What would you do BESIDES impeaching Chimp?

[jmowreader]

About once every three days, someone posts a thread "What would you do to fix America once the Dems regain power?"

And about once every three days, the thread gets at least fifty "impeach the bastard" responses.

I thoroughly agree. Impeaching Bush is of the utmost importance...but once he's gone, then what? The shit he broke is not self-mending.

For the purposes of this thread, come up with a way to fix America that does not involve removing George Bush from the White House.

[DS1]

1. Charge luxury SUV owners triple the toll amounts on the highway

and only allow them to pump 10 gallons of gasoline per stop.

With those revenues I will hire my own contigent of Blackwater Security, who will be set aside to do battle with anyone who wants to keep their machine guns.


Hey, guess I'm a Nazi after all :shrug:

[patrice]

5. Remove the tax write-offs on SUVs.

[enough already]

2. First thing I'd do is charge every last one of those bastards with treason

Everything else can wait.

[panader0]

3. Besides impeaching? Tar and feathering

[liberal N proud]

4. Put Cheney, bu$h, rummsfeld and rice in JAIL

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Replace him with a clone who would undo all he's done, ala "DAVE"

[Cooley Hurd]

13. I found your clone of *:

Too easy...:rofl:

[BrklynLiberal]

15. ROTFLMAO! Bet he would be a kinder, gentler Prezident!!!

[TomClash]

19. He's better looking than Bu** nt

[onehandle]

7. When the Dems take back Congress, smirk is automatically castrated.

Then a Democratic Congress starts undoing the policies that the previous Congress enacted.

Without Impeachment, that's what we'll have.

Bush can sit in his own feces for the next two years while he is simultaneously investigated and ignored.

[wordpix2]

12. add to that a penalty: all assets liquidated & returned to Treasury

including to a fund to help soldiers returning from Iraq with mental and physical problems---caused by these criminals' war. Halliburton, KBR, Carlyle Group, Blackwell, Big Oil must also pay penalty for their war profiteering

[Faygo Kid]

8. I fear there is no alternative. This side of revolution; perhaps secession

America is broken like it never has been in its history. We were wrecked in the Civil War, but we had Lincoln. We were destroyed by the Depression, but we had FDR. We now have not just the worst president ever, but one who actively advances the destruction of our nation and even the world. Some he does consciously; some he just believes in or goes along with, since he is so profoundly ignorant. Doesn't matter, at this point. Results are the same. This is bad. Very bad.

[LaurenG]

9. Oh wow there is so much to be done

Bring the troops home. Increase the minimum wage, institute health-care for all. We could start at the top and demote all Corporations to middle class citizen status and let them pay their own taxes, wages and health insurance, hold them accountable for every last 401-k $ and work on alternative energy sources starting now! I know it's a drop in the bucket but we have to start somewhere.

[NanceGreggs]

10. Demand repayment of every dime from Halliburton ...

... and other war profiteering companies.

Yes, EVERY DIME. They can then start submitting invoices, with documentation of proof, for every penny they have 'legitimately' spent of taxpayers' money. An oversight committee will then repay them for legitimate expenses that can be proven.

That move alone should bring billions of dollars back into the public coffers.

[pacalo]

11. For starters, I'd like to hear him apologize for misleading this country.

You know all those townhall meetings he likes to have, as long as he's assured that no questioner/fawner from the audience will hold him to account? After apologizing to the country, he could have a townhall meeting made up of every mother, father, wife, husband, & child that has lost a family member due to his selfish neocon aspirations.

Every audience member would have the opportunity to go to the mike & express their feelings to him, with no time constraints. Every tv station would be required to air it, for the country & the world to see.

He should then resign so that an effective leader can take his place to undo all of his damage.

[ClintonTyree]

14. Burn him!

You can burn the White House down with Bush inside. That way you wouldn't have to remove him. The place is so OLD anyway! :sarcasm: Hey, you needed at least one smart-ass in this thread. :shrug:

[Selatius]

16. Campaign finance reform: BAN ALL SPECIAL INTEREST MONEY

I don't care if it's coming from big labor unions or big business. It's got to go. I favor a clean election law for all federal races. If you are able to collect a set number of 5 dollar donations in your district, agree to abide by spending guidelines, and agree to forego any political donations by groups or individuals, then your election should be subsidized by taxpayer dollars and that you should be able to freely advertise your candidacy as a "clean" candidacy.

