Don't Forget: W Was A Terrible President

This is an excerpt from an article in the Boston Globe by Michael A. Cohen, entitled "Trump's dumpster fire shouldn't have people feeling fond of George W. Bush:

Let’s just do a brief rundown on W’s bill of iniquities.

Started the Iraq War, which killed nearly 4,500 US soldiers, took the lives of several hundred thousand Iraqis, had a price tag, in excess, of $3 trillion in direct and indirect costs, and plunged the Middle East into turmoil, helping spark the rise of ISIS.

• Presided over the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the meltdown of the global economy.

• Passed massive tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans and did little to spur the economy.

• His job creation record was dismal and median incomes fell by 4 percent during his presidency, a never before achieved feat in modern US history.

• Those without health insurance grew by more than 20 percent; the poverty rate jumped by 26 percent, and W took a small budget surplus and turned it into a massive trillion-dollar deficit.

• On foreign policy, Bush alienated key allies, did nothing to prevent North Korea from getting a nuclear weapon, and caused the United States to step back on dealing with global climate change.

• He utilized torture, conducted warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, and oversaw the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists. Oh, and the worst terrorist attack in US history happened on his watch.

Bush’s record of failure — across so many policy areas — is unmatched in US presidential history. Even Richard Nixon, the only president ever to be forced from office, could count a number of policy successes. For W, the cupboard is bare.

Indeed, Trump will have his work cut out for him if he wants to leave the country in as great a shambles as Bush did.

W’s presidency also offered a preview of the current dumpster fire at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like Trump, Bush staffed his administration with hacks, incompetents, and ideologues. Lobbyists were practically given oversight of environmental and business regulation with predictably awful results.

Like Trump’s band of mediocrities, the Bush administration was dismissive of science, facts, and truth-telling, and also like Trump, Bush’s White House openly sought to politicize the Justice Department.

He proposed a constitutional amendment in 2004 that would have prevented gay Americans from getting married and used that issue to mobilize religious voters in key swing states like Ohio. And in his reelection that same year, he engaged in divisive political rhetoric that portrayed Democrats and those opposed to his counter-terrorism policies as somehow unpatriotic. His presidency more than laid the groundwork for the angry, fractured politics and ideologically driven policy decisions that we are seeing today. And of course, Bush — like so many other prominent Republicans — largely remained silent as Trump took over the Republican Party.

Our political moment might seem bad (and believe me, it is), but it shouldn’t cause any American to look back at the Bush years with fondness. W was a disaster, and America is still paying the price.

British React To Trump's Ignorant Meddling

For no apparent reason except that he may have seen this on One America News Network, a conservative TV channel, Trump tweeted:

Just out report: "United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror." Not good, we must keep America safe!

Thanks, Donald, you ignorant twit. Crime in Britain and Wales, not the UK, is indeed up 13%, but that statistic does not refer to terrorism, Islamic or otherwise.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said Mr Trump's comments could fuel hate crime.

She said: "Hate crime in the UK has gone up by almost 30% and rubbish like this tweet from Donald Trump is designed to provoke even more of it. If we are to properly tackle hate crime and every other crime, we have to challenge this kind of nonsense."

She also described it as inflammatory and ignorant. Ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted:

Spreading lies about your own country: sad. Spreading lies about others: sadder. What an absolute moron.

Another reaction:

Reminder: More people died in the Las Vegas shooting than in UK terror attacks this decade.

And some more:

Conservative backbencher Nicholas Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, called the US president a "daft twerp" who needed to "fix gun control".

Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson also responded to the president's tweet, accusing him of "misleading and spreading fear".

Tillerson was right. The man's a moron.

Comprehensive Putdown of "Big Hat" Sheriff David Clarke

Click here for Charlie Pierce's article at Esquire, entitled "Big Hat Enthusiast Attacks Political Opponent for Her Big Hat." It's in reference to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who wears Stetson-type hats to honor her grandmother, and who attacked Trump for his insensitivity displayed during a phone call to a Gold Star mother.

Equivocal Thoughts About W

W spoke out strongly in opposition to Trump's policies. Like Charlie Pierce, I commend his speech -- but I can't forget or forgive W his botched presidency, and I can't disregard the fact that Bush's Republican party laid the groundwork for Trumpism. Charlie says (the title of his article):

Do I Applaud This Speech from George W. Bush?

I really don't know. We're on dangerous ground.

Charlie elaborates:

I watched C-Plus Augustus give a speech on Thursday morning that went off like a bit of a grenade in the national dialogue. A very long portion of it obviously was an attack on the current occupant of the office George W. Bush once held, and it was very effective speech, and I agreed with every diphthong, and I have no idea how to feel about that.

Here's the rest:

We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions – forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.

It’s hard to digest the phrase “degraded by casual cruelty” from a man on whose watch the United States formally became a nation that tortures people, and a man who willingly employed Karl Rove, and who accepted renomination in front of an audience wearing Purple Heart Band-Aids to mock John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Also, too—Swift Boats.

America is experiencing the sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions. According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systematic and stealthy, it’s conducted across a range of social media platforms. Ultimately, this assault won’t succeed. But foreign aggressions – including cyber-attacks, disinformation and financial influence – should not be downplayed or tolerated. This is a clear case where the strength of our democracy begins at home. We must secure our electoral infrastructure and protect our electoral system from subversion.

Voter cadging. Purge lists. Florida, 2000 and Ohio, 2004.

Our identity as a nation – unlike many other nations – is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Warrantless wiretaps. Patriot Act. Military tribunals. Gitmo.

Charlie concludes:

This speech is the sharpest point yet for those of us who have looked at big talkers like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, who criticize the president* without actually opposing him on any significant issue. It is something of a dilemma for those of us who have been saying that the president* is not an aberration, but the inevitable result of conservative politics, and that the Republicans should not be allowed to pretend that he’s not. What Bush did today—give a speech—is pretty much all he can do at this point. But, still, what elected him twice were the same politics that elected the incumbent. All the latter did was turn up the volume by being more shameless, more incompetent, and infinitely more of an asshat.

So, do I applaud? Do I marinate in my cynicism and remember that this proud defender of American democracy lied the country into a foreign policy debacle that is still ongoing, and that is now overseen by someone who couldn’t find Iraq on a map…of Iraq? Of all the strange places that the last election has taken this country, this has to be one of the strangest. You have to watch every step. The past is clutching your feet here like poison vines camouflaged as the comforting tendrils of citizenship.

NRA - Nonsensical Rifle Addiction

This is a clip from a Dutch TV show: