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Tag: "Bush"

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By Erich Vieth on September 21st, 2009

George W. Bush has a chuckle that he was actually president.

The Onion reports that George W. Bush has been having a chuckle or two thinking that he was President for eight years:

Witnesses said the former president’s chuckling grew even stronger as it dawned on him that, for eight straight years beginning in January 2001, he had the power to nominate executive and judicial officers to the federal government, as well as grant unlimited presidential pardons and reprieves if he so desired.

Humor
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By Erich Vieth on August 20th, 2009

Biggest non-surprise: Bush admin pushed for fake terror alerts

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge just wrote a book in which he tells us what we already knew, according to Think Progress:

[He]was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

My initial reaction: If true, those responsible should be criminally prosecuted.
My second reaction: They won’t be.

Corruption • Politics
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By Tim Hogan on July 28th, 2009

Yes, We Can (And We Must)!

President Obama has failed to keep his campaign promises regarding faith based programs and transparency–so far.

Admittedly, Mr. Obama worked hard and accomplished much since January 21, 2009. His accomplishments include assembling his administration, getting appointments approved over irrational GOP opposition, trying to include insane Republicans into his cabinet, promoting and signing an $800 (flawed) billion stimulus package, dealing with the budget (and additional appropriations in violation of promises to keep war funding inside the pentagon budget), dealing with Swine Flu, taking international trips, repairing international relations and making an important nomination to the Supreme Court.

Yes, Virginia, it’s only been since January 21, 2009! It hasn’t been even six months and the poor guy is getting crucified for what he HASN’T yet done. Cool off, chill out a little and consider these proposals (MY proposals):

If Mr. Cheney actually speaks—which he no longer does because he prefers not to be questioned further about secret assassination squads he apparently set up and then ordered the CIA not to disclose such actions to the Congress as mandated by federal law. Mr. Cheney has now abandoned his defense to a surrogate, Liz Cheney, who performs her role of defender for the former Vice President based upon her dubious qualifications of being Mr. Cheney’s daughter and a Bush administration appointee in the State Department (which was ignored in the Bush era!).

You see, the music died.

Corruption • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on July 03rd, 2009

Six years later, we’re starting to talk sense

Why did the U.S. invade Iraq? Nothing floated by the Bu$h administration made any sense. All of Bush’s reasons have long been shot down. Now we learn of an April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Truthout discusses the report and the historical context:

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

I’m not suggesting that an oil grab was a legitimate reason to invade. I’m merely suggesting that it was the real (and unadmitted) reason for Bu$h to invade.

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By Erich Vieth on May 27th, 2009

The real reason Bush invaded Iraq . . .

Why did George W. Bush invade Iraq? Clive Hamilton confirms one of my suspicions at Alternet:

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. . .

President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.

Iraq • Religion • War
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By Erich Vieth on May 16th, 2009

Frank Rich: It’s time to dig up Bush’s buried bodies

Frank Rich has just written an article pointing to a wide variety of Bush Administration scandals about to be revealed. He urges President Obama to let the information flow because there is a momentum to the process and it is, in fact, inevitable. The strangest one, in my opinion, is Donald Rumsfeld’s private bible quote laden newsletter. Strange and revealing, though not at all surprising. Rumsfeld’s newsletter, entitled Worldwide Intelligence Update, was:

[A] highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Corruption • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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On National Day of Prayer, lawsuit seeks to abolish National Day of Prayer
By Erich Vieth on May 07th, 2009

On National Day of Prayer, lawsuit seeks to abolish National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer in a nation that allegedly treasures the separation of church and state.

This incongruence motivated a lawsuit by Freedom From Religion Foundation. The federal suit was filed while the Bush Administration was in power, but it continues to be pursued today.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell:

“Exhortations to pray in official Presidential proclamations do not constitute ceremonial deism solemnizing some other occasion,” the Foundation asserts, but “constitute an end in itself intended to promote and endorse religion.”

In an article posted today, FFRF explains further:

“Prayer proclamations not only violate the separation between church and state, but offend reality, by suggesting we can suspend of the natural laws of the universe through wishful thinking,” notes Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor.

The Foundation and the freethought movement have long suggested a National Day of Reason.

“Congress ought to repeal this law and substitute a National Day of Service,” Gaylor added. “That would be constitutional and, equally important, it would be useful! Prayer is a cop-out. If humans want to improve the world, we need to take action, not slavishly beg a supernatural power to do our work for us.”

