BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:03 PM

Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009, at 6:39 AM ET

The New York Times leads with word that Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who has long been involved in intelligence matters, agreed to push for leniency from the Bush administration on behalf of two lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel organization. In calls intercepted by the National Security Agency, Harman apparently agreed to speak up for the lobbyists in exchange for help in convincing party leaders that she should be the chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee after her party gained control of Congress in 2006. The wiretapped calls were first reported by Congressional Quarterly and the NYT gets three sources to confirm much of the information. The Wall Street Journal banners word that cyberspies managed to repeatedly penetrate the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter, the "Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever," as well as the Air Force's air traffic control system. The spies were even able to copy "several terabytes" of data relating to the fighter-jet program.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:02 PM

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 05:49 PM

Last week, President Obama released four Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos that had authorized torture. "In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail -- like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears," The New York Times writes. The earliest memo, from 2002, was signed by Jay Bybee, then an Assistant Attorney General and now a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bybee's memo provided "a legal authorization for a laundry list of proposed C.I.A. interrogation techniques," including waterboarding. The techniques Bybee approved are illegal by U.S. statute and an international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory. Bybee attempted to give legal cover to illegal acts, and thus broke the ethical, professional, and legal standards that govern lawyers. For this, Judge Jay Bybee should be impeached. The Progress Report has launched a campaign to persuade the House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment hearings against Bybee. Already, more than 3,000 of you have taken action. Join our effort to convince the committee to launch hearings.

WHAT BYBEE APPROVED: "[I]n the finest legalese" and with "grotesque, lawyerly logic," Bybee wrote 40 pages of justification for treatment that clearly constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." He approved a method called "walling," which entailed slamming a detainee against a wall. Bybee claimed that "any pain experienced is not of the intensity associated with serious physical injury." He also gave a thumbs up to slapping a detainee's face as long as the interrogator took off any rings. "The facial slap does not produce pain that is difficult to endure," he insisted. And feel free to place detainees in stress positions, Bybee said: these "simply involve forcing the subject to remain in uncomfortable positions." Most notoriously, Bybee declared that waterboarding -- a technique perfected during the Spanish Inquisition that the United States later prosecuted Japanese officers for conducting against U.S. POWs -- was both legal and safe. "The waterboard…inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever," Bybee claimed. He said that U.S. law bans only techniques that cause "pain and suffering," a phrase "best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of 'pain' as distinguished from 'suffering.'" Since waterboarding causes no "pain," Bybee declares it legal. In fact, he wrote, even one separates "pain" from "suffering," waterboarding would still be acceptable: "The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering."

HOW TO IMPEACH BYBEE: The Progress Report is asking readers to sign a petition to be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, urging it to hold hearings on Bybee. After the hearings, the Committee would draw up articles of impeachment, and pass them with a simple majority vote. From there, the articles move to the full House, which can also approve them with a simple majority. The House sends two "managers" to serve as prosecutors in the impeachment trial, conducted in the Senate if a majority agrees to move forward. It takes 67 Senators to convict -- and a conviction would remove Bybee from the bench. Calling for his impeachment in January, Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote, "[Bybee's] impeachment is not a prelude to a sweeping political vendetta. It focuses on a very particular problem: Jay Bybee may serve for decades on one of the highest courts in the land. Is his continued service consistent with his role in the systematic perpetration of war crimes?" The New York Times called for Bybee's impeachment this weekend, writing that the "memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution." "His flagrant contempt for the rule of law is utterly inconsistent with his judicial position and speaks directly to his competency to function in that office," stated the Center for Constitutional Rights. "He ought to be impeached," House Judiciary Committee member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told the Huffington Post yesterday. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law. "Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed that impeachment is "certainly possible." "The idea of the author of one of these memos sitting on the federal bench makes a farce of the whole legal system," wrote the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Matthew Yglesias.