[cornermouse]

20. Agree.

I would also reset the districts to a normal, recognizable geometric shape and ban gerrymandering by any and all political parties.

[jmowreader]

22. This is good, but I'd like to take it a step farther

No negative campaign ads.

This will obviously mean the end of the Republican Party, and good riddance to them all. Republicans can't run a campaign without attacking constantly because they have no actual issues. Democrats tend to lose elections because they run on their merits. Republicans win because they attack Democrats. (John Kerry could have walked across Boston Harbor in the summer of 2004 and Bush's people would have run two attack ads: John Kerry can't swim, and John Kerry is so out of touch with the American voter he wears a haircut he won't get wet.) Someone once told me that Americans are "tired" of negative campaign ads. Oh really? I guess that's why people keep voting for the fuckers who run them, huh?

What did we hear about what Bush planned to do differently in his next term? Oh that's right, he didn't plan to do anything differently--he'd continue to spend money like a whole shipful of drunken sailors in a whorehouse, go on month-long vacations and lie through his teeth.

No special-interest money combined with no attack ads equals a 90-seat Democratic majority in six years. It can be no other way.

[cornermouse]

17. Send him back to Texas to live in disgrace, ignominy, and

ridicule for the rest of his life, unless the Hague asked for him to be handed over.

I guess I'm radical, because I would get rid of Homeland Security. I strongly suspect it is another expensive bureaucratic redundancy. We should have stuck with the FBI and CIA and worked at making them work better. Let's face it. Homeland Security isn't providing any better protection than the FBI and the CIA already did.

I would immediately undo the tax cuts for wealthy programs and start looking for ways to charge corporations their fair share of taxes starting with closing the offshore headquarters loophole. After all, what are they going to threaten us with? Outsourcing our jobs?

I would start an investigation into the oil company's charging methods and shutting down selected facility practices. Ditto with the electric companies.

I would get rid of NSA and I would also curtail the Pentagon's domestic spying program. I'd bring everyone home from Iraq and Afghanistan and cut the military budget back to the Clinton levels. I would then tell the Pentagon to live within their means. I would immediately end all those foolish and expensive "building a better bomb" and "star wars" programs. I would also restart that investigation into Halliburton and demand they repay money they were not entitled to for services which they did not perform.

I would sign Kyoto and revive the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons talks and treatys. I would also end the lumber, ranching and mining industries practices of basically raiding the national lands for what they want.

I would roll back all those anti-environmental programs that Bush started. I would also end the mixing of church and state by shutting down all faith based programs and associated offices. I would restore student loans to previous levels, get rid of NCLB, restore the medicaid and the government food and heating help programs for the poor. I believe they attempted to cut financial support of childhood immunizations at one time. (One of the most stupid moves I've ever heard of by this administration) I'm not sure if they did succeed but if they did I would restore that as well.

That's just off the top of my head, but the general plan would be to follow Bush's blueprint and undo everything he did.

[jmowreader]

31. If you mean "live in a singlewide in disgrace" I'm in

Bush owns a 2500-acre ranch. If you just send him back to Texas, he'll move onto his ranch and spend his days golfing, fishing and serving on the boards of Repuke-owned companies. OTOH, this could be entertaining...

1) Use eminent domain to remove Bush's ranch from Bush's possession. I have absolutely no idea what you'd do with it except for allowing the Crawford fire department to practice burning down the house (while Bush sits in a police car watching it) then returning the land to its natural state, but the whole idea is to get Bush's name off the deed.

2) Impose a fine equal to the amount Bush receives from the sale of the land to the government for...hell, just get a paper bag, write one Bush crime on each of about a thousand pieces of paper, throw 'em in and draw one.

3) Move Bush into a trailer park where he's required to live out his days under house arrest in a 14-foot-wide singlewide home on a rented lot with no exercise equipment.