Freethinkers believe in deeds, not creeds, said Barker. Noted 19th century freethinker/attorney Robert Green Ingersoll famously wrote: “The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”

Here is a copy of the Complaint filed by FFRF.

Featured • Politics • Religion
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By Erich Vieth on April 22nd, 2009

Torture as a tool for manufacturing evidence

McClatchy has now found a most intriguing (and, in retrospect, a most predictable) connection.

The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Read more about it at Koz. And also check out the new disclosure that the Bush Administration did its damndest to destroy a memorandum highly critical of the legality of its decision to torture prisoners.

And now we know that Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney personally approved waterboarding.

Finally, consider this conversation involving FOX’s Shepard Smith and Judith Miller (the Judith Miller), who unrelentingly attack the memos for trying to justify torture. Maybe Miller is in a redemptive phase . . .

THEN, listen carefully at exactly 5:07 of the video to hear a walloping Freudian slip by the conservative think-tanker, Cliff May, a guy who claims that waterboarding is fun and games, who accidentally admits that the Bush-approved techniques WERE torture (listen for the critical word is “it”). Yes, Cliff, it was torture and you (and everyone else in the country) know it. Miller raises the point that even Israel, which knows a thing or two about interrogating prisoners, outlawed waterboarding long ago because it is torture.

But there’s still more. Consider Republican strategist and Cheney-admirer Phil Lusser’s “magic eyeballs” in a conversation with Lawrence O’Donnell and Norah O’Donnell. Go to the end of this video and you’ll hear Lawrence O’Donnell clean Lusser’s clock.

It’s all falling apart like a house of cards. After years and years of insanity, it’s finally happening. Yes, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Corruption • Good and Evil • Politics • War • law and order
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By Erich Vieth on April 16th, 2009

Time to yank some professional licenses . . .

Based on the release of additional torture memos of the Bush Administration, Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority suggests that it’s time to revoke some professional licenses. I agree. Here’s an excerpt:

Reading these memos, it’s very clear that there are quite a few CIA employees who are allegedly medical professionals. Those people need to find new professions. I would strongly suggest that you take a few minutes - particularly if you’re a doctor or a psychologist - to suggest to your colleagues at the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association that it might be good to take some formal steps along those lines.

For additional information on the way the American Psychological Association facilitated the torture, consider this DI post, based on Amy Goodman’s book, Standing Up to the Madness.

Civil Rights • Law • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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By Erich Vieth on February 22nd, 2009

Obama will jettison Bush’s accounting fraud

This from the NYT:

For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.

Economy • Fraud • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on January 26th, 2009

The record of George W. Bush regarding AIDS

When asked what Bush accomplished during his eight years in office, many people point out that he was responsible for putting together a comprehensive AIDS program for Africa. In an article called, “An Unlikely Champion,” found in the January 15, 2009 edition of Nature (available only to subscribers online), the authors discuss the good and the not so good about the Bush AIDS program. That program was called the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (”PEPFAR”).

First of all, the good. PEPFAR put more than 2 million HIV-positive people on anti-retroviral treatments since the beginning of the program (in 2003). By 2008, PEPFAR prevented infection of 240,000 babies born to HIV-infected mothers. It also provided healthcare for 9.7 million people.

On the other hand, PEPFAR “has also been highly controversial because of stipulations on how its funds should be spent.”

Health • Medicine • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on January 25th, 2009

Obama bludgeons Al-Qaeda without any physical weapons

It was entirely predictable, of course. By undoing many of the Bush Administration policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of the so-called “War on Terror” and reducing the war rhetoric aimed at residents of the Middle East, Obama has done some significant damage to Al-Qaeda without the use of any physical weapons

The Washington Post reports that Al-Qaeda is reeling these days, because it has lost its best recruiting tool: George W. Bush. Barack Obama’s election has resulting in a strong barrage of words by Al-Qaeda, claiming that Obama has killed innocent Muslims and that he is even responsible for the violence in Gaza.

Bigotry • Politics • The Middle East • War
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By Erika Price on January 23rd, 2009

One more thing about Bush. (He’s not so dumb).

I promise I won’t muse any more about Bush for quite a while- unless something really juicy happens. Right now, though, I can’t resist. After a year or more of Bush keeping himself entirely mum and dull, his demise has sparked a mini-flurry of consideration- for me, anyway. 
Has everyone seen Bush’s final press conference? Has everyone noticed [...]

American Culture • Current Events • Politics
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