A PATH TO ACCOUNTABILITY: In 2003, Bybee was nominated by President Bush and approved by the Senate to sit on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. During his confirmation hearing, Bybee refused to answer questions, citing executive privilege at least 20 separate times. "If the Senate had known the truth, it would have rejected him," Ackerman wrote. Launching the impeachment process would force Bybee to finally answer questions. And with the Obama administration hesitant to launch prosecutions of any kind, an impeachment hearing might be the closest thing Americans get to a full accounting of Bush's torture program. Indeed, when pressed yesterday on why Obama was refusing to hold Bush administration lawyers who authored the torture memos "accountable," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated simply, "The president is focused on looking forward. That's why." Looking forward, however, "it is simply obvious that, if there is no accountability when wrongdoing is exposed, future violations will not be deterred," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said yesterday. ...

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:45 AM

What about the failure of Wilson to get the League of Nations through the Senate???


Or a few years earlier (1913?), when the Income Tax was created, allowing for unlimited growth of government?




Or the 1790's when the Whiskey Rebellion was put down?

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:41 AM

IT could be that that was just a symptom, and the source of malaise was the unfortunate confluence of Sicilian immigration policies in the late 1940s, the commercial success of tobacco and Wonder Bread, and the invention of LSD.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:13 AM

Exactly right, Sanity, that's what I've been thinking for years. All of these pieces must fit together somehow.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 02:42 AM

Well, think of it this way, or try to, If Obama does not rescind the policies of Bush's Administration, then he is just as bad..and 'enjoying' the benefits!

Personally, I think we started this wholesale downhill slide on November 22, in Dallas, 1963.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Barry Finn
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 02:26 AM

Maybe some "Extreme Rendition" is in order here.

What I find amusing is Bush on a lecture tour & writing a book.
He couldn't speak properly & can barely read.


"Bush has also been working to raise $300 million for his presidential library"

Hah, hah, hah. He thinks the public's as dumb as he is.
$300 mil to house 4 coloring books & only 2 that are completed is just ridiculous.

The tapes should should him trying to read to the kids as he found out the 'Twin Towers' were hit. "7 blank minutes".

"IMBECILE"

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 07:00 PM

"The current torture case began in the spring of 2004, when photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib surfaced. Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few "bad apples" for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, "I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened." While keeping up his busy law practice, he travelled to America to interview the key players in what he described as "a writing project I am engaged in on international law and the war on terror." Many Bush officials, including Feith and William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, who was also named in the Spanish lawsuit, agreed to meet with Sands, perhaps expecting a friendly chat. "I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful," Sands said. "I've got a particular bugbear about lawyers," he added. "If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred."
As Sands went about his research, he conferred with human-rights experts all over Europe on his findings. Word spread that he had the makings of a high-level war-crimes case. Sands won't reveal exactly which human-rights authorities he consulted. But, in recent months, one of them was Gonzalo Boye, the Chilean-born Spanish lawyer who last week filed the criminal complaint against the Bush officials, on behalf of five former prisoners who were, they allege, tortured in the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Boye said last week of Sands, "Let me just say that he played a very big role in my thinking. His book showed me who the targets were." Feith, reached on the phone, called Sands's book "wildly inaccurate." He said, "It's not a happy thing for the Spanish Court to think of prosecuting Americans for advice they gave to the President of the United States!"
It is hard to predict what will happen next, but, if arrest warrants are issued, the Obama Administration may be forced either to extradite the former officials or to start its own investigation. Sands, who admires Obama, said, "I regret that I have added to his in-box when he has so much else to sort out. But I hope he does the right thing. There's not much dispute anymore: torture happened, and the law is clear—torture must be punished."
Meanwhile, Sands reiterated a warning that he made in his book. "If I were they," he said, referring to the former officials in question, "I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole." ♦..."

