The Freedom Clock, started over a thousand days ago, indicates that we are exactly one year away from the end of George The Worst’s reign. At which point one hopes that the country will rise, blinking, as if shaking off an extended and hideous dream, and return to the land of the living.
Long national nightmare indeed.
PAD
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Amen to that, brother.
Can’t wait!
DF2506
Have you seen this t-shirt?
Or how about this bumper sticker?
http://www.cafepress.com/beatbushgear.17424650
I still chuckle when I think of a bumper sticker I saw one day on the way to work:
“I never thought I’d miss Nixon.”
I can’t say I’ve ever been really crazy about the guy (or voted for him for that matter) but, at the risk of starting an incredible sh*tstorm, I get this feeling that history is going to be kind to him.
As a president, he stirs deep emotion from his critics and admittedly, I am not happy with some of the things his administration has done. Still, because we are so caught up in the present we cannot see the effect a chief executive can have on the nation’s path until many years later.
What does stick with me though is how many people ran around eight years ago thinking we wouldn’t survive a Bush presidency but, here we are 8 years later with some very interesting prospects for his successor.
Over the course of my lifetime, 10 different men have led the country, only 7 of which I can clearly remember. Bush Junior certainly wasn’t the best but, he wasn’t the worst either.
It’s a good thing Bush was elected when I was an adult, when the years go by quicker (it doesn’t seem like seven). I remember when the first Bush was elected, it felt strange, because it seemed like Reagan had been president forever (since he was in office from the time I six years old until I was 14, so he was really all I knew).
I think he will be remembered as a dangerous fool who started messes economic, military and political and left them for his successors to resolve. I’ve lived during the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton and GW Bush, and loved none of them.
Eisenhower – fairly moderate and not bewitched by the military-industrial complex, but a horrendous public speaker.
Kennedy – foolhardy in foreign relations, probably well-meaning, and remembered fondly mostly because of his personal charm and tragic assassination, rather than any great accomplishment.
Johnson – crude, well-meaning, and completely destroyed by his incomprehension of the Vietnam War situation.
Nixon – tremendously well prepared for the office by education and experience, but so terribly flawed in character that he destroyed himself and harmed the nation.
Ford – a genial nobody who was defeated by an incompetent opponent in the 1976 election.
Carter – Small-minded and temperamentally unsuited to perform the job of President of the United States.
Reagan – Enormously charming, but completely distrustful of the checks and balances of the American political system. Iran/Contra was treasonous and moronic foolishness belonging in a James Bond movie. I believe his intellectual rot began long before he left office.
GHW Bush – it is possible he could once have been a competent President, but his eight years as Vice President left him cynical and tired.
Clinton – brilliant, well prepared to serve as President, and hobbled by serious flaws of character, thinking with his pëņìš.
GW Bush – stupid, incurious, hostile and jaded, with absolutely no respect for the constitutional system: a criminal.
“I can’t say I’ve ever been really crazy about the guy (or voted for him for that matter) but, at the risk of starting an incredible sh*tstorm, I get this feeling that history is going to be kind to him. “
I think the opposite.
A year or two ago some historians took a look at who were considered the best and worst Presidents in US history. There was a very clear pattern amoung the worst Presidents. They all served during long, unpopular military conflicts that didn’t have clear victories. I don’t remember all the details, but the criteria matched Bush extremely well.
In the end, there’s nothing good to remember about Bush. Most of what people like about him is the personal feeling they get when he speaks. Thirty years from now that will have faded away and historians will only be left with the facts of his Presidency, almost none of which shows improvement from when he entered the office.
I voted for Bush in 2000 and against him in 2004. I would have liked for this to have been a good Presidency, but it will definitely go down in history as a bad one.
Have you survived it yet?
George Bush goes to a primary school to talk to the kids to get a little PR.
After his talk he offers question time. One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him his name.
“Stanley,” responds the little boy.
“And what is your question, Stanley?”
“I have 4 questions:
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?” Fourth, why are we so worried about gay-marriage when ½ of all Americans don’t have health insurance?”
Just then, the bell rings for recess. George Bush informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess
When they resume George says, “OK, where were we? Oh, that’s right, Question time. Who has a question?”
Another little boy puts up his hand. George points him out and asks him his name.
“Johnnie” he responds.
“And what is your question, Johnnie?”
“Actually Sir, I have 6 questions:
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden? Fourth, why are we so worried about gay marriage when 1/2 of all Americans don’t have health insurance? Fifth, why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early? And Sixth, what happened to Stanley ?”
