Harold L. Householder – 2/20/06

This page was last updated on February 25, 2006.

Don’t listen to Bush; Harold L. Householder; Beaver County Times; February 20, 2006.

This is mostly a rehash of a Householder letter from October 2004.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“To listen to President Bush, you would believe he is the salvation of the free world.”

[RWC] When has anyone ever heard President Bush take credit for anything?

“The truth is he was a failure at whatever he started in private life. Now that he has made politics his life, he has the brilliance of Karl Rove to put a positive spin on his failures in government.”

[RWC] I thought Dick Cheney was the puppet master. <g>

“Don’t forget the 9-11 attacks happened with plenty of warnings it was coming on his watch. Then he took us into a war with no end in sight just because he, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted that war even before 9-11. There were no WMDs and no al Qaida in Iraq before we went there.”

[RWC] Oh man, the “Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand” delusion again! I wonder if Mr. Householder sincerely believes that President Bush et al really wanted a war. How would you come to such a conclusion?

“No al Qaida in Iraq before we went there?” Even if we ignore all the evidence to the contrary, does Mr. Householder expect us to believe al-Qaida was in every country in the world – including the U.S. – except Iraq? Besides, al-Qaida was not the reason we went into Iraq.

“We are losing the lives of our military personnel, and we will lose lives here because this war is draining money we could have used for health care, research, environmental protection, education, energy efficiency, etc. Bush says we cannot back out on our commitment to Iraq or we will lose our credibility worldwide.”

[RWC] Now we’re getting to the matter. Mr. Householder is a socialist and wants my money spent on extraconstitutional boondoggles. Read the U.S. Constitution and you find providing national security is a responsibility. The Constitution doesn’t mention any of the items in Mr. Householder’s list.

“However, it isn’t our commitment; it was his - based on lies.”

[RWC] Here’s the way it works, Mr. Householder. Any president’s commitments are our commitments.

Though important, credibility is a secondary reason. If President Bush believed immediately pulling out of Iraq would help or not hurt our national security, I believe we’d be out of Iraq.

After reading his screeds, I get a hoot out of Mr. Householder talking about “lies.” You’ll note he provides no evidence, unless he believes acting in good faith with the best information available is the same as lying. If this is lying, quite a few members of Mr. Householder’s probable party also “lied.”

“The Bush administration is the most bought-and-paid-for by special interest money in our history. One example is his Medicare drug program pushed through by Tom Delay and drug company lobbyists and buckets of drug company money. A normal 15-minute vote lasted three hours while Delay threatened moderate Republicans to vote for a bill that was to cost $395 billion but now has ballooned to over $700 billion, most going to drug companies, HMOs, and insurance companies.”

[RWC] I’d be willing to bet Mr. Householder would be singing praises if a Democrat president and Democrat majority Congress had passed exactly the same monstrosity.

Here’s a question for Mr. Householder and other who claim most of the money spent on the prescription drug program will go to drug companies. If you were spending money on prescription drugs, from whom would you buy the drugs if not from drug companies? If the money doesn’t go to the business providing the drugs and related services, to whom should it go?

“Another example is an energy policy written in secret by energy company executives and Cheney that give tax breaks and subsidies worth billions while Exxon makes $31.5 billion profits in 2005.”

[RWC] All that was secret were the working papers of the team and the Supreme Court upheld that procedure. The energy policy recommendations were published in early 2001. An energy bill was not passed until 2005 and its provisions are also part of the public record. There’s no question the oil and gas industry needs no incentives and they should have been cut. President Bush said the same thing, though he did not veto the bill.

“Don’t forget that Rick Santorum and Melissa Hart were with Bush in all he has done for his cronies and against us. We can vote them out in November.”

[RWC] Technically we can’t vote out anyone. We can only vote someone in.