Updated November  2007 Like a kick in the tush, we're stuck with Bush

The Worst President EVER In a nation of nearly 300 million people, this is the best the GOP could find? INDEX OF RIGHT WING NUTJOBS "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."  George W. Bush,  May 24, 2005 Y'know that idiotic grin he always wears?  It's just gas pains, or else it's that HALLIBURTON cash he keeps fingering in his pocket.

George Bush hates privacy, the troops, the environment, a balanced budget, compromise, fuel efficiency, the middle class, and anything else that makes the lives of average Americans better. He is THE WORST PRESIDENT IN MODERN TIMES. 
 

"He's a moron, if you'll pardon the expression." Martin Sheen  (who played the prez on TV) on George W.

Bush's poll numbers are in the tank   .....................Because the people have FINALLY woken up

Bush's lack of credentials   .....................He wasn't qualified in the first place 

Early Goof-ups ............................He's had it all wrong from the very beginning

George's Social Insecurity............................He had a chance to fix it right away, and blew it

Defenseless ............................ He can't get this national defense thing right either

W doesn't understand this health thing..................Medicare is just the start of his healthcare idiocy

W is in the pocket of Big Business ................. the White House has been bought and sold, over and over

W flunks the SCIENCE thing..................It's yet another class he must have slept through

George Jr's Energy Scandal .................................All oil, all the time

W  hates the Earth  .................................Our natural resources are being sacrificed to corporations

Foreign policy is foreign to W   ........................He's pissed away all our international goodwill

W hates education  ..............................Why every teacher & school in America hates this guy

George W Bush, disloyal dog.............This guy will screw anybody who gets in his way

Bush won't enforce American laws ............ Unless they serve his rich friends

Bush's idiot friends ............ They prop him up, he lines their pockets
 

ADDITIONAL PAGES

Bush is at war with the whole world, and his own troops  ..................... He's the worst wartime president ever

Cabinet of Fools..........................Only crooks & idiots work for Bush

George W Bush's Fuzzy Math   ........................He's killing jobs, companies, and our very livelihoods

George W Bush, Total Wimp   ........................If an issue needs bold leadership, he'll be raking up at the ranch.

The 2007 State of the Union funeral dirge ........................ Discouraging, unimaginative, inarticulate

And just a few words about Ronald Reagan........

No clue on the economy.  Absolutely terrible approach to the environment.  Awful energy planning.  All his contributors are going to jail for corporate crimes. Good thing he's got stuff to blow up, to take people's minds off his domestic agenda.  And other than the war, his foreign agenda is a mess. Mideast policy is a disaster. Can't get the allies to go along with him on Iraq. His cabinet can't agree on anything. Once again, let's thank those idiots who voted for Nader, those GOP crooks in Florida, and the Electoral Freaking College for handing us an idiot.

As of October 2007:

• Bush's personal approval rating ..... an all-time low 28 percent
• 55 percent say he's not "politically courageous"
• 62 percent say his Iraq policies show he's "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes"
• 54 percent say Bush is NOT "honest and ethical"
• 57 percent say Bush lacks "strong leadership qualities"
• Only 33 percent approve of his domestic policies
• Only 37 percent approve of how he handles the economy
• Only 21 percent think the USA is heading in the right direction
• Only 30 percent of conservatives and white evangelicals approve of the country's direction
• Only 28 percent approve of Bush's handling of the war
• Only 32 percent trust his policy in Iraq .... 55 percent trust Congressional Democrats
• Only 41 percent like how he's handled terrorism
• 45 percent "strongly" oppose his plan for a troop surge....92 percent of Dems, 70 percent of independents, and 31 percent of Republicans disapprove of the surge
• 67 percent think the surge will lead to greater US casualties
• Only 23 percent favor additional troops now
• 67 percent say the USA is losing ground in Iraq
• 70 percent want off troops out by April 2008
• 51 percent want Congress to investigate Bush-Cheney regarding 9/11
• 31 percent want immediate impeachment of both Bush and Cheney

George W.'s (Dis) qualifications

Poor Dan Quayle, categorized as an idiot.  But really, when you put aside the potato thing, and his Murphy Brown feud, and look at his overall record, his reaction to Columbine ("I hope they dont' try to use this an an excuse to take away guns"), his debates with Lloyd Bentsen, his many interviews, his move to Arizona for political gain, and the many quotes attributed to him, you come to realize that Quayle really and truly is an idiot.  Not many people in modern politics have been the source of as many stupid quotes as Quayle.  Luckily for Quayle, George W. also has a reputation as a dim bulb.  Why?  Hmmmm .....

September 2007: The text of Bush's United Nations speech was accidentally uploaded to the U.N. website, complete with the phone numbers of the speech writers, AND the phonetic spelling (for pronunciation purposes) of many names, including the incredibly simple Caracas (as in Venezuela), Robert Mugabe, Mauritania, and French president Sarkozy. Holy crap, the reason this clown was reading "My Pet Goat" to the kids when 9/11 hit was because it was the only frigging book he could handle. A day later, Bush tried plugging up the sagging support for No Child Left Behind with the statement, "As yesterday's report card shows, childrens do learn wen standards are high and results are measured."  CHILDRENS?  Jesus Christ.
 

PRESENCE.  Here's a great example of how stupid Bush sounds: July 2006, Shimon Peres, former Israeli PM, went on "Face the Nation." The guy's in his 80's, he's a veteran, got a lotta mileage on him. He took a bunch of tough questions from the interviewer, and kicked ass. Very smart, very articulate. Got his point across. Same show, same day, and Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon was also on, via satellite. English is most definitely NOT his first language. More like his THIRD. And he was also smart, articulate, got his points across. Later that same day, George W. Bush was reading from a damned SCRIPT, and tripped over himself. He can't think that fast. He can't handle tough questions. He's a disaster at press conferences. He yanks out that stupid giggle of his in the worst possible moments, because that's his safety net when he doesn't know what to say. The USA has a tongue-tied boob for a president. This is a major reason he's got no credibility. His lame supporters say, "well, he's just a plain-spoken kinda guy."  No, no, he's a DOLT.  And let's try one MORE example. Garry Kasparov, the former chess champ trying to boster opposition to Putin in Russia, spent much of 2007 on American television making his anti-Putin pitch. English is a secondary language for him. And yet he responds to questions instantly, and is incredibly articulate in English, FAR more than Bush. 
 
