Bush Approval Ratings up with the opening of his Library

[elbamba]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bush-library-opening-puts-his-presidency-back-in-the-spotlight/2013/04/22/bb7e6b9c-ab65-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html

By Dan Balz, Apr 23, 2013 04:00 AM EDT

The Washington Post Published: April 22
George W. Bush will return to the spotlight this week for the dedication of his presidential library, an event likely to trigger fresh public debate about his eight fateful years in office. But he reemerges with a better public image than when he left Washington more than four years ago.

Since then, Bush has absented himself from both policy disputes and political battles. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that the passage of time and Bush’s relative invisibility have been beneficial to a chief executive who left office surrounded by controversy.

Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove. Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC surveys.

Majorities said they still dis*approve of Bush’s performance on the Iraq war and the economy, but his economic approval numbers nearly doubled between December 2008 and today, from 24 percent to 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. Iraq remains the most troublesome part of his legacy. Today, 57 percent say they disapprove of his decision to invade, though that is down from 65 percent in the spring of 2008, the last time the question was asked.

Historians say it will take years, even decades, for any substantial revision of his presidency to take place. Bush has said he is content to let history judge him and told the designers of his presidential museum to present the facts and let visitors decide whether he was right. But some allies see Thursday’s official opening of the library in Dallas as an opportunity to begin to set his presidency into broader perspective.

“Obviously, it’s a big moment for him,” former British prime minister Tony Blair said in a telephone interview from London. “It’s a chance for him to explain that his political philosophy encompasses much more than the decisions he had to take after 9/11. We forget this sometimes. . . . This is a much more rounded person with many more dimensions to him than the caricature often portrays.”

Contemporary judgments of Bush’s presidency have been harsh. The war in Iraq, which he launched on the basis of faulty intelligence in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left this country deeply divided. His final months in office brought a collapse of the financial system that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. In between, his administration’s wobbly response to Hurricane Katrina damaged his image.

But Bush will return to public view at a moment when some parts of his record are being viewed more charitably. His advocacy for immigration reform and his relative success at attracting Hispanic votes, for example, are now seen as a model for a Republican Party that has awakened to its glaring deficit in the Latino community.

Thursday’s events are likely to be shorn of partisanship, though commentary around them may not be. The guest list will be topped by Obama and all living former presidents, including Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush. Blair, who stood steadfastly with Bush after the 2001 attacks and his decision to invade Iraq 18 months later, will be among the many dignitaries and Bush administration alumni who will gather on the campus of Southern Methodist University.


The article is three pages if you want to read it.

[coyotes_geek]

Only natural that Bush's approval ratings would be going up. American voters unilaterally support Bush policies, they just want them administered by an executive with the appropriate political party credentials.

[elbamba]

I noticed quite a few articles floating around that were favorable to Bush. I figured I would post this one if anyone is interested.

Has enough time passed for his presidency to be viewed as successful? My thoughts are probably not. I think enough time has passed without their lives changing that much that they put less blame on the president. Most presidents who stay out of the spotlight are usually only publicly seen when they are performing charity of some kind. Between this and just keeping his mouth shut you figure his likeability has to go up.

[elbamba]

Only natural that Bush's approval ratings would be going up. American voters unilaterally support Bush policies, they just want them administered by an executive with the appropriate political party credentials.

That is a really interesting point. I find that if I am being honest with myself, I spent much of the last decade worrying more about party affiliation than what was actually happening within the White House/congress and Austin. Since about 2006 I decided to stop voting by party affiliation. I have not seen much of a difference but at least I am happier with my own voting record.

[boutons_deux]

Bush and His Cronies Bear 'Ultimate Responsibility' for Torture -- So What's Stopping Us from Prosecuting Them?


Now that a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel has reached the conclusion that President George W. Bush and his top advisers bear “ultimate responsibility” for authorizing torture in violation of domestic and international law, the question becomes what should the American people and their government do.

The logical answer would seem to be: prosecute Bush and his cronies (or turn them over to an international tribunal if the U.S. legal system can’t do the job). After all, everyone, including President Barack Obama and possibly even Bush himself, would agree with the principle that “no man is above the law.”

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/bush-and-his-cronies-bear-ultimate-responsibility-torture-so-whats-stopping-us


torture was the least of dubya/dickhead/rummy's crimes. Invading Iraq for oil and causing 100K+ deaths, etc, etc, etc was their supreme crime.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

The fact approval ratings for Bush's economic policy are that high just show how retarded America is. That's further demonstated by only 57% of America disapproving of his decision to invade Iraq.

[coyotes_geek]

I noticed quite a few articles floating around that were favorable to Bush. I figured I would post this one if anyone is interested.

Has enough time passed for his presidency to be viewed as successful? My thoughts are probably not. I think enough time has passed without their lives changing that much that they put less blame on the president. Most presidents who stay out of the spotlight are usually only publicly seen when they are performing charity of some kind. Between this and just keeping his mouth shut you figure his likeability has to go up.

Bush was/is such a polarizing figure that he'll never be viewed as successful, but it's strictly personal.

And yes, Bush has been very smart about keeping a low profile.

[coyotes_geek]

That is a really interesting point. I find that if I am being honest with myself, I spent much of the last decade worrying more about party affiliation than what was actually happening within the White House/congress and Austin. Since about 2006 I decided to stop voting by party affiliation. I have not seen much of a difference but at least I am happier with my own voting record.

Same here.

[boutons_deux]

Bush was/is such a polarizing figure that he'll never be viewed as successful, but it's strictly personal.

And yes, Bush has been very smart about keeping a low profile.

smart? low profile matches his low intelligence of a useful idiot

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

And yes, Bush has been very smart about keeping a low profile.

Gee, I wonder why he's kept such a low profile and the Republian party has made such an obvious effort to distance itself from him.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

smart? low profile matches his low intelligence of a useful idiot

It is smart but that's because his presidency was such an abortion he'd be stupid to keep reminding people of it :lol. He literally left office then went to his room to think about what he did.

While Jeb might blow smoke about how ":crymy bwother kept us safe:cry (except for those two relatively large towers that used to stand in Manhattan)" I can guarantee he and the rest of the Bush family is furious with Dubya. The Bush family's plan was for Jeb to ultimately succeed his dad as president because growing up he was the prodigy and Dubya was the family fuck up. His presidency killed any chance for Jeb to get elected and ruined any legacy the Bush family might leave.

[coyotes_geek]

Gee, I wonder why he's kept such a low profile and the Republian party has made such an obvious effort to distance itself from him.


Bush was/is such a polarizing figure

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

What makes him any more polarizing than neocons like Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann who the GOP has no problem associating with?

[coyotes_geek]

He actually got elected president. Bigger stage, bigger spotlight.

[boutons_deux]

What makes him any more polarizing than neocons like Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann who the GOP has no problem associating with?

InSanetorum, your typical Catholic extremist conservative, and Bachmann are just asshole blowhards with no responsibility. dubya and dickhead actually had responsibility and power to LIE USA into Iraq for oil.

[ChumpDumper]

I absolutely approve of Bush's performance as not president the past four years. Keep up the good work not being president anymore. :tu

[BobaFett1]

Bush has done a lot better than what we have now. I disagree with his spending in the end of his term but he was a lot better than what we have now. Why does media not slam Obama for meddling in Libya?

[ChumpDumper]

Bush has done a lot better than what we have now. I disagree with his spending in the end of his term but he was a lot better than what we have now. Why does media not slam Obama for meddling in Libya?You mean why doesn't media act exactly as you want them to politically?

[Winehole23]

smart? low profile matches his low intelligence of a useful idiotdisagree about the low intelligence. getting elected TX governor three times and US president twice indicates a cunning political animal.

[ChumpDumper]

Bush has done a lot better than what we have now. I disagree with his spending in the end of his term but he was a lot better than what we have now. Why does media not slam Obama for meddling in Libya?You mean why doesn't media act exactly as you want them to politically?

[Th'Pusher]

disagree about the low intelligence. getting elected TX governor three times and US president twice indicates a cunning political animal.

Rick Perry is a cunning political animal. Would you consider him intelligent?

[coyotes_geek]

Bush has done a lot better than what we have now. I disagree with his spending in the end of his term but he was a lot better than what we have now. Why does media not slam Obama for meddling in Libya?

How do you think Bush would have handled Libya? Personally, I think he'd have handled it pretty much the same way Obama did.

[jeebus]

The fact approval ratings for Bush's economic policy are that high just show how retarded America is. That's further demonstated by only 57% of America disapproving of his decision to invade Iraq.
I approve of it cuz I made some sweet bank off of it.

[elbamba]

Rick Perry is a cunning political animal. Would you consider him intelligent?

I guess it just depends on your definition of intelligence. There are few politicians that I would consider smarter than me. This does not mean that I qualify to be a senator, governor or president.

Rick Perry is smart enough to know how to stay elected as the governor of Texas. While I imagine I could beat him in a spelling contest or reciting the constitution, he would school me at running Texas.

[elbamba]

Could you name a politician you consider intelligent and why you would classify them as such? Just curious.

[LnGrrrR]

Bush doesn't get enough credit for helping out AIDS victims in Africa. And I think the "No Child Left Behind" was a good idea in theory, which sadly hasn't borne out.

That's about all I'll give him credit for though.

[Winehole23]

Rick Perry is a cunning political animal. Would you consider him intelligent?fairly, yeah. he's not dumb.

[baseline bum]

fairly, yeah. he's not dumb.

http://therealrevo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rick-perry-college-transcript-505x387.jpg

LOL the idiot running Texas getting a D in economics. LOL getting a D in high school math and C's in high school physics in college.

[elbamba]

http://therealrevo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rick-perry-college-transcript-505x387.jpg

LOL the idiot running Texas getting a D in economics. LOL getting a D in high school math and C's in high school physics in college.

Is that his entire transcript or is that missing two years? If so, any clue how he did those years?

FYI, my grades sucked my freshmen year. I took a few years off and grew up before returning to school and graduating with a 3.6. But for my first year, I probably would have been around a 3.8. Would those grades along with a law degree from a top 30 law school, graduating in the top 10% of my class, qualify me to run Texas?

I am not arguing that Perry is Rhodes Scholar, but I believe he is in his 4th term as governor of one of the richest most powerful states in the union. Mind you, he reached his postition without being filthy rich or the son of a famous politician. The man is not dumb.

[baseline bum]

Is that his entire transcript or is that missing two years? If so, any clue how he did those years?

FYI, my grades sucked my freshmen year. I took a few years off and grew up before returning to school and graduating with a 3.6. But for my first year, I probably would have been around a 3.8. Would those grades along with a law degree from a top 30 law school, graduating in the top 10% of my class, qualify me to run Texas?

I am not arguing that Perry is Rhodes Scholar, but I believe he is in his 4th term as governor of one of the richest most powerful states in the union. Mind you, he reached his postition without being filthy rich or the son of a famous politician. The man is not dumb.

There's the other half. LOL Perry is a retard.

http://htmlimg2.scribdassets.com/85ewun3kqo12giph/images/2-e432155d61.jpg

Perry's a crook backed by people with money. Best little whore in Texas.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Is that his entire transcript or is that missing two years? If so, any clue how he did those years?

FYI, my grades sucked my freshmen year. I took a few years off and grew up before returning to school and graduating with a 3.6. But for my first year, I probably would have been around a 3.8. Would those grades along with a law degree from a top 30 law school, graduating in the top 10% of my class, qualify me to run Texas?

I am not arguing that Perry is Rhodes Scholar, but I believe he is in his 4th term as governor of one of the richest most powerful states in the union. Mind you, he reached his postition without being filthy rich or the son of a famous politician. The man is not dumb.

He reached his position by being a corporate puppet backed by filthy rich people. And yeah, he's done a great job making Texas rich by decimating state education spending so he can give tax blow jobs to the rich people who put him in office without creating budget deficits. Taking money away from public education and putting it in the pockets of rich people might keep him in office but it's something that does not require much intelligence and I'm willing to bet it's a budget plan you could come up with.

[coyotes_geek]

When it comes to politicians, people with money don't invest in retards. They invest in people who are smart enough to figure out how to keep getting re-elected and who are smart enough to exert influence over others. Perry excels at both.

Was he a less than motivated student? Absolutely. Is he dumb? Absolutely not.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

When it comes to politicians, people with money don't invest in retards. They invest in people who are smart enough to figure out how to keep getting re-elected and who are smart enough to exert influence over others. Perry excels at both.

Was he a less than motivated student? Absolutely. Is he dumb? Absolutely not.

Are you kidding? They love investing in simpletons like Rick Perry who are dumb enough to believe retarded ideas like getting rid of public education and the EPA. Why do you think the Koch Brothers pour money into candidates like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin? They're dumb simpletons who buy into "deregulate and privatize everything!" as the best solution.

They also don't need to worry about the candidate's ability to get reelected because the only way a candidate gets another term in this country is if he/she spends the first term giving corporate blow jobs.

[coyotes_geek]

Are you kidding? They love investing in simpletons like Rick Perry who are dumb enough to believe retarded ideas like getting rid of public education and the EPA. Why do you think the Koch Brothers pour money into candidates like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin? They're dumb simpletons who buy into "deregulate and privatize everything!" as the best solution.

My line of work, public infrastructure design & construction, is intertwined with politics and I know and work with people who move in those political circles. I'm no fan of Perry. I've never voted for him and never will. But believe me, Rick Perry isn't a simpleton. He's an intelligent, vindictive a-hole who knows how to manipulate people. Don't beleive all the "Fed Up", "secede" garbage. It's nothing but rhetoric to fire up the hardcore Texas conservative, which is the group that keeps getting him re-elected. Perry knows how to pick his friends and people in this state with money definitely want to be his friend because he absolutely crushes his enemies.

As for Bachmann, a good chunk of Koch's operations are in Bachmann's backyard so I'm guessing that has more to do with why she's getting money from them than anything.


They also don't need to worry about the candidate's ability to get reelected because the only way a candidate gets another term in this country is if he/she spends the first term giving corporate blow jobs.

They absolutely need to worry about the candidate's ability to get relected. Spending money on a candidate who loses is not only a waste of money, but it puts them in a bad spot with the candidate who did win.

[spursncowboys]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/go-ahead-admit-it-george-w-bush-is-a-good-man-20130422


Fact is that both Bush and Clinton do small acts of kindness every day, with little or no public notice.Why? Because, like past presidents, they realize the office is bigger than they are. Because they are deeply grateful for the job we gave them, and they feel obliged to return the favor.
Our presidents and ex-presidents are not perfect. You won’t always agree with them. You might not even think they’re worthy of the office. But try to remember what Clinton told me a few days before he left Arkansas for Washington (and a few years before the Lewinsky affair made it sadly ironic): “You don’t check your humanity at the Oval Office door.”
Remembering that is to respect the office. And it’s the decent thing to do.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

disagree about the low intelligence. getting elected TX governor three times and US president twice indicates a cunning political animal.

