Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Damning New Report on George W. Bush
George W. Bush is among the five least accomplished U.S. presidents, according to a new survey by the U.S.’s top 238 leading presidential scholars. They have been polled by the Siena College Research Institute’s (SRI) annually for the last 28 years. While president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country from 1933 until his death in 1945, ranked first in overall accomplishments, former President Bush ranked worst among modern presidents –and the fifth worst in history.
According to the Survey of U.S. Presidents the top five, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, are Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The presidential scholars ranked the U.S. Presidents on six personal attributes (background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck and willingness to take risks); five forms of ability (compromising, executive, leadership, communication and overall abilities); and eight areas of accomplishment including domestic affairs, economic, working with Congress and their party, appointing supreme court justices and members of the executive branch, avoiding mistakes and foreign policy.
If one analyzes just the Bush administration approach to foreign policy, health care and human rights one may consider among the biggest foreign policy blunders the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Bush administration blatantly ignored the advice from Gen. Eric Shinseki, who had estimated that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. Even more seriously, the war against Iraq was based, from the beginning, on false premises.
Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly stated that Iraq was “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11,” in spite of the fact that there was no evidence for such assertion. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission itself found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.
Compounding the wrongness of the approach towards Iraq is the right to initiate a preemptive war, flaunting international law. The 2006 updated National Security Strategy of the United States had established that, “….The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction –and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.”
As was clearly demonstrated not only did the government of Iraq not have any WMD, but at no point it could have been considered a threat to the United States, given the obvious difference in military capability between both countries. This was no impediment for former President Bush and his closest associates to continue using that rationale for the war against that country. That war and the justification for engaging in preemptive wars are among the most serious and damaging foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration.
If one analyzes the Bush presidency regarding its approach to health care one can find a policy of disregard for people’s health and support for corporate interests, which is, after all, only a reflection of the Bush administration decisions on almost all economic matters.
The Bush administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drugs for seniors thus negatively affecting their health and quality of life, while simultaneously depriving American taxpayers of savings from the very marketplace competition touted by White House economists. The administration also went to court to block lawsuits by patients who had been injured by defective prescription drugs and medical devices. In addition, the General Accounting Office conducted a study that concluded that the Bush administration created illegal, covert propaganda to promote its industry-supported Medicare bill.
The Bush administration record on human rights is dismal. Who can forget the photos of prisoners’ abuse in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq carried out by the U.S. Army and other U.S. governmental agencies and that have tainted forever the image of the U.S. as a defender of human rights? To compound the magnitude of the abuse, Janis Karpinsky, a commander at Abu Ghraib estimated later that 90% of the detainees in the prison were innocent.
Recently Physicians for Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration conducted illegal and unethical human experiments and carried out research on detainees in CIA custody. In addition, medical personnel engaged not only in torture of prisoners but also in the crime of illegal experimentation, activities in clear violation of the Nuremberg Code.
It would be naïve to think that all negative aspects of the Bush administration are the responsibility of former President Bush himself. He obviously is the face for members of his administration and others who were influencing policy decisions. But the ultimate responsibility falls on him. And he is the one that will have to respond to history for his actions.
- Posted in
82 Comments so far
Show AllObama's number 15 in this survey.
By telling us that Dubya blundered, the author's credibility drops to where Dubya stands in the ratings.
Dubya made no blunders...he purposely broke new ground for American fascism.
Obama is now institutionalizing nearly all of the "blunders" the author mentions.
For example: Obamacare applies Dubya's pro-corporate, ant-patient "health care bill" tactics on a much larger scale, empowering insurance and drug companies way beyond what they got from Dubya.
I only wonder if you can rate a President after 18 months one way or the other. Ranking Obama at 15th is likely to not go very well with most opinions here. As for whether GWB was successfull in his intentions, I suppose that the ranking committee might have standards that would disallow any intentions they deem sinister.
Lucky we still can, once the "Internet fairness Act" goes through. all politicy negitive comments will be read as typed and "Special Education Vans" will be sent out guiged by GPS to pick you up and adjust your attidute before "any Citizien can be injured by your lack of Hope and lack of appreation of Change" the Anointed one gave us undeserving.. Honkies!
>^^<
Exactly
Bush was the most successful president for the corporate-military state of America.