 

In November 2000, Al Gore appeared live on NBC Nightly News. To counter him, the Bush campaign sent Dick Cheney. It's unspoken but assumed, even by right-leaning pundits on the tube, that Bush can't be trusted not to trip on his own tongue in an unscripted situation. Just check out the debates if you're doubtful. Even Tom Brokaw made light of it during the interview.  The GOP kept saying he was trying to look presidential. Their definition of "presidential" means reading speeches off a teleprompter in front of flags. 
      In early 2004, he went on Meet the Press, and made an even bigger jackass out of himself.  He simply can't speak without sounding and looking like a simpleton.  This guy is NOT SMART ENOUGH TO BE PRESIDENT.

April 2004 -- He gave a press conference about the war.  He mumbled, and evaded literally every question. Letters to the editor of the Chicago Tribune and New York Times discussed the fact that the president is in fact the worst public speaker in his own entire cabinet.  Again, this lends credence to the notion that he only got the job becuase conservatives figure he's their kind of guy.  Apparently they like dummies.

The 9/11 Commission -- Bush first send he wouldn't testify, then he said he'd only give them an hour.  Then the usual outcry forced him to say he'd give them what they needed.  BUT .... he would only testify with Cheney at his side.  To keep him from having to answer all the questions himself without stumbling, and to keep him from stepping in whatever sh*t he could cause himself.

April 2005: During a press conference to push his wacky Social Security "fix" and other agenda items, W. never looked more pained to be in front of other people. It was excrutiating to watch, much like when you were in grade school, and the teacher just had to pick on the dumbest kid in class to read.  W. simply can't handle Q&A. He's absolutely dreadful at it. Why? Because deep down, he's a nincompoop.
 

Mastery of the language.  This is a guy who slept through class.  Lots.  He can't handle the basic vocabulary of a high school sophomore.  It shows a lack of concentration.  Supporters think of it as down-homey.  I think of it as dopey.  He even made a joke at an appearance at a school about how a C student can succeed.  That's really not a thing to advertise. In May 2005, his wife spoke at a dinner where she made fun of George's intellectual shortcomings. Yeah, that's sorta funny, on the surface, except for the facts that 1) it's all true, and 2) he'st he "leader" of the free world.

Brian Williams interviewed Bush down in New Orleans, where the president (ouch, it still hurts to type that) claimed that his reading choices were "ekilectic" or "epileptic."  He was trying to say "eclectic." This one's even worse than "nukuler." He also said he'd read "three Shakespeares."  Did he mean three plays? 

This is the best the GOP could come up with? A total retard?
 
 

Substance problems.  Sorry, but to me, this is an instant disqualifier.  Sure, he might be off all the stuff now, but he's never dealt publicly with the cocaine issue.  Not our business?  It is if he's got his finger on the button.   He says he's been sauce-less for well over a decade, but there's a great video clip of him at The Smoking Gun that makes it look like he was still getting blotto as late as 1992.

Background of legal troubles. A couple of goofy arrests for stupid stuff.  Big deal.  Nobody's George Washington.  A DUI.  Not good, but not the end of the world.  Cheney's got a couple too.  But he HID as much stuff as possible.  It sounds like he also hid the fact that he rarely showed up for National Guard duty.

Business foibles.  GW never held a real job until the age of FORTY.  And then he only got employed because of his dad's connections.  When he wanted to run for Congress in Texas in the late 70's, he sought Ronald Reagan's endorsement, and was rejected.  He ran multiple oil outfits into the ground, then ran a baseball team into the ground.  His record as Texas governor (again, a job he got because of family name) is as much smoke and mirrors as it is real accomplishment, and his tax break there will likely get a Democrat elected.

Slave to special interests.  This guy let industrial interests compile his strictly voluntary pollution standards, and put an oil industry guy in charge of "enforcement."  How do you enforce voluntary standards?  And what about Dick Cheney?  When's the last time you quit a job, voluntarily, and receive $20 million dollars in severance?  If they fire you, that's one thing.  But they knew just where Cheney was going, and made sure he'd be in their pocket.  They being the Halliburton Group, a massive oil outfit.  These two clowns are absolutely in the pocket of the oil industry.

Guns.  Just when the country is pushing back on the gun industry, and after an election in which western states spontaneously passed background check referendums, flying in the face of the NRA's money to elected officials, Bush likes concealed weapons.  He claims that the feds haven't prosecuted felons under existing laws.  But they've done a far better job of prosecuting than the state of Texas has under tough-talkin' George W.
 
 
 

A litany of early goof-ups......
 

Here's a couple of items from early in his second term that make me shake my head and wonder .....

First, he said "I earned political capital during this last campaign, and I intend to spend it." What this arrogant bit of bullshit means is, "I am going t o ram my agenda down people's throats." The problem with that was, his new ideas were even dumber than his older ideas, and he quickly hit brick walls even with members of his own party. There was also talk of a MANDATE. But considering his margin of victory wasn't that gargantuan, there WAS no mandate, just a win.

George W. also told an audience in Iowa that there would be a "political price" for those who opposed his attempts to overhaul Social Security. So far, he's dead wrong. The price is being paid by anybody who goes along with his wacky Social Security ideas.
 

For a guy who overused the saying "I'm a uniter, not a divider," Bush Jr. sure seems to do an awful lot of dividing.  Nominating GOP shills and right-wing nutcases like Linda Chavez and John Ashcroft was pretty stupid, and continuing to piss off the black electorate doesn't help either.  But then immediately cutting off abortion counseling overseas  is just plain MORONIC. 

Bush keeps forgetting an important fact : he actually truly lost Florida (as seen in an independent recount by several major newspapers) and (regardless of Florida) lost the popular vote, and has no mandate, and therefore has no right whatsoever to push his ridiculous rightwing agenda on a populace that overall didn't want him as president in the first place.  He ACTS like he won in a landslide, when he actually LOST, and holds office only because of a freak of accounting.

Quick review of Bush's activities during the Chinese crisis over the downed US spy plane: threw out the first pitch at a ball game, left all the important work to his cronies, and in general acting like there was no crisis at all.  He met with Colin Powell only twice during the whole affair. The New York Times  observed that Bush runs an administration that "does not require his presence."  After the eleven tough days were over, he retreated to his ranch for a "rest."  A rest from WHAT, I might ask.  This is one unremarkable guy.