Or a great supporting cast. It's not like this was an uncommon political circumstance historically.

[Th'Pusher]

Could you name a politician you consider intelligent and why you would classify them as such? Just curious.

Newt Gingrich comes to mind. He seems to have a firm grasp of any number of subjects. His politics are horrible, but I think he is an intelligent man.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Newt Gingrich comes to mind. He seems to have a firm grasp of any number of subjects. His politics are horrible, but I think he is an intelligent man.

Yeah as someone who thinks Bush and Perry are idiots surrounded by smart people I think Mitt Romney individually is extremely intelligent. He and Newt were the two smartest people in the 2012 Republican primary imo.

[Th'Pusher]

Yeah as someone who thinks Bush and Perry are idiots surrounded by smart people I think Mitt Romney individually is extremely intelligent. He and Newt were the two smartest people in the 2012 Republican primary imo.
Yeah. I agree with that.

[lefty]

Evaluating presidents ?

Come on man they are just puppets, they just follow orders from a higher authority :D

[baseline bum]

Yeah as someone who thinks Bush and Perry are idiots surrounded by smart people I think Mitt Romney individually is extremely intelligent. He and Newt were the two smartest people in the 2012 Republican primary imo.

True, I bet both were in at least the top 3-4% of the nation on their SATs, GREs, etc. Perry was the only candidate who sounded legitimately count-to-potato dumb.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

True, I bet both were in at least the top 3-4% of the nation on their SATs, GREs, etc. Perry was the only candidate who sounded legitimately count-to-potato dumb.

Yeah Newt has a PHD from Tulane and while Mitt Romney is a private equity god (say what you want about his ethics, but people lacking intelligence don't become wildly successful private equity CEOs). Newt was by far the most articulate candidate during the debates, especially because he got under the skin of whichever candidate he wanted whenever he wanted. Before Bachmann dropped out he could troll her into having an estrogen-filled meltdown with no effort and they were always hilarious. He'd get a smug, shit eating grin on his face and say, "This is an example of why I say Michelle struggles with the facts" while snickering to himself and she'd take the bait ever time.

I'd argue Rick Santorum also sounded retarded because he couldn't help himself from getting caught up with social issues. He let the media harp on gay marriage way too much because he can't resist the temptation to explain how gay marriage leads to bestiality.

[Clipper Nation]

Bush has done a lot better than what we have now.

:lmao :lmao :lmao

He was even worse than Obama has been, tbh :lol

[Clipper Nation]

Newt Gingrich comes to mind. He seems to have a firm grasp of any number of subjects. His politics are horrible, but I think he is an intelligent man.

Newt is a blowhard who thinks he's a lot more intelligent than he actually is, tbh...

[boutons_deux]

"people lacking intelligence don't become wildly successful private equity CEOs"

he's dumb, he's a fake, an empty suite, as he demonstrated in the campaign. an equity broker said Gecko was an unethical bastard. Those equity firms hire, throw big money at, the very best math, physics, legal, finance gunslingers and hit men, Gecko didn't do the dirty work.

[boutons_deux]

Bush's Legacy of Atrocities Is Nowhere to Be Seen at His New Library -- and the Local Paper Won't Even Run One Ad That Tells the Truth
http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/rectangle_150x107/public/story_images/photo_-__2013-04-23_at_1.11.20_pm.jpg


George W. Bush presided over an international network of torture chambers and, with the help of a compliant Congress and press, launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. However, instead of the bloody details of his time in office being recounted at a war crimes tribunal, the former president has been able to bank on his imperial privilege – and a network of rich corporate donors that he made richer while in office – to tell his version of history at a library in Texas being opened in his name.

Kill a few, they call you a murderer. Kill tens of thousands, they give you $500 million (http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/10/bush-raises-more-than-500-million-for-library/) for a granite vanity project and a glossy 30-page supplement in the local paper.

Before getting into that, some facts. According to the US government, more than 100,000 people (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq) died following the 2003 invasion of Iraq; of that number, 4,486 (http://www.icasualties.org/iraq/) were members of the US military. Other estimates place the figure at closer to one million deaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties) as a result of Bush's defining act in office: an aggressive war waged against a non-threat and which even some of his own advisers admit was illegal (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/nov/20/usa.iraq1). So far, the wars started by Bush and continued by his heir, Barack Obama, have cost upwards of $3.1 trillion (http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary). That's money that could have been spent saving lives and building things, not ending and destroying them.

But that's not going to be the narrative at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, opening this week in Dallas, Texas. No, that's going to be: 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 (see also: 9/11).

Called the “Day of Fire,” a main attraction at the new library will be a display on the events of September 11, 2001, where “video images from the attacks flash around a twisted metal beam recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center,” according to the Associated Press (http://news.msn.com/us/bush-library-exhibits-9-11-war-katrina-recount).

“It's very emotional and very profound,” Bush explained in an interview. “One of the reasons it has to be is because memories are fading rapidly and the profound impact of that attack is becoming dim with time.” That is to say, the former president has a keen interest in fanning the embers of outrage over the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans more than a decade ago lest the world view him poorly for the dozens of 9/11s he perpetrated not just on Iraq, but Afghanistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282 001%E2%80%93present%29#Estimates). Never forget the harm done to us or you just might remember the harm we inflicted on others.

The corporate media doesn't want you to remember those depressing and damning details either. In a supplement that reads as a paid advertisement, The Dallas Morning News calls Bush's new library, “A place to learn,” reporting that the former president hopes the “evenhanded treatment” of his legacy “helps satisfy visitors' intellectual curiosity.” That piece is followed by a silky soft interview with the former first lady, Laura Bush, and an editorial that states that her husband “stands out as a leader whose convictions guided him.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/bushs-legacy-atrocities-nowhere-be-seen-his-new-library-and-local-paper-wont

[exstatic]

Is that his entire transcript or is that missing two years? If so, any clue how he did those years?

FYI, my grades sucked my freshmen year. I took a few years off and grew up before returning to school and graduating with a 3.6. But for my first year, I probably would have been around a 3.8. Would those grades along with a law degree from a top 30 law school, graduating in the top 10% of my class, qualify me to run Texas?

I am not arguing that Perry is Rhodes Scholar, but I believe he is in his 4th term as governor of one of the richest most powerful states in the union. Mind you, he reached his postition without being filthy rich or the son of a famous politician. The man is not dumb.

Those people just paid his way. He's dumb as a rock, which is what they want: someone who will do what they want without any thinking or independence. It's the new political reality. It doesn't take money or smarts, just a total lack of initiative or a soul, and a pretty face.

[DarrinS]

By all accounts, Bush is a good and decent man. Just a bad president.

Obama pretty much continued Bush policies, but on steroids, and people love him.

Ironic

[boutons_deux]

By all accounts, Bush is a good and decent man. Just a bad president.

Obama pretty much continued Bush policies, but on steroids, and people love him.

Ironic

you're full of shit, wrong on all counts, per usual

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

"people lacking intelligence don't become wildly successful private equity CEOs"

he's dumb, he's a fake, an empty suite, as he demonstrated in the campaign. an equity broker said Gecko was an unethical bastard. Those equity firms hire, throw big money at, the very best math, physics, legal, finance gunslingers and hit men, Gecko didn't do the dirty work.



