George W Bush: A Forum Salutes You.

Fucking awesome Hassan i Sabbah, I believe that I was not on PO at the time (I'm not sure...find any pics? ).

And the user names aboard at the time are totally unfamiliar, scary even. Makes me think that Rove had hundreds of bots trolling forums even then.

But you have opened a Pandora's box, you know that there will be other gems that others will find also...

I would just like to point out that what I meant in my comment about the Democrats needing to become a centrist party was that they had moved too far to the right.

Thanks Hassan, this made my morning!

I still stand by my statement 100%. I don't see America as having gone liberal.

This is really about the media who are going broke (not just the newspapers) while having abandoned the reporting of news.

Every statement I made then is true now. In fact we can add to it the major media urban centers have given up on the news and get their information from the cartoonish Daily Show, Colbert Report and SNL.

The Republicans are questioning themselves and they shouldn't. Democratic gains are based off -isms, pure criticism with no true plan, and no action on previous promises. Republicans had a few corrupt members. The Democrats do as well but the media won't even say the name Democrat when reporting on them.

One thing Republicans definately have to stop doing is letting others persecute them with their own morals when those undertaking the persecution don't have those morals. Anyone still waiting for Tom Delay to go to jail for all the false charges filed against him? Anyone still wondering why Newt had to give back his book advance while Clinton grabbed hers and ran?

How's your wife? Compared to what. That is what America is asking right now. Soon they will know that Bush with a Republican Congress spent a hell of a lot less than Obama or Bush with a Democratic Congress.

Let's see how true this thread is in 2010 when Americans are wondering why a guy who can't figure out their own taxes is in charge of their taxes, when the media runs out of material because they run the same tired BushHATE routine and there is no one to hang it on and when everyone has realized you can't borrow and spend your way to prosperity to the tune of a trillion dollars a year. The bubble may briefly inflate but bubble economics is not the way to run the country and Republican or Democrat, but mostly boomer, the pain will come to bear soon no matter who is in office.

Can't recall when, but after 2002, I had gotten some idea that Bush and Co. was going to send us down the river (Euphrates or Tigris river, take your pick) into Iraq. There was even the mumblings of 9|11 being an inside job. I started to feel instinctively the same way with other administrations (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and even Clinton...take your pick) that we were getting bamboozled.

I was drinking the kool-aid like everyone after 9|11, but I had the sense that I've seen this method of lies and false flags before.

Only one news agency was reporting the apprehensions of entering into Iraq, but it wasn't enough to change America's path.

It didn't seem that anyone (except sammi jo) wanted to hear about it.

But it all came to a head when I called Fellowship "weird" and I was banned (!). I didn't mean it, and I'm sure Fellows forgave me. But that ended the PO forums for me back then. Ironic now, to say the least...

None of us should rely on Krystol Balls or other forms of media today either. We were misrepresented by them then and we are now.

So I'm not going to pull any rabbits out of the PO hat's past. We all make mistakes.

But it'll be fun to see how some will rationalize or defend themselves too.

You should have just put up SDW's post again

Well....SDW is not around here much anymore. So it's kinda wrong to post this without him able to defend himself?

But IMO, there never was a better bullshitter on the subject at hand than SDW2001.

I applaud you, sir.

Well a few points of clarification. First, I have said that Bush was not truly conservative and I said it in here while everyone was declaring him the most conservative guy ever while bleeding the economy for $250 billion a year. I think you should start a thread whereby they are shown statements where they pronounced how conservative he is and then follow them with the Bush Bailout and him declaring he had chucked free market principles so they can shown proper irony as well.

I haven't said that the Republican party doesn't have to re-examine what it is doing. I have said that many of them have abandoned their principles and become RINO's or Democrat-lite. I've repeatedly said that the Neo-Cons band together with the Democrats and paint paleo-con ideology as racist, etc.

The result is RINO's arguing that they are fiscally conservative for ONLY wanting to spend $700 billion on a bailout whereas Democrats want to spend $850 billion. The people questioning whether there should be a bailout, they don't get any media play, gain any ground and when they are given attention it is for -ism attacks.

Republican principles poll very high though.

This is one of the best articles I have read in the last year. You couldn't pack more truth into such a short piece.

You had the urban areas overcome the surburban and rural areas (though surburban went slightly Obama as well.) Everyone wants to go back to the lie that we are post-industrial/everything.


No amount of printing, debt financing, recapitalizing, quantitative easing, etc. can change the fact that we aren't post anything and need to stop trying to outsource while somehow controlling the creation of wealth. Using leverage to multiply the return won't change that fact, letting the fed buy everything in sight won't change that fact either.

