The BushCo Legacy
The end of 2008 draws nigh, and it’s time for the last post of the year. But before we, as Robert Burns suggested in 1788, knock back a pint of kindness for auld lang syne, let’s relinguish the past with a parting vitriolic rant aimed about 10 feet above the bow of the departing-none-too-soon lame-duck administration.
Condi Rice: Unapologetic BushCo Flunky
Sunday morning on CBS, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sucked up to Bush, again, saying that despite President Bush’s low approval ratings, people will soon “start to thank this president for what he’s done.”
Bwaahahhhahhahhaa! Get outta here, Condi. You gotta be kidding me. (Note: if this was an attempt by Rice to switch gears and chase a career in stand up comedy, the setup needs a lot more work…a LOT more work.)
Anyway, that was my first reaction — a good laugh at the expense of Dr. Rice who, as National Security Advisor in 2003 warned us all to beware of Iraqi WMD smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds. And the same Dr. Rice who took the job of National Security Advisor, then failed to bone up on national security to the extent that less than a decade after the Philippine police stumbled upon the Bojinka Plot (a plot in which radical Isamic terrorists were caught preparing to blow up 11 airliners en route to the USA — a plot which included crashing a plane into CIA headquarters), Dr. Rice still maintained nobody could have predicted 9/11: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would…try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”
It may go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that Condi (I’ll presume it’s ok to call her Condi, since she presumes all Americans are Bush sycophant morons (a nation trying to emulate their leader?)) is trying to conceal her contribution to American history with one last buff and polish on the still-steaming, remarkably vast pile of fecal matter that was the Bush administration.
Am I disappointed in the person I believed was the brightest of the bunch? Yes. Surprised? No.
After all, the world has seen Condi’s brand of historical revisionism before (and it’s only historical revisionism in the sense that ripping out the middle 41 chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a revision.) Perhaps, in the not-so-distant future, in addition to the unwanted Bush presidential library, there will also be FUBAR museums to preserve the awful truth of Bush’s first term for generations yet born, and BOHICA museums that chronicle Bush’s second term and attest to the swift ease with which a country’s defining constitution can be shredded and swept under the rug in broad daylight.
Bush’s Phony Presidential Library
About that unwanted presidential library to be located at SMU…
The price tag? $200-500 million. Bush Library spokesman Dan Bartlett says fundraising has been “very modest.” The modest fundraising may have a lot to do with the choking economy, or it may have a lot to do with a lot of people whose opinions are a lot like another Bartlett…
Bruce Bartlett, the former Republican treasury official who caught hell for his 2006 Bush critique, Impostor, has this to say:
Bush is going to go down as one of the worst presidents in history. A lot of conservatives kept their mouths shut at the time because they didn’t want to be crucified like me.
I thought Bush would have to go a long way to beat Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover but, at the last minute, he pushed the ball across the line…
Whether or not Bush is remembered as the worst president ever (and recent polls suggest that’s how he’ll be remembered — not that Bush ever put any faith in polls, or intelligence briefings, or weather updates, or the scientific reports he let his oil cronies censor), his brand-spanking-new library will, in one way, be a taxpayer-run shrine to BushCo’s habitual secrecy and routine unaccountability: Because of Executive Order 13233, drafted by Alberto Gonzales and signed by Bush on November 1, 2001, the Bush Library will be the first presidential library run by the National Archives in which a former president may censor and even refuse to open documents that the library is designed to archive for the public.
Cheers, BushCo! Don’t let the screen door hit you…
Read More: bush, bush legacy, george w. bush, condoleezza rice, condi, bushco, bush library
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Top 10 Bush Moments
Well, that didn’t work.
Here’s the link.
Too funny! I think in a few weeks when Bush becomes a former president, when he can finally bumble around without affecting a huge number of lives, he would be a great candidate for a new reality show.
We could use some reality, as far as he’s concerned.
There’s so much phoniness, obfuscation, and outright rewriting of history regarding this prez, it makes Reagan’s smoke and mirrors seem like a crystal ball.
It troubles me how easily people will believe the “official story”, or what they would rather believe, rather than struggle with the difficult facts and harder truths.
It seems to me we need to come clean as a nation in order to start anew, or else carry the baggage forever like a monkey on our back.
You are in top form with this post, Joe.
Biting wit is my favorite of all the forms.
I easpecially like your idea of a FUBAR museum. Have thought of it often myself. It would be nice if in 10,000 years when archeologists are digging up our covilization, they were able to find the whole truth written on brass plates.
I’ve also thought it would be nice to have a War Criminal museum.
Unfortunately, “historical revisionism” is a pretty hard disease to wipe out.
I am not here to defend Bush and his administration. The question is what type of leadership do we want.
An open one that has minimal scandals as they break rules and regulations out in the open defiantly, such as Bush.
Or a clandestine one riddled with scandals as they try to cover up all of those misdeeds, such as many previous administrations.
Wheeling and dealing is the nature of the beast, and will not change with a boat load of promises. It’s that we tend to ignore it, or admit it since it’s our side that is the victor now.
Xman history is what perspective you use to look at it. FDR and Churchill are considered great leaders of WWll from an American’s point of view. But ask old Eastern European’s what they think of these two and you will be told that they were the worst as they sold out to Stalin and forced millions to live under communism for all those years. So it is with Bush, if you back him, he was good, and if you did not he was the worst in history.
Completely understood, Pelmo.
Clinton belongs in my War Criminal museum as well.
As do many of our famous “Indian War” generals and politicians.
Of course, then there is what Bartolomeo De Las Casas says about the toture and genocide brought to the America’s by Columbus, and the Spanish.
We only have to watch the news these last few days to see that Bush is not the only one to ignore rules of war…or make them up or interpret them as they like or apply them as they like.
“Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.”
I don’t recall who said those words.
Corruption can be active or incidental. Bush’s brand is actively and incidentally corrupt. The worst sort is that which believes it is ultimately noble, and willingly makes ethical compromises because of that delusion.
We need objective leaders, willing to make mistakes while willing to admit them. Refusing to accept responsibility resonates throughout the land and makes of us a culture of weasels.
Xman isn’t it amazing that we are always told by those in power that they are doing all those things for our own good and safety. Yet every time they do it, I never feel better or safer. most of the time it is just the opposite.
Indigo it is much easier to blame the opposition then to take responsibility for an error.
If Nixon would have admitted right away that indeed there was a break in he would of survived and finished his term in office. Rather things kept compounding with every denial.
Same goes with Clinton. If he would have admitted the affair with Monica, within a week it would have been old news and all that folly that went on for months would have never happened.
Our leaders never seem to realize that to admit a mistake is a sign of strength, and that denial is a sign of weakness.
I keep wondering what would actually be in a Bush unpresidential library. Coloring books?
I just hope our new round of leadership has the cojones to be forthright.
Meanwhile, our acting leader must be face down in the nog, he hasn’t shown
his kisser since he dove into Crawford. And who is that bozo fielding questions in front of the blue curtain with the Western White House emblem?
Gaza’s burning, ya know? Hello? Anybody home? May this entire administration reincarnate as refugees. That’s my New Year’s prayer.
Hey guys,
Someone turned me onto a great alternative site.
Right up our alley.
If you have a hunger for “balance”, this site helps.
http://www.therealnews.com
Thanks, Xman. Good site. It’s on the sidebar now so I can visit frequently (like, BEFORE I go to the CNNABCBSNBC in-the-bed-with-corporate-advertisement alphabet soup “sources.” But, I don’t think it will be very successful–not enough stories of Hollywood DUIs, not enough Lindsey Lohan or Brangelina, and the stories go too deep and spit out too many unspun facts :-) But I’m gonna love it.
Xman the reason you are so turned on and not to well balanced, is due to your over use of those hand rolled funny looking cigarettes, that you got hooked on whille in San Francisco way back when.
Joe we should get into a serious discussion of why we have gone from a nation that was looked up to and sent men to the moon; to a nation that is looking up at others and being passed up in everything from A to Z. We may look at your comment above and laugh, but it seems that is what we have become.
Just one question, are you trying to keep me off this site by making this code stuff harder?
That would be a good discussion, Pelmo…in my mind, some of it has to do with the bad things we’ve done recently, but we’ve always done bad things…took the land from native Americans and Mexico, used propaganda to get in a war with Spain, etc. So, I don’t think that’s totally it.
In my mind, we’ve sort of run out of imagination. Look at the skyline of Dubai, or the modern marvels being built in other countries. How much progress have we made on the replacement World Trade Center tower? We’re bogged down in bureaucracy, and in the name of catching up to the rest of the world in math and science, seem to have attacked the problem at the expense of art and culture. But, that’s just the perception I get…I haven’t really looked at the facts. We may be behind the rest of the world in a lot of ways, but I’m guessing today’s generation of Americans are still smarter and live longer than previous generations. Maybe it’s just that the rest of the world has caught up to us, which is a good thing…that’s what we hoped for in the past, right? Bring all the other countries out of the wilderness? We can’t be good at everything…like an older adult, I think we’ve matured, and now, instead of still going out and trying to outrun some of the young whipper-snapper countries emerging into their prime, we should admire them and learn from them…like in health care…it’s time we learn from the systems of other countries. And like older adults, we still have a lot of wisdom to offer, if we would just admit the world doesn’t revolve around us and, you know, grow up and embrace the new kids.
But, that’s just off the top of my head…probably deserves some googling and a few in-depth posts. I was thinking on writing a post on The American Dream — what the heck is it? It’s different to different people, and it’s been different in different time periods. Worth a look.
P.S. The SPAM bots must have figured out the math comment blocker, so I’m trying a new one. I think THAT’s part of America’s image problem, too…we are still very smart and work hard…but we apply our smarts to inventing annoying things, like spam bots!!! :-)
P.P.S. Just added Gravatar images to the comments…if you want your picture to show up, add your image over at http://www.gravatar.com.
P.P.P.S. Hope these nested comments work…
Pelmo, I wish I could get hold of one of those funny little cigarettes. Unfortunately, I must look like a cop now and no one ever offers. Unbalanced? Yeah, it could have been one of those funny cigarettes…or it could have been getting stepped on by a police horse or gassed.
Joe, I think you have a major point. I get the comment that we (USA) has a superior attitude, all the time. I get asked why we always say we are the first to do this or that and then they show an example that seems to contradict our propaganda. I get comments asking why we say we are the best democracy, when we ban certain images or discussion that their country allows.
I have to agree that it would make for an uneasy relationship for one family in the neighborhood to always be claiming he was the best, first, biggest, brightest…and going around injecting itself into other families business and sometimes deciding to attack someone else in the neighborhood even when everyone didn’t agree…etc. etc. etc.
Until we get rid of our “chosen people” attitude, things won’t get better. OR…they could get better without us.
Joe I think it is pure and simple greed. It seems that is all that drives our elected officials, big corporations and almost everyone else. The hell with everything as long as I get my fat share.
All these other nations have no problem constructing all these wonders; and to top it off they always seem to come in on budget and on time. In this country the standard has become massive cost overruns, way behind schedule and most important the shody work. The Boston tunnel is a prime example as problems began with day one.
Xman you hit it right on the head with the “chosen people” attitude. It seems that every time we are hit with a catastrophe, people run around acting like how dare it happen here. It’s supposed to happen to others in far away countries.