He became a dumb/fake empty suite because he needed to in order to avoid being primaried by a dumb/fake empty suite like Perry, Bachmann and Santorum. That's one reason why I used to like the guy but my opinion of him quickly soured during Republican primary. People in Massachusetts don't elect fake/dumb empty suits as governor, do they?

And yeah, those equity firms hire the brightest minds America has to offer in math, physics, and finance to do the dirty work. Guess who becomes CEO and managing partner of those firms? The people who did the best dirty work early on in their career. Mitt Romney was no exception, it's not like he started off as the CEO. He got an MBA from Harvard, went into consulting, was a VP at Bain and Company by age 31, and was the co-founder of Bain Capital because of how high his reputation was among investors and Bain clients. Being dismissive of how much intelligence is required to have the career he had in finance comes off as blind hatred. I've already said his ethics are horrible judging by the companies he destroyed with LBOs, but that's unrelated to his intelligence.

I know several people who started a private equity fund that's raised close to a billion from investors (lucky connection I made from an internship) and don't specialize in LBOs but rather rebuilding already distressed companies facing bankruptcy and liquidation. They're huge assholes and they each have some kind of inferiority complex, but they're off-the-charts intelligent.

[DarrinS]

you're full of shit, wrong on all counts, per usual

butthurt and brain dead, per usual

[boutons_deux]

Library? How about "Lie Bury" ? :lol

The Bush Lie Bury

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6503/images/dubya.jpg

A half-billion dollar George W. Bush Library is being dedicated in Dallas with help from four other current or former U.S. presidents.

Protesters of this Bush Lie Bury -- this burying of a lying leader's record with a lying version of history -- believe Bush should be facing criminal prosecution instead.

Join us in urging the U.S. Department of Justice to act:

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7792

[Winehole23]

Or a great supporting cast. It's not like this was an uncommon political circumstance historically.knowing what to delegate and to whom isn't a trivial political circumstance. GWB was pretty good at that.

[elbamba]

Newt Gingrich comes to mind. He seems to have a firm grasp of any number of subjects. His politics are horrible, but I think he is an intelligent man.

Thanks for a good response. I always thought of Newt as a random internet smart guy who throws out facts with the hope that they stick and no one will fact check. But he does come off as intelligent and confident in what he is saying. Sometimes I think they art of being a good politician is pretending to buy the crap you are selling.

[elbamba]

Bush's Legacy of Atrocities Is Nowhere to Be Seen at His New Library -- and the Local Paper Won't Even Run One Ad That Tells the Truth
[/url]

Wow, a presidential library that focuses on the positves and not the negatives of the president's service. Shocking!

[coyotes_geek]

Thanks for a good response. I always thought of Newt as a random internet smart guy who throws out facts with the hope that they stick and no one will fact check. But he does come off as intelligent and confident in what he is saying. Sometimes I think they art of being a good politician is pretending to buy the crap you are selling.

I know it is.

[baseline bum]

knowing what to delegate and to whom isn't a trivial political circumstance. GWB was pretty good at that.

Delegating the presidency to Cheney wasn't too good of an idea tbh.

[Nbadan]

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/abughraib-701799.jpg

[Nbadan]

http://weeklyworldnews.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/bush_bill.jpg?w=375&h=200

[Nbadan]

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[Nbadan]

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[Nbadan]

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[Nbadan]

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[Nbadan]

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[Nbadan]

the best part of Dubya's presidency?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5TIT_q0510&feature=player_embedded#!

[boutons_deux]

Wow, a presidential library that focuses on the positves and not the negatives of the president's service. Shocking!

so it's not a RESEARCH library, it's right-wing hagiography puff piece, a $500M LIE covering up dubya's Reign of Error and War of Terror.

Right-wing did the same the with St Ronnie, who is way to the LEFT of today's extemeist. The right wing, conservatives, Repugs are dedicated to the LIE, the Empire of Darkness and Evil

[DarrinS]

By all accounts, Bush is a good and decent man. Just a bad president.

Obama pretty much continued Bush policies, but on steroids, and people love him.

Ironic

[boutons_deux]

50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency: A Reminder on the Day of His Presidential Library Dedication


1. He stole the presidency in 2000. People may forget that Republicans in Florida purged more than 50,000 African-American voters before Election Day, and then went to the Supreme Court where the GOP-appointed majority stopped a recount that would have awarded the presidency to Vice-President Al Gore if all votes were counted. National news organizations verified that outcome long after Bush had been sworn in.


2. Bush’s lies started in that race. Bush ran for office claiming he was a “uniter, not a divider.” Even though he received fewer popular votes than Gore, he quickly claimed he had the mandate from the American public to push his right-wing agenda.


3. He covered up his past. He was a party boy, the scion of a powerful political family who got away with being a deserter during the Vietnam War. He was reportedly AWOL for over a year from his assigned unit, the Texas Air National Guard, which other military outfits called the "Champagne Division.”


4. He loved the death penalty. As Texas governor from 1995-2000, he signed the most execution orders of any governor in U.S. history—152 people, including the mentally ill and women who were domestic abuse victims. He spared one man’s life, a serial killer.


5. He was a corporate shill from Day 1. Bush locked up the GOP nomination by raising more campaign money from corporate boardrooms than anyone at that time. He lunched with CEOs who would jet into Austin to "educate" him about their political wish lists.


6. He gutted global political progress.He pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol which set requirements for 38 nations to lower greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, saying that abiding by the agreement would “harm our economy and hurt our workers.”


7. He embraced global isolationism. He withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, over Russia’s protest, taking the U.S. in a direction not seen since World War I.


8. He ignored warnings about Osama bin Laden. He ignored the Aug. 6, 2001 White House intelligence briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.” Meanwhile, his chief anti-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, and first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, testified in Congress that he was intent on invading Iraq within days of becoming president.


9. Ramped up war on drugs, not terrorists. The Bush administration had twice as many FBI agents assigned to the war on drugs than fighting terrorism before 9/11, and kept thousands in that role after the terror attacks.


10. “My Pet Goat.” He kept reading a picture book to grade-schoolers for seven minutes after his top aides told him that the World Trade Centers had been attacked in 9/11. Then Air Force One flew away from Washington, D.C., vanishing for hours after the attack.


11. Squandered global goodwill after 9/11. Bush thumbed his nose at world sympathy for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, by declaring a global war on terrorism and declaring “you are either with us or against us.”


12. Bush turned to Iraq not Afghanistan. The Bush administration soon started beating war drums for an attack on Iraq, where there was no proven Al Qaeda link, instead of Afghanistan, where the 9/11 bombers had trained and Osama bin Laden was based. His 2002 State of the Union speech declared that Iraq was part of an “Axis of Evil.”


13. Attacked United Nation weapons inspectors. The march to war in Iraq started with White House attacks on the credibility of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, whose claims that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons proved to be true.


14. He flat-out lied about Iraq’s weapons. In a major speech in October 2002, he said that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to send unmanned aircraft to the U.S. with bombs that could range from chemical weapons to nuclear devices. “We cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” he said.


15. He ignored the U.N. and launched a war. The Bush administration tried to get the U.N. Security Council to authorize an attack on Iraq, which it refused to do. Bush then decided to lead a "preemptive" attack regardless of international consequences. He did not wait for any congressional authorization to launch a war.


16. Abandoned international Criminal Court. Before invading Iraq, Bush told the U.N. that the U.S. was withdrawing from ratifying the International Criminal Court Treaty to protect American troops from persecution and to allow it to pursue preemptive war.