Obamam is the second. He kept Robert Gates and Ben Bernanke.
The author wrote yesterdays CD propaganda article on Afghan children with traces of opium.
Today he is distracting us with a laundry list of all of Bush's well known crimes.
Chelala, get with it, Obombers the war criminal du jour.
Some of us have responded all along saying immediately what this article now presents as the result of long study by presidential scholars.
Of course there's no mention by Dr. Chelala that the grand change the majority of us voted for in casting ballots for Mr. Barack "Milquetoast" Obama hasn't happened. The egregious errors of Mr. Bush are continued and even exacerbated by Mr. Obama--an even more reprehensible character when his greater personal abilities should have provided him with the capacity for purifying the past through reparations for our sins as well as for charting a new course for the ship of state.
Mr. Bush steered us into a path that apparently cannot be changed. We are powering full speed ahead onto the shoals.
Somehow, this person now in the White House is NOT the loquacious, educated man who campaigned relentlessly under the banner of "change you can believe in"!!!!!
I don't know when this "puppet" was exchanged for the real person who campaigned in the last election, but it was certainly done steathily - what a HOAX!!!!!!
This puppet was already a puppet when he seemed to be a loquacious, educated man who campaigned relentlessly under the banner of 'change you can believe in". This African American man was choosen as a boy to be a future puppet for the people who run this country. Barry was choosen as Billy was--to fool us into believing that this darker skinned man or this poor boy from Arkansas would really understand and care about the working people of this nation. We were sold a phoney bill of goods.
There are, I am sure, a couple of young women now being trained to be our future puppet leaders. One of these girls is Asian and another is a Latina. These young women will be trained to speak well, dress nicely, and seem to have some sence of ethics and morals. They will be great actresses and have calm stage presence. We will believe their lies. The P.R. people are very well able to fool us. Didn't Obama get the prize of the best PR campaign of the year when he got elected?
It's all a puppet show folks. We have to be able to communicate with each other to attempt to hear some truth and try to get some real democracy in our land. For now, it is most important that you do not vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. These people are OBVIOUSLY paid lackeys of the corporations. You give them some legitamacy when you choose the lesser of those two evils. Don't do it!!
Write in your dogs name would be a better choice than a D or an R. There are other political parties---and independents------and you can start up a new party. Gotta do SOMETHING. It's bad and getting worse.
SKIN, SKIN, SKIN.Why should we care about the color of another's skin? WE ARE NOT THE BODY. NEITHER ARE WE THE MINDS THAT MOST OF US SELFISH, GREEDY, LUSTFUL HUMANS carry around with us.
O, Maya, thy sin-onym is human "beings". Being WHAT? ( MORE, always MORE for I, me, my, mine)
"The Bush administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drugs for seniors thus negatively affecting their health and quality of life, while simultaneously depriving American taxpayers of savings from the very marketplace competition touted by White House economists. "
If you remove "Bush administration" and replace it with "Obama administration" the factual content of the sentence remains entirely the same.
They play for the same team. All the abuses and crimes of the Bush years go on, unchecked, unexamined, UNPROSECUTED by the current bankster stooge.
The Bush years were a disgrace, eight years of daily humiliation for those of us who grew up on the myths of our "noble" Republic. Eventually it became transparently obvious to all. But then the corporate kleptocrats merely switched to a better brand image, with the added benefit of throwing the looney-tunes right into a dellusional hissy fit, that has scared the "progressive left" so badly that they continue to support an obvious puppet.
There can be no hope of restoring the Republic and dismantling the Empire without puttting Bush, Cheney and their criminal cabal on trial. We must clearly and rationally confront what they have done to us, if we can ever hope to repair it. But just bashing Bush for sport? Well, it has the scent of cheap solace for a progressive base that knows its been beat.
Briggs Seekins
briggsseekins.wordpress.com
What part of "impeachment is off the table" didn't you understand Briggs ?
Those were the first words Nancy Pelosi uttered in November 2006 upon becoming the first female speaker of the house and heralding a return to Democratic Party control of Congress.
You and I will both win Mega-Millions and Powerball long before the Dems even think about prosecuting any real criminals, be they banksters or DC electeds.
