Tag: Worst President Ever

Play ‘Rank the Presidents’ at AOL

Jon Ponder

AOL has an online poll up in which you are asked to rank the last four presidents from best to worst. As of 5:40 AM Pacific, Ronald Reagan was ahead of Bill Clinton but George W. Bush was safely last, behind his father.

History has been kind to Reagan. Personally, I found it hard to maintain my dislike of a man who suffered for so long — I even developed some sympathy for Nancy. And, frankly, dying has helped his legacy. But the Reagan was always a lucky S.O.B. and the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was the presidency of George W. Bush, which has been such a disaster that even the Reagan presidency looks good.

Still, there is no comparison between what President Clinton accomplished in his eight years and the meager results of the Reagan years — on the economy, foreign relations, social issues and the rest. Even on the scandal front, there were nearly 200 prosecutions for malfeasance in the Reagan Administration, but onlya handful of prosecutions of Clinton officials, despite the vast rightwing conspiracy’s multimillion dollar, multi-year investigations into so-called scandals.

It’s Friday, you’re at work. How better to waste a minute and a half than by giving Bill Clinton his due.

Go here: AOL Rank the Presidents.

Ecuadoran Presidential Candidate Rafael Correa Clears Up Meaning of Chavez’ Comments

Trish

“Whoops, did Chavez say Bush was like the devil? Well, that’s kind of insulting. Let me just clarify that, because I wouldn’t want the devil’s feelings to be hurt.”*

“Calling Bush the devil is offending the devil”

“Calling Bush the devil is offending the devil,” Correa said. He said that “the devil is evil, but intelligent.”

“I believe Bush is a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage,” Correa said. He later said the statement was a personal opinion.

*Paraphrasing Correa there, kids.

‘Compromise’ Torture Bill Allows Bush to Hold U.S. Citizens Indefinitely for No Reason

Jon Ponder

Every patriotic American ought to find this to be unacceptable:

Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops “during an armed conflict,” it also allows him to seize anybody who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

What makes this even more of a travesty is that Sen. John McCain — and dozens of Democrats in the House, as well as who knows how many in the Senate — are signing onto it.

Olbermann: Pres. Clinton’s Counter-Assault on Fox News Should Inspire New Aggressiveness toward Rightwing Lies

Jon Ponder
“To hear [Pres. Bush] bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11, 2001 or the nearly eight months that preceded it.”
— Keith Olbermann

Starting with the 9/11 commemorations, Keith Olbermann has been giving Democrats considerable cover to start speaking out against the GOP White House spin and smear operation. Pres. Clinton took the opening and went with it in a stunning counter-offensive on Fox News last week. On Monday night, Olbermann responded with this on-air editorial about the Fox News “sandbag” attempt and Mr. Clinton’s aggressive response:

OLBERMANN: Finally tonight, a special comment about President Clinton‘s interview. The headlines about it are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past present bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster finally lashed back. It is not important that the current president‘s portable public chorus has described his predecessor‘s tone as crazed. Our tone should be crazed. The nation‘s freedoms are under assault by an administration‘s policies can do us as much damage as al Qaeda. The nation‘s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit.

Nonetheless, the headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years—he has spoken the truth about 9/11 and the current presidential administration. “At least I tried,” he said, of his own efforts, “to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. That‘s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try, they did not try, I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty and for us. Action as vital and courageous as any of his presidency. Action as startling and as liberating as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11. The Bush administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors. The Bush administration did not understand the daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The Bush administration did not try.

Moreover, for the five years, one month, and two weeks, the current administration and in particular the president has been given the greatest pass for incompetence and malfeasance in American history.

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs, some of them 17 years old before Pearl Harbor. President Hoover was correctly blamed for, if not the Great Depression itself, then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the stock market crash. Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War, though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But for this president. To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11, 2001 or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

[…]

Rumsfeld in 2003: I’ll Fire the Next Guy Who Asks About a Post-War Plan

Trish

A string of retired military officers took the stand at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearings to enumerate all the ways Donald Rumsfeld sucks.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically”

“I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,” retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said…

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ….”

Well yeah, but except for that —

“Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making,” he added…

[Retired Col. Paul X.] Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a “serious moral failure on the part of our leadership.”

…Batiste, Eaton and Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq…

[Batiste] said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

4,000 Troops are Being Extended

And speaking of the Bush administration’s flawed plan for Iraq, it looks like 4,000 troops scheduled to come home aren’t. Someone leaked the crappy news to the press.

The Army has extended the combat tours of about 4,000 soldiers who would otherwise be returning home, a defense official said Monday.

The 1st Brigade of 1st Armored Division, which is operating in the vicinity of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, will be kept in place for several weeks beyond their scheduled departure…

The 1st Brigade…was extended to allow its replacement unit, from the 3rd Infantry Division, the minimum 12 months between overseas tours, the official said. The 3rd Infantry has served two tours in Iraq, including the initial invasion of the country in March 2003…

Until sectarian violence spiked early this year, Bush administration officials had voiced hopes that this election year would see significant U.S. troop reductions in what has become a widely unpopular war.

The British Have Saved Our Asses Again

One of the S-K-Ps from the Afghanistan prison right under our noses last year was killed by troops from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment.

