JEB was a failure. Make sure he stays gone!

Do you guys really want to be the national joke again?

The nation resoundly rejected a continuation of the Bush policies by overwhelmingly rejecting John McCain--and he did his best to run AWAY from the Bush name. If George W. Bush had been able to run, I think you would have seen an election reminiscent of Mondale's 1984 shellacking (just without Minnesota and DC).

Good citizens, how is it that Jeb Bush, a man who, like his brother, squandered a huge surplus from a previous Democratic administration with a massive $6.6 billion in tax cuts that only benefited Florida's wealthiest residents, is a serious contender for Mel Martinez' Senate seat?

Now our state is in such a fiscal crisis that the GOP legislature is now making huge cuts to our public schools and healh care facilities--and more are coming. JEB did to our state what Bush did to our country--which is why I can't understand why anyone would reward that man.

What makes the situation worse is that while JEB shared his brother's priority to help those who need it the least while hurting those who need it most, he was simultaneously lying about the severity of the state budget.

(What do you expect. The man lies about his own damn name. It's not even JEB--he hicked it up for the yokels. His real name is John Ellis Bush for crying out loud.)

Being responsible for the state's fiscal crisis should be enough to discourage anyone from reliving the Bush years. But, as it goes with the Bush legacy, there are many more reasons. People tend to look at the past with rose-colored glasses, so let me give a few more examples of live under JEB:

JEB is the one responsible for dropping legitimate voters who had been illegally purged by him and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. Even after the 2000 debacle, he had a "solution" for "those people" by instituting a complicated process that had the purged voters reapply for their own rights that never should have been taken away to begin with. In 2004, he hired a company that kicked off thousands of African-Americans, but surprisingly, less than 80 Cuban-Americans (who tend to vote GOP). Even JEB couldn't explain that one and, under intense pressure, finally backed off.

JEB turned critical state services over to private corporations. He shifted the job of providing for the poor to faith-based organizations while making huge cuts to spending programs to Medicare and health care programs for the elderly and disabled. The underfunded Department of Children and Families, which had few caseworkers, took 15 months to discover that 5-year-old Rilya Wilson was missing from her foster home. JEB, like his forever blameless brother, blamed the caseworkers.

JEB said he had "Devious PLANS" to kill the classroom-size amendment that voters demanded. Sen. Kendrick Meek called Bush's proposal to kill the classroom size amendment & threats of more cuts to much needed social services "a premeditated abuse of the highest office in Florida to circumvent the will of the people.''

JEB fought like hell to force a brain-dead woman, Terry Schiavo, to be force-fed because he claimed he was "pro-life". Yet he was unmoved by this letter to the St. Petersburg Times on 04/15/2003 by another citizen who desperately wanted to live: "I am just one of the 26,000 who received the letter from the Department of Children and Families last week, informing us that Gov. Jeb Bush and our elected public servants have given me until May 1 to continue my chemo. Then I must prepare to die in half the time I would live with chemo."

I could go on with the corruption, the failed Medicaid Reform Plan, or a host of other reasons that I have written about in previous blogs during his reign. But the truth of the matter is, its the Florida Democrats who are the reason JEB is now a serious contender. I talked about all the issues I have just mentioned and more, and how the FlaDems were giving JEB a free pass in this blog post back in December 2006. I warned that this meant he could return at a later date--but I thought at the time it would be as either VEEP or a presidential contender. (Even I didn't see how quickly the Bush family and their principles would fall out of favor).

But in this strange bubble we live in called Florida, JEB is poised to become a serious contender for Senate--bringing back what we have all fought so hard to overcome.

This time, we can't afford to roll over.