Bush is ranked 5th worse president for his accomplishments? Really? I suppose that's true if you look at it from the perspective of the average person. But that was NOT what Bush's presidency was about. It was about enriching the elite and increasing the power of the presidency. On those counts it seems he had a pretty successful presidency.
As far as the wars go, again a disaster for the common folk, but they did transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from the tax payer to private military contractors. Again a major success for his crony constituents.
As far as his historical legacy, I suspect he will become an icon like Ronny Ray-gun, especially if he lives a long life. How much of the crap he pulled will be remembered by the average American in 20 or 30 years? Faux news and the corporate media will say what a great man he was, after all he kept us "safe" because there never was an attack on American soil on his watch. (Remember a lie repeated enough will be believed as the truth by most people.)
The fact that real historians judge him poorly will never make it to the masses, and for the few that are aware of his true place in history, it won't matter. After all we make our own reality, don't we?
"How much of the crap he pulled will be remembered by the average American in 20 or 30 years?"
If things proceed as they have, there will be no "average American" in 20 to 30 years.
How true this is. They are working VERY hard at ensuring there will be no "average American" in 20 - 30 years.
They will be the "New" Average American. They will have been liberated from the "burden" of home ownership, and will be perpetual renters. They will also be liberated from the cost of higher education, because they won't get one. Their "education" will be one fed them from corporations, to their radios, TV's. Oh and don't forget their holographic 3d reality modules, where they can go to "experience" the wonders of the world that once was. They can see what the Gulf of Mexico, or the Amazon was like before they were destroyed. They'll even be able to see and even smell the long extinct, black rhinos and polar bears. For enjoyment most experiences will be "Back to the Future" ones because the present and future will be so depressing.
The "New" Average American, will also be freed from the worry of saving for retirement, because the average life expectancy will be a mere 59 years. This will be caused by the super processed foods the corporations will be feeding the populations by then. Most "New" Average Americans will die at their workstations, for having been "freed" from the shackles of the 40 hour work week are free to work as many hours they can handle for the new national of minimum wage of $5.50/hour.
That minimum wage was put in place by the permanent super majority Republican Party, that took power in 2030. Upon seizing power they held a constitutional convention, and passed an amendment granting them a permanent super majority. It was challenged in court, but the now totally right wing SCOUTUS upheld the super majority amendment in an 9-0 ruling.
For more details on how they will be living, please refer to Orwell's manual on the future, '1984'.
NC-Tom, I was thinking '1984' reading your comment, which is very literate, too, and reads like its sequel.
I'm reading said manual on the future right now, along with (another?) Arendt's 'Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.'
Peace, Jack
The book does seem pretty prophetic. I sometimes wonder if Orwell was a prophet, or his book has been used as a manual for the take over of our country, or if it is some combination of the two. But as the Brits say, he seems to have been pretty "spot on", right down to the telescreen which incessantly relays messages from those in power.
Bingo - "it was about enriching the elite and increasing the power of the presidency."
So that makes Obama on par with Bush, as he has continued his predecessor's policies.
One thing you can say about Bush, his policies may have been disastrous, but he pushed them thru relentlessly.
On the contrary, Obama is a jellyfish. A total waste of a Presidency.
This report confirms a very ugly factoid: Dubya was a typical Third World President. His corporate-laced administration was incompetent at every level, clouded by religious bigotry, and was bull-headed and arrogant at every turn. To add the icing on the cake, his accession to power was an illegal power grab by five conservative US Supreme Court justices who could not countenance the temerity of the people to choose something they did not approve of.
As any unfortunate citizen of any Third World country knows, bad governance goes hand in hand with the nightmare that is living in those countries if you are not rich. Dubya completed the change-over of the USA from First World country to Third World that began under the reign of Grandpa Caligula (Reagan).
If in the dim future we learn that GWB was criminally involved in 9/11, do you think it will change his ranking one way or the other? Or will they say, another American president using a false flag to start a war, yawn.
Excuse me, NateW, but first of all, our domination of the Third World began more than 50 years ago, under Roosevelt, or perhaps before him.
Secondly, while the United States began its transformation into a Third World country under Reagan, continued under G. W. H. Bush Sr., Clinton, and G. W. Bush Jr., this transformation of the United States into a Third World country has now been completed by Barak Obama.