I like the idea of getting rid of DHS. And you're absolutely right about its being a bureaucratic redundancy. They took the sixteen or seventeen agencies which combine to form DHS and moved them, complete with their leadership intact, into DHS. Also get rid of the Office of Special Plans.

I would keep the National Security Agency, but I'd make one huge change: I would bring Paul Menoher and John Burns out of retirement. Paul Menoher retired as a lieutenant general so he's DIRNSA; John Burns retired as a brigadier general so leave him a civilian and name him Deputy Director, NSA. The anti-NSA crowd may not believe there's such a thing as an ethical SIGINTer, but these two are highly ethical. If anyone can fix that agency, it's these two.

AND I'd nationalize all the private prisons.

[cornermouse]

35. I figured even Bush would have to go into town every once in

a while. I was sort of picturing people pointing at him and laughing or things like "Johnny, don't you ever grow up to be a President if you're going to be like him."

Of course, if he stays isolated on his ranch, that can make people a little strange. Think of Howard Hughes and some of the other wealthy but insane people. I could see George being like that.

Considering the size of debt he has rolled up, its only fair that he should help pay it off.

NSA. Ethical people running NSA is all right for the short term, but sooner or later they're going to retire and what happens if the next person isn't nearly as ethical? Dubya would be a fine example of an unethical person getting into a position and exploiting it in an unprecedented fashion.

[July]

18. Basically, undo to the extent possible everything Bush has done.

Starting with the executive order preventing the release of presidential papers.

Moving on to so many other things: repealing the Patriot Act, eliminating DHS, changing back all the environmental regs. that were changed, signing back on to treaties we're ignoring, closing Guantanamo, leaving Iraq, firing the political appointees throughout govt., getting rid of all efforts to give taxpayer money to "faith-based" organizations and eliminating the faith outreach programs within govt., changing the abstinence-only requirements for HIV/AIDS funding to something sane . . . and so on.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. Get the money out of politics completely.

Lower the salaries of politicians to reasonable levels.

Of course you can put that in the "fat chance" catagory seeing as how the crooks..er, politicians..make the laws.

[jmowreader]

23. Oh God. We're still not getting this. Everyone read this post.

We're still getting too many Bush-focused posts.

For the purposes of this post, assume that the Democrats have:

1) Taken a majority in the House and a good majority in the Senate--say, 55 seats.
2) Converted a handful of Republican senators to the Democratic Party.
3) Brought up a set of ironclad charges against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove and all the rest of the Bush junta.
4) Impeached all these people in the House.
5) Convicted and removed all of them in the Senate.
6) Chosen Nancy Pelosi (don't like Nancy? You pick one.) as Speaker of the House, then moved her into the White House after the junta is removed.
7) Rejoined the International Criminal Court and remanded the junta to The Hague.

We're now sitting on a completely Bushless government running a country Bush's people completely demolished.

NOW what would you do?

[cornermouse]

26. In the original post, you said and I quote.

"but once he's gone, then what? The shit he broke is not self-mending.

For the purposes of this thread, come up with a way to fix America that does not involve removing George Bush from the White House."

This is a contradiction. If he's gone from the White House, he is already removed. If he is not removed, then he's still in the White House. He cannot be gone and still in the White House.

[jmowreader]

29. Maybe I should have used a different word than "involve"

Bush has got to go. We can all agree on that.

Unfortunately, a lot of us deal with Bush removal like we were the Underpants Gnomes. The Underpants Gnomes, as we all remember from watching South Park, had a three-part business plan:

Step 1: Collect underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!

Our Three-Part Underpants Gnome Memorial Political Plan seems to be:

Step 1: Get rid of George Bush and everyone around him
Step 2: ?
Step 3: America is great again!

For the purposes of this thread, assume Step 1 has been accomplished and come up with something good for Step 2.

[cornermouse]

32. Lol.

The abbreviated version would be to return all policies to either Clinton's era or possibly earlier to Carter's.

Carter made a strong effort to cut off the Arab Oil stranglehold. Perhaps its no accident that Bush I (maybe with big oil's assistance?) aided and abetted Carter's departure. I remember Ford as a nonentity. I don't really remember much of Kennedy's presidency other than watching the media admire Jackie Kennedy's style and taste, JFK's rocking chair, and the day that he was assassinated.