From "THE BUSH SIX"
by Jane Mayer
APRIL 13, 2009
The New Yorker

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:40 PM

"Gone But Not Forgotten


It has now been three months since President Bush and his family boarded their plane back to Texas and handed the reins of power over to President Obama. Yet Bush administration officials are pushing to make sure that the American public remembers them -- or rather, remembers what they want them to remember. While Bush has been focusing on fundraising for his presidential library and hitting the lecture circuit, his top aides have been aggressively taking to the airwaves to criticize Obama. With Obama's approval rating still above 60 percent, these aides are pulling out all the stops to shape Bush's legacy and pass blame on to his successor. However, there's little proof that these attacks are working. In a recent C-SPAN poll of presidential historians, Bush made a list of the top 10 worst presidents in U.S. history. Even abroad, officials are attempting to hold the Bush administration accountable. Last month, a Spanish court "agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials...over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay."

THE DECIDER: Even while still in office, Bush was looking forward to making a "ridiculous" amount of money on the lecture circuit. According to his bio on the Washington Speakers Bureau website, the point of his speaking tour is to promote his policies that were "controversial at times" but "kept the country safe for more than seven years." Bush is now lecturing approximately once a week. His first appearance was in Canada, where activists and human rights lawyers tried to bar his entry into the country. Bush has also been working to raise $300 million for his presidential library, although "the prospect" of being identified "in perpetuity" with Bush's agenda "freezes the blood" of some of Southern Methodist University's leading academics. Even though he is writing a book on his time in office, Bush is not sitting around and reflecting on his missteps and regrets. "He's secure in the place he's in. He's confident in the decisions he made. There's none of that 'Shoulda, woulda, coulda,'" said former aide Dan Bartlett. One event that Bush is trying to wipe from the American public's minds is the Iraq war. His advisers have said that the war is "unlikely" to be one of the topics of focus at the presidential library; in fact, Bush's official 483-word bio on the library website doesn't have a single mention of Iraq. A newly released five-minute promo video for the library mentions the word "Iraq" just once, although it devotes a full 35 seconds to clips showing extensive footage of 9/11 and Bush's subsequent reaction.

THE LOYAL BUSHIES: Finding work has been tough for many former loyal Bushies. A Washington job recruiter estimated that only "25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded," a rate that is "much, much worse" than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton left office. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been one of the most high-profile job seekers; he has blamed his troubles on the "rough economy" rather than his incompetence while in the Bush administration. Others have been lucky enough to stay in the public light by appearing on cable news. Fox News contributor Karl Rove continues to use his platform to attack the Obama administration -- even though Bush has said that Obama deserves his "silence." Last week, for example, Rove called Vice President Biden a "blowhard" and a "liar." He also went after Obama for praising the "Turkish secular movement" while abroad, even though Bush did the same thing while in office. Former chief of staff Andrew Card's objections have been less substantive, focusing on the fact that unlike Bush, Obama does not require his staff to wear a jacket at all times in the Oval Office. In January, Card said that the new dress code showed a lack of "respect" for the office and created a "kind of locker room experience." Most recently, the President's brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, has made headlines for telling Obama to leave his brother alone. "If I had one humble criticism of President Obama, it would be to stop this notion of somehow framing everything in the context of, 'Everything was bad before I got here,'" Jeb Bush told Fox News's Sean Hannity last week, not noting that his brother also repeatedly attacked Clinton. In addition to attacking Obama, these Bushies have banded together to create a Bush-Cheney Alumni Association, committed to "help build a lasting legacy for President George W. Bush and the Bush-Cheney Administration."

SAME OLD DICK: The former vice president has been one of Obama's loudest and most controversial critics. On March 15, Cheney received widespread attention -- and criticism -- for saying that Obama is "making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack." Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod responded that although Bush has "behaved like a statesman...I just don't think the memo got passed down to the vice president." Both Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder similarly came out and condemned Cheney's comments. Cheney is also up to his old secrecy tricks, refusing to transfer his records and gifts to Bush's presidential library. Next week, top administration officials will be gathering in Dallas for a reunion with the ex-president. One person who won't be there? Cheney, who is still reportedly at odds with Bush over his decision not to pardon Scooter Libby...." (Progressive)

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 06:43 PM

If the high court had not voted Bush Jr. President, we would not have many of the new towns, homes and inventions we have today.

