Recently in Bush Presidential Library Category
First, representing tax cuts, the honest, insightful political zombie only now emerging from the crypt in which he was buried, paved over, and well-salted three years and change ago:
I don't care what anyone says, I like that Dubya is finally getting back into the national policy fray. Heaven knows he didn't get into the fight nearly enough during his presidency when the Dems were pounding him into the ground day in and day out for eight years, unopposed, which was a big factor in the GOP's complete collapses of '06 and '08 and the Obamunist national nightmare that resulted from it. I also appreciated his sage observation that it's no coincidence why it's the Dems who go out of their way to refer to the current individual income tax rates as "the BUSH tax cuts," as though that makes them ESPECIALLY evil. After all, a generation ago they didn't call the 1981 Economic Recovery Act the "Reagan tax cuts" after early 1983 when they sent economic growth through the stratosphere, they didn't dare.
Which brings us to Red Barry's graverobbing to find a predecessor behind which to hide his tax-raising mania, much like Mr. Incredible hiding behind the remains of Gazerbeam:
In his own perverse logic, it does make a modicum of sense. If the idea is to try and depict Mitt Romney as a plutocratic crypto-fascist, what better way to go about it than to desecrate the Gipper's memory by reinventing him as a "wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior" - just like Red Barry? Betcha didn't know that Double-R was in Bill Ayers' living room when False Messiah's political career was launched, didja? Must have been the Altzheimers.
To which Mitt only has to say four words: "There you go again..." I hope to God he does it. Given that this is the kind of campaign O is going to wage, he'll have oodles and oodles of opportunties.
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Decision Points by George W. Bush — Now Available
Decision Points is the extraordinary account of America’s forty-third president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life.
In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush begins the book by explaining his decision to quit drinking and tells of the journey he undertook to find his Christian faith. From there, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the twenty-first century.
A groundbreaking new brand of memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on one of the most consequential eras in American history—and the man at the center of these events.
JOHN adds: God, I miss the man. I disagreed with him on a number of issues--Medicare drugs, spending in general, immigration--but no one ever doubted where his loyalties lay or what country he thought he was President of. I will never forget the evening in October 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, when President Bush walked onto the field at Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch in the World Series, wearing a bulletproof vest because no one knew what to expect, and threw a perfect strike. We have had many highlights since we got involved in politics, but, likewise, I will never forget the Republican convention in 2004 when President Bush's appearance was preceded by a video that ended with a catcher's eye view of that pitch coming down the heart of the plate. Bush entered Madison Square Garden, moments after, to thunderous applause. It's good to see that he still throws a baseball like a man, which is how he governed.
Man, no kidding. Every time I see Bush I think how nice it was to have an honorable man in the White House. He was sandwiched between a professional quality liar and an incompetent (in more ways than one) liar. Whatever misgivings we had about some of Bush's decisions, as John says, were tempered by the fact that Bush loves this country and was doing what he thought was best for it. What we have now is a neophyte who does NOT love this country, and seeks to tear it down. Fortunately, the voters are seeing through the media hype to the man himself, and it ain't a pretty picture.
JASmius adds: Follow this Foghorn Leghorn vid to the 00:45 mark; it nails Barack Obama's spastic attempts at first-pitch-throwing and the window they provide into his true character.
And, yes, yes, feel free to substitute "guy" at the appropriate point in the line.
George W. Bush was in Chicago recently, plugging his new book, Decision Points. He packs more class in just a few sentences than we've heard from Barack Obama in his whole career.
"I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight," Bush said. "I don't think it's good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You're not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I'm going to emerge then submerge."
Bill Clinton could learn a thing or two from you, Mr. President.
I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities" he said. "In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger."
And you will be. The best line of demarcation between Dubya and Obama is this:
"The former president said his greatest failure in office was not passing Social Security reform."
Notice what's missing. He did not blame Congress, he did not blame his predecessor, he did not blame SOMEONE ELSE. What a CHANGE that is!
I remember our very own blog head honcho, Jim Sondergeld, saying that the Bush Administration should have fought back more vigorously when the Democrats were lying right and left about the Iraq war. Well, Karl Rove apparently realizes that now, too:
At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past. That was wrong and my mistake: I should have insisted to the president that this was a dagger aimed at his administration’s heart. What Democrats started seven years ago left us less united as a nation to confront foreign challenges and overcome America’s enemies.
Letting the Democrats set the terms of that argument is still hurting conservatives in general and the war effort in particular. So many people believed the despicable lies told by the Democrats during Bush's administration, not caring whether they were putting our soldiers in harm's way or weakening our defense. All they wanted, and it worked, by the way, was their power back. Now look at the mess we've got.
Read Rove's article linked above, and you'll be nodding your head and saying, "I knew that!!" This is a big "I told you so!" for Jim, though I doubt he's taking a lot of comfort in that.