Bush started a ridiculous radio address by saying "we must have rules and laws that restore faith in the integrity of American Business."  And yet this is the same idiot who dumped a Clinton policy of denying government contracts to companies that broke federal laws.

Dick Cheney's old buddies at Halliburton, the oil outfit that gave him $20 million dollars when he quit (don't you wish your employer would give you money when you quit?), continued trading with Iraq (before Hussein's removal), despite official sanctions.  They even helped rebuild Iraq's entire oil infrastructure. Cheney also wanted to lift sanctions against terrorist-sponsor Iran (since found to be in possession of nuclear weapons material) because Halliburton wants to run an oil pipeline through there.  Because there's oil around the Caspian Sea, Cheney also wants to lift sanctions against Azerbaijan, which is on on the outs because of a little thing like ethnic cleansing of Armenians, the polite way of describing how they wipe people out.
 

The Military: Bush ran on the platform that the military was underpaid and underfunded, and was deployed way too much.  So how many troops was he planning on bringing home before the terrorist attacks?  Oh, maybe about 750.  And how about those pay raises and budget jumps?  He told the brass in early 2001 that they'd start looking at it, MAYBE, in 2002.  If you're an army private, can you say lying sack of shit ?  Oh but wait .... June 2001, Bush finally recommended an $18 billion increase in the military.  For what, exactly?  Oh, sorta vaguely for pay increases, but he didn't  really specify. So much for an encompassing review.  He's just going to throw money at a military complex which has historically wasted billions, with no objectives for spending.  Just brilliant.

Bush insists on proceeding with scrapping the ABM treaty and building an anti-missile missile defense.  Well, GUESS WHAT?  It'll NEVER WORK.  It's easy to overwhelm such a system with cheap rockets, or even better, with rockets bearing multiple warheads.  If you built an interceptor rocket, then mass-produced it (at a cost of many, many billions of dollars), the system would easily be thwarted.  All this talk is doing is enraging the Chinese, who are now pledging to upgrade their missile inventories to deal with such an ABM system.  This is exactly what happened in the early sixties, when Kennedy commissioned far more missiles than were needed, prompting the Russians to massively build up their own nuclear delivery system.
 
 

STRONG ON DEFENSE?  NO, WEAK ON BRAIN
 

A group of dozens of budget watchers and retired generals have called on the administration to stop development on the missile defense shield, saying correctly that it will never work.  It's scientifically ridiculous, easily bypassed, and COSTLY.  In tests, it's been a disaster.  When they fire a defense missile at a fake enemy missile, even knowing when and where that enemy missile's going to be, they still miss most of the time.

In 2004, GOP attack groups dumped on  John Kerry's military record.  Interesting.  Kerry was highly rated as a commander by the people who served under him.  He was wounded multiple times in battle.  The GOP said that his last wound was too superficial to get him another purple heart and therefore out of Viet Nam.  But it was still a wound. What do we know of Bush's military record?  He got a dental exam in Alabama. What was he doing there? He got special treatment, a reassignment so he could work on somebody's campaign.  While he should have been flying planes in the National Guard.

In his autobiography, Colin Powell laments the many children of the privileged who went into the National Guard during the Viet Nam war, just so they could shirk their duty.

Noted warhawk Dick Cheney also got multiple deferments.  He said years ago, he's not a fighting guy, he's a thinking guy.  So it's okay for other guys to get killed, but he's not going anywhere near it.
 

Missile defense.It's ALWAYS been a dumb idea, so naturally Bush has been in love with it since he was just a lousy candidate instead of a lousy president. Reagan's Star Wars was also a dumb idea. Condi Rice [link] told the Russians they shouldn't sweat a missile defense battery in Europe, because "the idea that ten interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going  to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it." October 2007: a new round of missile def tests has the brass all happy. Sure, the things hit incoming test missiles, when they know in advance exactly when they're going to be launched, and from where, and what their trajctory will be. Otherwise, they can't hit SHIT.

EXACTLY. It's too easy to defeat such a system. It's been long-discussed. Launch ten cheap, bogus missiles, and one live one. Chances they'll hit ANY of them with an interceptor are lousy to begin with, so the chances they'll nail the CORRECT one are NIL. Shit, when they conduct the tests over the Pacific, and they know precisely when the dummy missile will be launched, from where, and what its exact trajectory is, they usually can't hit THAT. So now it's expected to hit its target when we don't know when one might be launched, or from where, or where it's headed to?
 

SOCIAL INSECURITY
 
 

George Bush had every chance in the world to fund Social Security well past the end of the century, when he had a surplus to work with. That's what we recommended in this very space, back in early 2000.

But that would have taken guts, something Bush doesn't have. He only acts when it's safe to do so. So what's the deal with Social Security now?

Let's get it out in the open ...... Bush will do nothing with Social Security if it doesn't involve private accounts. WHY? Because Big Business wants them. All the investment houses love the idea. They will make a mint off them. He keeps saying he wants all ideas on the table, but notice, he won't look at anything seriously unless it involves private accounts.

April 2005: George W. told an audience in Iowa that there would be a "political price" for those who opposed his attempts to overhaul Social Security, despite the fact that a sizable majority of Americans think his plans are nuts. This includes GOP Congressmen from Iowa who had been on the trail with him just the day before. They came right out and said he hadn't done enough to convince the public. And so far, the only person paying that political price is the president himself, whose approval ratings are nosediving, based largely on Social Security, but also because of the war, the economy, jobs, you name it.
 

Bush has been traveling the country, holding so-called town hall meetings to discuss it. But in many cases, you have to sign a loyalty oath to get in, or sign something that says you support the president. In other words, they want these events stacked with people who already agree, and they want lots of applause. THAT is why Bush can get a good response from these groups, while at the same time the majority of Americans think his ideas on reforming Social Security are screwed.

I'd heard plenty of stories of people getting kicked out of campaign events in 2004, because they didn't look right to somebody. But in Denver, three people with tickets to a Bush privatization meeting got kicked out because of their bumper sticker. Not in America? Don't believe it, not while Bush is in office. Check out this amazing story.

He finally caved into reality, and said that in order to accomplish what he wants to do, he will ONCE AGAIN SCREW THE MIDDLE CLASS by cutting benefits. During both campaigns he promised specifically that he would "not touch the benefits of America's retirees." But see, he's a LIAR.