The EDAR rolling tent for urban homeless people , commonly called the hobo condo, would not have been invented. It was developed by an idea of the director of the film "Revenge of the Nerds"
www.EDAR.org.

The tent cities growing near suberbs in California would not exist.

The widows and orphanes of today would not exist.

The integrity and full faith of the USA would not be crippled.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Greg F.
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 10:34 AM

I wish Reagan could have done for the US what he did for California...


But he did! He fu$ked BOTH of them over & neither has recovered yet from the disasters he created.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 11:35 PM

Kendall, you certainly hit the nail a square one. We vote for folks because we WANT to believe what they say is true. They are going to deliver on their promises. They are going to do their best, etc. We pull for our candidate and some even work to help him or her implement their visions of how things should be. And when the candidate can't pull it off, we should admit it. And when they outright lie and go against the vision they foisted off on their loyal followers, the same should have the courage and resolve to not only admit it but to advertise the same.

DF, I remember the vitriol heaped on Goldwater ("Au H2O, In your guts, you know he's nuts" countered "In your heart, you know he's right"). And much derogatory was said against Buckley and yet both these men conducted an intelligent dialogue with opponents of honestly held opposing views. I wish Reagan could have done for the US what he did for California but time was against him as well as partisan ideologues.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 08:04 PM

Thanks for posting that Azizi! In these days of revisionist history and Limbauffish ravings, it's amazing that that comes from a genuine conservative. But what Frank Schaeffer says is right on target.

I don't share Schaeffer's enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan (I consider Reagan to be one of those who set the stage for the current mess with his efforts at wholesale deregulation), but I have visions of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley doing about 7200 rpm in their graves at what the conservative movement and the Republican Party has turned into.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Azizi
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 07:41 PM

Frank Shaeffer is the son of evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer, two of the founders of the Religious Right. He left the Reigious Right in the mid 1980s and registered as an Independent in 2000 after McCain lost the Republican primary to G.W. Bush. Here's an excerpt of a recent article he wrote that is posted on Huffington Post:

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)
-Frank Schaeffer
Posted March 8, 2009

..."How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation...

For the party that created our crisis's of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene...

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/open-letter-to-the-republ_b_172822.html

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 02:33 PM

Nice metaphor in a verbical kinda way. NOW, we're ALL behind the 8 ball.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: kendall
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 12:08 PM

They defend it because they can not admit that they were snookered.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Greg F.
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 10:58 AM

And a bit over half of America bought into that shit....
A bit less, I believe. Remember Ohio and (earlier) Florida, and the concerted efforts at disenfranchisement operated by Bush's backers and cronies.

Size of the group be damned- that anyone with pretensions to having a functioning brain would buy into it then and now when it has been totally discredited STILL DEFEND AND SUPPORT THAT BULLSHIT surpasses all understanding.

Oh, ye generation of morons.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: kendall
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 07:38 PM

The passage of time may remove some of the smell from a turd, but it's still a turd.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:19 PM

In the words of an old mayor of Montreal: If you want me as your mayor, then put a big X beside my name. If you don't want me as your mayor, then put a small x beside my name.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:15 PM

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to vote for a 'change'. Think about Venezuela, Russia, Zimbabwe...and others.

Karl Rove & others had some notion of emulating those 'others' in a general way, but they got to greedy too fast.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:01 PM

Bush in retrospect??? How about your preconceived notions and prejudices on display? This thread is like an attempt to describe the grand scale of the Sierra Nevadas while you're still in the rugged hills and forests of the slope.

I'm not saying that Bush was "Grand" either so don't take any more out of the analogy than face value. I'm saying that there simply has not been enough time lapsed to title a thread as a "retrospect". Think "Woodrow Wilson"! He is in pretty sharp view as far as his policies and promises went. We can see the good intentions and the bad outcomes. We see his grasp for power or at least "legacy" in establishing the League of Nations. I don't believe it will be our generation or even the next that has a clear retrospect of the Bushies, good or bad.