[Omar] Farouq was one of four al Qaeda suspects who broke out of the prison in Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, in July 2005.

It was an embarrassing incident for the U.S. military, and the Pentagon waited until November to confirm that the man had escaped. The delay in releasing his name upset Indonesia, which had arrested Farouq in 2002 and then turned him over to the United States — which then shipped him to Afghanistan.

After escaping, the al Qaeda leader and the three others had managed to evade a massive manhunt. They later appeared in a video sent to the Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya and boasted of their feat.

Army Protests War Costs, Tells Rumsfeld and Bush It Needs Additional Billions to Keep Fighting

Jon Ponder
The Army’s chief of staff is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld.

It’s the incompetence, stupid:

The Army’s top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

“This is unusual, but hell, we’re in unusual times,” said a senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussions.

Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service’s funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.

According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army’s budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker’s request a 41% increase over current levels.

“It’s incredibly huge,” said the Army official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity when commenting on internal deliberations. “These are just incredible numbers.”

Just How Bad Are Bush’s Poll Numbers?

Jon Ponder

Eric Boehlert for Media Matters:

Here then, is some much-needed historical perspective to put Bush’s standing in context:

  • According to Gallup, on the eve of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, he was suffering the worst job-approval ratings of his presidency — 58 percent.
  • In 1968, when the war in Vietnam was claiming hundreds of U.S. casualties each week, President Lyndon Johnson was considered so unpopular that he didn’t even run for re-election. Johnson’s average Gallup approval rating for that year was 43 percent.
  • When Reagan’s second term was rocked by the Iran-Contra scandal, his ratings plummeted, all the way down to 43 percent.
  • This year, according to the Gallup numbers, Bush has averaged an approval rating of 37 percent.

Bush’s dismal ratings put him well within range of the country’s recent failed presidencies, like the one of his father, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. That’s the historical company Bush keeps, although you’d never know that from journalists who refuse to connect the dots and refuse to treat Bush’s second term as the failure that a majority of Americans say it is.

Did Osama Die Like a Martian?

Trish

If it’s true that Osama bin Laden died of a “waterborne illness” last month, as is looking fairly credible, I can’t help but think of the ending to War of the Worlds. Remember how humans weren’t saved from the Martians by firepower or strategy, but by disease microbes?

If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians — DEAD! — slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.

Gives me goosebumps, or makes me laugh bitterly, or both. If Osama is dead, and not by anything Bush and his minions can claim credit for, then what next?

We’ve been playing Whack-a-Mole for five years now, as the Bush administration identifies an endless stream of second-in-commands. We are usually introduced to them as they are captured or killed, but in a few weeks or months, new ones with similar names replace them. And none of it brings us any closer to some kind of ending in this fight.

So if bin Laden is dead, has in fact been dead for awhile now, then why are still at it? All along, we have accepted the Bush-given view that if we just kill all the “evil-doers,” especially the leaders, the problem’s solved. Could it be maybe, just maybe, the solution was never extermination? As George Lakoff and Evan Frisch pointed out in a brilliant Buzzflash guest contribution, declaring war on terror[ists] was a dumb strategy.

To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.

The more Americans kill and terrorize Muslims, the more we recruit Muslims to become terrorists and fight against us.

The war in Iraq was over in 2003 when the US forces defeated Saddam’s army. Then the American occupation began…

If bin Laden is dead, I can’t wait to hear what our new goal is morphed into by the folks who are profiting from all this carnage. But rest assured, a new one there will be. The question is, will we keep accepting it?

Ted Turner: Iraq One of the Dumbest Moves in History

Trish

Ted Turner has to be regretting that $1 billion gift to the U.N. a few years ago, since it’s pretty much all going to problems created by George W. Bush. He told Reuters how he really feels about the U.S. invading Iraq.

“It will go down in history, it is already being seen in history, as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody. A couple of others that come to mind were the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia,” Turner told the forum.

“It literally broke my heart. You don’t start wars just because you don’t like somebody. … I wouldn’t even start a war with Rupert Murdoch,” Turner said, referring to his onetime cable network rival.

One of the dumbest moves? Well, why not? After all, it was conceived by hands-down the dumbest president.

Pres. Clinton: Bush Wrong to Legitimize Whacking People Around

Trish

Did Bush skip Ethics 101 his junior year at Yale? You know, the course where you have to start out reading the Greeks and end up with John Stuart Mill, and know the difference between situational ethics and moral absolutism? And then you have to write a paper describing what you think is the best system for society — one that strives to produce the greatest good for the greatest number or one where everyone just does what works for them in the moment and maybe it equals out in the end.

Clinton: “The president says he’s just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they’re whacking these people around in these secret prisons”

Yeah, I thought Bush sat that one out.

But former Pres. Bill Clinton must have earned an “A” in that class.

“The president says he’s just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they’re whacking these people around in these secret prisons,” Clinton said in NPR’s “Morning Edition” interview, recorded on Wednesday.

“If you go around passing laws that legitimize a violation of the Geneva Convention and institutionalize what happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, we’re going to be in real trouble,” he said…

Even if there were circumstances where such treatment is necessary to prevent an imminent attacks, Clinton said: “You don’t make laws based on that. You don’t sit there and say in general torture’s fine if you’re a terrorist suspect.”