie Sanders has no chance of getting the Democratic Party nomination for president and knows that. He taps in to the anger they all know lies beneath the surface of US society and hopes he can stir up the Democratic Party left wing enough to push Hilary to the left a bit. Sanders will be telling us to vote for the Democratic candidate in November.

Democrats and Republicans are very confident as the working class has nowhere to go politically. We have no party, no real alternative at all. The huge exodus from political life is actually a protest in itself. It’s not the best protest but it’s not simply apathy, or that Americans don’t care.  An important aspect of building a united national direct action movement against the capitalist offensive is a political force independent of Wall Street and the 1% arising out of it.

Meanwhile, after these elections are over, the process will begin anew in preparation for the next circus.