Recently in George W. Bush Category

Been a while since I have stolen anything from another blog. I thought I had my problem licked, but damn if this did not just bring it back with a vengeance!

Actually, I think it's because with every purchase you get a free box of Crayolas for added coloring fun.

SNAP!

That one is going to leave a mark.

So, Michael Steele has come out and blatantly called Obama's economic policy a failure. Never mind that it is the Republican party's purposeful obstruction that has prevented a more meaningful and powerful financial stimulus package from being crafted. Never mind, as the preceding graph shows, it was 6 years of George W. Bush's economic policies that created the mess we are in, and that under Barack Obama we are slowly, very slowly, crawling out from that mess.

That the damn thing was vandalized is not a shock. That it took this long for it to happen is the real surprise.

Via Minnesota Independent:



Oh, cue the screaming righties.

Be very afraid.

God, I am so glad this man is no longer in charge. For eight years all George W. Bush did was cry "Be Afraid." Give him a national microphone, and he resorts right back to crying "Be Afraid."

I agree with the Heritage Foundation: President Obama should call Miserable Failure and ask his advice. Then do exactly the opposite of what MF suggests. No doubt there will be complete and utter success.

(Salon.com) While I'm loath to write a top-10 list, if only for fear of falling short of Dave Letterman's legendary bit, I'm making an exception in this first week of 2010 -- a moment when we get to not only make New Year's resolutions, but resolutions for the new decade. As we make those prospective pledges, let's take a moment to look back at the top 10 quotations from the last 10 years -- the ones telling us some painful truths about our country, society and worldview; the ones that might inform us of what we need to do as we move forward.

10. "They frankly own the place." -- Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in 2009 admitting the taboo about banks' influence in Congress.

9. "Haven't we already given money to rich people ... Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?" -- President George W. Bush in November 2002, acknowledging to advisors that he knew his tax cuts were giveaways to the super-wealthy.

8. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." -- Anti-healthcare protester at an August 2009 congressional town hall meeting in South Carolina -- the single most succinct sign that our country has become an idiocracy.

7. "We did this for the show." -- Falcon Heene on Oct. 15, 2009, telling CNN that the Balloon Boy chase was a hoax. The declaration demonstrated that the media's 24-7 knee-jerk sensationalism is irresponsible and proved that America's culture of celebrity aspiration is completely out of control.

6. "As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know they're some things we do not know. But there're also unknown unknowns; the ones we don't know we don't know." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Feb. 12, 2002, effectively telling us that the government had no idea what it was doing by invading Iraq.

5. "Bring 'em on." -- President George Bush on July 2, 2003, daring al-Qaida to attack U.S. troops -- yet more proof that the elite defines "toughness" as politicians flippantly sacrificing young American lives for Washington's hubristic ideologies.

4. "The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown." -- Daniel Fass, chairman of Obama's financial-industry fundraising party on Oct. 19, 2009, insisting that despite wrecking the economy and then being handed trillions of bailout dollars, Wall Street is a victim.

3. "$500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus." -- Wall Street compensation consultant James Reda on Feb. 3, 2009, giving the New York Times a good example of just how totally out of touch the super-rich really are.

2. "I didn't campaign on the public option." -- President Obama on Dec. 22, 2009, expecting the public to forget that his presidential campaign platform explicitly promised to pass healthcare legislation giving all Americans "the opportunity to enroll in (a) new public plan."

1. "It doesn't matter." -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Nov. 5, 2006, referring to polls repeatedly showing the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq war -- a sign the ruling class truly does not care about the demands of the public.

These epigrams expose a nation that has internalized and accepted the forces of avarice, corruption, dishonesty, incompetence and insensitivity. Some of them are darkly funny, some of them are gut-wrenchingly sad -- but all of them are warnings. Whether we listen to them or not will be the difference between repeating the last decade's folly or learning from it.

Here's to resolutions for the new decade that finally choose the latter.

These two post really suggest to me that we are seeing a swing in the mindset of our nation. We are moving away from fear, and starting to recognize a need for personal bravery in our everyday life.