US corporate exploitation of the Third World (particularly Latin America under the aegis of "gunboat diplomacy") has a long and dubious history of which I am well aware. But then that is distracting from the main point, the USA has become, for all intents and purposes, a Third World nation with bad echoes of the Robber Baron era... and Dubya finalized this process begun by Grandpa Caligula (Reagan).
What Obama is not doing is seriously trying to reverse this "Great Lurch Backwards," nor is this likely to occur as long as five conservative troglodytes sit in black robes @ the US Supreme Court.
I love it when the Comments are superior to the article published here. Well, I could wish for better articles, of course, but clear-eyed readers keep us on topic. Chelala does not mention Obama at all, surely relevant since B.O. currently occupies the rusty throne. We already knew years ago who and what Bush was.
"César Chelala is [a] global health consultant" who "has conducted health-related missions in over 45 countries" and "has written medical and scientific articles" for JAMA, etc.*
So please write us an article about the current state of U.S. health issues and our broken for-profit medical system. Which we also already know about, but at least it's your field.
* http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=1032
Bush is an idiot but this alone does not distinguish him from many other stupid people elected president of the US.
Bush is a born again moron pushed by zionist neocons within the foreign policy establishment to transform the middle east for Israel. He had the good fortune to have an ignorant population, a compliant media and a born again idiot as prime minister of England who shared his religious inspiration. Without Blair's support and willingness to lie Bush would have had a much tougher time getting the invasion and occupation he wanted. Bush was a transistional president as the United States moves towards an openly theocratic government sometime in the near future once both parties are subverted to this end by the right to life cultists.
Bush was a transitional president as the United States moves towards an openly theocratic government sometime in the near future
This is so true!
I said that about Carter.... didn't happen. and Reagan, and yes Shrub, it seemed to me he was in pissing match with the Mullahs over who really was talking to god.
>^^<
"Bush was a transitional president as the United States moves towards ..." –(Thalidomide)
–This is correct.
Just as Obama is transitional. Or more correctly, an interregnum, leading to the same thing Bush was transiting to: A more exigent fascism. Always in the process of further refinement.
A fascism whose genius endeavors to appear as anything but what it is. But then again, as in Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death," that pretense too may be dropped.
As the United States moves toward a more transparently Fascist state– which is the event horizon of the American demiurge as historical spirit–distinguishing differences in the personalities of the presidents and their mental capacities, or competencies to 'govern,' is irrelevant.
The larger point is that they–any American President– can ONLY move toward fascism. There is very little–if anything– in the recent historical record, the concrete materiality of it, that they want to do anything but
Those who believe there are other, more benign options, are in the throes of a delusion beyond the merely sophomoric. It is a trajectory that is all but irreversible and cannot be mitigated holistically; there are no countervailing energies emerging from within the American organism to restore a semblance of 'health.' Those options have been foreclosed by ruthless acts of will and deliberation to effect just the opposite.
America has become an immaculate monster which is not 'lead' by President's of whatever stripe, but moves in a parallel dimension of what is implacable, outside the appearances of its politics.
Reality cannot be grasped if people persist in believing one American President will somehow be substantively different than another. There is no alterity there. Those differences are merely perceived ones, registering little more than stylistic modulations in the night plain of the encroaching dread that is America.
The masquerade is over. But then, when hasn't it been?
"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
–(Edgar Allan Poe)
VashkarKim, I really enjoyed your literate comment here, thank you. You're some writer. Almost poetic, IMHO.
PeaceTruthBeauty!
Jack
Thanks Jack! It all helps. Sometimes we seem to do it right and your feedback really helps.
–(Kim Nguyen)
Your points are well taken but I take the liberty to reject them, one and all, in their entirety.
Since we are, I believe, more or less on the same side of the discourse, I don't think it would be useful to engage in a more formal and protracted contretemps. Since I am not familiar with your work on this thread, not really having read much, if any of it, that would be a fruitless task. We don't know where you are coming from, as we haven't had the curiosity to find out.
As it stands now, I'm sure you know what you are talking about, but we, in all honesty, haven't much of a clue, except to offer a conciliatory disagreement with the thrust of your critique. Perhaps it's a vague distaste for a certain quality of tonal annunciation that is liminal and intuited in your work. But please, I'm sure that's just us; it's neither here nor there.
