Hippies?

Justin,

To begin with, Justin, I think that you are not only being political when it comes to Mr. Garamendi's comments, but that you are political on most things that we talk about. But this is not bad thing to be. It means (at least to me) that you are engaged in the topics and take you take stances based on rational conclusions.

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I didn't realized that I made any sort of comparison between you and hippies. In fact I'm not sure that I've made any accusations against you about anything.

But I am more than happy to respond to things that you think are directly Bush's fault:

1. Turkey vs. the PKK

I didn't realized that Bush was responsible for a conflict that was created by the Treaty of Versailles. Now I guess that you could state that Bush's policies liberated the Kurds from Arab domination and therefore caused national Marxist groups like the PKK to become more brazen in their attacks against the Turks (and coincidentally against the Syrians and Iranians). But there is one caveat to that; It was the no-fly zones of the 90s that gave Kurds in Iraq their autonomy, and the PKK has had northern Iraq as a home base there ever since. So Bush is not directly responsible for this situation, but could have possibly added to it.

2. The ice caps

I didn't realized that Bush is directly responsible for global-warming. I understand political attacks on Bush by environmentalists over policy issues. I understand Democrats attacking Bush on global warming to score political points with liberal constituents. But I can't believe that Bush is solely and direct responsible fore the recession of the ice caps. If the scientists are correct then this melting has been going on for quite some time. And I believe that there is a great deal of earth science left to be understood before we have a full scope on global warming.

3. NG equipment and natural disasters

Now this one I will give you. A great deal of equipment is in Iraq. And the NG and reservist depots are much below there normal capacities. But I don't think that we need military equipment to fight fires. I think that we need fire hoses, and fire trucks, and perhaps some of those helicopters that can scoop up a bunch of water from a lake and dump it on a fire.

4. Cold people

I'm unsure what you mean by this. I'm guessing that you think that Bush wants poor families to be cold (as in a continuation of poverty so that they can't afford to heat their homes). This one definitely needs some elaboration.

5. Missing bin Laden

Is Bush solely responsible for not catching bin Laden? I don't know, and neither do you.

6. The cost of war

You are partially correct. Bush is only a piece in the governmental budgetary process. The current process is based on the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (from a Congressional standpoint). This act set up a relationship between appropriating and authorizing committees, and created a budget committee to keep things in order. For the executive branches side, I believe it was during the Hoover administration that the White House for the first time began to send joint budgets to Congress, up until then each department would send budgets to the Hill independently of each other.

But to get back to your point.... yes Bush has responsibility for the cost of the War in Iraq, but he is by no means directly responsible.

7. Hack job science

Once again I need more elaboration.