17. Colin Powell’s false evidence at U.N. The highly decorated soldier turned Secretary of State presented false evidence at the U.N. as the American mainstream media began its jingoistic drumbeat to launch a war of choice on Saddam Hussein and Iraq.


18. He launched a war on CIA whistleblowers. When a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed saying there was no nuclear threat from Iraq, the White House retaliated by leaking the name and destroying the career of his wife, Valerie Plame, one of the CIA’s top national security experts.


19. Bush pardoned the Plame affair leaker. Before leaving office, Bush pardoned the vice president’s top staffer, Scooter Libby, for leaking Plame’s name to the press.


20. Bush launched the second Iraq War. In April 2003, the U.S. military invaded Iraq for the second time in two decades, leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and more than a million refugees as a years of sectarian violence took hold on Iraq. Nearly 6,700 U.S. soldiers have died in the Iraq and Afghan wars.


21. Baghdad looted except for oil ministry. The Pentagon failure to plan for a military occupation and transition to civilian rule was seen as Baghdad was looted while troops guarded the oil ministry, suggesting this war was fought for oil riches, not terrorism.


22. The war did not make the U.S. safer. In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate (a consensus report of the heads of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies) asserted that the Iraq war had increased Islamic radicalism and had worsened the terror threat.


23. U.S. troops were given unsafe gear. From inadequate vests from protection against snipers to Humvees that could not protect soldiers from roadside bombs, the military did not sufficiently equip its soldiers in Iraq, leading to an epidemic of brain injuries.


24. Meanwhile, the war propaganda continued. From landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to declare “mission accomplished” to surprising troops in Baghdad with a Thanksgiving turkey that was a table decoration used as a prop, Bush defended his war of choice by using soldiers as PR props.


25. He never attended soldiers' funerals. For years after the war started, Bush never attended a funeral even though as of June 2005, 144 soldiers (of the 1,700 killed thus far) were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary, about two miles from the White House.


26. Meanwhile, war profiteering surged.The list of top Bush administration officials whose former corporate employers made billions in Pentagon contracts starts with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, which made $39.5 billion, and included his daughter, Liz Cheney, who ran a $300 million Middle East partnership program.


27. Bush ignored international ban on torture. Suspected terrorists were captured and tortured by the U.S. military in Baghdad’s Abu Gharib prison, in the highest profile example of how the Bush White House ignored international agreements, such as the Geneva Convention, that banned torture, and created a secret system of detention that was unmasked when photos made their way to the American media outlets.


28. Created the blackhole at Gitmo and renditions. The Bush White House created the offshore military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as secret detention sites in eastern Europe to evade domestic and military justice systems. Many of the men still jailed in Cuba were turned over to the U.S. military by bounty hunters.


29. Bush violated U.S. Constitution as well.The Bush White House ignored basic civil liberties, most notably by launching a massive domestic spying program where millions of Americans’ online activities were monitored with the help of big telecom companies. The government had no search warrant or court authority for its electronic dragnet.


30. Iraq war created federal debt crisis.The total costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars will reach between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, when the long-term medical costs are added in for wounded veterans, a March 2013 report by a Harvard researcher has estimated. Earlier reports said the wars cost $2 billion a week.


31. He cut veterans’ healthcare funding. At the height of the Iraq war, the White House cut funding for veterans’ healthcare by several billion dollars, slashed more than one billion from military housing and opposed extending healthcare to National Guard families, even as they were repeatedly tapped for extended and repeat overseas deployments.


32. Then Bush decided to cut income taxes. In 2001 and 2003, a series of bills lowered income tax rates, cutting federal revenues as the cost of the foreign wars escalated. The tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy, with roughly one-quarter going to the top one percent of incomes compared to 8.9% going to the middle 20 percent. The cuts were supposed to expire in 2013, but most are still on the books.


33. Assault on reproductive rights.From the earliest days of his first term, the Bush White House led a prolonged assault on reproductive rights. He cut funds for U.N. family planning programs, barred military bases from offering abortions, put right-wing evangelicals in regulatory positions where they rejected new birth control drugs, and issued regulations making fetuses—but not women—eligible for federal healthcare.


34. Cut Pell Grant loans for poor students. His administration froze Pell Grants for years and tightened eligibility for loans, affecting 1.5 million low-income students. He also eliminated other federal job training programs that targeted young people.


35. Turned corporations loose on environment. Bush’s environmental record was truly appalling, starting with abandoning a campaign pledge to tax carbon emissions and then withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases. The Sierra Club lists 300 actions his staff took to undermine federal laws, from cutting enforcement budgets to putting industry lobbyists in charge of agencies to keeping energy policies secret.


36.. Said evolution was a theory—like intelligent design.One of his most inflammatory comments was saying that public schools should teach that evolution is a theory with as much validity as the religious belief in intelligent design, or God’s active hand in creating life.


37. Misguided school reform effort. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative made preparation for standardized tests and resulting test scores the top priority in schools, to the dismay of legions of educators who felt that there was more to learning than taking tests.


38. Appointed flank of right-wing judges. Bush’s two Supreme Court picks—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito—have reliably sided with pro-business interests and social conservatives. He also elevated U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pickering to an appeals court, despite his known segregationist views.


39. Gutted the DOJ’s voting rights section. Bush’s Justice Department appointees led a multi-year effort to prosecute so-called voter fraud, including firing seven U.S. attorneys who did not pursue overtly political cases because of lack of evidence.


40. Meanwhile average household incomes fell. When Bush took office in 2000, median household incomes were $52,500. In 2008, they were $50,303, a drop of 4.2 percent, making Bush the only recent two-term president to preside over such a drop.


41. And millions more fell below the poverty line. When Bill Clinton left office, 31.6 million Americans were living in poverty. When Bush left office, there were 39.8 million, according to the U.S. Census, an increase of 26.1 percent. The Census said two-thirds of that growth occurred before the economic downturn of 2008.


42. Poverty among children also exploded. The Census also found that 11.6 million children lived below the poverty line when Clinton left office. Under Bush, that number grew by 21 percent to 14.1 million.


43. Millions more lacked access to healthcare. Following these poverty trends, the number of Americans without health insurance was 38.4 million when Clinton left office. When Bush left, that figure had grown by nearly 8 million to 46.3 million, the Census found. Those with employer-provided benefits fell every year he was in office.


44. Bush let black New Orleans drown. Hurricane Katrina exposed Bush’s attitude toward the poor. He didn’t visit the city after the storm destroyed the poorest sections. He praised his Federal Emergency Management Agency director for doing a "heck of a job" as the federal government did little to help thousands in the storm’s aftermath and rebuilding.


45. Yet pandered to religious right. Months before Katrina hit, Bush flew back to the White House to sign a bill to try to stop the comatose Terri Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed, saying the sanctity of life was at stake.


46. Set record for fewest press conferences. During his first term that was defined by the 9/11 attacks, he had the fewest press conferences of any modern president and had never met with the New York Times editorial board.


47. But took the most vacation time. Reporters analyzing Bush’s record found that he took off 1,020 days in two four-year terms—more than one out of every three days. No other modern president comes close. Bush also set the record for the longest vacation among modern presidents—five weeks, the Washington Post noted.


48. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld. Not since Richard Nixon’s White House and the era of the Watergate burglary and expansion of the Vietnam War have there been as many power-hungry and arrogant operators holding the levers of power. Cheney ran the White House; Rove the political operation for corporations and the religious right; and Rumsfeld oversaw the wars.