Oct 19, 2004, John Kerry said the president planned to "privatize" Social Security. Dick Cheney and Commerce Secretary Don Evans very excitedly denied this. Now when reporters toss questions at Bush's press secretary and use the word "privatization," that's perfectly acceptable. What changed? Nothing. At the time, they were LYING.

The Congressional Budget Office stated in 2004 that to follow the president's plan, Social Security would end up $2 trillion in the hole, requiring a cut in benefits of 25-40%. Bush has never explained where that extra money that we'll need (in order to not cut benefits) would come from. Of course, the president keeps submitting budgets that don't include the war in Iraq, preferring to ask for special, unbudgeted funding.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said "I am certainly not going to support diverting $ 2 trillion from Social Security  into creating personal savings accounts."

CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN GROUPS HAVE WRITTEN BUSH TO SAY that they have no "enthusiasm" for his Social Security plans.

The money to make all this work  -- take the money OUT of Social Security to stuff into private accounts -- would have to be borrowed, adding to the already gargantuan debt rung up by Bush and his idiot GOP-controlled Congress. Eventually, taxes will NEED to be raised in order to cover this. In fact, even WITHOUT this disastrous plan of his, taxes eventually are going up ANYWAY, because of Bush and his idiot GOP-controlled Congress.

With his plan getting thrown back in his face, and polls indicating that a large majority of Americans disapprove of his privatization, Bush began pushing progressive indexing, meaning that the majority of Americans, the middle class that's already getting cheated by his economic policies, would pay the most into Social Security and realize the fewest benefits. On "Meet the Press", Republican Senator George Allen said that he opposed  progressive indexing  because it would "reduce the retirement security for those particularly middle-income working people."

Conservative Columnist George Will  stated that progressive indexing  would "stigmatize Social Security" by directing it at lower income seniors, at the expense of the middle class that supports it, "making Social Security less and less relevant to a majority of the American people". 
 
 

The most unhealthy presidency ever

George W. Bush is wrecking the ability of this country to supply healthcare to its citizens.  And his approach to healthcare the world over is also a bunch of baloney.  Here's what I mean......

Bush's very first act as president was to cut funding for any international family planning groups that even mention abortion.  This effectively killed ALL their options (even non-abortion options)  in helping keep down the huge numbers of unwanted, starving children in the Third World.

Bush's own officials admit that worsening fiscal problems will mean that, in a second term, Bush would start cutting Medicare and Social Security in order to pay for his disastrous economic policies.  The director of the Office of Management and Budget admits "In the long run, Social Security cannot meete its commitments." 

Bush wants to establish private healthcare accounts for everybody, to help pay for medical deductibles.  That's just great -- except it leaves out all those people who are already not covered by any insurance.  If they could afford those accounts, they could afford insurance.  In the meantime, we've got tens of millions of citizens without health insurance, and his plan does NOTHING for them.
 

Uninsured children.  Everybody agrees that there are millions of uninsured in the USA, many of them children who only get care when they're brought to an emergency room. September 2007, Bush is so hung up on tax breaks to let people buy their own insurance (because, once again, it's good for Big Business insurance companies), that he's holding hostage a bill to cover uninsured kids. SCUMBAG. Even other GOP members of Congress are on him about it, flat-out accusing him of using kids as leverage.
 

The Medicare Scam.  Thousands of older folk quit the AARP because of its support for the Republican Medicare bill, which is a subsidy to drug companies, and which ultimately wno't benefit seniors.  If the damn thing was so great, the AARP wouldn't now be lobbying to allow the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada.  Where are a lot of these drugs manufactdured?  In the USA.  Many in Congress, including many Republicans, said they would only vote for the bill if it was proved that the costs would be contained.  The head of Medicare testified, don't sweat it.  Within a couple of weeks of passage, it was revealed the bill would cost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS MORE than originally said.  The head of Memdicare reportedly threatened the underling who was put in front oft he Senate to discuss costs, if that underling were to have revealed the actual costs.  The head of Medicare is now under investigation.

Bush likes to "remind" people that while he was gov of Texas, "we passed a Patients Bill of Rights."  But see, he opposed that bill to the bitter end, and in fact never signed it.

Scientifically speaking, W. flunks

The guy who thinks that creationism is "science" regularly lets his religious beliefs cloud what ought to be religion-free decisions. But separation of church and state doesn't register with this bumpkin.

October 2007: The Bush administration just did a hack job on a 14-page report on global warming, chopping it to FOUR pages, leaving out analysis that points to increased illnesses and wildfires due to warming. Perhaps the recent godawful fires in California had something to do with that.

January 2007: A Congressional committee found what we've all known for a long time, that the Bush administration deliberately put the squeeze on scientists to cover up evidence of global climate change. Lots of government reports were "watered down," primarily by a Bush official who formerly lobbied for Exxon-Mobil, and later went back to work for Exxon. WHY was an oil guy involved with global climate research? Well, whose products are considered most responsible for global warming?
 

July 2006: Bush finally wields his veto power, after ignoring ridiculous spending bills and other party-line crimes, in order to kill stem cell research. Members of his own GOP shoved this thing through, in order to benefit victims of cancer, paralysis, and a plethora of diseases for which stem cells offer the very real potential of a cure. And he did this to pander to that minority of supporters from the evangelical wing of his base. He's completely screwed them over for years, and now in his feeble attempts to win them back, he's pushed a flag-burning amendment that he knew would fail, a gay marriage ban that he knew would fail, and now he's actually killed off something that MATTERS, something that could actually HELP THE AVERAGE PERSON, something that his administration has steadfastly refused to do, in favor of benefiting only the wealthiest. SCUMBAG.

Karl Rove weighed in. Demonstrating that he has no idea what he's talking about, he said that scientists prefer adult stem cells over embryonic cells anyway. WRONG.
 

The Bush administration refuses to acknowledge any scientific principles that clash with their quasi-religious right-wing agenda. They rely more on a higher power they can't see than scientific methods and results that they themselves commission. In fact, Bush has paid for various reports that, once they came back with unfavorable conclusions, he deep-sixed.  Just like judges who rule against their pet cases are activists, scientists whose evidence contradicts the administration are non-entities. 

In 2004, 20 Nobel Prize winners warned that "the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented".