Yeah, I’ve read that joke. It’s funny.
I noticed that the year was coming up soon myself. But Peter, aren’t you a day early in this announcement? I know what the clock says, but January 20th is tomorrow. Won’t it be 365 days beginning then?
Are you certain Bush’s time in office is over next year?
Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz and Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten uncovered a scenario where Bush can get legally get another term in office.
Reality is much stranger than fiction.
366 days, alas. This is a leap year.
As for “”I never thought I’d miss Nixon.””, believe it or not, there’s an op-ed piece by one former Senator George McGovern out there where he says:
“I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?”
Free hint to the young’uns; look up who Nixon defeated in ’72, and what Watergate was initially about.
Full piece at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010404308.html
As Tom points out, it is only Jan 19th
Bush’s replacement enters office on Jan 20th at noon.
I know this quite well as I was born exactly 24 hours after Nixon entered office.
W makes Nixon look good.
I just find it odd that so many of us are fondly remembering the days when our biggest problem with the President was him lying about his sex life.
Blair said:
“…Bush can get legally get another term in office.”
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Okay. It was a fantasy article. But let’s also not forget that a thing (a presidential decree? a presidential statement?) was made listing the chain of command should the country suffer a ‘great disaster’. All that has to happen is a ‘great disaster’ occurs, and Martial Law is declared. Then Bush et al. could rule indefinitely.
Just like the current situation in Pakistan.
Don’t know if anyone has linked to this in other threads or not, but Countdown played this last night.
Go to http://www.blimptv.net and click on the link to “Bush’s Coins”.
It’ll definately be a day for dancing in the street.
But whether our national nightmare is over kinda depends on who wins the election.
The thing that currently scares me: John McCane. He seems to be doing good for the Republicans. It seems like he MIGHT be the one who gets to run for them. McCane, as far as I can tell, is another George W. Bush. Sure he can speak a lot better then Bush, but he has all the same politics (so basically he’s a well-spoken Bush and he knows how to sucker people in). He’s VERY scary imo. And I wonder if Hilary runs, will anyone vote for her? Or enough people? WHAT IF WE GET McCane in office?!
*shivers* If that happens, we might as well just keep Bush…*shivers more*
Seriously…I’m just not liking where this election looks to be going….
DF2506
” I think Hilary might be OK as President (definitly better then Bush), although OBama seems like a better choice to me.”
I disagree that McCain is another Bush. He supports Bush more than I’d like, but I think that’s largely because he’s of the mindset of not speaking publicly against a sitting President, especially one of his own party. That’s not a value that I admire, but it’s not the worst thing.
He has been critical of the war in Iraq in the past and he isn’t a warmonger. I think he’s immensely more rational than Bush and I don’t think he would have gone to war with Iraq if he’d been elected in 2000. I like him a lot more than Mitt Romney.
I think Hillary is where the money and speical intrest groups lay and egg. I really didn’t want to see her do good in the elections Edwards is the man really but all of those grandma chuckies are voting for her áršë.
Yeah, but McCain still refers to the Koreans as “gooks”.
I know he was tortured by them as a POW and all, but seriously, do you want your President to be someone who refers to Koreans as gooks? In public?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
But his economic gobbledygook is just as bad. For example, in one speech he says..
Sounds good, right?
Problem is…we’re in a recession-type of economic problem. Goverment spending HELPS that kind of problem, not hurts. Cutting government spending helps with inflationary problems, not recessionary. If anything, our problems comes from an unregulated mortgage and banking system. Hm. Didn’t we have a savings and loan scandal before? Hm. Wasn’t one of the politicians involved in that debacle named McCain?
McCain is just as much of a tool of big money as is Bush…
roger Tang said:
“Problem is…we’re in a recession-type of economic problem. Goverment spending HELPS that kind of problem, not hurts.”
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True. Basic economics. But I don’t think Bushco. understands anything that requires thinking. Tax cuts will not stimulate the economy fast enough to make much of an impact. Rebates aren’t a great idea, IMO, but spending HERE AT HOME is sure to help the economy.
I know he was tortured by them as a POW and all, but seriously, do you want your President to be someone who refers to Koreans as gooks? In public?
What the hëll were the Koreans doing in Vietnam???
As someone who actually likes President Bush I have found his two terms to be particularly exasperating and frustrating.
