http://www.lakelandtimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=10&SubsectionID=10&ArticleID=28986President Obama, President Bush: We owe you a very big thank you
It's not often we give a big thanks to President Barack Obama or former President George W. Bush, but this week we feel we have to give credit where credit is due.
That's because the hallmark of both administrations is and was massive, naked political corruption. With Bush, it was shameless giveaways to big-business cronies and other special interests; with Obama, it's an ideological depravity of the worst sort, a disdain for American values and constitutional principles.
Both were a disgrace to the office they were elected to, but there is a silver lining. Because their offenses and sell outs were so egregious and public and brazen, they exposed not only themselves but the global establishment within which both have worked against America.
They were partners in crime, so to speak, and their tenures in the Oval Office only demonstrated what they and their allies and their political parties really are.
You know the old saying that there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, used mostly by the Left. Well, it turned out to be true, and it took Obama and Bush to confirm it.
We have written before about the unholy alliance of big business, big unions, special-interest identity groups and bureaucrats who thumb their noses at the American people, and for the past 16 years they have had Bush and Obama to lead them.
Both delivered the same result, achieved with different rhetoric and tactics.
Bush, of course, was the self-proclaimed champion of "compassionate conservatism," which turned out to be neither conservative nor compassionate. Just ask the middle class he kicked and gouged almost to death.
Compassionate conservatism meant pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants; it meant expanding the scope of executive discretion in deporting illegal immigrants - just like Obama - it meant temporary work authorizations for many instead of deportation and, oh yeah, it meant lost jobs for Americans and huge sleazy profits for big businesses looking for low-wage labor.
Compassionate conservatism meant cozying up to global-warming interests, even as Bush took powder-puff public steps opposing climate-change orthodoxy. He opposed the Kyoto Protocols, a meaningless gesture, but, behind the scenes in 2007, he helped the United Nations lay the groundwork for the recent Paris Accords, when he quietly agreed to enter negotiations for a new global treaty.
Those Paris Accords mean billions in the pockets of big businesses that profit by shifting jobs overseas to developing countries, which are still allowed to pollute for years to come. And billions in the pockets of the crony class mean billions less in the pockets of the middle class.
Meanwhile, Obama wasn't about compassionate conservatism; his mantra was hope and change. He was pandering to different voting constituencies but the result was always the same - policies that enhanced and preserved the global establishment.
On amnesty and immigration enforcement: Ditto with Bush. On climate change: Bush laid the groundwork for Paris and Obama closed the deal. On the regulatory state: Both expanded it significantly.
And what about the ultimate firewall against globalist hegemony: the United States Constitution, which preserves the power of the states and the liberty of individual citizens?
Obama has obviously fed the constitution to the shredder with his endless string of executive orders, but Bush wasn't much better, even if his rhetoric was.
For example, as the Cato Institute pointed out in 2006, Bush signed the McCain-Feingold bill to regulate and ration political speech; protesters at his appearances were often fenced off in "free speech zones" (funny, we thought the United States was a free-speech zone); the president proclaimed that he had unilateral executive authority over questions of war and peace, and the power to designate American citizens as "enemy combatants" and lock them up without charges - not so coincidentally, the very same power Obama has claimed.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Again, the rhetoric was different, but they served two wings of the same global establishment. Bush was the handmaiden of crony big businesses feeding at the trough of big government and profiteering by the billions in the global-warming racket, not to mention of the military-industrial complex; Obama was the slap-happy ally of partisan bureaucrats and ideological one-worlders and their assorted identity groups.
Soon enough, though, saying one thing and doing the exact opposite was bound to catch up with Bush, and the greasy hypocrisy could not be long hidden. So Bush beget Obama, and he probably didn't care too much that he did.
Over time, though, the same thing has happened with Obama. With his hatred of America values and culture, with Obamacare, with his amnesty and lawlessness in immigration, with his income redistribution and climate-change policies - all this has turned the broad middle class into a sprawling economic ghost town, and what's left of it is miserable.
Just like with Bush's hypocrisy, it's hard to hide empty ghost towns. These days, hope and change is but a tumbling tumbleweed in the desert.
But again, we thank these two for their brazen contempt for the constitution, for their personal lack of honesty and ethics in government, for their shameless pandering to special interests.
We thank them because, just as Bush beget Obama, Obama and Bush have beget the 2016 presidential campaign and an authentic revolt against the establishments of both political parties.
The string of wins by Bernie Sanders against the hopelessly propped-up Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's evisceration of the GOP establishment bosses are the direct result of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
We have them to thank for opening all our eyes to the fact that both party establishments are corrupt, and they are both part of the same global governance network.
It's too soon to say how this election will work out. As of this writing, Democrats are stealing delegates from Sanders, and Republicans are stealing delegates from Trump, and the mainstream press is trying to put out the fires of the revolution with a daily dousing of propaganda.
It won't work. The establishments of both parties must go, or the voters will themselves simply dispense with the two parties, and that is the fact whether Trump or Sanders win or not.
So thank you, Obama and Bush, for helping us rid the nation of your kind, once and for all.
