Even without George W. Bush's debut in Fort Worth as a motivational speaker (see Stephen Colbert swoon over the speech
here), this past week has been full of reminders of 43. On Wednesday, President Obama walked out onto the North Lawn of the White House to plant a tree where, one year earlier, Bush had tried to plant a Scarlet Oak.
It's early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. Should he escalate in Vietnam? Should he say "yes" to the request from U.S. commanders for more troops? Or should he change strategy, downsize the American commitment, even withdraw completely, a decision that would help him focus on his top domestic priority, "The Great Society" he hopes to build?
We all know what happened.
Where are the liberal protesters?
Wall Street and the abuses of corporate America crashed the economy, leaving regular people anxious and financially insecure. Yet the far right, not the reformist left, is getting the political windfall.
The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens.
That George Bush, man – what a monster, eh? I mean, could you even have imagined a
president so destructive?
It's actually worse
than you thought, though. Lately, there's been a spate of fresh
revelations about some of the incredibly disastrous policies that were
executed by the Bush administration.
Did you know, for instance,
that they...
An important new report
(.pdf) was released Thursday by Human Rights First regarding the
overwhelming success of the U.S. Government in obtaining convictions in
federal court against accused Terrorists.
ROME - Environmentalists broke into power stations across Italy and shed their clothes in downtown Rome on Wednesday as world leaders discussed a new deal to combat global warming.
Dozens of activists from 18 countries scaled smokestacks and occupied four Italian coal-fired power plants, hanging banners that called on the Group of Eight summit in central Italy to take the lead in fighting climate change, Greenpeace said.
The Obama Administration is looking more and more like the Bush Administration every day when it comes to the policy of holding prisoners indefinitely, without trial, or even after a trial and an acquittal.
Obama himself is already on record favoring indefinite detention of some prisoners.
I just returned from a research trip to Norway where the people I
interviewed often brought up the topic of our new President. The
first was Kristin Clemet, the director of a conservative think tank.
"This spring on a delegation to Washington I was struck again," she
said, "by how different the political spectrum is in Norway from your
country. Here, Obama would be on the right wing."
I checked her view with others -- academics, politicians, activists all
over the Norwegian spectrum -- and all but one agreed.
