bush

If You Can’t Beat Them…..

Since the GOP doesn’t seem to be able to distance themselves from the disaster known as Bush, it looks like they will now embrace them:

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino, former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie and former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto are among those set to provide words of wisdom to House Republican press secretaries at their annual workshop this Friday.

Now there’s a lineup, but since when is a time of “worship” turned into business time? Or are they just going to worship the Bush years?

Deep Thought

How would the right and the media be reacting if Kos tweeted that Bush was a “goat fucking child molester”?

Jane Harman The Liar

After yesterday’s back and forth of rather or not Jane Harman got the New York Times to hold the wiretapping story in 2004, it is now confirmed. She in fact did:

Congresswoman Harman spoke to Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman in late October or early November, 2004, apparently at the request of General Hayden. She urged that The Times not publish the story. She did not speak to me, and I don’t remember her being a significant factor in my decision. In 2005, when we were getting ready to publish, Phil met with a group of congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish. The Times published the story a few days later.

Harman did so at the request of Michael Hayden, Bush’s National Security Adviser.

This lady is a traitor all the way around. Being a traitor to her party is bad, but being a traitor to our nation is unacceptable. I hope the Democrats do the right thing and start an investigation of their own. She also shouldn’t be allowed to remain on any committees during this time.

Republicans Just Don’t Get It

Their is still furor on the right over that DHS report. I particularly like this line:

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said Wednesday he was offended that veterans were characterized as potential domestic terrorists

Yeah – how could we assume military veterans would become domestic terrorist!

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966) - enlisted in the U.S. Army, undergoing basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.

If people aren’t doing anything wrong, then what do they have to worry about? We have heard that from the right ever since it become obvious Bush was destroying our rights to snoop on us. Now people like John Boehner want to use the troops, yet again, as a political tool.

Sure John – fill them with a fake sense of outrage and really push them into the extremist wing. So what if they die in the process – I mean their lives are such a small price anyways. Isn’t that what you said John?

Misleading The Reader

Larry Johnson’s blog, No Quarter, never ceases to amaze me. Here is one of his writers claims today:

In a brilliant rebuttal to coordinated attacks from the far left, this Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Tax Day Becomes Protest Day - How the tea parties could change American politics.” (related stories) nails the true genesis of today’s protests:

The author of this “brilliant rebuttal”? Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Yeah – that Glenn Reynolds, of InstaPundit fame, who helped put this whole thing together. But forget facts, let’s just try to sell it as some independent thinker. I bet they would have bought a brilliant op-ed rebutting claims that Bush lied us into war, even if the op-ed was written by Donald Rumsfeld.

Killing The Small Farmers

This is why I always say we need two parties in government – it helps level things out. Now that the Democrats are in charge, they are going overboard on regulation:

The panics over salmonella, E. Coli and unsafe foodstuffs from China have heightened the prospects that Congress will enact a measure known as H.R. 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009?. Should the measure in its current form become law, “food establishments”, which to quote Patrick at Popehat “means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce”*, will have to register with a new federal regulatory agency, submit to federal inspections, and, perhaps most significant, keep “copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label”. Penalties for infractions will be very, very steep.

I live in farm land. One of the things I love about it is being able to go down to the local farmers markets on the weekend and get fresh produce. This bill could put an end to all that.

What has happened during the Bush years in regards to regulation was sickening, but the Democrats answer is to do the complete opposite – over regulate. It’s not the small farmers causing the problems – it’s the large scale, corporate farms. Why not take us back to the same kind of regulation we had prior to Bush? We didn’t suffer the recalls then like we do now. This “panic legislation” is not the answer at all and it needs to be stopped.

Trying To Find The Bad Polling

A new Washington Post/ABC news poll has come out, and it finds President Obama still enjoying a 66% approval rating. 42% also think the country is heading in the right direction. Compare that to when Bush was in office:

                Right     Wrong     No 
              direction   track   opinion  
3/29/09          42        57        1
2/22/09          31        67        2
1/16/09          19        78        3
12/14/08         15        82        3

Obama’s numbers have almost tripled, and that has the wingnuts pissed off, like Gateway Pundit:

UPDATE: Of course... MSNBC's poll (linked above) is hopelessly biased.

Even with an 11-point advantage among Democrats, Obama cannot convince a majority that the country is on the right track.

First things first. This poll was conducted by Washington Post and ABC news, not MSNBC. MSNBC just happed to report on it.

Also, when do you think the last time that 42% thought the country was on the right track? Well the poll tells us:

4/18/04          42        57        1

So we haven’t seen that kind of number since Bush’s first term! Damn Obama just can’t close the deal!!

The spin doesn’t stop there. Gateway Pundit took that from Ace of Spades, which said:

Quote Of The Day

Alex Knapp over at Outside the Beltway:

Let’s call the “tea party” and “going Galt” nonsense what it is: unprincipled partisan hackery. If these were truly principled protests, they’d have been around all through the Bush and Republican-controlled Congress years, too.

Alex has put together an interesting set of observations about the whole “tea party” and “going galt” nonsense.

75 Year Old Woman To Receive 40 Lashes

From Bush’s buddies:

The sentencing of a widow to 40 lashes for mingling with two young men has sparked new criticism of Saudi Arabia.

Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi, was convicted and sentenced last week for meeting with men who were not her immediate relatives.

The two men, including one who was Mrs Sawadi's late husband's nephew, were reportedly bringing her bread. They were also found guilty and sentenced to prison terms and lashes.