About 10 years ago -- before the day that everything changed -- at an AA meeting I said our children are far stronger than we give them credit. I was personally attacked by several of the members that day for having the audacity to trust the safety and well-being of my children. I shook my head in amazement and left it alone, believing they would eventually learn to move away from fear. Little did I know that this was simply a symptom of the fear and cowardice that has already inflicted our nation.

Without the attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush would have been a one-term president, just like his father. But after decades of fear-mongering by the conservatives in the Republican party, and a lack of personal bravery by the conservatives in the Democratic party, the attacks only strengthened the already perceived danger of life. Fear became an overwhelming force in this country. Where rational thought once was the hallmark of facing life, it was wholeheartedly abandoned that day, and our hopes and desires for safety were handed to a man completely unprepared for leadership during unremarkable times, let alone extraordinary times.

However, in terms of fear being a motivational force in electoral outcomes, George W. Bush was the pinnacle of success. Today, the majority of people will simply not vote out of fear. As a populous, I think we have learned our lessons in that regard. Like it or not, the idea of Iraq as a mistake is more or less established, with only hair-brained future conspiracy theorists making any claim to the opposite; dead-enders hanging on to that last little hope of re-establishing relevance and power through belief in fear and cowardice, a legacy of failure handed to them by their elders.

Now, the Hullabaloo post is an example of the media pinnacle of success. At least for Fox News. In more ways than I can really due justice in describing, Glenn Beck's show is a self-parody of the Fox News mind-set. It is paranoid schizophrenic thinking laid bare for all to see. If there is one thing to be grateful about, it is that this is occurring mostly in the media, and not on the floor of the congress, as happened in the 1950s with McCarthy. None-the-less, Glenn Beck is pulling on the last, lingering, strings of fear that are entwined around a small, but extremely vocal, percentage of the populous; elders of the hair-brained future conspiracy theorists. 

NOT!

(NYT) WASHINGTON -- Thousands of pages of internal e-mail and once-secret Congressional testimony showed Tuesday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of United States attorneys.

Like anyone who has been paying attention for the last eight and a half years didn't already know this.

Oh, and previously known? How about; than Karl Rove publicly testified before congress.

Can the Legacy Media be any more gutless?

MN Progressive Project has a post up about Minnesota Republican infighting that has gotten ugly. It is the usual personal attacks on character that we have come to expect from today's Republican party. It is reminiscent of the attack George W. Bush's campaign made against John McCain back in 2000

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that Democrats of days gone by have engaged in the same personal attacks and will do so in the future. Currently, though, it appears to be a Republican trait. If anyone has done any reading on Karl Rove's past, you learn that he started his dirty, character assassination tricks at a young age, and at a local level.

I know, for myself, that in the past I never paid attention to these kind of low brow political attacks. I considered myself above them, or just felt it was not important enough for me to take into consideration. But I have come to learn that it is important these types of antics be exposed and brought to the attention of the electorate, and at a local level. Just imagine a world where Karl Rove's sleazy campaigning were exposed when he first started out, and had not been at the helm of George W. Bush's campaign, and by extension, his administration.

Eight years of George W. Bush in the White House has taught me that all politics is local. Any and all personal attacks, whisper campaigns, and other Lee Atwater dirty trick antics, whether by Republicans or Democrats, must be exposed early on at the local level, or else we can look forward once again to an incompetent and immoral presidency.

But when a President does it, it's suddenly a big deal?

All cynicism aside, this is ridiculous. All it really does is prove the lie to the concept "a man you'd want to have a beer with" floated when Bush was running for President. Obviously, considering the media circus around this "beer," I'd never want to have a beer with anyone who's going to be President. I just don't want to have to deal with all the bullshit.

This is what Sarah Palin meant when she said it:

I've been struck by this since the beginning. If it is the case that the president can designate an Office of Legal Counsel functionary to immunize government officials and employees against criminal behavior, then it is true, to all intents and purposes that "if the president does it it's not illegal."

And, from this article, we also learn that Cheney, who developed his executive beliefs and values from the Nixon White House, ordered the CIA to not inform Congress about the secret wiretapping programs.

(NYT)The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Next week sure is going to be an interesting news week.