Here's just a few examples of  Bush's anti-science silliness :
 

A Congressional report of Bush administration-approved sex education programs were found to dispense these interesting opinions:

• Condoms have a failure rate of 15%, and fail to prevent transmission of the HIV virus 31% of the time
• AIDS can be spread by sweat and tears
• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• Women who have abortions often become sterile, and are more prone to commit suicide

June 2005: Science academies of the G-8 countries put out a joint statement calling for immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Lord May, president of Britain's Royal Society, said in releasing the statement that U.S. President George W. Bush's policy on climate change was "misguided" and ignored scientific evidence.

It turns out that Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (and a former oil industry lobbyist !!!), has been editing reports on climate research that had already been approved by government scientists. WHY? Because these reports point out what the whole world, outside the Bush administration, already knows: there's a definite link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The White House doesn't like those kinds of reports, because they indicate that Big Business will have to change its way to reduce those emissions. And anything that Big Business doesn't wanna do, Bush doesn't like, because he's in their pocket.
 

A Bush-commissioned report on global warming discovered that, yes indeed, it's a reality. But because it disputes what the Bushies always say (BECAUSE it would be injurious to Big Business), Bush had to bury the report. It ended up literally buried, deep on the EPA's website. When Christine Whitman, Bush's original rubber stamp of an EPA chief, was asked about the report, she claimed she didn't know anything about it, despite the fact that it was on her agency's website. So either she was lying, or completely clueless and therefore too stupid to have that job in the first place.  In the meantime, Bush continues to hammer away at the "myth" of global warming, even though every other country on Earth, and every scientific body in this country as well, firmly accepts the overwhelming evidence of global warming.

Bush continues to let his right-wing flunkies flog the notion that women who have abortions are far more likely to develop breast cancer. This is totally debunked, but they keep saying it.

James Hansen, a NASA scientist, said the Bush administration specifically tries to hide information that contradicts what they want said.  “In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now."

A panel of scientists who met in DC in February 2005 complained that scientists are ignored in policy decisions, and that research money is being regularly cut, especially when it threatens to contradict administration views.
 

In his original energy bill, which was righteously defeated, Bush left out serious research into alternative fuels, preferring to fund pseudo-scientific "research" that amounted to more tax breasks and giveaways to oil companies. Remember, when Bush says energy, he means oil. Anyway, one of those initiatives was "clean coal." Ain't a whole lot more there that's going to get discovered. Another was, and this is no joke, coal bricks painted with diesel fuel. This was supposed to burn cleaner.
 

As reports have come out in favor of stem cell research, they have been buried. The president made some perfunctory attempts to go along with said research, because of the popular demand, but it was only a token effort. May 2005, he's trying to block it again. Know who's all FOR stem cell research? Nancy Reagan.

Panels meant to advise Bush on scientific matters have been open only to GOP supporters. Public interest groups who have asked publicly about environmental policy have faced demands for their tax records from hostile GOP Congressmen.

February 2005, Bush visited a government alternative energy lab. Three weeks before that visit, their budget had been cut, and eighteen people were laid off. Right before he showed up, they got an emergency grant, so they could hire those people back. Even the folks who got their jobs back questioned the timing.
 
 

Energy = oil = contributors = screwing the citizens
 

September 2006: Gas prices are coming down. WHY? Because oil companies don't want Democrats in place who might call them before Congress to explain record profits during a time of skyrocketing gas prices. So they manipulate the price back down, until after the election.

Don't call it an Energy Policy.  It's an Oil Policy. George Jr. and Cheney are all about oil.  Cheney was a Halliburton exec (and of course, they've been paying him the whole time he's been in office).  George Jr. was a failed oil exec.  He was also a failed baseball owner, but that's another story. 

Bush said in his State of the Union, 2006, that "America is addicted to oil," and that the country needed to do something about it. He talked about conservation, a concept Cheney had previously and openly mocked. Bush talked about alternative fuels. And then he promptly proposed absolutely NOTHING.

Meantime, BUSH HAS NO BALLS AT ALL. He does NOTHING as oil companies rack up obscene, record profits by allowing the price of crude oil to drive up gasoline prices, when the more expensive oil NOW won't turn into gasoline until LATER.

Summer 2005: Gas prices are through the roof. The last time this happened in a crisis, the oil industry was threatened with a windfall profits tax. But that's when our president was looking out forthe interests of our citizens instead of the interests of big business. Even though the oil that we were allegedly short on wouldn't turn into gasoline for many months, the price of gas went up ANYWAY. And the oil companies are racking up record profits. Exxon-Mobil, the recipient of billions in tax credits under Bush's energy bill, had the biggest profit EVER of any public company, in the fourth quarter of 2004. 

Summer-Fall 2005: Oil companies are all reporting RECORD PROFITS after months of ridiculously high oil prices. If the prices were high because of hurricanes, high demand, ruined refineries, etc., then why are their margins suddenly so high? When the oil company execs were brought before Congress to answer for their obscene profits while Americans were draining their wallets to fill their tanks, their Congressional buddy from Alaska made sure they didn't have to be sworn in, so they couldn't perjure themselves. Because they WOULD have. SOme of them testified they had nothing to do with Cheney's super-secret oil policies, when in factd they HAD. 

Spring 2006: Here we go AGAIN !!!!!!!!   55% of the price of a gallon of gas is from crude oil. Okay, so if oil prices are up, that should affect the price of the gasoline manufactured from it months from now. Instead, the oil companies raise the price of gaoline IMMEDIATELY.  It's a big f____ g    SCAM !!!!!
 
 

Various groups sued Dick Cheney to gain access to the so-called secret notes of the secret energy policy commission, which Cheney put together using executives from the oil industry.  The policy benefits those same people, whaddaya know.   No sooner does the case get to the Supreme Court, then Cheney takes Justice Antonin Scalia on a duck hunting trip, as the guests of an oil executive.  THIS STINKS LIKE HELL.  SCALIA REFUSES TO RECUSE HIMSELF FROM THE CASE.  CHENEY HAS CORRUPTED THE SUPREME COURT FOR THE SAKE OF HIS OIL BUDDIES.
 