Sick….

Let's Talk Numbers

There has been so much talk lately trying to blame the market on Obama. Bob has been keeping track of MSNBC's usage of a graph tracking the market since election day. So I wonder if the media would mind using some other numbers?

DJIA when Bush took office: 10781
DJIA when Bush left office: 7949

Now let's compare that to those "horrible" times of the 90s the Republicans refer to so much:

DJIA When Clinton took office: 3241
DJIA When Clinton left office: 10781

While Clinton more than tripled the stock market, Bush dropped it by 75%. And look at this graph. The Republicans and media can’t continue using the 9/11 or Iraq War meme:

The market more than recovered after 9/11 and well into the Iraq War. As matter of fact, the big nose dive wasn’t until last year. But was that from Election Day?

For Or Against Obama’s Iraq Plan?

The media is in a frenzy about the Democrats getting ready to “fight” President Obama on his Iraq plan. Of course they are – the media loves anything that might have to do with Democratic infighting.

Personally, I support Obama’s plan. Would I like to see all troops out next year? Of course. But I trust Obama. As matter of fact Obama has given us more reason to trust him than any other politician in history. In his first 40 days he has worked to deliver on an unprecedented amount of campaign promises. So since Obama hasn’t given me any reason to not trust him, I am going to take him for his word and judgment. If he really believes that we need 50,000 troops to remain, then we need that. I want what’s best for my country, not what best aligns with my own political belief.

Also just think back to Bush. Constantly Bush said he would listen to his commanders. For years now the commanders in Afghanistan have been yelling for more troops as that region continues to deteriorate. Bush ignored them, and now we got a bigger mess there then when we first entered that war. So the fact that Obama is proving that he is willing to listen and learn from our military leaders is a big bonus, and something we didn’t see in the past eight years.

But I also agree with the Democrats who are against this plan, and would rather see all our troops pulled out. It also makes me proud to be a Democrat.

Let’s compare this to the recent stimulus battle. Three Republican senators broke with their party to vote for the bill. Were they commended on serving their constituents or personal beliefs that got them elected? No. Instead they are facing punishment from their party.

Sully Is Wondering About Malkin

Andrew Sullivan:

It says something that, challenged for posing in a photo with a man with a swastika-bedecked Obama sign, all she says in response is that far left people used Nazi imagery against "Bushitler" for years. This is true and she rightly disdained it. But ... so? Why is it ok now but not then? Was she aware of the sign? Or did she miss it? The fact that Malkin has not answered these questions seems the only apposite thing to note.

She hasn’t answered because she knows the answers will prove the fact that she is the number one hypocrite on the right. A simple example is how it is fine for her to stalk a 12 year old, yet people question a 30 year old, so-called plumber and they are violating his privacy. Or how it’s unpatriotic and you should be treated as a terrorist for questioning Bush, but it’s perfectly acceptable to question Obama.

Michelle Malkin is in the same class as Ann Coulter. She is a rabid, hypocritical racist bitch, and she is happy about that. As long as she is making money for it, then why not? I guess the good Christian thing to do is sell you soul to the devil for a profit. Coulter and Malkin are both prime examples of this. I wonder what their judgment days will be like?

Wasn’t Tarp Supposed To Open Credit Markets?

Well under Bush it appears to have done just the opposite:

The 20 largest banks that received government rescue funds slightly reduced their lending to consumers and businesses in the last three months of 2008, the government said Tuesday.

The Treasury Department said the banks reduced their mortgage and business loans by a median of 1 percent each, while credit card lending rose by a median of 2 percent. The median is the point halfway between the banks that lent the most and those that lent the least.

Ironically this puts Bank of America on the list, who seems determined to get me to sign up with their insurance or credit cards by calling me multiple times per day. They do that despite me being on the national do not call list and telling them countless times to not call anymore. Perhaps Congress can next tackle BoAs constant violation of the law in this sense.

Confused

Everyone has had to see this graph by now. It’s the one put out by Nancy Pelosi’s people.

The blue line is the 1990 recession, red is 2001 and green is current. Just looking at that you start to comprehend the seriousness of the current financial situation.

Now let’s consider this. Republicans attribute the Bush tax cuts to getting us out of the 2001 (red) recession. The estimated cost of those tax cuts is $1.35 trillion. The current stimulus bill is at $800 billion, and even Republicans say it could cost up to a $1 trillion. Now look at that graph again and how much more serious today’s recession is than the 2001 one. See where I’m going? Republicans are complaining that this stimulus costs too much, yet we are much worse off than in 2001 and the bill is actually less.

Like I have been saying all along; the Republicans don’t really want a cure to the current economic problems. They want a way for the economy to remain the same or get worse so that they can hit the campaign trails in a few months saying “see the Democrats are making us hurt”. This is a pure example of putting ideology above country and something we can’t let happen. Hopefully we can get some surrogates out there for the Democrats echoing this message and informing America how the Republicans arguments are not only failing in logic, but also risking putting our nation in a bigger purgatory.

John Kyl Doesn’t Like Obama’s Words

Priceless:

“In discussing with the American people his approach to the stimulus of our economy, he has first really used some dangerous words,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican. Mr. Kyl added, “It seems to me that the president is rather casually throwing out some careless language.”

Kyl sure didn’t complain when Bush was out there using words like “mushroom cloud” to describe an imaginary weapons program in Iraq. I guess Kyl would rather use words like those of McCain, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”, in other words – lie to the people. Is it any wonder why Kyl is in the minority party?