PS I am no fan of the Bush administration and that is based on my own leanings but I know it and can separate it from the facts. To that end the facts need to be established. Amos and some others have clearly done this. Context and relationship are a must.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:54 PM

"The national debt was about $5.7 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001. Today, after almost eight years and a couple of wars, the debt has risen to about $9.7 trillion.

And, by the way, that figure might rise another $1 trillion or so before Bush steps down on Jan. 20.

The national debt ceiling today is $10.6 trillion. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants Congress to raise that to $11.3 trillion to clear the decks for massive borrowing to deal with the nation's financial crisis.

A national debt of $11.3 trillion would come to more than $37,000 each for every man, woman and child in the United States." (written in September 08.)


This means Bush nearly doubled the national debt while in office.

Just in case someone thinks he was doing his job.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:48 PM

A bit less, I believe. Remember Ohio and (earlier) Florida, and the concerted efforts at disenfranchisement operated by Bush's backers and cronies.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:26 PM

And a bit over half of America bought into that shit. (Just juxtaposing that with the 'What Makes America Great' thread.)

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:24 PM

Death and destruction on a massive scale, dismemberment, orphaning of children and the death of infants, bloody maiming of citizens, torture, secretive deception, covert manipulation, etc., etc., etc. These were the earmarks of the Bush Administration. A slippery slope of justified dictatorship justified by sycophants with JDs after thier names.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Riginslinger
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 03:57 PM

Maybe it's a matter of scale.

If you tell a lie, you get impeached. If you tell a big lie, he get to command millions of forces in a foreign war.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: kendall
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 08:42 AM

I'm amazed by the fact that a president can be impeached for lying about a blow job when another president gets away with starting a war on the basis of lies and getting tens of thousands killed.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: GUEST,Deda
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 11:44 PM

There is no corner of this planet, and almost no individual, whose future was not damaged by eight years of the Bush administration. The oceans are dying, the polar caps are melting, the forests are being clearcut at a pace that just keeps speeding up. These are not liberal delusions, and there are no serious, trained or respected scientists who seriously dispute them anymore. Al Gore clearly won the 2000 election. I am heartsick when I consider how much better off planet earth and the human race would have been if Bush had just not been appointed by, what was it, one or two members of the Supreme Court. I have two grandchildren, and a third on the way, and a step-grand-daughter. A Buddhist friend advises me, "Never look at the big picture. There is no big picture. There's just now."

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 08:10 PM

The war on science and research was a dictatorship that set back the quest for knowledge, action and wisdom. Not for any rightious values of an antique religion but for political points with a notion that stem cell research was somehow equated with an abortion. The editing of global climate enabled another decade of oil dominence.

The damage to the quest for science reached down to an entire generation of children. Instead of anthropolgy and archeology and geology many fo them were indoctrinated with creationism and and a 6,000 year old universe.

I am glad that this damage was briefly mentioned in the inauguration address by Barak Obama.


Don, Watcing the inauguration again tonight I saw how embarrassed Bush senior was when Barak said "those days are surely gone".
Jr. felt so isolated he tried to strke up converseations with guards too the point Laura had to pull him away to allow all the people behind to eagerly exit the cold.

Art
There is much truth in what you say but the total ineptness of W belies that he let it happen more than he made it happen. If you want to believe in a globalist agenda to destroy populations if not by war and pestilence but by the economy, I would not disuade you.
The failure of global Population control is still the greatest unmentioned threat to this planet.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 03:31 PM

I think ensuing years will bring out more damage that Bush did to the country.

We've just tapped the surface.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 10:31 AM

DougR: .... Have you no decency?

Just no intelligence.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:43 PM

At Barack Obama's inauguration, whenever the television cameras zeroed in on Bush, he looked to me like he had aged about twenty years. And when he and Laura were walking to the helicopter, he looked like a whipped dog.

I think he may well have been thinking of the striking contrast between himself and Obama, and agonizing over how history is going to judge him.