[Lars39]

36. Start public works programs to shore up our infrastructures.

Remove every single bushbot from every single program and department. (I really hope someone's keeping track of them all.)
Shut down the damned faith-based programs.
Shut down the spying programs.
Pull the plug on Homeland Security.
Get moving on global warming and alternative energy sources now.
Health care and dental for everyone now.
See what kind of damage the cretins did to Social Security.
Secure our ports with companies that aren't bush cronies.
Go over bush's executive orders and reverse 'em.
Fully fund higher education.
Do what we can to reverse the 'brain drain', ie top scientists and researchers that have left.

[TexanDem]

24. Rather than impeach -- charge w/ war crimes! Arrest the whole bunch!

That's for starters. Don't know if anybody can save us now so much damage has been done in every facet of American life. For sure, bring the troops pronto, repeal tax cuts and incentives to outsource jobs, balance out some of the trade and open up some factories here again, reinact all eliminated environmental laws and pass some new ones, throw every Republican out of office. That's the first day.

[Joey Liberal]

25. Impeach Cheney

After all, Cheney is really running this country. BushFelon is a mere puppet.

[pnwmom]

27. We need to air our dirty laundry. That means we need to win at least

one of the houses of Congress, and use subpoena power to fully expose corruption and misuse of power in the Bush administration.
What we have seen up till now is just the tip of the iceberg.

[DeaconBlues]

28. These things won't solve all America's problems but

how about:

1. raising the minimum wage

2. repealing the bankruptcy laws

3. enact laws that encourage organized labor

4. universal healthcare, or, if this isn't possible, healthcare for children

Working people have been getting the squeeze for too long. It time to give them the break they deserve

[jmowreader]

33. How about this?

Raise the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour AND make the first $15,000 (which is the annual pay of someone earning $7.22/hour) tax free. We finance it by not stockpiling World War II-vintage medical supplies, by getting rid of quadruple-redundancy in the government and by allowing Unicor (Federal Prison Industries) to compete with the Chinese by making cheap plastic crap and selling it to Wal-Mart.

[HooptieWagon]

30. Fixing dumbya's blunders will cost $

Look in voter rolls for anyone with an "R" for party affiliation, and anyone or corporation that donated to the rethugs, and charge them a "War Tax". 50% of income should about do it.

Raise gas tax by $1.00/gal. Half goes to mass transit, half to alt energy research.

All ChimpCo admin assigned to work (prison) camps cleaning up and rebuilding New Orleans. Afterward, they are turned over to the Hague for war crimes trials.

Further:
Repeal all enviromental laws passed by the rethugs.
Repeal all tax cuts.
Cancel all no-bid contracts, and begin fraud investigations.
Start anti-trust investigations of insurance, health-care, and energy corporations.
Ban televangelists.
Introduce comprehensive science education for students and adults.
Cancel all school voucher programs.
Appoint Eliott Spitzer as AG, and give him total authority to conduct "war" on corporate fraud.
Cancel all E-voting systems and tabulators that do not produce a paper trail.
Eliminate party designations on voter rolls to help deter gerry-mandering.
Enact laws with teeth regarding campaign financing and truth in campaign ads.


That should take care of the first 30 days...

[Sullivan4Congress]

34. Excellent Topic

Let's set some positive goals for what we can accomplish with new leadership. Here's a start:

1. Deliver on Harry Truman's goal of providing health care coverage for every American family.

2. Restore accountability and maturity to our foreign policy, so that we can end the cluster in Iraq and bring our troops home.

3. Invest in alternative energy sources, so that we can break our dependence on fossil fuels. That's the environmentally, economically and strategically right thing to do.

4. Reform our tax system, making it fairer and simpler for lower and middle income taxpayers. Rolling back the egregious Bush tax cuts is only part of the game. We should find ways to simplify the system and to provide relief for folks who aren't in the top 1%.

5. Declare independence from special interest politics by enacting REAL lobbying reform and by moving towards a nationwide "Clean Elections" system.