I don't know why that is except from what I have read it does not interest me much. And I do not want to insult a potential blog ally even accidentally as that would be wrong and ignorant of me. Please understand that this is as delicately and as candidly as I want to put it; it is in no way meant to be hostile.
However your comment has forced me to issue not a recantation, but a refinement– and to acknowledge a mistake I made– which your commentary has correctly elicited on two points:
First, when I wrote "there are no countervailing energies emerging from within the American organism to restore a semblance of 'health," I should have inserted 'institutional' after 'countervailing.' That is a more accurate rendering of what I believe. Thanks for calling that to question.
Secondly, we are, for the record, anything, but 'despondent' or in any way 'resigned.' Quite the contrary.
From what we post, it is, as you say, not easy to discern without way of explanation which, until now, we have dubiously omitted. The mistake is ours. It may seem paradoxical, but a relentlessly negative engagement, which produces 'clarification,' is a radical function not of hopelessness, but of its opposite. Thus it produces an 'elation' which is derived from attempting to relentlessly understand things as they are. It produces for us a happiness far more profound than the facile optimism which is a byproduct of what we perceive to be, faulty analysis.
I am not sure, but perhaps it was Trotsky who stated what for us has become axiomatic:
"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."
I also leave you with this to mull around:
"And transversal connections, from knowledge to knowledge, from one point of politicization to another, can be established..."
–(Michel Foucault, "Die politische Funktion des Intellekttuellen")
No 'despondency' there. It's in the 'knowledge' and the 'politicization' or lack of it.
For example, when I ride my bicycle to the Chinese market to buy some pork belly for a Vietnamese stir fry, some people would consider the fact I rode a bike rather than a motor scooter a 'political act,' a kind of sub atomic energy displacement creating a positive force field. And the revolution has begun in this small act of eco resistance.
We don't believe that. But then that's just us. –(Kim Nguyen)
I would have to observe from his accomplishments
that George Bush ranks as one of the most competent
presidents this country has ever had.....just because
he didn't accomplish what you wanted him to accomplish
doesn't make him incompetent.
I would venture to say, half of the posters voted for
him in 2000.
. . . former President Bush ranked worst among modern presidents and the fifth worst in history.
Why the compulsion to be generous to George Wanker Bush?
This survey is nothing short of ridiculous. 238 Presidential Scholars--exactly who are they and how were they chosen?--give us their opinions about 44 US Presidents. What do they base their opinions on? Most likely accepted historical work which is itself biased in one way or another. And it is not that these scholars are equally knowledgeable about all of the presidents; they are not. The most knowledgeable scholars would refuse to participate in such foolishness. This survey means nothing. Rather than fill in ovals on a five point scale concerning "intelligence" and "willingness to undertake risk", they should be doing legitimate scholarly work. And that would be deciding how policies enacted by former presidents affected the future course of the nation both positively and negatively. That is what the survey really should be about: policies, not personalities.
I see that the most important value is missing: Vision.
Need we know more?
I would have to say FDR was right down there with Shrub, (Little Bush) As more and more truth comes out of the Greatest Generation. How he broke the law so many ways to send materials to England. How the door was left open for the "Surprise" invasion of Hawaii, which wasn't a State at the time anyway. The list grows everyday. on the illegalites used to get us into Europeian Tanturm 2. Any person of intellict and 90% of Americans were dead against going to europe even after the Japs Attacked, Beff up the Pacific ok but no blood for Europe. But FDR being an old school highbrow needed a war to kickstart the economy after the Depression, and if it helped hie euro-buddies out all to the good.
>^^<
P.S. it's past time Lyndon Johnson got full credit for Civil Rights. Kenneddy talked some, but LBJ made it happen!..
Although I tend to agree with your general thrust, my take is a bit different. Whoever these "presidential scholars" are, 238 of them provides a very large sample that should control for lots of noise and bias (hopefully). A lot of these flaws (that previous research is biased, that more is known about some than other presidents) should tend to cancel one another given this big a sample (assuming these scholars are appropriately selected). Also, you imply that measures based on rating scales (filling in ovals) are not legitimate, but this isn't really true. Humans are usually good at utilizing such scales (though we don't know how they were labeled), they often provide data that can be obtained in no other way, they are statistically sound, and they are used (apparently successfully) in many scientific disciplines. Not perfect - there's always costs and benefits to different kinds of measures.
