Tag: Worst President Ever

Bush Nominee to Replace Call-Girl Scandal Figure Made Infamous Racist Remarks

Jon Ponder

To replace Randall Tobias, the State Dept. anti-prostitution czar who admitted using the services of the D.C. Madam (and who likened ordering a call girl to ordering a pizza), Pres. Bush has nominated Henrietta Holsman Fore, a California heiress whose record includes an infamous racist harangue:

A Wellesley College trustee’s remark that blacks preferred pushing drugs to working in a factory has precipitated an emotional debate on this bucolic campus already grappling with charges of racial insensitivity…

The trustee, Henrietta Holsman, a 1970 graduate of Wellesley who runs a manufacturing concern in Los Angeles, resigned from the board last weekend after apologizing for her comments, which also cast aspersions on the work ethic of Hispanic and white employees. But in a letter to the college newspaper, Ms. Holsman reiterated her statement that she had trouble keeping black assembly-line workers from going “…back to the street to earn more money … selling drugs.”

In her lecture, Ms. Holsman also said she had found Hispanic workers to be lazy, white workers resentful of having to work with machines, and Asians, while very productive, likely to move on to professional or management jobs. [NYT, 2/12/87]

With a statement like that in her past, naturally Pres. Bush nominated Fore to run human relations for the State Dept., a post she has held since June 2005. Prior to that, she headed the U.S. Mint.

Retired Generals’ Ads Might Be Last Straw on Iraq

Trish

If Bush means what he says about listening to the military, a series of ads featuring retired generals should produce critical mass on Iraq. Brought to us by Vote Vets, the first spot features former Iraq commander Maj. Gen. John Batiste.

Our ads are airing in states and districts of those Members of Congress who are very close to breaking with the President on Iraq, and joining the troops and American people…Mentioning them by name at the end, the local spots will call on them to “Protect America, Not George Bush.”

Batiste comes right out and says he left the armed forces in protest over Bush putting service members at risk for a failed strategy.

Following is a list of the elected officials the ads are aimed at. If one of them belongs to you, remember that nothing makes an impression on a public servant like a call from the folks back home.

They are:

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine
Sen. John Sununu, N.H.
Sen. John Warner, Virg.
Sen. Norm Coleman, Minn.

Rep, Mary Bono, Palm Springs, Calif.
Rep. Phil English, Erie, Penn.
Rep. John “Randy” Kuhl, Bath, N.Y.
Rep. Jim Walsh, Syracuse, N.Y.
Rep. Heather Wilson, Santa Fe, N.M.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Springfield, Mo.
Rep. Tim Johnson, Urbana, Ill.
Rep. Mike Rogers, Brighton, Mich.
Rep. Fred Upton, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Rep. Mike Castle, Wilmington, Del.

Future ads will feature Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and our personal favorite, Gen. Wesley Clark. Pony up some bucks, if you can, so the spots can be run nationwide.

Breaking: Bush Gets ‘Blunt Talk’ from GOP House Delegation

Jon Ponder
“My district is prepared for defeat.”
— GOP rep to Bush

NBC News is reporting that a delegation of House members called on Pres. Bush yesterday in the private residence of the White House to inform him that he has lost all credibility on the war among their constituents.

Pres. Bush was advised that he and his spokespersons should stop making claims about progress in Iraq altogether. One of the congressmen told him, “We need candor. We need honesty, Mr. President.”

Here’s a rough transcript of the NBC News report:

[…]

Bush Whines to Texas Friends: Nobody Understands Me

Jon Ponder

In the 2000 campaign, we were told that George Bush doesn’t read polls. Unlike Bill “Finger-in-the-Wind” Clinton, Bush knew his own mind and besides he had his finger on the pulse of regular Americans. In reality, of course, he doesn’t need to read the polls since Karl gives him a full briefing every morning.

“His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable.”

A story at HuffPost appears to confirm that Bush is not only aware he’s tanking in the polls, he’s whining about it:

[We’re] hearing that some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be okay…etc., etc.

This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

There’s no hope George Bush will learn anything from his failed presidency. What his party might learn from it is an open question.

Update: Trish saw this article at ABC News — 18 Big GOP Donors Dine With the Queen — which may offer a clue to the identities of the “Texas friends” who were subjected to Bush’s whining.

Gingrich Advises Republican Candidates Not to Mention Bush

Jon Ponder

Think Progress:

[On Sunday’s] CBS’s Face the Nation, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich advised fellow conservatives not to talk about President Bush’s record. “President Bush is not the future. He’s not a solution. He doesn’t solve Social Security. He doesn’t solve Medicare. He doesn’t solve the economy. He doesn’t solve the environment. He doesn’t solve education. He’s a current fact,” Gingrich said.

It’s also a “current fact” that the conservative agenda has failed to “solve” these important issues over the past six years.

Gingrich went on to say that conservatives “have to say, this is not what we want to debate. It’s not in Baghdad, it’s not in Katrina, it’s not at Walter Reed, it’s not with the U.S. attorneys, but I have a better plan for a better solution that fits your values.” When Host Bob Schieffer suggested that Gingrich seemed to advocating steering clear of President Bush, Gingrich responded, “Well, I think that’s clear.”

