How will you weather Bush's second term?

[HamdenRice]

I am as horrified by the damage Bush has done as the next DUer and have high hopes that Kerry will be elected, but I also have this sinking feeling that the Bush-Cheney criminal enterprise will manage to steal the 2004 election -- terrorist attacks around October, popping Osama out of his spider hole, maybe even selected states of emergency in urban/Democratic districts in swing states on election day. Sadly, my rational self predicts another popular vote loss, but electoral college victory for W, come November.

My big worry is how to survive the 2004-2008 epoch. The stock market will slide almost immediately on the news of four more years of gigantic and ever growing deficits. The dragging on war creating excessive demand, and Bush's favoring high energy prices (helps his friends in the oil biz) is already leading to generalized inflation -- which has been just a bad memory for almost a quarter century -- and the next four years will likely see the "stagflation" of the 1970s. (Yesterday I went grocery shopping and was shocked at how prices are already beginning their generalized ascent: $6/lb for some cuts of beef! I put $10 of gas in the car and got about 3 1/2 gallons!)

If Europe, disgusted with the Bush administration and having no interest in cooperation, is likely to push forward with making the Euro the international transaction currency, and hence the dollar will crash (because artificial demand for the currency will plumet) adding to rampant inflation here.

With no plan to end the war and no accountability, Iraq could easily drag on as long as Vietnam or France's Algerian War. In 4 years, terrorists could be regularly making small strikes -- car bombs, mortars -- rather than spectacular strikes in US cities, much as the English experienced with the IRA or even as the US experienced with ultra left groups in the late 60s-early 70s.

If Bush wins 2004 and feels invlunerable, he will implement the authoritarian agenda that the neo cons have openly preached: More and more US citizens will be deemed enemy combatants -- just for dissent -- and "disappeared" into a overseas prison system that stretches from Cuba to Afghanistan to Iraq.

How will you survive 2004-2008?

[mmonk]

1. very carefully

eyeing my holdings against collapse and exploring moving possibilities if things get really bad. That's all I can do besides the political stuff. Take care of my family if the nation can't change course despite all our efforts.

[onecitizen]

2. I really didn't need this.........

today. Don't you think we think about this all the time?

[HamdenRice]

3. I hadn't really thought about it

I hadn't really thought about it that much because I really did believe that no one could vote for Bush. But the fact that his approval ratings are not in the 10s rather than the 40s just makes me wonder? What's up with republicans' brains. So today I was really thinking what 4 more years would be like. Could we (we either as my family or we as a nation) survive it? I really don't know whether this country could survive 4 more years.

[onecitizen]

6. Dude, your 2 threads on this is........

confusing me. I'm already confused enough! :-)

[matcom]

4. well, since i am not a butler on the Crawford Ranch

i won't have to

[davidinalameda]

5. how is Vancouver in November

I will be on the first plane one way up to Canada on November 3