Things we don't know about Bush

[Rogue]

http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/pp180/killlogan/1.jpg?t=1230964243

[boutons_]

Still trying to whitewash dubya?

His GSE tactics were primarily aimed at Dems associated with the GSE's, iow, pure politics, not prudent, competent govt policy, which the Repugs don't believe in idealogically.

19 states, including Spitzer's (who brought down the head of AIG), wanted the feds to stop predatory lending, but dubya's OCC ruled that state laws controlling banks were wrong, and the predatory lending continued.

[Rohirrim]

Bush is the devil.

[boutons_]

From the asshole's own mouth:

_ "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." _ September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.

_ "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" _ January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.

_ "They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." _ Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

_ "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." _ Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.

_ "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." _ April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.

_ "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." _ April 18, 2002, at the White House.

_ "There's an old saying in Tennessee _ I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee _ that says, fool me once, shame on _ shame on you. Fool me _ you can't get fooled again." _ Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.

_ "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." _ Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

_ "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." _ Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

_ "Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." _ April 20, 2005, in Washington.

_ "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." _ Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.

_ "I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." _ Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

_ "It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war." _ June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

_ "Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." _ Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

_ "These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." _ June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

_ "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." _ September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.

_ "Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.

_ "The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." _ May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.

_ "And they have no disregard for human life." _ July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

_ "I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." _ June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.

_ "Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people." _ July 4, 2008 in Virginia.

_ "The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer _ prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them. It's good to come down here." _ Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.

_ "This thaw _ took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

[manufor3]

From the asshole's own mouth:

_ "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." _ September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.

_ "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" _ January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.

_ "They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." _ Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

_ "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." _ Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.

_ "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." _ April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.

_ "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." _ April 18, 2002, at the White House.

_ "There's an old saying in Tennessee _ I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee _ that says, fool me once, shame on _ shame on you. Fool me _ you can't get fooled again." _ Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.

_ "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." _ Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

_ "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." _ Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

_ "Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." _ April 20, 2005, in Washington.

_ "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." _ Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.

_ "I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." _ Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

_ "It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war." _ June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

_ "Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." _ Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

_ "These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." _ June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

_ "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." _ September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.

_ "Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.

_ "The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." _ May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.

_ "And they have no disregard for human life." _ July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

_ "I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." _ June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.

_ "Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people." _ July 4, 2008 in Virginia.

_ "The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer _ prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them. It's good to come down here." _ Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.

_ "This thaw _ took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

first 2 LMAO

[SpursFanFirst]

Oh Boutons...let it go already. The man will be gone from office in 16 days.
Can't you just be happy with that?

[boutons_]

FUCK NO

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif (http://www.nytimes.com/)

January 4, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

A President Forgotten but Not Gone
By FRANK RICH (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html?inline=nyt-per)


WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.


The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/wsjpoll20081211.pdf) on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.

The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press. Now that bag of tricks is empty as well. Bush’s first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/international/27CND-BUSH.html) was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2001806972_bushturkey04.html) for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq’s improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/middleeast/15prexy.html).

He tried to spin the ruckus as another victory for his administration’s program of democracy promotion. “That’s what people do in a free society,” he said. He had made the same claim (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012601009.html) three years ago after the Palestinian elections, championed by his “freedom agenda” (and almost $500 million of American aid), led to a landslide victory for Hamas. “There is something healthy about a system that does that,” Bush observed at the time (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060126.html), as he congratulated Palestinian voters for rejecting “the old guard.”

The ruins of his administration’s top policy priority can be found not only in Gaza but in the new “democratic” Iraq, where the local journalist who tossed the shoes was jailed without formal charges (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/world/middleeast/22iraq.html) and may have been tortured. Almost simultaneously, opponents of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused him of making politically motivated arrests (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html) of rival-party government officials (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html) in anticipation of this month’s much-postponed provincial elections.

Condi Rice blamed the press (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28337897/) for the image that sullied Bush’s Iraq swan song: “That someone chose to throw a shoe at the president is what gets reported over and over.” We are back where we came in. This was the same line Donald Rumsfeld used to deny the significance of the looting in Baghdad during his famous “Stuff happens!” press conference of April 2003 (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2367). “Images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over,” he said then, referring to the much-recycled video of a man stealing a vase from the Baghdad museum. “Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?” he asked, playing for laughs.

The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn’t grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he’s promised not to steal the spotlight (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081218-4.html) from Barack Obama once he’s in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/26/bush.poll/index.html)finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.

Bush is equally blind to the collapse of his propaganda machinery. Almost poignantly, he keeps trying to hawk his goods in these final days, like a salesman who hasn’t been told by the home office that his product has been discontinued. :lol Though no one is listening, he has given more exit interviews (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/politics/25memo.html) than either Clinton or Reagan did. Along with old cronies like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, he has also embarked on a Bush “legacy project,” as Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard described it on CNN (http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/stephen-hayes-bush-administration-working).