49. He’s escaped accountability for his actions. From Iraq war General Tommy Franks’ declaration that “we don’t do body counts” to numerous efforts to impeach Bush and top administration officials—primarily over launching the war in Iraq—he has never been held to account in any official domestic or international tribunal.


50. He may have stolen the 2004 election as well. The closest Bush came to a public referendum on his presidency was the 2004 election, which came down to the swing state of Ohio. There the GOP’s voter suppression tactics rivaled Florida in 2000 and many unresolved questions remain about whether the former GOP Secretary of State altered the Election Night totals from rural Bible Belt counties.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/50-reasons-you-despised-george-w-bushs-presidency-reminder-day-his-presidential?akid=10363.187590.aUKrVz&rd=1&src=newsletter830237&t=3&paging=off

[boutons_deux]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/boro-bush-lib.jpg


While former Presidents and a star-studded cast of other dignitaries gather in Dallas, Texas, today for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the first library opened by Mr. Bush, located in Guantánamo, Cuba, celebrated its eleventh anniversary in January with considerably less pomp.

And for Harland Dorrinson, who curates Mr. Bush’s other library, the lack of attention stings.

“We’re actually the first George W. Bush library, if anybody cares to know,” Mr. Dorrinson said, adding that “no media whatsoever” covered the Guantánamo library’s eleventh anniversary.

“They say that millions of people are going to visit the George W. Bush Library in Dallas every year,” he said. “On a good day, we’re lucky if we see one or two C.I.A. guys in between interrogations, looking for a Tom Clancy novel.”

While Mr. Dorrinson said that he doesn’t expect his library to get the kind of attention likely to be enjoyed by its fancier counterpart in Dallas “any time soon,” he calls the absence of recognition “hurtful.”

“It seems like there was a lot of excitement about this place when we opened in 2002,” he said. “When was the last time you heard anyone in Washington even say the word ‘Guantánamo?’”

That’s a shame, he added, because the library at Guantánamo has a lot to offer that the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas doesn’t: “If you go to their Web site, you see that they’re closed some days. We’re going to be open forever.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/04/first-bush-library-quietly-celebrates-eleventh-anniversary.html#entry-more

[boutons_deux]

Bush weeps while talking about Hurricane Katrina and dead soldiers
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cnn_bush_crying_130425c-615x345.jpg

“the servicemembers who laid down their lives to keep our country safe” during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. :lol

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/25/bush-weeps-while-talking-about-hurricane-katrina-and-dead-soldiers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

dubya still LYING about why he wasted 100Ks lives for oil. fucking crocodile tears.

[boutons_deux]

unbeatable :lol

The Daily Show Takes on the Bush Library and 'Disasterpiece Theater'

http://www.alternet.org/media/watch-daily-show-takes-bush-library-and-disasterpiece-theater

[boutons_deux]

How to debunk George W. Bush’s attempts at revisionism (http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/bush_is_not_back_and_he_is_still_terrible/)

Every dog goes to heaven and every former president should get a shot at repairing his legacy, especially when it’s as tattered as George W. Bush’s. With the opening of his presidential library and museum this week, observers from former Bush officials to mainstream outlets were taking a fresh, rosy look at the Bush legacy. Some offered dopey and facially ridiculous cheerleading, while others offered more compelling suggestions to return to the Bush era with an open mind. After all, other presidents left office in a cloud only to be redeemed by history years later.

So, is this week making you feel a bit nostalgic for the Bush era? Don’t. It’s been almost half a decade since the 43rd president left office, and he’s looking as bad as ever. Of course, that won’t stop a small circle of admirers (many of whom used to be on his payroll) from trying, so here’s your guide to taking on the five biggest specious pro-Bush talking points put forward this week:

1) Bush kept us safe: The biggest myth of the Bush presidency, by far, is that the president kept the country safe. As Charles Krauthammer wrote this week in the Washington Post in a typical example: “It’s important to note that he did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terror infrastructure that continues to keep us safe … Which is why there was not one successful terror bombing on U.S. soil from 9/11 until last week.”

Just no. First of all, why does 9/11 not count? It’s not like the U.S. government was completely unaware of the threat from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden until 9/11. After all, bin Laden had already helped orchestrate the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds in 1998, and Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan to try to kill bin Laden three years before 9/11. And then there’s that CIA briefing that warned Bush: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” — 36 days before Sept. 11. Bush’s response to the briefer giving him the news? To say, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Then he went fishing. Literally.

As for the claim that there were no terror attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11 under Bush — also bogus. Conor Friedersdorf writes:

“Bush’s tenure included anthrax attacks that killed five people (more than died in the Boston marathon bombing) and that injured between 22 and 68 people. Bush was president when Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two and wounded four at an LAX ticket counter; when the Beltway snipers killed 10 people; when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured six driving his SUV into a crowd; and when Naveed Afzal Haq killed one woman and shot five others in Seattle.”

Also, there was the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, just before the 2000 election, which should have brought an extra warning about the al-Qaida threat, and later on, bombings in London, Madrid, and Jordan. Meanwhile, thanks to the wars there, much of the attention from international terror went to Iraq and Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and sympathetic groups found it easier to kill American soldiers than to attack Americans on U.S. soil.

2) Bush was fiscally responsible: Here’s Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, writing in the National Review this week, “Over Mr. Bush’s tenure, our national debt averaged 38 percent of GDP, a result of holding average annual deficits to 2 percent of GDP, and federal spending remained below 20 percent of GDP in six of his eight years in office. (Only one other president in the past 40 years was able to reach such a low level, and for fewer years).” Jennifer Rubin added in the Washington Post: “He is responsible for one of the most popular and fiscally sober entitlement plans, Medicare Part D.”

Former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card even had the chutzpah to claim that President Bush “probably has the best track record of any modern president in terms of fiscal discipline.”

The only way to make that claim is to be willfully dishonest, as the numbers are cut and dried. Notice that Gillespie cites the average debt over the course of the eight years, instead of the progression. Here’s another way of looking at Bush’s fiscal legacy: When he entered office, the U.S. government was running a surplus (and was projected to do so for the next several decades) and when Bush left office, the government was running its biggest deficit since World War II.

Part of this can be attributed to the collapse in tax revenue during the Great Recession, and even if we don’t blame Bush for letting Wall Street collapse the economy, you can certainly blame him for ruining the fiscal bulwark built up under the Clinton years with massive tax cuts that mostly benefited the rich and two hugely expensive wars. Here’s a chart from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities about what’s driving the debt:

As for Medicare Part D, which helps seniors pay for prescription drugs, while the cost of the program is less than was originally projected, it’s still higher than it should be. The savings came from lower drug spending overall, but while overall spending is 35 percent lower than expected, Medicare Part D spending was only 22 percent below expectations. And drug costs are still higher under Medicare Part D than they should be.

And during most of this time, there was no reason for the debt to explode; the economy was doing pretty well (unless you were poor). Much of the debt raised under Bush was purely elective. Even Republicans say this all the time. “Many of us, myself included, got into politics because we were appalled at the Bush record on spending,” South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney told the Hill.

3) Iraq wasn’t so bad: While even the people who were responsible for executing it admit there were problems with the Iraq War, they always blame it on faulty intelligence. And who could have predicted the uprising following the invasion? Meanwhile, Afghanistan wasn’t so bad, they say.

