Mandate from the people? I think not.

I do believe American voters have given Bush what is called in technical terms 'what-for.' The House of Representatives was lost, more than half of the states in the US are run by Democratic governors, and the Senate looks like it will end up 49 Democrat, 49 Republican, 2 Independent (both of whom are liberal).

This is good for a number of reasons - first and foremost, it repudiates every claim George Dubya made in the past few months during election madness. He is clearly not in control of what's happening in Iraq, and pretending that he is merely makes him look inept and stupid. He also isn't acting like a real Republican (in terms of being a fiscal conservative) which is helping him alienate many members of his own party.

One of the most important claims that was refuted in the past few months was in a report that I mentioned in a previous blog that pointed out that the invasion of Iraq did not, in real terms, make the US safer from terrorist threat and that the war was being used as a rallying point for insurgents and terrorists. This is something Bush denied, but is quite clearly happening.

One of the things that made me most angry during the past few weeks (and Bush always has just the right mix of ignorance and confidence to be extremely upsetting) was the hullabaloo over John Kerry's botched joke. It was meant as a critique of the president, and in true Kerry fashion, he took every ounce of humor out of his little joke and then failed to deliver it properly. Republicans jumped on this saying Kerry was criticizing the troops when of course that's not what he meant to do at all.

I think it's extremely hypocritical of the President to criticize someone else for failing to respect our friends and family that are serving abroad. First, he's the one who is sending them to possible death, loss of limbs, and mental trauma. Second, he made JOKES about how the reasons for going into Iraq were patently untrue. He has failed at every instance to show respect for the men and women he is sending into harm's way, and he has the unmitigated gall to criticize someone who actually went to Vietnam instead of finding a way to stay at home because that particular veteran had his sense of humor surgically removed when he became a Senator.

George Bush deserved the set down he received from the American people. He needs to re-evaluate everything he has done from the beginning of his term, but more than likely he won't. After all, his policy is to 'stay the course' (or is it?) and he is 'the Decider.' Rather than showing that he has working brain cells and that he is concerned about the situation he has put our country and many other countries into in Iraq, he instead barrels on ahead as though everything is coming up roses. Let's all hope this will change in the last two years of his presidency, and let's all hope that he is able to do MUCH less damage in the next two years than he has caused in the past three.