His blatant violation of his vital commitment in the system of checks balances is reflected in many of his attempts to be bipartisan… which means that sometimes he probably doesn’t read the bills that come across his desk, as drunk with blind trust (if not alcohol) as he is.
His expansions of executive power would be less disconcerting if he had more elegant constitutional arguments defending them and a tighter framework to prevent those expansions to be abused by any later President that held more guile.
He spends like a drunken (that metaphor) sailor. He communicates good ideas like a blind deaf-mute.
He has been an enormous disappointment.
I believe, however, that history will judge him more like Truman than like Nixon.
Of course, I love Truman, and I despise much if his individual policies. No President is perfect; as I went through the “Current Events” section at the semi-local mega bookstore Schuler’s I could not suppress the notion that all the books examining President Bush’s administration were jumping the gun. I judged his work as if I were a naive giddy school girl when I was 19, 20, 21. I’m not judging it again as a whole for another ten years.
“Problem is…we’re in a recession-type of economic problem. Government spending HELPS that kind of problem, not hurts.”
I’m sorry but your wrong, Ever hear of TVA it was great program during the depression right..well other than the fact it displaced more black people that it employed and then not only were they jobless but also homeless. If i have to give money to the people in the corporations to fix the economy or to the government I’m going to side with the people that if they fail they now longer have a job vs the people that will just take more of my money if they mess up.
as for bush his term isn’t over but considering its an election year and congress traditionally does next to nothing when there running for there own seats the only things that can change Are Iraq and the economy. And while Iraq is getting better the economy is slowing down. so its going to be a mixed year at best for him.
You mean like the CEOs who’s salaries have gone up 2000% in the last 25 years with no rise in profits, or the companies receiving government subsidies to make adding factory-processed corn to everything cheaper than sugar, increasing diabetes rates by up to 10? Maybe you should try spending a day or two without picking up the korporate kool-aid.
Bill Mulligan – What the South Koreans were doing in Vietnam was fighting – often with great valor. 300,000 South Korean troops served in the Vietnam War. Many U.S. troops were impressed with the discipline and fighting ability of the Koreans (who had shown much of the same in previous wars). North Korea sent an approximately 200 man fighter squadron to serve the North Vietnamese side, but I do not know what the North Vietnamese or anyone else had to say about their service.
Rereading the previous post, no – of course McCain was tortured by North Vietnamese, not Koreans, so that first post was seriously mistaken. Although “gooks” is a pretty offensive word, I wouldn’t argue with McCain about anything he wanted to call the NVA. A family friend was always so unPC as to dislike the Japanese, and call them bad names, just because they killed a lot of his friends and tortured him for a few years! How primitive! (Yes, I am being sarcastic.) It’s hard to reverse the prejudices and propaganda attached to our previous wars, and I’m afraid our soldiers really do need to depersonalize the enemy – whoever it is – in order to survive combat mentally intact. I’ve read a lot about WWII GIs who were much more uncomfortable about their actions against Germans and Italians than against Japanese, because they Japanese were more effectively demonized. Just about every GI knew somebody back home who looked just like the Germans and Italians he had to kill, but most didn’t know any East Asians.
> Or how about this bumper sticker?
There were two errors, not one. The first, and lesser error came when he was elected in spite of his less-than-sterling background. The far worse error came when he was kept in office after the first term.
>You mean like the CEOs who’s salaries have gone up 2000% in the last 25 years with no rise in profits, or …
Or CEOs who get huge bonuses for just firing people? In Canada one infamous guy (head of high tech giant Nortel at the time) got a $128M (that’s right, MILLION) bonus when all he really did was lay off over 10,000 people. I can’t help wonder how many of those several thousands could have been kept employed using that $128M?
Certainly I mean no disrespect toward the South Korean soldier. Were I choosing sides for thermonuclear kickball they would definitely be near the top of the list, along with the Aussies and Israelis.
As long as it isn’t Huckabee, I’ll be happy. I think he is the one that is like Bush, not McCain, not Romney. It’s that Christian Fundamentalist mindset that scares me and seems to make the guy believe he can do anything ’cause God is on his side…
Bill Mulligan – I initially misunderstood your post, but it was a valid question which didn’t denigrate the Korean soldiers.
