Tag: Worst President Ever

Poll: Terrified Sheeple Rally to Bush, GOP

Jon Ponder

Hapless Dems Watch Tongue-Tied and Hamstrung as America’s Bright Future Appears to Fade to Permanent Darkness Under Bush Regime

On virtually every comparison between the parties measured in the survey, Republicans have improved their position since early summer.

Fear and loathing: As the White House political team mapped out its strategy for winning the mid-term elections, Karl Rove, President Bush and the others plotted a campaign of political terror designed to ratchet up the fear among the populace.

In one of the most audaciously cynical political maneuvers ever undertaken by the Bush White House political office — and that is saying a lot — they launched their campaign of fear in conjunction with commemorations of the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

The White House was willing to risk criticism for using the sacred memory of 9/11 to win votes for one reason: They’re desperate. If they lose control of either branch of Congress, the era of unfettered executive power will end.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, new polls show that the president’s fear-mongering is working. Despite the GOP record — botching the war in Iraq, losing an entire American city and running up the highest deficits in U.S. history — several recent polls, including the new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, show that President Bush and the GOP are gaining popularity, with mid-term elections about six weeks away:

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Bush Adding Signing Statement to Geneva Conventions

Trish

It worked the first 750 times: You know about Bush’s signing statements: First, he signs a bill passed by both houses of Congress, the people’s representatives. Next, he signs a statement that cancels out, reverses, ignores, or undermines the letter and intent of that bill.

Since this technique has worked so well for Mr. Bush, allowing him to run things as he — and he alone — sees fit, why not expand it beyond domestic policy to international law?

Don’t like Article III of the Geneva Conventions? No problem! Just issue a clarification — aka signing statement — that says we’ll do whatever the hell we want, and the world can’t stop us because… Well, just because.

I think we should all do this. Got a hangover? Call work and say you’re sick, then sign a statement authorizing yourself to define “sick.” Having an affair? Swear to your spouse you’re true blue, then sign a statement authorizing yourself to clarify “monogamy.” Go ahead, it’s easy. I’m signing one right now authorizing myself to define “president.” Then I’m sending an email to Al Gore.

Olbermann: What Would Bush Say to Jefferson?

Jon Ponder
Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued – a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone who disagrees.
— Keith Olbermann

During President Bush’s mini-meltdown last Friday, brought on by former Sec. of State Colin Powell’s letter disagreeing with Bush’s plan to continue torturing terrorist suspects, the president blurted out, “It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists.”

Keith Olbermann believes that the phrase “it is unacceptable to think” should never be uttered by an American president:

[When] a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context, he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.

That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think.

Thus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.

It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever, he alone has had the knowledge necessary to alter and re-shape our inalienable rights.

This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.

If Mr. Powell’s letter — cautionary, concerned, predominantly supportive — can induce from you such wrath and such intolerance, what would you say were this statement to be shouted to you by a reporter, or written to you by a colleague?

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.”

Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job, Mr. Bush.

They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.

He put them in the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Bush, what would you say to something that anti-thetical to the status quo just now?

Would you call it “unacceptable” for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?

Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued – a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone who disagrees.

Bush Lacks Credibility on Torture Guidelines

Trish

Bush keeps pushing the case for uplifting the morale of folks on the front lines of torture by “clarifying” the Geneva Conventions. But those same people are still smarting from the exposure of a CIA agent’s identity by, it now appears, not one but three members of his administration. And ain’t nobody talking about clarifying the rules on that.

None of Bush’s threats and arguments whose theme is, “What are you? Stupid?” about a fair playing field for our torturers will have any credibility until he addresses the flagrant anti-American game playing among his own staff

Well, actually Palm Beach Post columnist Tom Blackburn is.

Mr. Novak, that bull in the china shop, now writes that the revelation of Mr. Armitage as the source doesn’t fit “the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson.” Mr. Armitage was not a mouthpiece for Mr. Rove or Vice President Cheney.

Maybe so, but it’s not that easy. Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby did mention Ms. Plame’s name to other reporters. So maybe it wasn’t well-crafted and maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but the revelation of a covert officer’s name was not a fantasy. For a while, it seems as if “Valerie Plame is a spook, and she’s Joe Wilson’s wife” replaced “have a nice day” among Washington pleasantries. Why Ms. Plame’s name was on so many lips doesn’t alter my point. It never should have been there.

Blackburn reminds us why all this matters.

We don’t reveal CIA officers’ names because if a foreign government knows, it can find out whom the officer had contacted. The foreign government can unmask its own leaks. With some regimes, that can mean death. At least it can cost someone who helped the United States his or her job.

When that happens and is known to have happened, it makes work more difficult for other agents we have around the world. Who is going to talk to an American whose name may turn up in Mr. Novak’s column?

None of Bush’s threats and arguments whose theme is, “What are you? Stupid?” about a fair playing field for our torturers will have any credibility until he addresses the flagrant anti-American game playing among his own staff. We’re waiting.

President Queeg Confronts Congress, Threatens to Quit Torturing Terrorists

Jon Ponder

President Bush had a mini-meltdown during his news conference at the White House on Friday. It was triggered by a question from NBC’s David Gregory and the topic was his demand that Congress legalize his administration’s torture of terror suspects (and retroactively, to boot).

But what has the president in a snit is the fact that his lackies in the Senate have refused to write the legislation the way he wants it. Even Bush’s own former Sec. of State Colin Powell criticized the administration’s policy of torturing terrorists.

The president is frustrated because, as it turns, he can’t force the Congress to do anything. Who knew?

