And As Columbo Would Say: Just One More Thing May 24, 2013
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics, reader interaction.Tags: bush, Colin Powell, intelligence, iraq, lies, wmds
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George Bush knew good and goddamned well that his contentions about Saddam having WMD’s and having direct involvement with 9/11 were lies. He didn’t get bad intelligence, he demanded bad intelligence. Colin Powell, in the subsequent years, has all but explicitly confirmed it. And Hillary Clinton and John Kerry may have been swept up in the near-religious fervor to just go get revenge on someone, anyone, and willing to accept the neo-con claptrap, but not everyone was duped. Here’s a list of senators who knew better:
- Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
- Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
- Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
- Robert Byrd (D-WV)
- Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
- Mark Dayton (D-MN)
- Richard Durbin (D-IL)
- Russell Feingold (D-WI)
- Robert Graham (D-FL)
- Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
- James Jeffords (I-VT)
- Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
- Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
- Carl Levin (D-MI)
- Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
- Patty Murray (D-WA)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
- Ron Wyden (D-OR)
If any of the surviving heroes want to run in 2016, I’ll be happy to support them.
And I knew good and goddamned well that I was “rising to the bait”. Typical Righty tactic, to bait the trap, then self-righteously congratulate themselves for the naivete of their gullible opposition.
BW
Still Stuck On Benghazi…Really? February 11, 2013
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics, reader interaction.Tags: benghazi, bush, hussein, iran-contra, over, saddam, WMD
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Look, many thanks to my blogmate for doing the heavy lifting while I was somewhere near East Jesus, Ohio, enjoying my wonderful brilliant handsome grandsons…may they all be bright enough to grow into liberals, just like their grampy. I’ll do what I can to pollute their young minds, early and often.
But more Benghazi? Really? That’s all you’ve got? Bush had a couple of undeclared unnecessary wars, thousands of deaths, and untold tens of thousands of ghastly injuries. We had lies about WMD’s, lies about Saddam and 9/11, and assurances that these little conflicts would be wrapped up in a matter of months. His dad had Iran-Contra and Ollie North doing the kind of dirty tricks Tom Clancy is too embarrassed to put in his adventure novels. You know what? It’s over. The issue is deader than Saddam Hussein, Moammar Kadafi, and Osama bin Laden…two of whom are notches on Obama’s gunslinger belt. The president said al-Qaeda was weakened. He didn’t say they were gone. These guys are like cockroaches. We could literally nuke the entire region and a couple dozen of them would still come crawling out of the radioactive pit, ready to start spitting out little mutant terrorist babies just as fast as they could rip away the burkas. So again, a dead ambassador and three dead guards is nothing of which to be proud, but it’s not the last volley in the war on terror either. I can’t emphasize this enough: It’s over. You don’t get a re-do on the election, just like Gore didn’t get a Mulligan in 2000. Maybe Obama got away with some sleight of hand (I don’t really believe that, but maybe…), but even so, I think that FOX could have trumpeted some perceived malfeasance from the highest peak and it wouldn’t have gotten enough fools to pull the lever for Mitt Romney. Again: game, set, match. Move on.
In other news…you know, like things that are actually occurring currently…the Popester is calling it quits. I can only imagine when he heard the announcement of my impending retirement, that was what tipped the scales. Given that the last Pope to retire rather than wait for putrefaction to actually set in was 600 years ago, you’ve got to wonder just what’s going on. I smell some kind of Nazi Fourth Reich conspiracy afoot. Anti-Christ and all that. Maybe Dan Brown can sort it out.
Otherwise, I’ve had no time for anything today other than whittling down a staggering stack of weekend CT scans, almost all them ordered on the flimsiest of indications, and virtually all of them negative. I’m sure this kind of stupidity is completely the result of Obamacare. But I digress. More substantive discourse tomorrow.
BW
It’s Not Poor Education If You Get The Answer Right November 27, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Uncategorized.Tags: bush, communist, education, obama, re-election, saddam, shiftless moochers
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When George Bush was elected twice in a row, when illusory WMD’s never materialized and Saddam actually didn’t have anything to do with 9/11, when a huge budget surplus was reduced to a staggering debt because of unfunded wars and tax cuts for the richest among us, Americans were geniuses for making the right decision in the voting booth and the American education system was the finest in the world. Now that Obama has acheived a second term, it’s because he was elected by a bunch of shiftless moochers with the intellect of protozoa, and our schools are little more than communist re-education camps. Rationalization and sour grapes. Nothing more.