Bush at 28% Again – Is It a Sign of a ‘Dead Duck’ Presidency?

Jon Ponder

In the new Newsweek poll, approval of Bush’s job performance has dropped to 28 percent. That’s the second time this year — the first was in a CBS Poll taken in January, during the week before his State of the Union address. Twice in a little over three months is not a good sign for him but not yet a clear signal of a major shift.

George W. Bush has been rewarded for his phone-it-in attitude and his incompetence with money and power, time and time again. No one has failed as far upwards as he has.

Pres. Bush lost the support of independents long ago (and what little support he had from Democrats evaporated when he invaded Iraq), so it has been support from mainstream Republicans that has buoyed his approval ratings in the mid-30s. But if he skids along in the 20s for the next few months, it is a sign that the mainstream has given up on him.

Left with only the wingnut base of Christian nationalists and whackjob extremists behind him, Pres. Bush could become, not a lame duck, but a dead one.

George W. Bush was born lucky, but throughout his life he has taken for granted the extraordinary advantages handed to him — in military service, business and government. He wasted or mismanaged nearly every cushy assignment given him, usually with impunity. In fact — and here’s the luck again — despite his lifelong incompetence, phone-it-in attitude and cronies-only hiring practices, he has been lauded with power and money at every turn. No one has failed as far upwards as he has.

But if he loses the support of his party’s rank and file now — the way he lost it from the rest of us ages ago — his luck could finally run out. To save their own skins, Republicans in Congress, especially the 21 out of 48 GOP senators who are up for reelection in 2008, might feel compelled to abandon him on the war, and perhaps even to agree to corrective action against him, such as a censure or worse.

Spoiling Everything Else Just to Use More Energy

Trish

The Sierra Club is reporting even more depressing news on a day that included the devastation of honeybees and no end to problems with the nation’s food supply.

Get a load of this:

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? It doesn’t apply to Texas. Nuff said.

Jaws dropped last week when the DOE proposed its first two so-called “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.” They covered the entirety of [Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey] and vast swaths of southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and New York. Under everyone’s favorite bill, the Energy Policy Act of the 2005, the DOE can designate such corridors for new pipelines and powerlines. And if local or state officials want to protect their wilderness area, wetland, tribal burial ground, or Civil War battlefield — TOO BAD! The federal government can approve transmission lines over local objection and even if they conflict with other federal laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act.

Best of all, once they’re approved, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been granted sweeping powers of eminent domain. So FERC can then swoop in, take your property from you, and turn it over Energy Company X so they can pad their bottom line.

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? Wait, there’s more.

This provision of EPACT 2005 — never debated on the floor of the House — does include one Texas-sized loophole. As in, the whole state of Texas is excluded from this vast and likely unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

Nuff said.

On ‘Mission Accomplished’ Day, Desperate Bush Mentions al Qaeda 28 Times in Speech on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of his “Mission Accomplished” debacle, Pres. Bush delivered a speech to a construction industry group in which he desperately tried to link the war in Iraq to 9/11 — using the words “al Qaeda” 28 times in 73 minutes. (He also used the word “progress” 15 times.)

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Here he is at his most shameless:

Al Qaeda is the group that plot [sic] and planned and trained killers to come and kill people on our soil. The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens. I’ve got to tell you, that day deeply affected my decision-making. And I vowed that I would do anything that I possibly could within the law to protect the American citizens against further attack by these ideologues, by these murderers.

And:

For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11. I strongly believe it’s in our national interest to stay in the fight.

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Or maybe, as Keith Olbermann suggested, the White House message team is forced to drag out this tired crap because that’s all they’ve got left.

Conservative Icon Willam F. Buckley Worries Bush Is Killing GOP

Jon Ponder

William F. Buckley, ancient founder of the National Review and leading light of the once powerful country-club wing of the GOP, is worried that Pres. Bush is destroying the Republican Party:

“The parallel [to Iraq insurgency] even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.”
— Bill Buckley

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue.

Buckley sees the fatal issue as Bush’s war in Iraq and fears that while the president’s aggressive campaign to win short-term political victories at home — like vetoing his own “emergency supplemental” war funding bill — may bolster his hardcore, mostly Christian nationalist base, it is all just a misdirection meant to hide the fact that Bush and his team know that the war is lost:

[Beyond] affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month.

Buckley compares the Iraqi insurgency to the spread of early Christianity, casting America in the role of the faltering Roman Empire:

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that [Vice Pres.] Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease?

He even suggests the insurgents’ cause is as unstoppable as your typical country clubbing freeman’s need for drink:

The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

Finally:

There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

Buckley ignores the source of his party’s affliction. Bush would have never reelected without the votes of the Christian nationalists, especially the ones in Ohio who turned out in droves to vote for Karl Rove’s anti-gay marriage amendment. These same easily fooled voters are largely still behind Bush and his lost cause.