The Historification of 43's Hardcore Incompetence (Rolling Dubya Legacy Thread)

This is the thread to update as the documentation comes in about how absolutely pathetic, vile, hideous and tremendously destructive George W. Bush's presidency was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04rich.html

http://www.good.is/awesome/good_transparency_hidden_cost_of_war.html

Since we live in an advanced Western civilization, there needs to be legal justification when we torture people, and the Bush Administration proudly produced it. Memos authorizing the use of "enhanced" techniques were written in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council. Vice President Dick Cheney and his nefarious aide, David Addington, had a hand in the process. The memos were approved by Bush's legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales. A memo listing specific interrogation techniques that could be used to torture prisoners like Mohammed al-Khatani was passed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He signed it on Dec. 2, 2002, although he seemed a bit disappointed by the lack of rigor when it came to stress positions: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," he noted. "Why is standing limited to four hours?"

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1870319,00.html

"Bring it on!"

"Heckuva job, Brownie!"

"I'm the Decider."

Mission accomplished.

Harriet "WTF" Miers
Samuel "Scalia Jr." Alito
John "Smiling Jack" Roberts

Promising to fire anyone in his administration who had leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent, no matter who it was.

Announcing after his re-election that he was going to spend his political capital, then blowing a big chunk of it on Terry Schaivo.

politicizing the Justice Dept. Lucky for us that scandal has just been wrapped up in a report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/washington/13web-justice.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99307148

In his speeech addressing the fast-exploding torture scandal, promising to tear down Abu Ghraib prison and replace it with a shining symbol of a renewed and free Iraq... a newer prison!

this forgotten gem - Surgeon General used as political tool
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76600.php

In a story with local ramifications in my state, the Bush administration was sued by the logging industry for not cutting down enough of the national forests. As it turned out, the lawsuit had been suggested to the logging industry by Bush administration officials. After the suit was filed, the government obligingly settled out of court by giving the logging industry each and every concession they asked for, in full and without exception.

a few samples from their war on science
CDC
FDA
NASA

Two words: abstinence education.

on related topics...
this was an early decision but still in place
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/30/usa.georgebush1
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/09kristof.html

Bush recently gave "right of conscience" to pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/18/AR2008121801556.html

Some detail from the Justice Dept. report that kind of sums up what happened to the federal government under Bush:

In that incident in August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Schlozman asking Schlozman to bring coffee for him to a meeting both were scheduled to attend. Schlozman replied asking Tanner how he liked his coffee. Tanner's response was, "Mary Frances Berry style - black and bitter." Berry is an African-American who was the Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from November 1993 until late 2004. Schlozman forwarded the e-mail chain to several Department officials (including Principal DAAG Bradshaw) but not Acosta, with the comment, "Y'all will appreciate Tanner's response."

In a story with local ramifications in my state, the Bush administration was sued by the logging industry for not cutting down enough of the national forests. As it turned out, the lawsuit had been suggested to the logging industry by Bush administration officials. After the suit was filed, the government obligingly settled out of court by giving the logging industry each and every concession they asked for, in full and without exception.

Really you have to wonder about the people working in this administration and how they justified this kinda shit to themselves. Like, how many actually succeeded in cognitive dissonance and convinced themselves that "we're saving the trees from wildfires!!! go us!" ? And how many were self-aware Bond villains? With this kinda shit, it's hard to *not* imagine a dark room, a bunch of people sitting around a table, cackling.

Schlozman's lawyer referring to those (and other) comments as "inartful" was pretty incredible. Even Thornburgh is offended by that shit!

Speaking of NASA, our soon-departing president a few years ago made a fling at the inspiriational-vision-of-the-future thing and declared the USA would move quickly to build a space station on the moon as an intermediate step to visiting Mars. Then he didn't take a single action designed to make this happen.

NASA has probably less prestige now than at any time since the mid-50s, when all their rockets were falling over on the launch pad and exploding in mid-air.

xpost
Very similar to not taking a single action in New Orleans after he gave that speech about how he would "rebuild"

Oh and maybe we should take a minute and catalogue all the things that nobody saw coming:
9/11 - "flying planes into buildings"
the election of Hamas
breech of the levees in New Orleans

I'm forgetting at least 4 more.

Condi's really the center of most of those comments"
Condi: "nobody could've predicted that they'd fly planes into buildings"
Condi: "nobody could've predicted that Hamas would be elected"

I forget the source now, but several years back the story came out that Bush had confessed to some visitor in the Oval Office that he believed God had personally chosen him to lead the nation into the Iraq war. He professed to be humbled by this knowledge.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/13/god-told-bush/

The Bush White House staffers apparently spoke disdainfully of the "reality-based" people who didn't grasp the genius of Bush's foreign policy. They thought the bold, but correct, approach was just to do stuff without reference to outside facts and reality would obediently fall into line with you.

