Have to love Will Ferrell. Best George W. Bush impersonation on the planet.

President Barack Obama won the election by 10 million votes. Not only did he win traditional swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, he also carried states that traditionally leaned Republican such as Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada. For an organization with very limited resources, Republicans seem to think that ACORN has the ability to steal elections even in states with Republican governors (such as Indiana, Florida and Nevada) running the show.

A poll taken in September found that “42 percent of Republicans believe that President Obama was not born in the United States, while 22 percent still remain uncertain of his birthplace origin.” Finally, a third poll showing just how crazy the Republican Party has become asks respondents whether the president should be impeached. While only 20 percent of Americans support such action, 35 percent of Republicans believe that President Obama should be impeached.

The only grounds for impeachment, according to the Constitution are for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, something that arguably could be used against say – President Bush for ordering the use of torture and misleading the nation into a war. What exactly President Obama has done that constitutes a high crime – other than enact policies that the country voted for – I’m not quite sure.

These types of beliefs don’t mesh well with mainstream America. Believing that our president is not only illegitimate, but a secret Muslim born in another country is considered loony – even in most conservative circles. The Tea Party movement is clear in what they want to do. “Our goal is to take over the Republican Party,” Matt Kibbe said on Hardball. If the Republican Party does not get their crazy elements under control, a year in which they could make inroads, 2010 may end up seeing more Democrats getting elected to Congress.

“As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer said in a a statement this week. “The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans … is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”

Minneosta Governor Tim Pawlenty, a potential Republican presidential candidate and one of John McCain’s final considerations for VP in 2008, had this to say: “At a minimum, it’s disruptive. No. 2, it’s uninvited. And No. 3, if people would like to hear his message they can, on a voluntary basis, go to YouTube or some other source and get it. I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s schoolchildren.”

Of course none of what these Republican politicians are saying is true – as is also the case in the healthcare debate, global warming and so on. No one is forcing students to watch this. Parents have the freedom, if they so choose, to opt out on behalf of their kids. School districts across the country have their own policies, but this is probably the first time I have ever heard of a speech on making good grades as being a bad thing.

Republicans constantly tell us how its not money that schools need more of – we need better parenting, fewer time spent on video games and tv, more time studying. I agree with that, and I think most Americans do as well. President Obama has said that since he became president and throughout the campaign last year. Indeed, he wrote about these challenges extensively in Audacity of Hope. Unlike Republicans I think that we underfund our children’s educations, pay teachers less than they deserve and fail to teach curriculum in areas that will be essential to a 21st century economy.

Back on the topic of the president giving a speech to schoolchildren, though. As I recall, President Bush spoke to schoolchildren quite often. He was sitting in a classroom on 9/11 as the country was under attack. Where was the criticism for George W. Bush, his father and Ronald Reagan when they delivered speeches and “disrupted” the classroom? It seems that Republicans will oppose absolutely everything that President Obama does – even if it is as basic as challenging students to stay in school and reach for their dreams. Saying that the president plans to “indoctrinate” children is nonsense. The crazy train is chugging along and shows no signs of slowing down.

By the way, Obama’s policies are working. The GDP fell by only 1% in the second quarter compared to over 6% in the first quarter of 2009. Most economists believe that the country will see growth in the 3rd quarter of 2009 (July to September). The stimulus did what it was intended for: it slowed the recession, saved jobs that would have been otherwise lost and invested in our country’s economy through infrastructure projects, green jobs and the largest tax cut in American history.

Even (some) Republicans understand. Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett laid out the facts in an article for the Daily Beast:

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real GDP grew 34.7 percent. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the fourth quarter of 2008, it grew 15.9 percent, less than half as much.

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real gross private domestic investment almost doubled. By the fourth quarter of 2008, real investment was 6.5 percent lower than it was when Bush was elected.

• Between December 1992 and December 2000, payroll employment increased by more than 23 million jobs, an increase of 21.1 percent. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it rose by a little more than 2.5 million, an increase of 1.9 percent. In short, about 10 percent as many jobs were created on Bush’s watch as were created on Clinton’s.

• During the Bush years, conservative economists often dismissed the dismal performance of the economy by pointing to a rising stock market. But the stock market was lackluster during the Bush years, especially compared to the previous eight. Between December 1992 and December 2000, the S&P 500 Index more than doubled. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it fell 34 percent. People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.

• Finally, conservatives have an absurdly unjustified view that Republicans have a better record on federal finances. It is well-known that Clinton left office with a budget surplus and Bush left with the largest deficit in history. Less well-known is Clinton’s cutting of spending on his watch, reducing federal outlays from 22.1 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent of GDP. Bush, by contrast, increased spending to 20.9 percent of GDP. Clinton abolished a federal entitlement program, Welfare, for the first time in American history, while Bush established a new one for prescription drugs.