This is partially why I have, over time, started to say this is more than a party issue. It is a generation issue. When is some boomer journalist going to stand up and ask boomer Obama how many trillions of debt he is going to tack on to his lovely daughter's futures? It is the blind spot. It isn't just liberal though it leans that way. It is also generational and I have said that as well.

I don't think blaming boomers is the Republican talking point du jour, even if some folks who don't want to do anything thinking dismiss it as such. There is a power populism out there and a lot of folks who are not post-anythign who want a voice. They do not want those tapping their blackberries to keep destroying wealth while telling them how to do their jobs. Occasionally it crystalizes very strongly like the nerve Joe the Plumber hit during the campaign. What he represents isn't gone even if McCain didn't manage to tap into it that well.

The California example of this is that we are broke as hell and import almost all our power from out of state (much like the U.S. does oil) so that we can be "clean." We let those "dirty" states like Texas, Kansas, etc. make out electricity for us but then complain they are ripping us off while not generating it the way we would which is what drove the generation out of state in the first place.

It isn't economically sustainable. We can hide it or borrow it away for a while but the truth is the truth. Soon we will have to get our hands dirty again or go broke denying it.

Maybe he could team up with Boomer Biker, like a point/counterpoint blog...\

A few things I would add.

-Artman, I love ya bro and I don't recall what exactly happened years back but I want you to know I am sorry it ever happened. Please forgive me and know I love ya!

Hassan, I am sure you recall my transformation politically. Bush blew it big time starting with the war in Iraq.

Trumpt. This is not about the media. "The media" is always an excuse given when a republican in name looses. This is about the republicans being republican in name only but in reality spenders during the Bush years that make a republican of the Clinton years blush. The country tired of a party which focused on the war in Iraq and forgot the roots of fiscal responsibility. The republican party became the party of "BIG Government" foreign policy. What ever happened to the republican party of the Clinton years that focused on fiscal responsibility?

Bush and his speech Thursday evening,

Wow was that a boring "going through the motions" put you to sleep excuse of a dismal speech or what.

The man knows he is not popular. That much is true.

It is my hope that going forward more of us decide to hold our elected officials accountable as opposed to cheering them on while listening to what ever brand / flavor of talk radio we have an appetite for.

Talk radio be it Limbaugh on the right or Maddow on the left is pointless if nobody holds their leaders accountable.

Spin machines do nothing to help the cause of sorting out the times when we need to take difference with the actions of our leaders no matter which team we think we are for.

Now in case I have not had a chance to tell one of you all yet.

Happy New Year!

Go and be prosperous and live in peace!

Share and reason with one another!

but above all,,

Love and be loved.


Your friendly Fellows

And you too. All the best to your family also.

And to this wonderfully dysfunctional family we have here too.

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OT: This must be the most embarrassing book an author has ever written.

Love this comment...

So, OK, so the post-Bush plan for the Republicans is to despise and resent anyone over 40, as well as the seemingly endless list of everybody else that they despise and resent?

So then the Republican party base can be people under 40 living in the south or some of the plains states and Alaska who have a high school diploma and are not professionals and are white and not gay and who love Jesus? So it's Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder and Sarah Palin, pretty much, against everybody else?

That sounds awesome. That's a Republican Party I can totally get behind.

Blame your parents. Perfect.

Basically everyone who knows, or who knows someone just like someone they saw busted on COPS.

Of course you do!



Can you say clutching at straws?


We were tired of it along time ago also. Unfortunately he was still president and we'll be living with the consequences of his mismanegement for awhile now.

And Hassan I applaud you for pulling this out of the past! I've been waiting for this for a long time and it's great it's there in black and white.

There's not much the Bush supporters here can say about it with much validity except " We're sorry! We were wrong! " which they're of course not going to do.

Really. With guys like this on their team it'll be alot longer than 8 years before they see the inside of the Whitehouse!

The actual title of the book written in 2003;


WTF?



Heck, Bush used this exact same word again just a day or so ago.

You betcha!

That makes me unbelievably sad.

For the dog.

(though, I hope he's Boomhauer's, as he seems like the nicest of the bunch (I think...I'm not up on Boomhauerian and didn't understand a word he said))

GW seems to be spending his last weekend in office as POTUS... on vacation at Camp David.

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It is 3 days, 5 hours, 17 minutes and 36 seconds until Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 12:00:00 Noon (Washington DC time)

Do you know what the real irony is here? This wasn't really difficult to work out!

All you had to do was pay attention to what has been going on with the republican party since the 80's and then look at Dubbya's record.