I have a question for the relegious right… I know as a country we have been either blessed or extremely lucky but, if GOD cares so much for america why did it take almost 1500 years after the the crucifixtion of christ just to find the silly continent? Imean if you are a strick creationist that means 3/4’s of creation has been spent without even knowing where america was… Not to mention the about 9/10ths without America as a country
Exciting news! I just heard that, as part of the new reality-based line of comics Marvel is planning to launch this year, the inaugural series is going to be a major comics event based on George Bush leaving office. They’re still working out details for the format and release date, but are hoping to attract a lot of media coverage when the project is officially announced. (The not-yet-released news that Marvel is hiring Markos Moulitsas as co-writer on this project should pretty much guarantee that!)
The series will be set January 19, 2009, with Bush and the remaining members of his administration contemplating what could happen when a new administration takes over (Investigations? Indictments? Trials? Prison time, without presidential pardons?) and deliberating over what they can to do in the remaining time in office.
The tagline Marvel is planning to use to promote the series is: What would you do if you only had… One More Day?
The tagline Marvel is planning to use to promote the series is: What would you do if you only had… One More Day?
*chuckle*
The best part is that it’s an 8 years truly worth wiping out.
matt said (in reference to Bush):
“…so its going to be a mixed year at best for him.”
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MIXED??!?!?? He hasn’t had a good one yet! Everything he has done has been to benefit him, his friends, and corporations that back him. He doesn’t give a šhìŧ about terrorism, national security, the economy, etc., unless it benefits his cronies.
And what does this have to do with what I said?
You’re pointing to implementation rather than principle; any idiot can screw up a plan. And, of course, you ignores the point that we HAVE been stimulating the economy through corporations over the past seven years, and not only do we have the mess we have now, but many of them are still on the job, those who are not have been richly rewarded, and NONE of them are in any way responsible to you or me as voters.
Posted by Bill Mulligan
George Bush goes to a primary school to talk to the kids to get a little PR.
After his talk he offers question time. One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him his name.
First heard that one from Myron “Everyboby Gotta Be Someplace” Choen in the Sixties, with Red Square as the locale. “What happened to Levine?”
Cohen was also the raconteur from whom i first heard “Oh, you want Greenberg the spy. Second floor back.”
Posted by PandaPhil
…whether our national nightmare is over kinda depends on who wins the election.
Well, actually, from where i sit, it looks as if none of the candidates likely to actually be nominated could be worse than Bush.
Posted by John
Yeah, but McCain still refers to the Koreans as “gooks”.
I know he was tortured by them as a POW
You misspelt “Vietnamese”.
My full opinon on this: As long as we don’t get a Republican for our next President we should be OK. It should be a Democrat for our next president or better yet, an Independent. Haven’t heard what independents will be running though. I must likely won’t be voting that way though since Independents NEVER win..but it would be intersting to see wouldn’t it? *sigh*
I’m definitly very against McCain though. I don’t even want to see him run. He’s just way too close to Bush for my tastes. I don’t want to see Huckabee run either if he’s really like Bush (don’t know much about him). I’d say either Mitt, lol, or the “smart” Republican choices: Fred Thompson or even better (imo) Rudy Giuliani. Those are the only two that I can see that MIGHT be OK. Still wouldn’t want to see either win…but if I Republican HAD to win….
DF2506
Mike, did you actually see Myron Cohen??? I love that guy! Classic stuff:
A couple is before a divorce judge. The judge says: “And so Madam, I am going to find for you that you receive 400 dollars per week for the rest of your life or until such time that you remarry.” And the husband says: “You know, judge, that’s so fair of you that I also shall throw in a couple of dollars.”
“George the Worst”
I adore the optimism.
“George the Worst”
I adore the optimism.
“George the Worst”
I adore the optimism.
“George the Worst”
I adore the optimism.
“George the Worst”
I adore the optimism.
Hopefully by 2009 you’ll undergo the same experience that Australia did. It seemed like Bush-admirer-and-loyalist Prime Minister John Howard had been around forever. Unfortunately more than 50% of Australians disagreed with that assessment and he lost the 2007 election. For me, it really does feel as though the country has woken up from a deep slumber and we’re reengaging with the world again.
Of course, 50% of the country would probably disagree. 🙂
Posted by Bill Mulligan
Mike, did you actually see Myron Cohen??? I love that guy!
No – my Dad had a copy of the “Everybody Gotta be Someplace” album and maybe some others…
“What the hëll – my mother would send me out on a night like this?!?”
Appreciating and learning from Myron Cohen (and David Tarr, among others) may be why a Jewish firend who i’d known for some time was surprised to discover that i *wasn’t* Jewish myself…