A similar group of conservative wackjobs known as the “deathers” are floating the idea that President Obama’s healthcare reform will lead to euthanizing of elderly people. Former VP candidate (and recently resigned governor of Alaska) Sarah Palin went so far as calling the president’s plan “evil”. The fuss that Republicans are stirring up comes from a provision that would prevent another Terri Shiavo-like situation where the government steps in to determine whether a person should live or die (like the Republicans in Congress and Bush attempted). As the AP reports:

A provision in the House bill written by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.

Ironically, it was George H. W. Bush’s administration that instituted a policy that requires hospitals to ask patients if they have a living will. Facts are nasty things. Of course the Republican Party never let that get in their way. Keith Olbermann tackled the issue in a Special Comment on Monday night:

Now it’s not so secret and good riddance. America should not stoop to the level of our enemies. We have maintained an image in the world since World War II as a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world only to slowly corrode it over time as we continued down the path toward imperialism. If we allowed the Republicans to have another term then we would have gotten there eventually.

This in itself, however, is not an adequate argument. As evil, inhuman and illegal as torture may be, some people will raise the issue that if American lives are at stake, it is the duty of the government to do anything to obtain this information. Torture advocates often warn of a “ticking time bomb” scenario that is more suitable for Hollywood lore than it is for serious political discourse.

Of course there are people out there that would like to do harm to the United States. We should do everything within the confines of the Constitution, American laws and treaties that we are signatories to in order to disrupt the terrorists that seek the destruction of American lives. Torture is not the way to do that. According to the top experts in the field, torture yields highly inaccurate information that sends our intelligence on wild goose chases. On top of the negative image that it sends putting us back in the PR war against Al Qaeda, we also waste resources.

Arguments have been made, particularly by conservative leaders like Charles Krauthammer that if we have information and know that a suspect has information that can prevent an attack, it is the president’s obligation to use any means necessary to obtain that information. The first problem with this is that it is next to impossible to know that someone has information. Furthermore, even if they did know, we could not confirm its authenticity unless we already knew the information that we obtained through torture. This case would be particularly disturbing since it would not even be necessary.

As unlikely as torture is to provide any meaningful information, it certainly is fully possible for this practice to become widespread abuse. It already has. The Bush administration gleefully employed the technique against suspected terrorists. As CNN puts it: “Interrogators waterboarded Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August of 2002; and they used the tactic against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the 9/11 attacks, 183 times in March of 2003. That’s about six times a day.” If getting information is all that this is about, as the conservatives claim, then why are we waterboarding someone 183 times in a month? How does that provide useful information? I really would like to know.

I do not sympathize with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He deserves far worse than what he got. But that is not the place of the United States government. These tactics are treacherous for any nation that claims to be a free and democratic state. Peggy Noonan and other conservative commentators may want to “keep walking”, but people with a conscience have a duty to stand up and object when our government condones this kind of practice. We need a clear, indistinguishable line between ourselves and the terrorists that we are fighting. Torture blurs the line beyond recognition.

This first one is by Mike Keefe of The Denver Post. As the cartoon points out, the so-called “Country First” Republican Party is now rooting for our president to fail. What a reversal!

This second cartoon is from Pat Bagley of The Salt Lake Tribune. The level-headed pilot of our economy, Barack Obama, not only has to deal with a crashing jet (the economy), but he also is receiving a ton of different directions from passengers (politicians, citizens, pundits). It puts the position that President Obama inherited from George W. Bush in great perspective.

That’s not true, though, because of the situation that the economy now faces. With the $613 billion in debt that Lehman Brothers will be protected from in bankruptcy, news broke that the third largest investment bank, Merrill Lynch, was also in trouble. Instead of filing bankruptcy they agreed to be bought out by Bank of America for $50 billion. The collapse of Lehman puts 25,000 people out of work in an economy that already has a 6.1% unemployment rate.

The blame lies in Washington and on Wall Street. President Bush and his administration enabled the mortgage crisis by letting Wall Street become the Wild West where an unregulated banking industry played by its own rules. The banks were giving loans, “sub-prime mortgages”, to people that either could not afford them based on their income or had bad credit. They gave them loans anyway and teased them with low interest rated, but the interest rates were variable and adjusted upwards eventually.

Meanwhile, the banks sold these mortgages to investment companies so when one of these people with these loans paid their mortgage, it wasn’t actually going to the bank – it was going to an investor. When the interest rates adjusted, millions of these loans defaulted and now the companies that put their money into them are waving around worthless pieces of paper. There was no government regulation at all of these schemes that resulted in massive exchanges of money, people losing their homes and investors being defrauded.

America under George Bush and the Republicans has become nothing but a way for large companies and powerful Wall Street executives to pass on risk to someone else while they cash in. Al Greenspan has called this a once in a century event. The economy is teetering on the brink of recession and while it is unpleasant to imagine, the reality is that the parallels to the Great Depression are too great to ignore.  We have an out-of-touch president, a reckless group of thugs on Wall Street and millions of average Americans suffering, as usual. America, have you had enough?