In a story with local ramifications in my state, the Bush administration was sued by the logging industry for not cutting down enough of the national forests. As it turned out, the lawsuit had been suggested to the logging industry by Bush administration officials. After the suit was filed, the government obligingly settled out of court by giving the logging industry each and every concession they asked for, in full and without exception.

― Aimless, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:24 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

are you fucking kidding

wow

didnt you vote for this dude

wha

i could be wrong

you are

sorta baffled why you would think that, tbh

oh no i was talking to millar not u

o i c

Here's a lovely story about a man named Dick Cheney and a huge fish kill on the Klamath River.

It seems that spud farmers in the Klamath basin in Oregon were drawing down so much water from the Klamath river system that it was causing huge environmental problems for fish. The local Klamath tribe joined forces with commercial salmon fishermen to sue for more water to be left in the river. They won, using an argument based on the Endangered Species Act.

The Bush administration (think: Rove) obviously calculated that there was political gain to be had in the intermountain West by taking a position in favor of the farmers, and by extension, against the ESA. The farmers were small potatoes; being seen to hate and undermine the ESA was the important part of the equation.

At one point in 2002, during the controversy Dick Cheney picked up the phone and ordered a particular valve that controlled a major diversion canal be opened to irrigate fields. By the end of the week more than 10,000 fish were dying downstream. Not little fish, either. This was maybe 150 tons of fish piled up in stinking masses.

Heckuva job, Dickie!

i hate these people

let's not forget John Ashcroft - sure he's small potatoes compared to some of this stuff but what an embarrassment he was

lol so true. Ashcroft was such a disaster. Until Gonzalez walked in that same door and made Ashcroft look halfway credible.

Ah yes, John Ashcroft! The Man Who Annointed Himself. And who draped the statue of Justice in the lobby of the Justice Department, because it had bare breasts.

all this time, and no mention of henry paulson?!? christ, as bad as cheney and rice and ashcroft (or any of a countless other bush admin folks), not one of them has made the lives and safety of the average american as miserable and insecure as that single man. with the possible exception of cheney or the shitheads who killed countless people in new orleans after katrina, no other bush admin figure fills me with as much nail-spitting rage as henry paulson.

please share. you're among friends here.

please share. you're among friends here.

as always, paul krugman speaks my mind so much better than i can

henry paulson's legacy:

http://baselinescenario.com/2008/11/08/henry-paulson-bailout-legacy/

One of the more interesting facts about paulson's hand on the tiller of Treasury is that his decisions have veered so wildly from one plan to deal with the problem to its exact opposite, often in the space of days or weeks - for example, bailing out AIG with cash infusions, but letting Lehman Brothers go bankrupt, while brokering Bear Sterns to be bought out, and insisting on a $700 billion blank check to buy "troubled assets", then announcing less than a month afterward that he didn't intend to buy any troubled assets with the money.

This has not just the look of panic, but of a panic that understands it has no clear idea of how the economy works or no clue what to do. He just flails. His ignorance and incompetance are about as well hidden as an erection in a swimsuit.

jesus christ ethan

get one xls

Xtra Large Schlong?

This has not just the look of panic, but of a panic that understands it has no clear idea of how the economy works or no clue what to do. He just flails. His ignorance and incompetance are about as well hidden as an erection in a swimsuit.

yeah, there's all that ... and the incompetence of paulson is enough to make me see red. but what really sends me over the edge with him is his arrogance, which has not slackened even in the face of his incompetence.

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2009/01/president-bushs-legacy-one-of-our.html

Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902?

McKinnon: "We're all f'ed up. Stay the course"

Super dumbulence lives on in Sarah and Joe, who apparently will never disappear.

eg: No picnic planning in the Holy Land!

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/12/joe-the-plumber-ban-media-from-war/

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=215905&title=six-days-seven-nights

In a story with local ramifications in my state, the Bush administration was sued by the logging industry for not cutting down enough of the national forests. As it turned out, the lawsuit had been suggested to the logging industry by Bush administration officials. After the suit was filed, the government obligingly settled out of court by giving the logging industry each and every concession they asked for, in full and without exception.

---

Really you have to wonder about the people working in this administration and how they justified this kinda shit to themselves. Like, how many actually succeeded in cognitive dissonance and convinced themselves that "we're saving the trees from wildfires!!! go us!" ? And how many were self-aware Bond villains? With this kinda shit, it's hard to *not* imagine a dark room, a bunch of people sitting around a table, cackling.

This would be pretty easy to mentally justify, to be honest -- as an innovative way of cutting through the stifling red tape of big-government over-regulation, making for an administration that works for American industry and entrepreneurship rather than against it, etc.

But I kinda doubt the people at Interior were operating from such a complex ideologically self-justifying mindset: the attitude over there seemed to be a full-on "business and corporate success are GOOD, right?" mentality, to the point where they were firing people for finding revenue that should have been collected from oil companies. I guess that just seemed petty and mean, trying to collect taxes like that.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090202/williams

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them

Too right, Willie S!