The One Good Deed of Pres. George W. Bush

Okay, folks - Eco Child's Play has helped me to see the only good thing President Bush has done in the past 8 years.

"Lead is now banned from children’s toys. Can we all do a happy dance?

Guess what?

The bill also bans a chemical called phthalates that is widely used to make plastic products softer and more flexible. I am positively swooning. Then I did a little research and stood still.

It seems to me that adults could use a little protection from phthalates too. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH) phthalates may interfere with the DNA in semen. I hate to sound ungrateful but do we need phthalates? Would it be okay if all our plastics weren’t soft and flexible?

If I had a toddler I wouldn’t put away the test kits just yet, but I would relax a little. Now, it might be a little optimistic to assume that other countries would be concerned about our laws. *hat tip to China*

Moving forward instead of mere recalls will we see criminal charges in addition to massive financial penalties for toy makers who don’t comply? According the AP, the budget for the Consumer Product Safetly Commission (CPSC) will increase to $136 million by 2014. Perhaps the CPSC will even regain it’s teeth, since he maximum fine goes from $1.8 to $15 million.

This is a win for parents and our children, but mostly kids in 2014 and beyond. I wanted to be more optimistic but I’m seeing it as simply a good start. Not a solution. Thanks W… I thunk you dun good. (As written by a child not left behind)

Jessica Gottlieb is raising two children in Los Angeles, and she writes about it at Jessica Gottlieb. This is an original post to EcoChildsPlay."

Thank you, Eco, for allowing me to see the only good thing our 43rd President has done!

How Bush Sold Us the War in Iraq

If you don't read political non-fiction, I would suggest adding former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new memoir. He writes:

"...the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated political propaganda campaign led by President Bush and aimed at manipulating sources of public opinion and downplaying the major reason for going to war."

Who did not see this coming? The 341 page book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception gives an extreme look at President Bush's White House, but stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq. He writes:

"Over that summer of 2002, top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war ... In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating soureces of public opinion to the president's advantage."

But he doesn't just go after Bush, McClellan also tosses blame for the Hurricane Katrina disaster on Carl Rove, and the Varerie Plame fiasco on Vice-President Cheney and Scooter Libby. McClellan's book goes so far as to call the atmosphere in Washington D.C. as "poisonous." Again, who didn't see that coming?

Does President Bush think the citizens of America are stupid? He must think so because he keeps getting away with his dictatorship, trying to disguise it as democracy. Why hasn't Congress moved for impeachment? If President Clinton can be impeached for lying to a grand jury, then Bush should be impeached for lying to the American public.

Most people know the real reason we are in Iraq - oil and revenge for the past President Bush. Our current President had a hidden adjenda when taking office and that adjenda was bringing down Iraq - plain and simple. Now that we are in this mess, how do we get out? Hopefully the next President of the Free World will have the adjenda of the American people on his mind, not a personal adjenda that has destroyed our nation.