The GOP tried to force through a so-called "energy bill" which was nothing more than a subsidy for oil companies.  The promising fuel cell technology, to make cars cleaner (and therefore much less dependent on foreign-supplied fossil fuels from other countries) was effectively killed off, as research funding went away.  In its place, the "energy bill" included:
 

• Capital Gains Treatments of Coal Royalties  (i.e. tax breaks for coal producers)
• Subsidies for wacky "alternative" fuel sources, including COAL BRICKS PAINTED WITH DIESEL FUEL
• Over $2.5 BILLION in additional subsidies for coal product research
• Close to $6 BILLION in subsidies to help the oil industry, which is already rich and doesn't need taxpayer help, find new ways to drill for oil ..... NO KIDDING
• Money for ethanol producers, despite the fact that ethanol does nothing to help air quality, and uses only slightly less oil than straight gasoline
• Allows the feds to override states' rights in electricity transmission policies
• Weaken current laws by exempting certain types of vehicles, for no good reason other than as a favor to industry, from fuel economy standards
• Eliminates the tax credit for hybrid vehicles, which are already cutting fuel consumption
• Weakens the Safe Drinking Water Act so oil drillers can use unsafe practices
• Extends the limitation of liability to nuclear and oil companies for any problems caused by production
• Repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which protects consumers from unfair practices by electricity companies
• Eliminate accountability and liability of companies that produce the chemical MTBE, used in gasoline; these chemicals have been leeching into groundwater for years, and the bill would have let the producers escape cleanup costs, which are considerable
• Altogether, $20 BILLION in subsidies, lots of protections for businesses, zero benefit to the citizens of the USA

The energy bill would have done nothing to decrease dependence on foreign oil suppliers, done nothing to push new technologies, done nothing to clean up the air or water.

The guy who brags about getting bad grades 
           is in charge of education policy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

MARCH 2007: More than fifty GOP members of Congress lined up to oppose renewal of No Child as it currently stands. States want more flexibility, don't want to be anchored to standardized testing, don't want faraway bureacrats deciding how they should run things locally, and so on.

Bush didn't even wait to start scrweing up education.  He cut funding for programs helping abused and neglected kids, and child care for low income parents.  He completely killed the very effective "Reading is FUNdamental" program which his wife and mother both supported.

The No Child Left Behind act is a bunch of baloney.  It's built supposedly on the success of Rod Paige in running the Houston public schools.  Paige, of course, was named Secretary of Education.  But under Paige, the Houston schools didn't do so well, and under the new law, they're doing even worse.  In Houston, when a kid leaves school, they are to be "coded" with a reason.  Did they graduate, transfer, drop out, get kicked out, whatever.  In an independent audit, it was found that the majority of these students were NOT coded.  No idea why they left.  Some schools recorded no dropouts at all, when in fact they had DOZENS of dropouts who had simply been unaccounted for.

Houston schools also saw large amounts of cheating by school administrators who get bonuses based on exam scores, attendance, and dropout rates. Well, they didn't account for the dropouts, they held back kids who would drag down their exam scores, and encouraged failing kids to drop out.  Schools that said the majority, if not the entirety, of their seniors were planning on attending college in fact turned out to have only a minority of students who had taken the SAT, and many of those scored poorly.

Many schools, in fact, country wide, have been found to cheat, in order not to be sanctioned under the No Child law.

The No Child law also was not adequately funded.  There's not enough cash to fix ailing schools, and in some school districts, so many kidsd qualify for transferring that they can't all possibly do so.

There's also a sneaky as hell provision in the law, which says that public high schools must provide contact info for draft-age kids to the military.  Several schools have fought this. 

MAY 2005: The state of Utah has passed a state law superceding federal law, and allowing their schools to ignore No Child Left Behind. As an example of why they did this, they point to a magnet school that has been so successful, parents literally line up every year to get their kids enrolled. Because three special ed kids failed a standardized test, the school was tagged as a failure under the federal law, which ALSO doesn't make allowances for immigrant kids who don't speak perfect English when they enter the system.

FEBRUARY 2006: A HARVARD STUDY FOUND THAT THE "NO CHILD" LAW WAS BEING NEGOTIATED INTO IRRELEVANCE ON A REGULAR BASIS. Many states got extensions on deadlines, and many white school districts were able to reduce the number of schools listed as "failing," not by fixing them but by negotiating with regulators. School districts in minority areas got no such breaks. This is exactly what the law was supposed to stop.
 

ROD PAIGE had to apologize on his department's website after calling the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" because they don't like No Child Left Behind.  He called teachers TERRORISTS.  Another wonderful Bush appointee.

As a result of this misguided, underfunded nonsense, teachers find themselves having to recertify.  This includes my own wife.  She's been teaching advanced mathematics for many years.  She and her colleagues now are scrounging to find the time (and some of them the money) to take certification classes.  Consider this .... a teacher only spends from 8 to 3 (or thereabouts) in the school, but not only commutes like everybody else, but also must create lesson plans and grade homework and tests.  I know from personal observation that my wife works betwen 50 and 60 hours a week in total.  A recent book, in which the author describes following a NYC teacher for a month, states that the average time a teacher spends on the job is 60 hours.  Try taking a night course in between all that.  AND THEN ..... the courses that are judged acceptable are themselves a joke.  I can't believe the garbage they offer up for certification subjects.  It's all just going through the motions.

Several states are now putting up legal fights against the law, and many school districts have refused the meager funding provided by it in order to avoid the wretched work required by it. Heavily Republican Utah weaseled out of it.

The budget negotiated in spring 2004 included no reduction in tax cuts for millionaires, a whole lot more money for Iraq, and $1.7 BILLION in cuts to education.

One little known provision of the law (at least early on) was the requirement for high schools to provide contact information for all their kids to military recruiters. The feds didn't bother explaining that parents could specificallly ask that their kids' contact info NOT be made available this way. Many schools have gone so far as to sue to get out from under this requirement.

George W., Fault of the Earth

                         He's the worst environmental president EVER

Bush does whatever his corporate sponsors tell him to do. This includes cutting any legislation that imposes pollution controls, and not enforcing the environmental laws already on the books. The theory he subscribes to is that anything costing industry more money (as in not polluting) will take money out of their pockets, and possibly slow the economy. As a result, the Earth suffers.

• George W. simply HATES the environment.  He broke a huge campaign promise to cut CO2 emissions from power plants.  He eliminated controls on carbon dioxide emissions, the kind that contribute to global warming. He pulled out of the Kyoto agreement, which bound together many countries in bringing down emissions. It seems the old controls were too harsh on corporate interests.  The Europeans have added this drastic move to their list of concerns over his presidency.  Essentially, they think he's an idiot. Bush and his cronies, and fools like the Chicago Tribune, say that Russia and China, big polluters, would have suffered no restrictions.  Correct.  But does that mean we PULL OUT? No, it means we strive to bring them into the fold as well, not abandon the rest of the world. Bush even shocked his own environmental chief, Christine Whitman, with this surprise and stupid move. A couple of months after announcing this stupidity, the administration announced they were reconsidering the move.  Gee, ya think?