I agree with you that the emphasis should be on policies rather than personalities. Some personality characteristics may still be relevant, but different historians may not define something like "integrity" in the same way. Use of trait terms that are this difficult to define is highly problematic. I have no idea why they chose to measure "luck".
But in general, we don't have enough knowledge regarding the design or results of this study to evaluate its worth. The only thing to do is to look at the data and break it down in terms of the various measures: Some measures might be worthless (e.g., luck) while others might be valuable (e.g., intelligence). Also, since this study is done repeatedly across years, it might provide longitudinal data that would be quite valuable (unfortunately we don't know given the poor quality of the article).
Everything about this article is categorically and factually incorrect. The reason for this has little to do with the information listed and all to do with the underlying unwarranted assumption that the author makes regarding Bush and the office of The Presidency overall. The author makes the classic and repeated mistake of basing his allegations on this unwarranted assumption. To illustrate let's use the following example.
Example:
Unwarranted assumption: Bush/FEMA really WANTED to deliver water, food and emergency supplies to the Katrina victims.
You perhaps make this assumption because (a) it was their official and moral duty to do so, and (b) any sane human being would have tried their best to do so. But none of this means that Bush and FEMA actually set out to do things you think they should have done. The assumption is unwarranted, because you are extrapolating from yourself, and the general population of sane human beings, to Bush and his cronies.
The exact same assumptions are made left and right about Iraq: that Bush, in his heart of hearts, wanted to bring US-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, only he failed. That Bush wanted to keep the price of oil down to ensure the continuation of the American Way of Life(tm), only he failed. The facts suggest the precise reverse: that the chaos, the bloodshed, the skyrocketing oil prices are not unfortunate side-effects of a botched (but well-intentioned) job, but rather, that they have always been the goal. Until this simple point is well understood, there will be no effective opposition to what the Bush and now Obama administrations have done, and no holding them to account.
Another example: the FISA law debacle and Bush's fight for telecom immunity. It is mistaken to argue that hey, Mr President, you don't really need this to fight terrorism effectively, since the FISA law already gives you all you need to eavesdrop now and get it OK'ed later. As if he didn't know that! As if Bush really, honestly, was just doing his best to "fight terrorism" effectively.
See the real purpose behind what Bush is doing, and you will see that he and his people have in fact been amazingly competent. Almost eight years, and they nearly ALWAYS got what they wanted, most often with lots of help from the Democratic party.
Getting exactly what you want every time all the time is NOT incompetence.
As one poster said and mcoyote's insightful, informative post shows, comments are usually better than the original article.
The puppet masters got what they wanted alright. But the former Idiot-in-Chief really did believe in those lofty goals. Which is why he became their favorite pony to push through the smoke and mirrors process of democracy, even if they had to revert to fixing the final votes tally provided the presidential contest remained tight enough. Like Reagan before him these simpleton fools really do believe they know how the world works, all the while those in the real know how prop them up to enhance their interests. That's the fun part for the high rollers who can afford to BUY power behind the scenes. Make it look legit at least in so far as to render credible challenges to its legitimacy very costly and ultimately unlikely to succeed, and you will get the prize in the end. Even the notorious Cosa Nostra mafiosi is reputed to favor "democracy" as it provides the nearly ideal cover to carry out their nefarious dealings.
The fact that politicians strive to succeed in the political arena only makes them more ripe to be bought by the powerful vested interests which are exceptionally organized in carving up the Parcheesi game board on which politicos will tread. The Bush years are probably the most glaring example of this overt fixing of the political process in favor of elitist interests in recent memory. Yet in the case of Obama, he seems to be doing most of "the work" for them. So after all is said
and PAID FOR they get to go on laughing all the way to their banks...
The great virtue of coyote's formal posting methodology is the ability to proceed from the concrete to the abstract, so that abstract and general truths about the United States begin to make sense since they are contextualized by examples that are unassailable.
That is not an easy thing to do. There is great resistance and it is exceedingly difficult or impossible for many to grasp abstract generalizations about America and see the truth in them except by deducing them from concrete examples.
This is especially true in the informality of the blogosphere which is too casual for scholarly exegesis.
As such, these missives are highly instructive in their tutelary value. This is true even if you may find yourself in disagreement with some of his conclusions, which for us, is seldom the case.