At the same time, I thought "there goes the patsy for Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove."

And even cheerleader Grover Norquist is now trying to distance himself from the Bush administration.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:14 PM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:03 PM

Facts, as Colbert pointed out, seem to have a notoriously liberal bias.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:55 PM

Elected, re-elected in 2004???

Nope... He probably was neither... Seems that one heck of a lot of funny stuff happened in Ohio...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:51 PM

One need not look hard to see that Bush's providing an atmosphere of rampant greed, combined with the administrations complete disregard for for legal limits and common sense has led us to the financial and constitutional impotence we are all victims of now. The man and his cohorts were a perfect storm disaster for this country, and we ought not allow them to never answer for what they have wrought. The details noted in this thread, as they unfold, hopefully, will beam needed light on the heinous workings and dynamics inherent in the dark deeds of these people.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:37 PM

"...Earlier this week, Holder made good on his promise, releasing nine Bush-era memos that formed the basis for the previous administration's policies on issues such as torture, wiretapping, and the suppression of free speech. Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said the memos "read like a how-to document on how to evade the rule of law." "Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness," read a statement by Holder, underscoring the clean break with the Bush administration. "It is my goal to make OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making." Also this week, the Obama administration revealed in court documents that the CIA destroyed 92 tapes showing interrogations of detainees -- far more than the Bush administration was willing to admit. In December 2007, the New York Times reported that the CIA had destroyed at least two videotapes documenting suspected al Qaeda operatives being subjected to "severe interrogation techniques."

WHAT THESE MEMOS REVEAL: Some of the memos were released in response to a lawsuit against former OLC attorney John Yoo, by Jose Padilla, whom the United States held for years as an enemy combatant. The"e Obama administration concluded that there was no classified information in these documents; this admission was a stunning contrast to the Bush era, when officials attempted to maximize government secrecy by increasing the classification of government documents. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) praised Holder's quick release of the memos, saying that they finally  "provide details of some of the Bush administration's misguided national security policies." The picture they end up painting is of an administration that believed "the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights," as the Associated Press reported. Furthermore, several of the memos -- including ones on extraordinary rendition and First Amendment rights -- were eventually rescinded, reflecting the "major legal errors committed by Bush administration lawyers during the formulation of its early counterterrorism policies."

CREATING A DICTATORSHIP: A memo written by Yoo on Oct. 23, 2001, contained one of the most surprising revelations: the Bush administration considered suspending First Amendment rights. "Freedom of speech is integral to a free society," President Bush said in May 2008. However, seven years earlier, Yoo wrote, "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully. ... The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically." After reading the memos, Harpers' Scott Horton wrote, "We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship." In fact, Yoo's memo was too much even for Steven Bradbury, the man who failed to gain Senate confirmation to head the OLC because of his extreme views on torture. On Oct. 6, 2008, Bradbury wrote a memo saying that Yoo's suggestions to ignore free speech were "overbroad" and "not sufficiently grounded."

A BLANK CHECK: Yoo's October 2001 memo also dismissed the Fourth Amendment, claiming that protections against unwarranted searches and seizures could be subordinated in the war on terrorism. Yoo similarly proposed invading Americans' privacy in a Sept. 25, 2001 memo, advocating "warrantless searches for national security reasons." The Associated Press noted that the document "did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation." In fact, one of the most controversial memos from the Bush era that many lawmakers have been asking to be released is one explicitly justifying the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping. Another major focus of the memos is the treatment of detainees. A March 13, 2002 memo written by then-assistant attorney general in the OLC Jay Bybee argued that the president had the authority to transfer detainees to other countries, whether or not they may be tortured there. Recognizing his controversial proposals, Bybee provided ways for the Bush administration to avoid being held legally liable. "So long as the United States doe[s] not intend for a detainee to be tortured post-transfer, however, no criminal liability will attach to a transfer even if the foreign country receiving the detainee does torture him," he wrote. "These memos were meant to provide the president with a blank check with respect to the rights of not only prisoners overseas but people in the United States as well," concluded the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer.