 
• SEPTEMBER 2007: The White House has been literally sneaking around, making backdoor calls to create opposition to California's attempt to reglate automotive emissions. They've been flooding the Department of Transportation with emails in this effort. California has been asking the EPA to let them push for lowered emission standards for two years. Staff at DOT has been queasy over the thing, with several suggesting that having this conversation by email was dangerous. Governor Schwarzenegger's office has questioned why the White House has put so much effort into blocking this request. But the answer is easy. Big Business doesn't want it.

 
• JUNE 2007: Turns out the Dick Cheney’s insistence on whacking the Clean Air Act and other restrictions on polluters (in order to serve the interests of big business, which have always had precedent over the American people in the Bush administration) that caused Christine Whitman to resign as EPA chief. Cheney also got personally involved in trying to lift the snowmobile ban in national parks, and it was his insistence on mucking with water supplies that caused the biggest fish kill ever in the West, knocking off untold thousands of salmon in the Klamath River in Oregon.

 
• JUNE 2007: Suddenly Bush has discovered greenhouse gases, and has called several world leaders to talk about capping them. Embarrassing thing is, these other countries have all been focused on this for literally years, while the Bush administration has been officially pretending that global warming doesn't exist. Truly, it sucks to be an American, with this f___g moron in charge.

 
• JANUARY 2006: Six former heads of  the EPA, including one Democrat and SIX REPUBLICANS, all said that the Bush administration has neglected global warming and a host of other environmental concerns. "We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it," one GOP member of the group said. 

 
• MAY 2005, Bush opens 60 million acres, about ONE THIRD of national forest, to new road construction, which means logging, mining, and other commercial use. His agricultre department mouthpiece, Mike Johanns, says this will help "cooperatively conserve" these areas. In fact, the forests get NOTHING out of this except traffic. Meanwhile, Big Business gets to rape and pillage. Already, 386,000 miles of roads already cut through national forests, and there's a $10 billion backlog of maintenance on them. In other words, they can't keep up with the roads they already have, and they're going to build more. The League of COnservation Voters says that Bush is "selling out to the logging and timber industry." 

 
• Bush keeps pushing his "Clear Skies" legislation, which he says will cut different kinds of emissions with certain amounts of time, not bothering to mention that the EXISTING Clean Air law, in place for many years, will accomplish better numbers quicker. Why does he do this? Because the energy companies want it. Compliance is largely voluntary, and also allows compoanies to trade poluttion credits. If we're allowed to dump, let's say, 100 tons of sh*t per week into the air (50 for you, 50 for me), I can buy half your pollution credits, so I don't have to put in the proper equipment. You get limited to 25, but I get to dump 75. SO if all the companies in a particular area buy up the credits, let's say around Chicago or Houston, then those cities get royally screwed with more pollution. And that's exactly what's happened in the past with this kind of arrangement.

 
• He's just DYIN' to drill in Alaska.  If he'd just clamp down on the lousy mileage gotten from SUV's, we'd more than conserve enough to make drilling unnecessary.  Why should we ruin the Alaksa Wildlife Refuge when there are sports utility vehicles all over the road that get less than 15 miles a gallon? Bush wants to drill because he says conservation is not enough, Well, not the way HE defines conservation. He provides tax breaks for people who own gas-guzzling SUV's, while simultaneously trying to do away with the tax break for buying a fuel-saving hybrid car.

 
• Bush and his people say the total footprint of a drilling platform in ANWR would be relatively small.  But he leaves out the part about the roads, the ponds, the pipelines, the storage buildings, etc., i.e. things that dramatically increase the size of that footprint to many square miles.

 
• When a U.S. Geological Survey mapmaker released a map showing that Bush's proposed drilling spot would be right smack dab in the middle of where the caribou calve, that guy was canned.  The excuse was that he was only supposed to map migratory birds, not mammals.

 
• He's also taken away a ban on mining on federal land.  He said it added "bureacratic confusion" to the mining industry.  Oh gee, those poor rich mining guys are confused, dear me. 

 
• He also rolled back restrictions on arsenic use by mining operations, which was jacking up the arsenic levels in drinking water in the west.  The National Academy of Sciences, previously commissioned by the government to do a study on the matter, concluded in 1999 that arsenic levels needed to be addressed "promptly," as in immediately.  But Bush put things right back the way they were.  So far, in every case, Bush has taken the anti-environmental stance on these issues, because his way benefited big business.

 
• George has rolled back efficiency standards on new central air conditioning units, because his manufacturing buddies say it will make prices too high.  Hey, MORONS, it will be far more expensive later to pay the extra electricity bills, and require more fossil fuels to GENERATE that electricity.  Can't see past NEXT WEEK, George Jr.?

 
• Despite the years of work put into it, Bush called a Clinton rule against public subsidy of logging roads in national forests a "last minute" rule.  He repealed it.  So we taxpayers get to help pay for the destruction of our national forests.  This rule was set aside at the request of the timber industry.

 
• George did away with a ban on Jet Skis at various state parks, for very vague reasons.  Fact is, rangers don't like them, most park visitors don't like them, the environment doesn't like them.  They're noisy, intrusive, and dirty.  But they're made by contributors, obviously.

 
• W arranged a $235 million dollar campaign contribution to his brother in June 2002, via environmental policy.  Floridians, who were wishy washy on re-electing Jeb Bush, love their Everglades.  So even though he wants like mad to drill in Alaska, W had the feds buy up the offshore drilling leases near the Everglades.  His own backers among the energy nuts have derided this move, but hey, he needs to get his bro re-elected, right?  So SCREW the environment, unless there's political benefit.  Even his buddy Rush Limbaugh has labelled Bush "George W. Al Gore" for caving into the greens.

 
• Bush upholds an environmental (sort of) policy.  He's keeping a snowmobile ban at Yellowstone and Teton national parks.  Why?   Because no major contributor is pushing snowmobile sales.  Otherwise he'd be building them a freaking road past Old Faithful. Oops, but then a year goes by, and even though it doesn't affect the price of tea in China, Bush wants the snowmobile ban slowly removed anyway.  It's taken a lot of work by the park service and others to keep the ban in place. But then in Winter 2004, they found a judge who made the ban go away.  Another judge insists on keeping the ban, or at least a lowering of the number of snowmobiles in the parks, in place.  By the way, the people who work at the park routinely wear masks just to keep from gagging on the pollution put out by the snowmobiles.

