George Bush was the best President ever, and recent polls prove it.

George W Bush might be the best, most under-appreciated President in history. Americans have such short attention spans that we really counted him out too soon. 8 years ago, he made a campaign promise to be a uniter and not a divider. We all waited for him to bring the country together, and after 9/11 there was a time where it looked like he might do just that. But alas, it was too short lived for Americans to be satisfied. Still, George Bush persevered through the adversity, and followed his heart in doing what he knew was right, trusting the American people and history to fully appreciate his efforts as time would inevitably vindicate him. Almost a decade after those heady Florida days, there is a fledging democracy taking root in the heart of the Middle East, America has stood strong, and the terrorists have not dared to attack us again. It took many years and much hardship, lo! the trials and tribulations may have seemed interminable, but at long last truth and justice are prevailing and George Bush has managed to bring his dream to fruition. No longer a bitter and divided nation, George Bush has finally turned his hopes and aspirations into a tangible national unity. What proved elusive after 9/11, and impossible after the war in Iraq, is now reality.

George Bush has finally united the country, nay the world, together behind Barack Obama.

Petulant Asshole

Today was George Bush's last press conference. If you want to watch the whole thing you can start here. I think Keith Olbermann's bit on it was pretty good:



The most notable thing I saw was when talking about torture and eavesdropping (near the end), he seemed to blame all the things he did on the press. "You remember what the enviroment was like in Washington [after 9/11]? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress. When members of Congress were asking questions..." and "All these debates will matter not if there was another attack on the homeland"

You see, he did these things because the press and Congress was mean to him after 9/11. You all made him feel so bad that he had to do these things so you wouldn't be mean to him again. You see how it is your fault, not his? He was just connecting dots. He was just doing what he thought you wanted so you wouldn't be mean to him again.

An Update: I really should have noted something about Bush's statement of "All these debates will matter not if there was another attack on the homeland"

Apparently, if there was another terrorist attack after 9/11, GW thinks no one would care one bit about all that controversy over torture, eavesdropping, etc. Had there been another attack, well then the gloves would have came ALL the way off. I can only imagine what that would have been like.

"Me" time

Already the presidential R&R champion, GW is going out on a high note by opting to stay on vacation during the recent Israel/Gaza fighting.

Fun for the whole family

Sock and Awe

Rhetorical Question

Whether or not you agree with him, it is so refreshing to hear a president speak intelligently. In my opinion I want a president that seems smarter than me. I think most people would agree with that so my question is; what does that say about Bush voters?

*(No offense to my loyal reader(s) who fall in that category)

Like it's going out of style

Is the way the GW Bush administration is handing out money in its final few months in office. Think the Iraq war is a money pit? Not in comparison to what has been spent ensuring financial execs get their christmas bonuses this year. This CNBC page is keeping a running tally of the grand sum of federal handouts, and has a slideshow to compare it to other high dollar expenses in the history of the nation. The money spent on the financial crisis surpasses even WWII, and the entire cumulative spending of NASA. Memo to W: George senior can't write a check to bail you out of this one.

Happy Anniversary

Mother of all ironies

It seemed like graduation day was coming, and George W Bush was going to leave office as a free market hero. Bush and the last half dozen presidents before him have de-regulated nearly everything there was to de-regulate. Capital was king and those who have it make the rules to ensure they kept it. The government was made impotent to oversee or even peer into corporate dealings. The buzzword was "specific market failure", that was used to prevent nearly everything that was proposed to regulate business activites. Everything from accounting rules to greater consolidation to climate change was a non starter without a 'specific market failure' to warrant action. When some of them did rear their heads like Putin likes to do, some superficial knee jerk laws were passed that did little to constrain the advance of unfettered capitalism. Not even the debacle of energy market de-regulation, Enron, and the ensuing accounting scandals could stop the inexorable march towards private control of everything. Medicare was partially privatized with the Plan-D pharmaceutical subsidy. An unsucessful attempt was made to privatize social security but it remained on the wish list and probably still is there. Free market was the mantra and it was pushed to its ideolical extreme. Acedemics like Greenspan who ran the Treasury and the Fed, who were by no means opposed to the free market ideology, were replaced by industry executives Paulson and Bernanke by Bush. In the same manner as he did so many other things, Bush was able to bring the ideology to its extremes and enscone it in the Washington consensus as dogma.

Now, with the implosion of the US financial system, it appears to be forcing the hand of the Bush administration to abandon its plan to act as a repository for the big financial institutions to unload worthless assets on. To try and keep the global economy from all but dying, Paulson is now seriously proposing to give money directly to banks, in exchange for a federal ownership share. Due in large part to the failure of their ideology when taken to extremes, the free market chamion is socializing a huge portion of the country's finance system.

I misunderestimated him

I was a bit heartened when the House voted down the Bush-Paulson bailout bill. Now tonight the senate passed their own version of it. the whole things makes me utterly fucking sick. I had thought the days of the Bush administration fear mongering and forcing its way over the cowering democratic minority in Congress were behind us. It was a slow weaning process, but it appeared that after the FISA telco immunity bill was passed there was no more low hanging fruits of fear left to exploit. Even in that case it was a minor struggle to pass, when the Democrats at least feigned opposition for a short while to put out the image of standing up for something. Boy was I wrong. Not only were Bush and Paulson able the pass their request nearly verbatim with minor cosmetic changes designed to be ineffective but placate the masses who wouldn't read the fine print, but actually were able to get the Democrats to champion it for them, allowing the House Republicans to simultaneously stand up to it and vote no on principle, and lament over how the Democrats caused or allowed it to fail and ruined the country. Touche

A nickel if you can think of an exception

Nothing good has ever resulted when GW has urged the American people to do something urgently.