JASmius adds: I can't much argue with Andy McCarthy on the following:
Yes, the failure of the Bush Administration to defend the President’s integrity on the WMD question contributed mightily to the problem, but it did not cause the problem. What caused the problem was the Administration’s failure to make a convincing, defensible case that military operations in Iraq were a logical and worthy extension of the war against jihadist terror.
If, instead of putting almost all its eggs in the WMD basket, the administration had tended to that case, then (a) the failure to find WMD in the anticipated quantities would not have been the public-relations catastrophe it turned out to be; (b) the claim that the administration had not been forthright in marshaling the intelligence to justify the invasion would have had much less force; and (c) there would have been strong political support for removing the regime in Iran at a point in time far more propitious than now, when the regime stands on the brink of obtaining nuclear power. Iran, as I’ve detailed, was clearly abetting al-Qaeda, was probably complicit in the 9/11 attacks (as the 9/11 Commission intriguingly intimated but failed to investigate), has a storied history of murdering Americans, has never stopped fueling anti-American terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was unquestionably ramping up its WMD programs.
The American people went to war after the 9/11 attacks because they accepted the urgency of defeating our terrorist enemies and the countries that facilitated them. Support for the war flagged when the government’s objectives parted ways from the public’s. When the Bush Administration decided to highlight Iraq’s WMD, it sold too short the terror ties that were the only coherent connection to the casus belli on which the nation agreed.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was part of the War on Terror. Woulda been a lot easier to sell that if the Bushies had, um, sold it that way. Ironic that it so completely disarmed US on disarming Iran. The inevitable war with the mullahgarchy is going to be the biggest blot on what could have been a sterling Bush legacy.
One of the most unsung and underappreciated accomplisments of the Bush Administration was that they succeeded in preventing any sequels to 9/11 on American soil or against U.S. interests anywhere else in the world for over seven years. One of the most unsung and underappreciated - and, yes, greatest - vice presidents in American history went out of his way to tell the Politico just exactly why there were no such sequels, and what will happen if that package of counter-terror policies is ousted in favor of a return to the weak-assed policies that gave us the Khobar Towers attack, the '98 African embassy bombings, the USS Cole attack, and 9/11 in the first place:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is blasting the fledgling administration of Barack Obama, arguing that its policies dealing with terrorism and international foes are naïve and dangerous, making it all the more likely that terrorists will succeed in their next attempt at killing Americans, according to a report in Politico.
Simply by closing Guantanamo Bay’s detention camp for terrorists, Cheney said, Obama inadvertently will aid enemies eager to make another attack on the United States. Another major attack on this country — perhaps even using biological or nuclear materials — is very likely in the next few years, Cheney said.
“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt,” Cheney said. “Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.”
As with the economic "stimulus" BS, this facts of this issue are not debatable. A weak, conciliatory, pacifistic, reactive, "law enforcement" approach to the war on terror emboldens and strengthens Islamist terrorists and their state sponsors, like Iran, who are building nuclear weapons, and breeds ever more direct and horrific attacks. We saw it throughout the Clinton years, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Whereas treating it as a war, launching military campaigns of liberation against terror-supporting states (Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom), and taking the tough, hardheaded, realistic homeland security steps necessary to prevent terrorist infiltration (Patriot Act) and communication (NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program) and financing (SWIFT program), prevents major attacks and neutralizes transnational terror networks like al Qaeda, like Hezbollah, like Hamas, as anything other than minor, local nuisances.
Big Time summed it up thusly:
“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy....
“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”
No attacks against the U.S. at home or abroad since 9/11. It is undeniable. And when we get hit again even worse - a plague attack in Houston, a radiological attack in Chicago, a suitcase nuke in Washington, D.C., a mass conventional subway bombing in New York - it will be as a direct result of Barack Obama returning to the weak, conciliatory, pacifistic, reactive, "law enforcement" approach to the war on terror that raised al Qaeda to the level of national security threat in the first place.
And unlike President Bush, who never publicly blamed his predecessor (even though Sick Willie was very much to blame) but set about the business of making sure such an attack never happened again on his watch, you can count on Red Barry doing just the opposite to try and save his worthless political ass while We, The People bury our dead - and prepare for sequels.
Bush Commutes Sentences of Border Guards
In his final acts of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the prison sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration.
Bush's decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were too harsh.
Better late than never...
History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy.
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George W. Bush, Inaugural address, 2001
George W. Bush, Inaugural address, 2001
George W. Bush, Klein, J. (2004). The perils of a righteous president. Time, May 17: 25.
More at http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/George_W._Bush
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You get the idea. Now, I defy you to come up with *anything* Barack Hussein Obama has said that comes close to the inspiration contained in the quotes above. Have you ever heard Obama say anything positive about America, other than we had the divine, inspired discernment to elect him? I think I'll wear black on January 20 like I did the day after the election. It'll certainly reflect my mood.
JASmius offers: "Lipstick on a pig"....?
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