Hope this keeps this discussion moving!

[cornermouse]

38. I like those.

[lpbk2713]

37. I'd take away his training wheels.

And let him skin up his knees and elbows.

[Arkham House]

39. Tackle the corporate media

That should be priority #1. Restore the Fairness Act...ruthlessly use antitrust laws to break up the media monopolies...and intensively investigate the White House-Rove-right-wing media axis, to see exactly who did what, and for what reasons...grab 'em all by the short hairs and shake them until they rattle...and send a few of these right-wing trash for some Gitmo Therapy, if necessary...that'd be a nice start...:-)...

[alfredo]

40. Remove his immunity from the ICC, boycott any company that hires

him.

Not necessarily in this order

Campaign finance reform
Restore the inheritance tax and rescind the huge tax breaks for the idle rich.
up the CAFE standards
enforce anti trust, pollution, war profiteering laws.
restore education funding, modify or scrap NCLB
restore VA funding
restore the Bill of Rights
pull our troops out of Iraq
review bush's executive orders and change those that give the president dictatorial power.
Pay reparations to Iraq once the situation stabilizes.
If Iraq chooses to charge bush administration officials with war crimes, comply with extradition requests. Hands off our soldiers though, they blameless. They were deceived too.
Push alternative energy technology.

[mzmolly]

41. Undo just about everything he's done and start at square one.

We need to get back to Clinton era peace/prosperity.

I'd issue a formal apology to the world if I were the next Dem Prez also.

We need to put someone like Clark/Murtha/Kerry in charge of Iraq's transition as well.

The list is looooong.

[jmowreader]

42. To get back to Clinton era peace/prosperity will take Clinton

So here's what you do: You elect me President.

I'll do three things right off the bat: reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, close down the war in Iraq, and name Bill Clinton to the newly-created post of Secretary of Fixing Everything Bush Broke. Essentially, the Department of Fixing Everything Bush Broke will be charged with getting the economy and our standing in the world back to where it was on Bill Clinton's last Friday in the White House.

I've then got to invite Rush Limbaugh to the White House...for a thorough dressing-down in which I'll inform him that we're going to spend a Whole Million Dollars figuring out some way to put him in prison. There's gotta be something Oxycontin-related we can nail him with.

[mzmolly]

44. We also have to address the media monopoly.

You mentioned the "Fairness Doctrine."

Let's think of a new title for that "Fixing Everything Bush Broke" position - how bout "Senior White House Advisor?" ;)

As for Rush, he'll handle his own demise. I think we have bigger fish to fry. :hi:

[jmowreader]

46. How about "President Emeritus"?

The "bigger fish to fry" include shutting Rush Limbaugh up.

I'm sorry if you feel different about this, but this is the fucknuts that made the 1994 Republican Takeover of Congress possible. He is one of the major players in the 2000 installation of Bush. He is one of the major players in the 2004 reinstallation of Bush. The guy's first chair on the Republicans' Mighty Wurlitzer. He's gotta go, but since the First Amendment says we've got to let him say any damn thing he wants, we'll have to settle for drug charges.

There's already a Senior White House Advisor. I want it to be very clear that Bill Clinton is above all the advisors and cabinet midgrades. All I want to do with Clinton is write my name at the bottom of the work he accomplishes and send minivans packed with money to his doorstep every couple of weeks. Clinton is very good at looking after himself.

[mzmolly]

47. I guess I don't listen to him and don't give him much credit personally.

Are you a former listener?

[jmowreader]

48. How he works is pretty insidious

Let's throw out a name...oh, John Smith, Democratic congressman from a district in Tennessee that could trend either way. Let's say around Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge, being the home of a national laboratory and one of the biggest explosives factories in the world, needs a LOT of security from the government.

Let's further play and say Bush's budget for 2007 gets rid of all the federal security around Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the explosives factory. John Smith voted against the cut, but since he's a Democrat and the Republicans wanted the cut it went into effect.

