Reply With QuoteDoes his terror never end?!!?!? :(
So, I'd forgotten about his, but my friend just reminded me today that I owe him a case of his favorite beer. All because of Bush. The heck with getting us in Iraq, Bush made me lose a bet and pay off in beer!
I bet my neighbor that Bush would fully pardon Libby on his last day in office. I thought it was a no brainer. I'd forgotten all about it until my neighbor told me tonight that he would take the case this weekend.
Apparently Cheney pushed and pushed and argued for Libby's pardon and Bush told him no, to the point of creating a rift between the two.
Of all times for Bush to do the right thing, he has to do it when it costs me a case of Bells Expedition Stout. :(
Does his terror never end?!!?!? :(
yepOriginally Posted by jeff lackey
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...dent_bush.html
I have to say, I was very impressed that Bush didn't issue a shitton of last minute pardons. Not that that even makes up for a little bit of all the stuff he screwed up, but it was definitely unexpected.
Impressed? Shit. If there's something I admire about real criminals is that they value loyalty. And by "real criminals" I mean the type glorified in fiction, of course.
It was too much work, and that brush wasn't about to clear itself.
No, he just sold the ranch after it was no longer useful politically.
Or maybe Bush thought it was the wrong thing to do.
Bush was a simpleton, a jackass, and in all likelihood a criminal. But he was also a man, not a 2-dimensional cartoon character. Refusing to do something because "it's just wrong" fits the Bush personality that I've read about.
So this is why he went into Iraq, right? He couldn't have truly thought 'it's just right'. Or how about leaving a shit ton of people in a football dome? He thought 'it's just right' again? C'mon, I think the only reason he didn't pardon Libby is because he didn't want to be hated even more than he already is.
Or were you being sarcastic/trolling? If so, you got me.
You think Bush thinks he's hated? Or cares? Has he ever given you the impression he gives a shit about public opinion? He famously never reads papers, views the press as hopelessly biased, and since going into Iraq has rarely if ever bothered to make a case for his actions (before or after) to the American public. No comment on waterboarding, phone tapping, etc., other than a steady assertion of executive privilege whenever Congress woke up long enough to ask him what he was up to.. The impression you should take away that he DOES think what he was doing was right and wasn't going to be distracted from it by pandering to a bunch of liberal elites who wouldn't approve of anything he did no matter what it was. So why bother?
I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that if America suffers another major terrorist attack during Obama's administration, republicans will mimic the "8 years of peace and prosperity" trope that democrats never stopped repeating about the Clinton years. Of course, they'll leave off the "prosperity" part but they will make sure no one forgets we were safe after 9/11 as long as Bush was in office (and you didn't live in hurricane country).
I don't think it really counted as "peace" either. How about "safe and secure"? Still alliterative. But yeah, good capsule analysis of the Bush years.
So it took Bush eight years to develop a spine and say "no" to Cheney? I'd like to say "better late than never" - but in this case, that doesn't really apply. At this point, Libby's pardon (or lack thereof) doesn't mean dick to anyone but Dick.
Man, though, the grief Bush might've saved us if he got out of that abusive relationship a lot sooner!
This is you making Bush into a cartoon. The man clearly has principles and moral standards that he sticks to, that I find myself disagreeing with most of them is another matter. Taking a stand on this particular issue because Bush felt it was the right thing to do is a reasonable explenation. Refusing a last-minute pardon for a marginal gain in popularity is not.
I think he probably did manage to convince himself that Iraq was a just war although his motivations probably also had a lot to do with his father's legacy. Katrina on the other hand can be chalked up to indifference to poor people, incompetence and cronyism. But it's not exactly something he planned, unlike Iraq.
Contrary to the bullshit he tells the press, there's been plenty of leaks about how he and Rove obsess over polls in private.
Not that he ever really changed anything as a result, but he's no Truman.
Many sources have said that W is obsessed with his legacy. I sorta assumed he didn't issue those last-minute pardons because he didn't want any additional strikes against him in the Worst President Ever contest.