So all he can do now is make threats — and the threat he made at the press events was a real head-scratcher: If the Congress doesn’t give him the legislation he wants, says the leader of the free world, he’ll stop his people from torturing terrorists from now on!

Here’s a snippet:

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Bush Seeks Comparisons between His Presidency and Lincoln’s

Jon Ponder

Earlier this week, we reported that President Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he believes so-called War on Terror has sparked a third Christian evangelical “Great Awakening.” He also said that the awakening is part of a confrontation between “good and evil,” making it sound like the world was slouching toward Armaggedon and that he was proud to be playing a role in bringing on the End Times.

At a press conference today, President Bush was asked about the story. In his answer to the question, he revealed something even more shocking. He has apparently been spending time recently trying to find someone who will tell him whether there are parallels between his presidency and Abramham Lincoln’s:

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What We Really Lost After 9/11

Trish

Today’s New York Times marks the empty, token sacrifice we’ve made since 9/11, and names what we were really cheated of.

It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured. But the call never came.

The attacks themselves have begun to acquire the aura of inevitability that comes with being part of history. We can argue about what one president or another might have done to head them off, but we cannot really imagine a world in which they never happened, any more than we can imagine what we would be like today if the Japanese had never attacked Pearl Harbor.

What we do revisit, over and over again, is the period that followed, when sorrow was merged with a sense of community and purpose. How, having lost so much on the day itself, did we also manage to lose that as well?

The time when we felt drawn together, changed by the shock of what had occurred, lasted long beyond the funerals, ceremonies and promises never to forget. It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured.

But the call never came. Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children, and with money earned by the next generation. Our role appeared to be confined to waiting in longer lines at the airport. President Bush, searching the other day for an example of post-9/11 sacrifice, pointed out that everybody pays taxes.

That pinched view of our responsibility as citizens got us tax cuts we didn’t need and an invasion that never would have occurred if every voter’s sons and daughters were eligible for the draft. With no call to work together on some effort greater than ourselves, we were free to relapse into a self-centeredness that became a second national tragedy.

What the Times doesn’t say is that it could have been no other way with a leader as morally vacant as ours, a president whose first words of inspiration were to buy, buy, buy and show our patriotism and courage by indulging in mindless consumerism.

There was a time when America could do better than this, and I’m still not convinced we chose the alternative. It’s a plain fact that George Bush received less of the popular vote in 2000, and from everything I’ve read about Ohio in 2004, I think the chances are good he did that year also. Those of us who want something finer are still out here. We just have to get better at claiming it.

Five Year Old Lies Continue Killing

Trish

One of my favorite off-line reads, The Week magazine, is usually unswervingly neutral in its coverage. Not this time. The editor’s note for the current issue comes down hard on the Bush administration, blaming it not just for 9/11, but for the greed and consumerist ideology that placed the economy above safety.

The government let them down—just as surely as it did when it ignored warnings that Muslim men with foreign citizenships were learning how to fly commercial jets

Just hours after Sept. 11, Jeffrey Endean of the Morris County, N.J., Sheriff’s Office plunged himself into the nightmare of ground zero. Endean rushed to the still-burning ruins, volunteering to search for survivors and counsel emergency workers. He worked there for two months on nights and weekends, without ever wearing a mask. “The EPA said the air was safe,” he said. “That was all the talk—it was just dust.” Today, Endean’s lungs, larynx, and vocal cords are all scarred from a cocktail of atmospheric toxins—dioxin, lead, asbestos, and pulverized glass. His asthma is so bad that he awakens most mornings gasping for breath…

A new study by Mount Sinai Medical Center has found that about 70 percent of ground zero workers have serious respiratory problems caused or worsened by inhaling the poisoned air at the site. Even as they worked in the dust and the fumes, many had concerns about what they were breathing. But the Environmental Protection Agency blithely insisted that the air was fine. If people didn’t return to downtown Manhattan, of course, Wall Street would remain closed, and the economic damage would be severe…But a small army of selfless laborers are now paying the price with their health; some have died. The government let them down—just as surely as it did when it ignored warnings that Muslim men with foreign citizenships were learning how to fly commercial jets.

Poll: Mixed Messages on Terror

Buck Banks

Scared or confused: According to National Journal’s PollTrack, it appears Bushco’s unrelenting focus on the “War on Terror” is beginning to have an effect on his polling numbers … or not.

A recent CBS News/New York Times poll shows that 55 percent of respondents approve of the way he’s handling “the campaign against terrorism.” That’s up four points since mid-August, and the current survey was conducted prior to the speech he made Wednesday afternoon, in part addressing counterterrorism efforts since Sept. 11, 2001.

The same poll has other indicators, however, that show the public’s confidence in anti-terrorism efforts isn’t consistent. Forty-nine percent said the nation is “adequately prepared to deal with another terrorist attack” — down 15 points since March 2003.

Similarly, respondents aren’t nearly as satisfied with the Bush administration’s progress in creating a “comprehensive plan” for safeguarding the country against terrorism as they were a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks. In May 2003, 42 percent said the White House team had made “a lot” of progress; that figure has dwindled to just 16 percent in the current survey.

CNN pollsters also found discontent about “the way things are going” for the United States in its war on terror. Nine percent said they were “very satisfied,” compared with 53 percent who said they were either “not too satisfied” or “not at all satisfied.” Forty-nine percent fell into the dissatisfied bloc at the same time last year.

And in a recent Pew Research Center poll, responses were split evenly on a question that asked respondents why they thought there hasn’t been another terrorist attack on the country since 2001. Forty percent attributed it to luck, while 39 percent said “the government is doing a good job protecting the country.”