BW
Back To Work November 26, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Journalism, Politics.Tags: abyss, benghazi, bush, debt, fiscal cliff, kenyan muslim, susan rice
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As best as I can tell, not much happened over the Thanksgiving holiday. I successfully managed to avoid all contact with politics and world events for four days, with the exception of football, which is on every screen in every casino and bar and restaurant up and down the length of Las Vegas Boulevard. The Ohio State-Michigan game was like some kind of holy event. Now it’s a new week and I’m ready to swim back into the currents of the twenty four hour news cycle.
Congress, having the only job with more guarateed vacation time than public school, is back in session. The big news is that a couple of Republican senators seem to have taken some remedial arithmetic classes while on break, and have returned to DC newly convinced that balancing the budget requires not only spending less, but making more. It would appear that Grover Norquist has been demoted from messiah to merely prophet. I’m not going to take Lindsey Graham and the rest too seriously when they talk about increasing revenue, since none of them has actually agreed that raising the marginal rate on billionaires is on the table…but the very fact that they’re willing to compromise in any fashion whatsoever is a welcome change from their pre-election intractability.
It’s a sure bet that some accord will be reached on the so-called “fiscal cliff” in the next six weeks. Even the most doctrinaire idealogues up there on the Hill has to have realized by now that the villagers will attack with torches and pitch forks if they don’t do something. The whole concept of the fiscal cliff is something that was contrived by the Republicans out of whole cloth anyway. Again, that staggering debt wasn’t going to strangle our grandchildren until George Bush was replaced in office by the Kenyan Muslim…then it became the very brink of the abyss. I’m not going to pretend I have some sort of advanced undertstanding of macroeconomics, but for anyone interested in excellent summaries of the myth of the fiscal cliff, these discussions by Robert Kuttner and Paul Krugman should calm your nerves.
And my blogmate is right about one thing…the media is ignoring that whole Behghazi thing. Today’s Huffington Post has one piece on the guy who made “Innocence of Muslims”. Over at CNN, nada. Even at National Review Online, a reliable conservative bastion, there are only a couple of articles about the impending Susan Rice nomination, but not a single piece with Benghazi in the title. The righties made a whole forest full of smoke…but without the kindling of a general’s wayward wing-wang, there’s no fire, and now even the smoke is fading. But I’m sure there’s another pseudo-outrage just waiting to be manufactured over there at the Limbaugh O’Reilly Steyn School of Public Policy. Maybe Michelle Obama is about to take a stand on some new controversial topic, like curing cancer [First Lady Hates America! Second-Hand Smoke From Second-Class Citizens!] Just wait.
BW
Know A Man By The Company He Keeps July 18, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.Tags: birth certificate, birther, bush, college transcripts, joe arpaio, national guard, obama
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Hey, my blogmate is in good company. When it comes to changing the conversation, no one is better than The Donald. He’s also making the rounds of the talk shows, demanding that Obama release his college transcripts. And then there’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio down there in fortress Arizona, who’s now discovered that the president’s birth certificate is definitely a fraud. By the way, has anyone seen George W. Bush’s national guard records lying around anywhere?
BW
About That Economy May 31, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Economics, Politics.Tags: 2008, Bob Cesca, bush, deficit, depression, Economics, republicans, supply-side, trickle-down, unemployment
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Look, the numbers are out there and available for anyone to review. The Republicans distort them to serve their own purposes, and the Democrats massage the best results out of them posssible. The indisputable fact of the matter is that the economy, including joblessness, was in it’s worst shape in 2008, when George Bush and Republican policies had us all poised on the brink of a global depression. The rate of unemployment inevitably continued to rise during Obama’s first year in office, but has declined ever since, albeit not nearly as fast or steeply as anyone would like. The Republicans can carp all they want about Obama failing to rally the economy, and my blogmate can be as tired as he wants about hearing that Bush did it, but it’s pretty clear that the whole decline was brought about by the Republican policies of supply-side/trickle-down/unregulated/keep the billionaires happy…and they are proposing the reimposition of those very same policies if they regain the White House…with the additional features of gutting any programs that remotely benefit the middle class or the poor. You remember the old axiom about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Just another reason the righties are insane.