Limbaugh will tell his listeners, repeatedly, that John Smith is playing fast and loose with our national security by allowing the Republicans to cut the security forces. How he was supposed to force them to acquiesce I don't know; perhaps he was supposed to bring a gun onto the House floor and start shooting Repugs with it until they removed the Oak Ridge provision from the budget. Anyway, he'll have his dittoheads call Representative Smith's office to complain. He'll tell his listeners to vote for the Republican challenger Joe Jones because that man is GREAT on security (okay, forget the fact that Joe Jones had his house broken into fourteen times last year because he can't figure out how to operate the doorlock). He will do everything in his power to torture Rep. Smith.

After the 2004 election Newtie Gingrich brought Lard-Ass onto the House floor to honor him as the "kingmaker." He's really fucking bad.

[mzmolly]

49. I wonder if he - like Dobson was on the Abramoff payroll?

If so, perhaps that is why he's considering retirement? ;)

I do have "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot..." time to read it in full perhaps?

[jmowreader]

51. I wouldn't doubt that he was

Dobson...I've read all the Dobson stuff, and I really think he got played in the Abramoff deal. The guy's about three-quarters nuts, but he's completely anti-gaming. If he would have known the particulars of that situation (new people: Jack Abramoff, through several cutouts, hired fundamentalist James Dobson to try--successfully--to get a new casino stopped. Abramoff was working for a casino that the one Dobson helped stop would have competed with.) he wouldn't have taken Abramoff's money.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. My list:

1. Withdraw from Iraq. Everything we try to do there just makes the situation worse. Tell the Arab League it's all theirs. You want to see the Iraqi people throw flowers? They will when the U.S. troops leave.

2. Use the savings from not fighting a war as the first step in putting the Pentagon on zero-based budgeting. Eliminate all science-fictiony weapons systems and all bases that have outlived their usefulness.

3. Institute real national defense by weaning this country from petroleum through development of alternative fuels and substitutes for plastics, funding for mass transit and smart urban design, and funding for world-class intercity rail. This will help put blue collar workers to work in well-paying jobs.

4. Work toward universal health care by allowing anyone to buy into Medicare on a sliding scale that drastically undersells the insurance companies. (But be sure to streamline Medicare, because at present, it's so burdened with administrative rules that practitioners can violate them without knowing it.)

5. Save Social Security by raising the cap on salaries subject to FICA to $500,000 and eliminating FICA for wages less than $10,000 a year (a real tax cut for low-income people).

6. Propose a Constitutional amendment forbidding "Christmas tree" bills. This is in line with the practice of many states, which require all bills introduced to deal with only one subject.

7. Institute an accelerated program of micro-loans in countries that are major sources of illegal immigration. The people who sneak into richer countries to find work are among the most ambitious and resourceful of their own countries and just need a little financing to make it in their more familiar home environment.

[entanglement]

45. Smash the RW media machinery

n/t

[rustydog]

50. rejoin KYOTO, accept nuclear non proliferation

renig on every single Bush treaty until they were studied it to see if it benefits America and the world, not America's stockholders.

Public funding of campaigns only. No private donations, no corporate donations.
equal time for candidates in all media, electronic and print.

No private ads anywhere, only political ads paid for by taxpayers.

I'd repeal leave no child behind, I'd leave iraq, I'd kill clean skies initiative, shrink it until it fits into a bathtub and drown it alongside Grover Norquist's dreams.

God, there is so much to repair that this fool ruined.

[jmowreader]

52. Make sure to get Healthy Forests too

[Beausoir]

53. Gut the FCC and sack the FOX news idealogues that run it. Then...

reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.

Hold every public news agency ACCOUNTABLE and REQUIRE them to present more than one viewpoint.

[Hubert Flottz]

54. I'd impeach half the Supreme Court and half of congress too.

Get rid of the deadbeat bloodsucking parasites and America might regain her strength!

[BlooInBloo]

55. Cut fed income tax of under-100k by 30%....

... increase income tax of over 100k by 1%.

Direct the IRS to focus 90% of their tax recovery efforts on amounts over $1 million.

Direct LA to delay it elections - in whatever manner I can do so.

Usee the resulting stoopid-huge surplus to fix NOLA and put its people back where they belong/want to be.

Tell LA to get its vote on.


EDIT: Last step: get ready for anotherr 4 years.