FINDING THE TRUTH: The release of these memos came as Congress determines how to investigate -- and perhaps even prosecute -- the Bush administration's misdeeds. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the creation of a "truth commission" to investigate these wrongdoings. Leahy initially hinted at providing "blanket immunity" to Bush officials willing to testify, but both Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have warned against this approach. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has also put together a report looking at whether Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury "knowingly signed off on an unreasonable interpretation of the law to provide legal cover for a program sought by Bush White House officials." Whitehouse and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) have called on the Justice Department to release this report."

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Some of us kinda realized it at the time...

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:33 PM

I beg to differ, Rig. IMO, he was elected in 2004. NOT re-elected.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:16 PM

In 2004, many still thought we were 'winning' in Iraq.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Riginslinger
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:06 PM

Every time the topic of George W. Bush comes up, I'm continually amazed that he got reelected in 2004.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 06:28 PM

". . . fellow travelers. . . ."

You're quite a piece of work, Doug.

Definition of "liberal media":   any part of the news media that expresses even the mildest skepticism that George W. Bush could actually walk on water.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Peace
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 06:06 PM

"I think you would be hard put to sell the fact that the NYT is capable of presenting an objective view of anything related to the Bush years (other than to your fellow travelers of course)."

It does NOT matter whether the reporting paper is objective. Just matters whether they got the facts straight. I think you boy is in for some jail time. I sure as hell hope so.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 04:57 PM

"Central Intelligence Agency redacted the number of tapes destroyed....etc"

What we have learned is that when something does not exist, like, say, gods or Unicorns or Elves, anyone may describe or define it anyway they wish.

In the case of destroyed tapes, those who destroyed them may give any semi-plausible description of what was on them. If Richard Nixon had thought about this, he might have finished his 2nd term.

(In that other thread, Amos, you noted a video about money.....which simply states that money is 'created' when banks make a loan in exchange for a 'promise' to repay it with interest.) In a similar way, 'information' is created when claims are made about contents of such tapes. This data/information is used to support actions and defend them later. Unlike 'information' about WMDs or Yellow Cake uranium, claims about the contents of now non-existent tapes are hard to dispute. UNLESS there are individuals who saw the tapes and are willing to dispute the 'official' version, we can only surmise.

   Karl Rove is still a free man because he allowed very little information about his machinations to be written down, taped, emailed or overheard by anyone who was not trusted.

Thus, we have "gleaned from the rear view mirror" that enough lies, well-crafted and lacking clear evidence of their nature & intent, can obfuscate JUST enough to make prosecution difficult. When lies and deception and disreputable doings are piled high enough, it is even difficult to know where to start.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 04:18 PM

The Chicks were dixed.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:45 PM

Isn't it great to be able to have a thread with this for a heading!!

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:39 PM

right wing radio says no one was ever critisized for complaining about Bush, but say one thing about B Hussein Obama and you're called a racist.

thats problably because the caller is racist.


I remember it was called Bush bashing and you were unamerican and a traitor. At least no one was ever Dixie Chicked.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Barry Finn
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:13 PM

It true Doug that "I think you would be hard put to sell the fact that the NYT is capable of presenting an objective view of anything related to the Bush years"
but that i snot the fault of the NYT nor the fault of the general media as a whole nor is it the fault that the public has an objective veiw of the "Bush Yeras". It is the fault of Bush, that he lead in such a fashion that most find now what was done throught out his reign was criminal! He'll get no mercy as history is now starting look back on him.

"He never made a move that didn't help those that didn't need it and at a cost to those that couldn't afford it." (me)

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:36 PM

DougR:

By your use of the expression "fellow travelers" you directly, and obviously intentionally, imply that I am a Communist sympathizer or a member of the Communist Party.

I am not. Nor have I ever been a member of said party. Have you no decency?



A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:27 PM

Ya'll got a couple months???

I mean, where does one start???

(The stolen 2000 election, Boberdz, is a good place to start...)

Yeah... So it is...

B~