No, it took four to six years. If you look at many of Bush's policies after he was reelected it's pretty clear that Cheney and the Neocons were in the decline by then. Hence the departure of Rumsfeld and the eventual adoption of a strategy in Iraq that was proposed by the generals and not by politcal hacks back in DC. Bush made plenty of mistakes, and can certainly be criticized for them, but the last few years were relatively sane. Among other things he sided with the military in it's opposition to the Neocon desire to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of his presidency and he decided to not blanket pardon people as everyone was sure he would do.
No, I wasn't trolling or being sarcastic. I think that Bush has some simplistic morals and is, fundamentally, lazy. I think he went into Iraq because he thought it was the right thing to do... despite all the evidence to the contrary. And as for leaving people in the football dome, that was just plain incompetence. I haven't seen any evidence that Bush is out-and-out racist... he just put an incompetent organization in place, and when the disaster struck he seemed to prioritize easy-to-implement photo ops over difficult-to-understand solutions.
I could be wrong... Bush has shown a large capacity for cynically lying & manipulating events. But in this case, I think the more direct answer is more likely... he just thought a pardon was wrong. *Shrug* It's important to remember that even villains are people, and sometimes they do things for the right reason.
i kinda lean towards what anaxagoras is saying, and certainly the people bush surrounded himself with in the wh brought out more negatives in his personality.
Yeah. Of course Bush is a human, apparently not a psychopath, and no doubt is nice to children and dogs as long as they have been personally introduced to him, and aren't Iraqi.
But his conduct during his presidency was so rife with misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance* as to make our worst previous presidents' failures pale into insignificance. What he did to this country in general and to tens of thousands of innocents abroad in particular is unforgivable.
For this reason, I find it hard to cut him some slack because he failed to compound his ruinous record with last-minute pardons, or because he behaved in a gentlemanly way during the transition.
*For heaven's sake, my stupid windows spellchecker doesn't believe this is a word! Gaah!
No one is saying you should cut him some slack. That said, I do think that we need to wait a big longer before deciding he was totally wrong on everything we currently think he was wrong on. That Obama has chosen to adopt at least one Bush position that we all felt was wrong suggests that maybe there is something more to that issue then we understand.
Sometimes people seem to forget this is a republic and not a democracy we have in the US. There is a distinction, minor and irrelevant as it may have seemed back in high school government class.
Not to nitpick, but we're a democratic republic. A republic with democratic elements.
I just don't think it does us any favors to caricature Bush. I think we should be thinking about what made him tick - because it's interesting and it's important to know why the atrocities of the last eight years were committed/allowed to happen. That doesn't mean I'm cutting him slack.
Let's also not forget the rehabilitative effects of time. Certainly there were people who thought (and still think) Reagan's cowboy antics regarding the USSR were dangerous and counter-intuitive to those who desired a peaceful detente with the Russians. However, a huge number of Americans now credit Reagan with bringing down the iron curtain and with it the Soviet Union, even though both happened well after his terms ended. Likewise, Nixon's prowess as a statesman as regards China is lauded almost universally now, quite a disconnect from the same people who blame him for not only continuing but escalating the Vietnam war (and secret bombings in Cambodia, etc.). If by some chance Iraq ends up as a democracy in 10 or 20 years, there will be those who point to the invasion and removal of Saddam as the catalyst for that change, and for better or for worse the mismanagement of the war will be relegated to the other collectors of history - movies and TV shows.
I too was impressed by the lack of partisan or paid-for pardons. One of the very few good things about his presidency.
Chocolate sprinkles on a giant mountain of shit does not make the shit taste any better - it just means you wasted good chocolate.
There speaks a man who's never tried it! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
This metaphor doesn't work. Nothing got wasted and nobody is trying to say Bush was a good president. Maybe you could have gone for something like:
A giant mountain of shit baking you cookies doesn't make it any less of a giant mountain of shit - but the cookies are surprisingly tasty.
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