Here’s Krauthammer: “Bush’s achievement was not just infrastructure. It was war.” He goes on to note that Democrats voted for the Iraq War, and that while there were no nuclear weapons, the war did prevent Saddam Hussein from regaining his “full economic and regional power.” Karl Rove added, “I do believe that the Iraq War was the right thing to do and the world is a safer place for having Saddam Hussein gone.”

More whitewashing. Bush officials threw the CIA under the bus for allegedly misleading them on weapons of mass destruction, but what seems more likely is that the White House and other key officials “cherry-picked” key pieces of intelligence to bolster their claim and discarded the rest. Intelligence is messy and produces lots of divergent and sometimes conflicting information from sources of varying reliability, but the White House pushed the boundaries of intellectual honesty in building the case for the war. While many argue it’s a bridge too far to say he lied and knew there were no nuclear weapons, it’s clear that officials chose an outcome they wanted and then found the evidence to get them there, and then misled the American people and world by not honestly representing the doubts in the intelligence.

As for the aftermath, as James Fallows wrote in his seminal 2004 account, “The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge.”

Is Iraq better off without Saddam Hussein? One could make the argument, but the country is hardly the model of peace and democracy. The war tipped off a brutal civil war that left an estimated 125,000 dead and millions displaced. Bombings and attacks continue to this day and the country seems to be heading back toward widespread violence. Meanwhile, the government the U.S. installed is trending toward autocracy.

And while Iraq may no longer be the regional powerhouse it once was, the war served to empower Iran, its longtime rival, by eliminating the main check on Tehran’s power. Now it’s Tehran’s nuclear program that we’re worrying about.

The fact that Democrats also supported the war does not make it right; it means that they were wrong too.

4) Bush is Back — and popular now! At the beginning of the Week of Bush Revisionism, the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll showing that Bush’s poll numbers have recovered since leaving office. As Dan Balz wrote, “Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove.”

This has been a jumping-off point for every Bush revisionist article and argument of the past five day and presented as proof positive that Americans are finally realizing that Bush was OK. As Rubin wrote, “It took less than 4 1/2 years of the Obama presidency for President George W. Bush to mount his comeback.” Her phrasing suggests this is an unusually short amount of time for a former president to stage a comeback, as if presidents inevitably leave office in disgrace, as hundreds of thousands of people sing “Kiss Him Goodbye.”

But this simply isn’t the case. Americans are a pretty forgiving people and generally like their presidents, so if it takes almost five years for fewer than half of Americans to like you, the problem isn’t the public — it’s you. When Bill Clinton left office, he had a 65 percent approval rating (reminder: This is the guy who was impeached). Today, according to a Fox News poll from last week, 71 percent of Americans view Clinton favorably and just 25 hold an unfavorable view of the former president.

And the poll is just a single data point, hardly enough to say definitively that Bush has bounced back. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from earlier in April found that only 35 percent of Americans view Bush in a positive light, while 44 percent viewed him negatively.

Even the relatively positive Washington Post poll found that Bush’s approval rating on key decisions is still deep underwater. And as recently as November, most Americans still blamed Bush for recession, almost four years after he left office.

5) Bush was a historically great president: Karl Rove went for the big picture, saying at the dedication of the Bush Center in Dallas, “I’d put [Bush] up there” with “George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, FDR.”

Hmm. Is that really where Bush ranks in the history of American presidents? If you ask historians, it’s somewhere near the very bottom. A Siena College survey of 238 presidential scholars in 2010 put Bush at 39th out of 43 presidents. A 2009 C-SPAN ranking put him at 36th.

If you ask the American people, they say something similar. In 2012, Gallup asked Americans how former presidents will go down in history. Nearly half — 47 percent — said Bush will be remembered poorly or below average. Just 25 said above average or “outstanding.” By contrast, just 12 percent said Clinton would go down as below average or poor.

If you ask the data, they paint an ugly picture. Unemployment, federal debt, consumer debt and poverty all went up, while income inequality, GDP, wages, tax revenues all went down. Here’s what Neil Irwin wrote in 2010:

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different. The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth.

Add to that the bungled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the preventable failure to catch Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, the absolutely horrendous handling of Hurricane Katrina, the outing of a covert CIA officer in a political vendetta, the illegal wiretapping of Americans’ phones, the improper firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the use of taxpayer dollars to pay columnists, and “misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes,” to name a few — and, well, then you know why Dana Perino, Bush’s former press secretary, was forced to lead her ode to the ex-president by recounting that he “shar[ed] his peanut butter and honey sandwiches with me.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/bush_is_not_back_and_he_is_still_terrible/

[BobaFett1]

You mean why doesn't media act exactly as you want them to politically?

No dumbass. Why does media not ask Obummer tough questions? Double standard. Chumper you been owned son. STFU.:lol

[BobaFett1]

How to debunk George W. Bush’s attempts at revisionism (http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/bush_is_not_back_and_he_is_still_terrible/)

Every dog goes to heaven and every former president should get a shot at repairing his legacy, especially when it’s as tattered as George W. Bush’s. With the opening of his presidential library and museum this week, observers from former Bush officials to mainstream outlets were taking a fresh, rosy look at the Bush legacy. Some offered dopey and facially ridiculous cheerleading, while others offered more compelling suggestions to return to the Bush era with an open mind. After all, other presidents left office in a cloud only to be redeemed by history years later.

So, is this week making you feel a bit nostalgic for the Bush era? Don’t. It’s been almost half a decade since the 43rd president left office, and he’s looking as bad as ever. Of course, that won’t stop a small circle of admirers (many of whom used to be on his payroll) from trying, so here’s your guide to taking on the five biggest specious pro-Bush talking points put forward this week:

1) Bush kept us safe: The biggest myth of the Bush presidency, by far, is that the president kept the country safe. As Charles Krauthammer wrote this week in the Washington Post in a typical example: “It’s important to note that he did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terror infrastructure that continues to keep us safe … Which is why there was not one successful terror bombing on U.S. soil from 9/11 until last week.”

Just no. First of all, why does 9/11 not count? It’s not like the U.S. government was completely unaware of the threat from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden until 9/11. After all, bin Laden had already helped orchestrate the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds in 1998, and Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan to try to kill bin Laden three years before 9/11. And then there’s that CIA briefing that warned Bush: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” — 36 days before Sept. 11. Bush’s response to the briefer giving him the news? To say, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Then he went fishing. Literally.

As for the claim that there were no terror attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11 under Bush — also bogus. Conor Friedersdorf writes:

“Bush’s tenure included anthrax attacks that killed five people (more than died in the Boston marathon bombing) and that injured between 22 and 68 people. Bush was president when Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two and wounded four at an LAX ticket counter; when the Beltway snipers killed 10 people; when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured six driving his SUV into a crowd; and when Naveed Afzal Haq killed one woman and shot five others in Seattle.”

Also, there was the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, just before the 2000 election, which should have brought an extra warning about the al-Qaida threat, and later on, bombings in London, Madrid, and Jordan. Meanwhile, thanks to the wars there, much of the attention from international terror went to Iraq and Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and sympathetic groups found it easier to kill American soldiers than to attack Americans on U.S. soil.

2) Bush was fiscally responsible: Here’s Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, writing in the National Review this week, “Over Mr. Bush’s tenure, our national debt averaged 38 percent of GDP, a result of holding average annual deficits to 2 percent of GDP, and federal spending remained below 20 percent of GDP in six of his eight years in office. (Only one other president in the past 40 years was able to reach such a low level, and for fewer years).” Jennifer Rubin added in the Washington Post: “He is responsible for one of the most popular and fiscally sober entitlement plans, Medicare Part D.”