To this end, Rove has repeated a stunt he first fed to the press two years ago (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060820/28presidency.htm): he is once again claiming (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html) that he and Bush have an annual book-reading contest, with Bush chalking up as many as 95 books a year, by authors as hifalutin as Camus. This hagiographic portrait of Bush the Egghead might be easier to buy were the former national security official Richard Clarke not quoted in the new Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902) saying that both Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had instructed him early on to keep his memos short because the president is “not a big reader.”:lol

Another, far more elaborate example of legacy spin can be downloaded from the White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/bushrecord/documents/legacybooklet.pdf): a booklet recounting “highlights” of the administration’s “accomplishments and results.” With big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled “Did You Know?” and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, its 52 pages require a reading level closer to “My Pet Goat” than “The Stranger.”

This document is the literary correlative to “Mission Accomplished.” Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/asia/02kabul.html)). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).

If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist.

But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081218-4.html) many (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081218-2.html) print (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973196721822961.html) and (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/interview_with_president_georg.html) television (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/Story?id=6356046) exit (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081207.html) interviews (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003790.html).

The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040413-20.html) in 2004 still can’t.

He can, however, blame everyone else. Asked (by Charles Gibson (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/Story?id=6356046)) if he feels any responsibility for the economic meltdown, Bush says, “People will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived.” :lol

Asked if the 2008 election was a repudiation of his administration, he says “it was a repudiation of Republicans.” :lol

“The attacks of September the 11th came out of nowhere,” he said in another interview (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081218-4.html), as if he hadn’t ignored frantic intelligence warnings that summer of a Qaeda attack. But it was an “intelligence failure,” not his relentless invocation of patently fictitious “mushroom clouds,” that sped us into Iraq.

Did he take too long to change course in Iraq? “What seems like an eternity today,” he says (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973196721822961.html), “may seem like a moment tomorrow.” Try telling that to the families of the thousands killed and maimed during that multiyear “moment” as Bush stubbornly stayed his disastrous course.

The crowning personality tic revealed by Bush’s final propaganda push is his bottomless capacity for self-pity. “I was a wartime president, and war is very exhausting,” :lol he told C-Span (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081218-4.html).

“The president ends up carrying a lot of people’s grief in his soul,” he told Gibson (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/Story?id=6356046). And so when he visits military hospitals, “it’s always been a healing experience,” he told The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973196721822961.html). But, incredibly enough, it’s his own healing he is concerned about, not that of the grievously wounded men and women he sent to war on false pretenses. It’s “the comforter in chief” who “gets comforted,” he explained, by “the character of the American people.” The American people are surely relieved to hear it.

With this level of self-regard, it’s no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff. The smugness is reinforced not just by his history as the entitled scion of one of America’s aristocratic dynasties but also by his conviction that his every action is blessed from on high. Asked last month by an interviewer (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973196721822961.html) what he has learned from his time in office, he replied:

“I’ve learned that God is good. All the time.”

Once again he is shifting the blame. This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him.

==============

There have been and will be lots more devastating trashings of dubya's and dickhead's disastrous Reign of Error. You dubya suckers have been wrong about dubya since 2000, and are still wrong today.

You've done a heckuva job, dubya
STFU
GTFO
GFY

[boutons_]

Tons of things we don't know about dubya and dickhead, because they have kept they secret, destroyed them, etc. etc.

============


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif (http://www.nytimes.com/)

January 4, 2009
Editorial

Exit, Stonewalling

True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. These could illuminate some of the administration’s darker moments, including the lead-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was distorted, the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. torture interrogations, and the vindictive outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration. We should be grateful for their efforts. Entire days of e-mail records have turned up conveniently blank at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney, of course, retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard; he is fighting to the last the transfer of his records to the National Archives, as required by law. He recently argued in court that he “alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records.” As in: L’etat c’est Dick. :lol

Modern administrations from Ronald Reagan’s to Bill Clinton’s typically tried to evade at least some disclosure obligations under the public archives law. But the Bush team, from day one, has flouted the requirement to preserve a truthful record, ignoring repeated warnings from the National Archives. In government agencies, the public’s freedom-of-information rights have been maliciously hobbled.

The National Archives is further burdened by the steady and inevitable growth in digital records — a mass 50 times larger than that left eight years ago by the Clinton administration. It will take years to ingest before historians can truly get a handle on what is missing.

History is truly the poorer for the Bush administration. President-elect Barack Obama must quickly undo the damage by ordering that records be shielded from political interference, by repairing the freedom-of-information process, and by ending the abuse of the classification process to cloak the truths of the presidency.

========

Criminals covering their bloody, blackened tracks


I want to see what dubya and dickhead did to keep the country safe from 20 Jan 2001 to 11 Sep 2001.



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[SpursFanFirst]

FUCK NO

So sad.