Stars and Stripes

GW Hols up Old Glory backwards while making what might the most retarded face I have seen from him yet. (Hey tards, please don't boycott me for saying retarded)

Batman

Photo of the day

GW and two volleyball players

Check please

If you haven't already heard (or guessed), GW is projected to leave the White House with the biggest budget deficit ever; and that's not counting the spending on the wars he started. As it turns out, the privileged son who couldn't handle the finances of his failed business ventures also cannot handle the finances of the USA.

Deserters

It's starting to get down to the final few believers. People are jumping off the Iraq war bus left and right. Iraq's Prime Minister now publicly wants us to leave. He expressed general agreement to Obama's 16 month exit schedule more than once. In an interview, and then after a meeting between the two. It's about as close as he can come to endorsing BO and dissing Bush as you can get while their country is occupied by us and Bush is president. Now even Blackwater wants to leave, or at least not fight there anymore. Sounds like Iraq is such a moneysink that even with the billion or more dollars they were paid, they still don't like the payback. Proving a strong adherent to the doctrine of preemption, Bush had announced that he would be OK with a 'time horizon' which is entirely something different than an artificial timetable-which would embolden the terrorists to wait us out.

Monday Reading

Caught on tape, an offer of meetings with key bush admin people in exchange for cash for the Bush Library. It will be interesting to see if we get a peek at the logbooks.


Relief is in sight! Unveiling a bold plan to deal with high gas prices, George Bush has removed the ban on offshore drilling, and urged more drilling in Alaska, ANWR. Since the offshore ban by executive order #42 put in place is gone now, the only thing standing between the consumer and the offshore oil is Democrats not removing the congressional ban. Bush blames the problem on democrats in congress, for not having already removed the ban, one that has been in place for decades. Bush says it must be done now because of high gas prices. Don't believe the people who tell you there is no short term fix. Seeing as it would take close to a decade to get significant output, the time to have overturned it if there was one was close to a decade ago, or sometime during that 12 years republicans had congress. I think Bush was in the White House for a few of those years, maybe. As Bush said, there's a chance there could be as much as 10 years of oil production offshore. Add that up with the shale and the Alaskan oil he mentions and we can go another 30 or 40 years till we get back to where we are today importing oil, at which time the Middle Eastern reserves will have a bit less after a few decades of the rest of the world's consumption especially growing India and China. Nothing says presidential leadership like punting the ball a few decades down.


Obama writes intelligently for the NYT about Iraq. McCain is showing signs of Alzheimer's, I gave them some funny names.
#1-Czech yourself
#2-It's all muslim to me
#3-Green Bay Packers
#4-Disgraceful ignorance
#5-Phil McCracken
#6-Not a geography major(Or an Econ major)
#7-Cease paying attention
#8-General Confuse Us?

The ICC has for the first time charged a sitting leader with war crimes, Sudan's President. Will Bush get a turn in the future? One retired General thinks so.

Surprise

There's not much thrill left to be had from bush admin scandals. Every new scandal coming out is something that has been mostly common knowledge for years. Today the big news was a report about the DOJ basing hiring on ideological and political criteria. Nothing new here, when Monica Goodling testified during the Alberto Gonzalez hearings she admitted as much. All this report does is shed light and offer some hard data as to the extent of it. What new scandals could there be that aren't already commonly accepted? Waste and fraud in military contracts? circumventing domestic eavesdropping laws? hiring glaring incompetents based on personal loyalty? understaffing and underfunding most of the federal domestic agencies? toerture-er-enhanced interrogation? lying and exxagerating about Iraq intelligence? Will we find out that he had a strong personal desire to take Saddam out and pushed us into war? You mean to tell me he is holding hundreds of people for years indefinitely?

It all reminds me of that sitcom that had two coworkers who hid their romance from the others, and then give an anti-climactic confession since everyone knew already. You know the one about that one family? It had the fat and dumb guy with a hot wife? That one where they would learn a valuable life lesson at the end of the show?

I came I conquered I vacationed

A G.W. Memoir

Let the baby have his way, hint hint

In the early days of the bush 43 debacle, the newspapers usually forshadowed his actions by quoting 'White House officials' saying the president is probably going to do this or that pretty soon. The pattern is coming back in this NYT article. Bush is 'urging' Congress to allow oil drilling offshore and in ANWR. Some 'officials' are quoted, and the WH press secretary also hinted, that bush is 'seriously considering' using executive action to allow said drilling. Translation: if bush doesn't get his way with Congress, he will go ahead and allow these things by executive order.

No shame

Yes, we all have noticed that gas prices are high. Not one to see a golden opportunity wasted, president bush has 'demanded' that Congress lift the 27 year old ban on offshore drilling. It's been a while since heyday of bush's demands to Congress. Back in the day it was a sure fire way to get Congress to pass anything bush demanded of it. Invade someone? Done. Broad new spying powers? Done. Tax breaks for your buddies? Done. Legalize torture and include retroactive immunity for war crimes to the executive branch? Done.

If the democrats currently in the majority there had half a brain they would realize that those times (should) have passed, the public mood has changed. The president is no longer a valiant crusader keeping us safe from the evil Islamist minions. No longer a hero, bush is now a laughingstock at best.

Under the guise of helping ease the high fuel prices, bush is trying to use his bully pulpit one more time to demonstrate his contempt and disdain for Americans, using a real problem, high energy prices, to push through a fake solution to line his friends and supporter's pockets at the expense of the country's coastlines. Allowing offshore drilling will not help with gas prices. Any oil from this drilling is a decade away from getting to the world market, and isn't enough to make much of a dent anyway, even if we did have the refining capacity for it and a way to keep it in domestic use only.

The whole idea is simply a shameless ploy to trick the country into a non-solution designed to enrich his old oil buddies and his VP's company. Is it January yet?