Former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card even had the chutzpah to claim that President Bush “probably has the best track record of any modern president in terms of fiscal discipline.”

The only way to make that claim is to be willfully dishonest, as the numbers are cut and dried. Notice that Gillespie cites the average debt over the course of the eight years, instead of the progression. Here’s another way of looking at Bush’s fiscal legacy: When he entered office, the U.S. government was running a surplus (and was projected to do so for the next several decades) and when Bush left office, the government was running its biggest deficit since World War II.

Part of this can be attributed to the collapse in tax revenue during the Great Recession, and even if we don’t blame Bush for letting Wall Street collapse the economy, you can certainly blame him for ruining the fiscal bulwark built up under the Clinton years with massive tax cuts that mostly benefited the rich and two hugely expensive wars. Here’s a chart from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities about what’s driving the debt:

As for Medicare Part D, which helps seniors pay for prescription drugs, while the cost of the program is less than was originally projected, it’s still higher than it should be. The savings came from lower drug spending overall, but while overall spending is 35 percent lower than expected, Medicare Part D spending was only 22 percent below expectations. And drug costs are still higher under Medicare Part D than they should be.

And during most of this time, there was no reason for the debt to explode; the economy was doing pretty well (unless you were poor). Much of the debt raised under Bush was purely elective. Even Republicans say this all the time. “Many of us, myself included, got into politics because we were appalled at the Bush record on spending,” South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney told the Hill.

3) Iraq wasn’t so bad: While even the people who were responsible for executing it admit there were problems with the Iraq War, they always blame it on faulty intelligence. And who could have predicted the uprising following the invasion? Meanwhile, Afghanistan wasn’t so bad, they say.

Here’s Krauthammer: “Bush’s achievement was not just infrastructure. It was war.” He goes on to note that Democrats voted for the Iraq War, and that while there were no nuclear weapons, the war did prevent Saddam Hussein from regaining his “full economic and regional power.” Karl Rove added, “I do believe that the Iraq War was the right thing to do and the world is a safer place for having Saddam Hussein gone.”

More whitewashing. Bush officials threw the CIA under the bus for allegedly misleading them on weapons of mass destruction, but what seems more likely is that the White House and other key officials “cherry-picked” key pieces of intelligence to bolster their claim and discarded the rest. Intelligence is messy and produces lots of divergent and sometimes conflicting information from sources of varying reliability, but the White House pushed the boundaries of intellectual honesty in building the case for the war. While many argue it’s a bridge too far to say he lied and knew there were no nuclear weapons, it’s clear that officials chose an outcome they wanted and then found the evidence to get them there, and then misled the American people and world by not honestly representing the doubts in the intelligence.

As for the aftermath, as James Fallows wrote in his seminal 2004 account, “The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge.”

Is Iraq better off without Saddam Hussein? One could make the argument, but the country is hardly the model of peace and democracy. The war tipped off a brutal civil war that left an estimated 125,000 dead and millions displaced. Bombings and attacks continue to this day and the country seems to be heading back toward widespread violence. Meanwhile, the government the U.S. installed is trending toward autocracy.

And while Iraq may no longer be the regional powerhouse it once was, the war served to empower Iran, its longtime rival, by eliminating the main check on Tehran’s power. Now it’s Tehran’s nuclear program that we’re worrying about.

The fact that Democrats also supported the war does not make it right; it means that they were wrong too.

4) Bush is Back — and popular now! At the beginning of the Week of Bush Revisionism, the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll showing that Bush’s poll numbers have recovered since leaving office. As Dan Balz wrote, “Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove.”

This has been a jumping-off point for every Bush revisionist article and argument of the past five day and presented as proof positive that Americans are finally realizing that Bush was OK. As Rubin wrote, “It took less than 4 1/2 years of the Obama presidency for President George W. Bush to mount his comeback.” Her phrasing suggests this is an unusually short amount of time for a former president to stage a comeback, as if presidents inevitably leave office in disgrace, as hundreds of thousands of people sing “Kiss Him Goodbye.”

But this simply isn’t the case. Americans are a pretty forgiving people and generally like their presidents, so if it takes almost five years for fewer than half of Americans to like you, the problem isn’t the public — it’s you. When Bill Clinton left office, he had a 65 percent approval rating (reminder: This is the guy who was impeached). Today, according to a Fox News poll from last week, 71 percent of Americans view Clinton favorably and just 25 hold an unfavorable view of the former president.

And the poll is just a single data point, hardly enough to say definitively that Bush has bounced back. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from earlier in April found that only 35 percent of Americans view Bush in a positive light, while 44 percent viewed him negatively.

Even the relatively positive Washington Post poll found that Bush’s approval rating on key decisions is still deep underwater. And as recently as November, most Americans still blamed Bush for recession, almost four years after he left office.

5) Bush was a historically great president: Karl Rove went for the big picture, saying at the dedication of the Bush Center in Dallas, “I’d put [Bush] up there” with “George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, FDR.”

Hmm. Is that really where Bush ranks in the history of American presidents? If you ask historians, it’s somewhere near the very bottom. A Siena College survey of 238 presidential scholars in 2010 put Bush at 39th out of 43 presidents. A 2009 C-SPAN ranking put him at 36th.

If you ask the American people, they say something similar. In 2012, Gallup asked Americans how former presidents will go down in history. Nearly half — 47 percent — said Bush will be remembered poorly or below average. Just 25 said above average or “outstanding.” By contrast, just 12 percent said Clinton would go down as below average or poor.

If you ask the data, they paint an ugly picture. Unemployment, federal debt, consumer debt and poverty all went up, while income inequality, GDP, wages, tax revenues all went down. Here’s what Neil Irwin wrote in 2010:

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different. The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth.

Add to that the bungled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the preventable failure to catch Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, the absolutely horrendous handling of Hurricane Katrina, the outing of a covert CIA officer in a political vendetta, the illegal wiretapping of Americans’ phones, the improper firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the use of taxpayer dollars to pay columnists, and “misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes,” to name a few — and, well, then you know why Dana Perino, Bush’s former press secretary, was forced to lead her ode to the ex-president by recounting that he “shar[ed] his peanut butter and honey sandwiches with me.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/bush_is_not_back_and_he_is_still_terrible/

Clinton missed a chance to kill Bin Laden also.

[BobaFett1]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/05/14/60-minutes-clinton-administration-passed-opportunity-kill-bin-laden-1

[ChumpDumper]

No dumbass. Why does media not ask Obummer tough questions? Double standard. Chumper you been owned son. STFU.:lolWhat specific questions did you want asked about Libya?

[ChumpDumper]

Clinton missed a chance to kill Bin Laden also.Bush ignored the threat of terra completely. Hornet you been owned son. STFU, :lol

[boutons_deux]

Clinton missed a chance to kill Bin Laden also.

He shot missiles at OBL, and Repugs bitched and whined saying he was distracting from Repugs flaccid harassment impeachment.

[Nbadan]

Last night at the new George W. Bush Library....

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/310911_10151642233096081_268054094_n.jpg

[Nbadan]

George W. Bush Presidential Library Virtual Tour


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWmsE9ULahc&feature=player_embedded#at=73

[baseline bum]

Last night at the new George W. Bush Library....

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/310911_10151642233096081_268054094_n.jpg

:lol

[Nbadan]

http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/H/J/5/bush-obama-fingers.jpg

[Sa_Spursfan20]

http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/H/J/5/bush-obama-fingers.jpg

Terrible photoshop tbh