For a more detailed analysis: Bob Cesca: The Truth About The President And The Deficit, Continued…
BW
Here’s The Truth About The Deficit, The Debt (They’re Not The Same), And Obama May 24, 2012
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Economics, Politics.Tags: afghanistan war, bush, debt, deficit, economy, iraq war, obama, tax cuts
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Republicans don’t like science and they seem to have their own peculiar form of math. By their unique calculations, it’s Barack Obama who’s ruined the economy, while George Bush, a couple of multi-trillion dollar wars, and tax breaks for billionaires had nothing to do with it (and any mention of these things is nothing but Democratic “sour grapes”). Here’s a little something we progressives like to refer to as the ”facts”:
Bob Cesca: The Truth About The President And The Deficit
You can do your own math.
BW
My Blogmate Needs To Spend Less Time Watching FOX News December 2, 2011
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Health Care, Politics.Tags: AIDS, AIDS day, bush, obama, speech
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the Obama Administration barely acknowledged the contribution of George Bush, who did more to prevent AIDS than any world leader in history.
Which is an interesting take on yesterday’s events, but it’s just not true. Obama gave a speech at The George Washington University yesterday on National AIDS Day. Here’s the quote from the opening paragraph of the piece from Politico, written by Jennifer Epstein:
President Barack Obama on Thursday showered praise on his predecessor for “bold leadership” on an unlikely issue: AIDS treatment and prevention.
The speech was opened by George Bush himself, who appeared via teleconference from an AIDS hospital in Tanzania. The article went on to say: Obama, who on Thursday called Bush’s global progress to fight AIDS one of his “greatest legacies,” also has lauded Bush’s work in the past. On World AIDS Day in 2008, as president-elect, Obama “salute[d] President Bush for his leadership in crafting a plan for AIDS relief in Africa and backing it up with funding dedicated to saving lives and preventing the spread of the disease.”
So what else was Obama supposed to do? Give Bush a ticker tape parade and award him the Presendential Medal of Freedom?
BW
Maybe You Need A Few Days Off August 19, 2010
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.Tags: bush, obama, vacation
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I must have missed my blogmate’s posts bitching about presidential retreats during the Bush reign. Obama has taken fewer vacation days than either Reagan or Bush during their first year in office. Bush, in fact, spent 69 days at his ranch the first year. That’s over three months, more than a quarter of the year. Anyone want to direct me to the transcripts from the Rush broadcasts talking about Bush’s elitism? Look, it’s a tough job being president. If a couple days on the ranch or at the beach keeps them sane enough to keep from flipping out and nuking Booblekistan, I say break out the sunblock and move on.
BW
Hi, I’m From The Oil Company And I’m Here To Help The Planet May 5, 2010
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Environment, Politics.Tags: BP, bush, cheney, deepwater horizon, leak, oil, oil spill, robert f. kennedy jr.
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We’ve just added a fourth to the classic list of the “three great lies”. For those of you who have been living in a sheltered cave on a remote island this last century, those would be:
1- The check’s in the mail.
2- I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.
3- I promise I’ll pull out before I come (and that’s the least offensive variation on this theme).
Anyway, if you’ve not gotten to the mute button on the remote fast enough in the last couple of years, you’ve seen the BP commercials touting their newfound commitment to the environment. It’s not just about trillion dollar oil profits. It’s about wind power, solar power, geothermal power, “clean” coal, and “safe” nuclear. Their tagline was “BP…Beyond Petroleum”. Exploding refineries and leaking drilling platforms notwithstanding, they’re all about renewable energy and a cleaner, healthier, happier Earth. Yeah, right. And I’m upset that Pamela Anderson got booted off “Dancing With The Stars” last night because she has such intricate footwork.
For real spookiness, it’s hard to beat a four minute forty-two second hip-hop music video made on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in 2009 touting their SAFETY RECORD. No one is saying for sure, but I’d put even money that a few of the workers featured in that video are among the 17 injured and 11 dead, victims of BP’s devotion to offshore safety. And by the way, just like in Iraq and Afghanistan, when you hear about “injuries”, you are not provided with any true perspective on the severity of said “injuries”. These were guys trapped in the middle of a fireball that looked like hell on earth. After seeing the burn on my son’s arm last year after a much less severe accident, I can’t even imagine what the “injuries” from Deepwater Horizon must look like.
The truth of the matter is that BP and the other oil giants, in complicity with George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the Texas oil crowd that ran our country literally into the ground for eight disastrous years, did their level best to wring every last penny of profit out of every barrel of oil, to the extent of lobbying against even the cheapest and easiest safety measures on their drilling rigs. For less than a million bucks, which means the same to BP as a stick of gum does to me, this whole ecological tragedy could have been avoided. Think about that while they’re trying to explain to you this summer why the price to fill your tank just went to triple digits.
BW