This is not what my husband and I do on this blog– usually proceeding inductively, so we greatly appreciate it when someone else has the patience to do it in ways that are more easily understood.
From the doofus himself -
"I'll be long gone before some smart person figures out what happened in this Oval Office." George Wanker Bush, May 12, 2008.
I like it when people refer to Bush as a failure. I would put it another way for this most contemptible and criminal of "presidents". I think that, aside from his failure to achieve the "reform" of Social Security (a huge gift to the investor class that Obummer is currently working on with his select group of behind closed doors fatcats) that Wanker accomplished just about everything he set out to do, namely the largest transfer of wealth in history. That group of "Have-Mores" that he stated were his "base" at the Al Smith dinner in 2000 couldn't have been happier and were amply served by this reckless, ignorant sociopath. It is hilarious to compare Wanker with Buchanan and Polk and Andrew Johnson as the worst president. As far as I know they were all put into the office legitimately. Bush never was and didn't feel the slightest shame about it. He corrupted the Constitution, flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet, lied his shameless ass off to Congress and got us into two tragic "wars" that are bankrupting our country and making us into the pariah of the world AND if all that weren't enough he geared up on a policy of rampant de-regulation that will result in a more heavily polluted country for our children to inherit, PLUS that mammoth oil blowout in the Gulf which BP, et al may not be able to stop. That was a gift from the Bush Regime as well in the person of one Dick Cheney whose closed door (hmm, there seems to be a pattern here) energy commission decided that blowout preventers that cost $500,000 were too much of a burden for the poor old oil corporations to have to pay for. Has anyone heard the worst and most corrupt VP in U.S. history apologize for that? No, and you never will.
The Wanker is a bone deep screw up who decided that he wanted to outdo his father, get the presidency and start a war that would make him go down as a great leader and, oh yes, do his ruling class buddies and Wall Street a big, big favor. I am 61 years old and I don't expect to live long enough to ever see this nation repair itself from the profound damage that Bush and his ilk did with the help of a corrupt media and Congress.
I agree, Bush was not a stupid man, he was part of a fascist cartel that successfully stole everything they could and rubbed our noses in it. Excellent Post!
Maritimus49, you and Clearbluesky sure did hit the nail on the head.I am completely numb from witnessing the last ten years and at a total loss as what to do about it. This charade we call the electoral process has left me so angry that I am not going to vote anymore. I suppose that is what the oligarchy wants so they can continue to rape America and the world while we are comatose.
That's right kids, keep focusing on the idiot GWB instead of the warmongering and treasury-sucking Obama that's now running the joint.
Bush is gone. Obama is now the murderer/thief-in-charge.
Focus on the current Evil One, not the one who is now out to pasture. But alas, this IS after all, the season of the election cycle when dems blame their usual fuck-ups on others.
"If we link intent, actions, and results -- the truth is revealed -- and people act decisively for their own benefit.
There is only now, to create change, inquiry and act responsibly -- the "past" is as much as an illusion as the future, and both limit acting NOW."
You've stated beautifully the thing I have tried to convey on many occasions.
I have a family that does "things" and then when anybody goes to question it..the answer is, "Oh, that is the past, stop dwelling in it!"
I believe that if we understand a thing, we can make batter decisions.
A "thing" is not in the past if people are thinking about it now. Past and future play like movies on a screen. There is only the now.
Thank you Justice Arcs.
-dbear
This article got it backwards:
Ol' Jr. was a GREAT president - in furthering the agenda of the 5 Families of the Corporate Mafia.
Obama is an even BETTER president for the Corporate Mafia - he can get away with things that dumbass Jr. could not; like stealing social security to give to the MIC., cut Medicare, advocate for "health care" legislation that subsidizes private insurance companies while leaving the system intact.
What's more, he has continued and escalated Bush's foreign policy and signed the largest military budget in the history of the world.
So forget dumbass Jr., OBAMA is so far, the best Chief Public Relations Officer for the Corporate Mafia yet.
Like Silvio Berlusconi said last year: Obama speaks better than Bush and has a better tan.
Good phrase: the corporate mafia. That's exactly what the face of modern empire looks like. And there are real families involved (been at the game for centuries).Check out Tarpley.net, & his online book the unauthorised bio of bush. Also his other online book "against oligarchy".