Goodbye to you, W.

# 3. He has decreased our national security since 9/11.

By now, most of us have heard of the “Jersey Girls,” the 9/11 widows turned activists who helped force a reluctant George W. Bush to accept an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks of September 11. Though many of the Jersey Girls voted last time around for George W. Bush, it was no surprise last week to find them holding a press conference to endorse Senator John Kerry for president.

One of these GOP widows explained how she’d come to recognize that national security had not been enhanced since 9/11 and that the current administration instead seems to revel in war. “I am scared by the mentality that my daughter, who is 5 years old, is being handed a tomorrow that will be a war for a lifetime,” she said.

But it’s not just the Jersey Girls who now doubt Bush’s ability to secure the nation. An unprecedented group of 26 ex-diplomats and military leaders—several of whom were appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—recently came out saying George W. Bush has jeopardized our national security and isolated America from the world and should be ousted in November.

By shifting America’s resources and focus away from dismantling the Al Qaeda network and toward the disastrous war in Iraq, Bush actually has made the world safer for terrorists while doing little to secure America from future threats.

#4. He protects polluters of our air, water and forests.

We are not the first to declare that Bush has the worst environmental record of any president in the history of the United States.

While hiding his anti-environmental agenda with deceptive rhetoric (“Healthy Forests” initiative and “Clear Skies” program), the Bush administration has: (1) gutted key parts of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Both are crucial laws that featured support, through the decades, from both Democrats and Republicans; (2) demolished the Superfund program (charged with cleaning up the most dangerous toxic sites across the country and here in our region) and allowed polluters to not pay to clean up their messes; (3) opened millions of acres of wilderness—including some old-growth forests in the Sierras—to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling; (4) hampered the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to enforce regulations (even against the worst polluters) and seems highly motivated to protect the oil and coal industries from having to follow environmental rules; (5) withdrawn the United States’ participation from the Kyoto Agreement, a global effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and since then censored or fired scientists whose findings on global warming did not line up with his political agenda. Enough already.

#5. He’s not smart enough to be president.

#6. He likes government secrets and has thrashed civil liberties.

#7. He has hindered scientific and medical progress in the United States.

#8. His judicial appointments are too extreme.

#9. He surrounds himself with ideologues.

#10. He favors the ultra-rich.