Over 1,000 people assembled at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, on Saturday, January 6, 2006, to form the word “Impeach!” in giant letters. Protesters said they hoped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents the city of San Francisco in Congress, would see their message.
The folks at Fox News were discussing Barack Obama’s admission in a book 11 years ago that he’d used drugs in his youth when the show’s hostess went off script and brought up Pres. Bush’s use of cocaine in his youth:
Their conversation took an unusual turn, however, when Fox reporter Kirian Chetry said President Bush had also admitted to using cocaine.
Obama “talks very candidly, as did our current president, who admitted to using cocaine, correct? [Others demur] Well, who wrote, somebody wrote in a book — well, he admitted that he had an alcoholic, he had a drinking problem. Who was it who said they witnessed him using cocaine? It was somebody who wrote a book…”
As her colleagues tried to talk her down from the line of discussion, Chetry responded, “Okay, okay, fine, but there were questions about the current president and whether he used cocaine or not as a young guy, but there’s something about turning your life around…that people can accept.”
John Seery, who wrote about Bush’s cocaine-abusing past back in the 2000 election, has this take on the Fox segment in the Huffington Post:
Whew, that was a close one! Fox News surely didn’t want to open that door into Bush’s creepy closet, and they tried to slam it shut. Maybe the stress of the Iraq War, compounded by the growing abundance of Afghani poppy plants, is triggering memory flashbacks. Whatever the reason, the “cocaine issue” is back in the news–it just won’t go away.
What amazes me is that here we are, six years into Bush’s presidency, and the press still refuses to treat the longstanding stories about Bush’s cocaine use with the severity and scrutiny that such charges surely deserve, given the high level stakes involved. The issue is no longer simply how and why Bush has successfully dodged the topic for his entire political career. The story now should be why the press has treated him with kid gloves for so long.
The cocaine story came up in August 1999. Here’s a CNN article from the time that sums up events around Bush’s non-admission:
Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann reported that Pres. Bush will announce next week that he is sending 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. According to NBC and the BBC, the president will try to sell the escalation as a “sacrifice” by the American people in order to achieve stability in the Middle East.
The real reason for the escalation, of course, is to try to create sufficient stability in the region so that Bush can declare “victory” in Iraq before he leaves office.
In an editorial later in the show, Olbermann expressed outrage at the president’s intent to require the sacrifice of additional American troops in order to salvage what is left of his own legacy:
This is really bad:
A new poll from The Associated Press and AOL News has discovered that Americans are torn in terms of their perception of President George W. Bush and his performance in 2006. When asked to name the past year’s biggest villain, Bush was far and away the #1 choice, commanding 25 percent of the vote, distantly trailed by Osama Bin Laden (8 percent), Saddam Hussein (6 percent), President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran (5 percent), North Korean leader Kim Jong II (2 percent) and Donald Rumsfeld (2 percent). Satan only took in 1 percent of the vote, as did Hugo Chavez, Tom Cruise, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Rosie O’Donnell, among others.
On the flipside, Bush also claimed the top spot when Americans were asked to name the year’s biggest hero, but with only a trifling 13 percent of the vote. The troops in Iraq came in second (6 percent), followed by Jesus Christ (3 percent), Barack Obama (3 percent), Oprah Winfrey (3 percent), and rock star/philanthropist Bono (2 percent). Other “do-gooders†of 2006, receiving 1 percent each, included luminaries, business leaders and politicos such as Warren Buffett, George Clooney, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Angelina Jolie, Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Condoleeza Rice.
Ironically, the number of Americans who are delusional is also 13 percent.
Merry Christmas from George Bush:
In a span of a few hours, 2,973 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a span of 45 months, the number of American troops killed in Iraq exceeded that grim toll as the war continues.
The milestone in Iraq came on Christmas, nearly four years after the war began, according to a count by The Associated Press.
The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of six more American soldiers, pushing the U.S. military death toll since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,977, four more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
You can’t blame the faculty and staff of Southern Methodist University in Texas for objecting to Pres. Bush’s plan to put his $500 million library, or “lie-berry,” as he might put it on their campus. After all, who wants to be the home of the laughingstock of presidential museums.
Texas Monthly magazine got a copy of a letter sent from the a faculty group to the university’s board of trustees in which they expressed some of their concerns:
“We count ourselves among those who would regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.”
“[T]hese violations are antithetical to the teaching, scholarship, and ethical thinking that best represents Southern Methodist University.”
These are excellent points but the reason given by the faculty members that has real resonance is that the library’s real purpose is to rewrite the history of Bush’s term in office:
Their concerns are based on a New York Daily News story of November 27, which describes the future library as a $500 million center (the costliest presidential library ever), the purpose of which would be “to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.”
The letter to Turner makes the point that there are “two fundamentally different visions of the Library”: a neutral space for unbiased academic research conducted by scholars, or a conservative think tank and policy institute that engages in legacy polishing and grooms young conservatives for public office.
The concept of a George W. Bush library is a joke, or rather, I wish it were. It is a sure sign that after Bush has completed his term as the Worst President Ever, he’ll spend the rest of his life being the Worst Ex-President Ever.
In her end-of-the-year interview with People magazine, First Lady Laura Bush offered this unscripted assessment of the reasons Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice won’t run for president:
“Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she’s an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job,” the First Lady said.
Michael Kinsley said a gaffe is when a politician accidentally speaks the truth. Laura was clearly speaking off the cuff, and she certainly made Condi sound too weak and needy to be president.
Maybe Laura forgot that Queen Elizabeth I was single the entire 49 years she was queen of England. History remembers her as an accomplished world leader, who excelled in a male-dominated world.
Or maybe Laura remembered America’s only president who was single. James Buchanan was the 15th president, a one-termer who served immediately prior to Lincoln. Historians generally believe Buchanan’s failure of leadership put the country on a glidepath to civil war. Because of this, Buchanan was widely regarded to be the Worst President Ever until, the title that now belongs to George W. Bush.
Condi can’t be president because she has a record of egregious incompetence and a political tin ear. Her marital status is irrelevant.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