Anyone with a brain could work it out ( well that and an open mind ). The Neocons had wanted a venue to further their agendas ( someone pliable ) for some time and with Clinton's massive debacle they saw an open road.

What they didn't realize is that he'd screw them over as well.

Now if you look back into his past and see how he handled his oil companies ( which ended with them going nose first into the ground ) you can see how he operates in a business sense.

Put this togther with a history of shield beating type warmongering and who he chose as a running mate and then shake well!

When he ran I knew he would beat Gore somehow. I also knew we were in for some of the worst times on record. But one thing I did miss and that was how bad it could get. I didn't think he'd get a second term but I underestimated the power of the rightwing propaganda machine ( of course they got a little boost from 911 ).

Well I do have hope for the future but it'll take awhile to turn things around.

" What the fuck? "

Too bad Gore didn't win. He probably would have followed his former coworker's policies and not got involved in Iraq. Would have handled 911 totally different ( possibly captured OSBL ) and not spent money like it was water. Probably would have been a lot greener and we wouldn't have been in the mess we are.

By design or not I do think the terrorists got exactly what they wanted for us. And they didn't have to send any envelopes filled with anthrax or send any WMD. We had a our own WMD right here in the Whitehouse.

These 2 recessions might have still happened but as I've said before it's all in your approach. Now I know the right will say " You have no way of knowing that ". But I do know anyone qualified for the position would have done better. We do know he probably would have followed Clinton's policies which wouldn't have gotten us here.

This guy was the wrong direction to take at that cross road.

Ah well too bad. But I hope that for many years to come people will rememeber the Bush legacy. How can they help? As Bush Sr. said to Jeb recently : " It's probably not a good time to run ".

We don't know that. They didn't finish counting the votes in Florida. Nobody knows who won 2000. There was no 2000 election. It was a presidential appointment.... our votes stood for nothing


The Iraq war would not have happened if President Gore....


And Cheney would not have been there to alter the FAA/NORAD/USAF scramble procedures a couple of months before 9/11 (requiring personal Sec. Defense authorization for intercepts and challenges), thus giving those in control of the airplanes the window of opportunity to reach their targets. The original, pre-9/11 scramble protocol was reinstated 9/12/2001. Yes, under Gore, 9/11 would either have not happened at all, or there would have had a different, happier outcome.... without the slightest shadow of doubt. And without 9/11, we would not have had the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the anthrax attacks, the department of homeland security, the Patriot Act, the TSA, extraordinary renditions, First Amendment zones, the trashing of the Bill of Rights, the loss of checks and balances, soaring government secrecy and paranoia, warrantless wiretapping and surveillance, $1 trillion wasted on wars of choice, a massive federal deficit.... the list goes on and on (tincan dictator stuff)...... and the rest of the world would have a damned sight more respect for us......

And yes, OBL would probably now be in jail, found guilty for his part in the attacks on the USS Cole and the US Embassies in Africa.


Yes, but Americans don't like tree-hugger hippie technology. We like gasoline and big, rumbling V8s.


.

Yes, they certainly did, and they are still chewing on it... Nothing. is. going. to. Change®.


"They" didn't have to? Don't you mean "Muslims had nothing to do with the Anthrax attack, except (a) get framed by the perpetrators re. the letters in the envelopes, and (b) get blamed in the corporate media, without any evidence? Again? As usual?


Yes, and what's new there? Come January 20, we'll have a different batch.


A dry alcoholic, with little knowledge of the real world outside of Texas and Kennebunkport, is not the best choice for the world's most powerful CEO with the heaviest responsibilities. The 8 year debacle wasn't really Bush's fault; he was just the wrong man in the wrong job. Cheney was really the one in charge, and there is how the problems really got started.


July 4th, 2009.........

Unbelievably, Christopher Hitchens disagrees with you. Surely he must be some kind of religious nutcase.

Doubtful. But he is a "drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay" who went a little off the reservation for a while. He seems to be coming back around, though.

Where would the motivation have come from?

Gore seems like a much more reasonable individual that wouldn't have looked at the bad evidence at face value. After all the UN was advising military action wasn't necessary at that point. The Bush administration and only the Bush administration was the one who pushed this through.

And SDW where ever you are let's hope for a brighter future now for all of us!

I think hoping for that's a good thing.

Ok?

Here's my 'classy' salute to George and his fan club,

love and kisses, Marc (and Zeus)

If you can search back eight years you might find my prediction that electing Bush would lead to an overwhelming mallaise in the country, feelings of despair and a mood of darkness, and, economic woes where divisiveness and misery are the norm.

I remember at the time Fellows thought I was an idiot . . . he later grew up, politically speaking.