 
• Bush says the way to cut down on forest fires is to have logging companies thin out the forests.  The actual problem, however, is not trees, it's brush.  But there's no money in clearing brush, and nothing for his corporate friends to feast on.  The poorly-named Healthy Forests Initiative encourages more logging and road-building in national forests.

 
• Bush commissioned a report on global warming, and when it contradicted his own opinions, he did his best to hide it.  He says that with regard to global warming, "we'll get used to it."  He also preposterously said that global warming will lengthen vacation and growing seasons.  He forgot to mention that a lot of prime vacation spots on the coasts will be under water.

 
• Winter 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists backed a report that shows how the Bush administration has repeatedly distorted scientific findings whenever those findings conflicted with policy.  The administration has suppressed research on global warming, air quality, water quality, cancer, sexual health, etc.  WHY?  Because if industry doesn't want to spend money implementing controls to reduce pollution, they tell their buddy Bush, and he makes sure they don't have to spend the money.

 
• Winter 2004, Tiffany's, the jewelry people, said it would be environmentally irresponsible to drill a very deep mine in Montana, a mine that activists say would harm bears and trout streams in the area.  The White House verbally attacked Tiffany's.  Apparently Bush and co. really want to drill that mine badly.  Why?  Because big business wants it.

 
• An oil spill in an old pipeline near Prudhoe Bay in Alaska went undetected for days, failing to set off any kind of alerts. A BP employee driving by the spill actually smelled oil and sounded the alarm. Over 210,000 gallons of crude had already spread out over two acres on the Alaskan landscape. And the GOP wants to drill up there?

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One of the huge bits of bullshit propagated by drilling nuts, including Dick Cheney personally, is that the footprints of any drilling facilities will be relatively small, compared to the vast wilderness of Alaska. But they  conveniently leave out the footprints of the access roads, retention ponds, maintenance facilities, parking lots for the equipment, the pipelines themselves, and all sorts of other doohickeys that go with the drilling facilities. 
 

George W. just LOVES Big Business

Bush doesn't give two shits about the middle class or minorities. EVERYTHING he does benefits only those who already have some cash on hand.

• He loves privatization. He was going to hand over Social Security to brokerage firms, a plan nobody liked, not even his own party. And he privatized Walter Reed Hospital, resulting in a horrible scandal involving the poor treatment of troops wounded in Iraq.

 
• In 2002, Bush revoked the "contractor responsibility rule" which required federal officials to review a company's recent history of violating federal laws before awarding federal contracts

 
• He called John Kerry "the candidate of special interests."  And yet Bush raised FORTY TIMES MORE MONEY from special interests than John Kerry.  Most of that money of course comes from business interests, including massive amounts from big polluters.

 
• He wiped out the tax credit for buying a fuel-saving hybrid car, BUT he passed a tax break for businesses that buy gas-wasting SUV's. This one makes no sense, unless you're a manufacturer of SUV's and a megalith corporation that sells oil products.

 
• He made it just about impossible for people to declare bankruptcy if they've gone broke because of death in the family, loss of job, or catastrophic illness, because the credit card companies want their pound of flesh, even from those nailed by misfortune.  BUT BUT BUT he made it even easier for wealthy people who want to shelter their assets if THEY declare bankruptcy.

 
• He opened just about every last bit of protected federal forests to road-building, logging, and mining. This doesn't benefit the citizenry one iota. BUT it's great for loggers and miners.

 
• He's rolled back emissions standards and mining pollution controls to benefit his industrial buddies, and made the ones already in place VOLUNTARY.  Oh yeah, that'll work.

 
• He let Cheney lobby for changes in foreign policy, including sanctions on rogue nations, to benefit oil interests. Cheney even tried to circumvent sanctions on Iraq before the war, in order to build a pipeline across Turkey.

 
• He's suspended a law banning contractors who've broken environmental, labor, tax, or other laws from bidding on government contracts.  Makes sense, doesn't it, the law passed under Clinton which kept scofflaw contractors from getting more government business.  The unions love this law, as do most right-minded citizens.  But business groups hate it.  So Bush dumped it. 

 
• He rolled back protections for workers in jobs that suffer high incidence of repetitive motion ailments.

 
• He repealed a rule against public funding of logging roads in national forests because the timber industry wanted it done.

 
• He loves the oil guys.  And so while they're complaining that the Arabs are tightening the supply, and raising the prices at the pump NOW even though the affected oil won't be at the pumps for six months, they're also making RECORD PROFITS.  If the price of gas is skyrocketing because the supply is down, why are they profiting so heavily?  Because they're GOUGING.  Do you hear Bush talking about windfall profits tax, like predecessors did?  Hell no.  He and Cheney are millionaires because of the oil industry.  They're in Big Oil's pocket.  And nothing makes that more obvious than the mess at Enron.  It seems like half the cabinet used to work at Enron, and both Cheney and Ashcroft, along with several other staff members, have had to recuse themselves from looking into the mess because of their involvement with Enron.

 
• His head of the SEC is a former accounting firm lawyer who has previously advised clients to destroy documents in case they get caught.  Oops, that guy finally got forced out in a scandal.  Little surprise there.

 
• Cheney's old company, Halliburton, which still pays him money, was selected for a no-bid, no-ceiling contract to help rebuild Iraq.  And THEN they got caught overcharging for fuel by over $11 million.

 
• He early on said he'd support renewing the assault weapon ban, saying no civilian needed such weapons.  But int the face of pressure from the NRA, he has been totally silent, and obviously willing to let the ban expire.

 
• He lets big polluters sell each other credits to pollute. I can dump more tons of crap in the air if I buy away YOUR right to do so. Problem is, if every company in a particular area buy up credits from people in the boonies, then everyone who lives in that one area gets smoked out pretty bad. Like in Houston.

 
• He severely limited class action lawsuits. Not because he really want to screw lawyers, but because Big Business wanted it that way.

 
• December 2005, more propsed cuts to food stamps and other assistance, just before Christmas. But health care companies made out with Medicaid, while poor folks and old folks got larger co-payments. Also, the GOP Congress kept a subsidy meant to lure regional health care companies into the Medicaid program. Also hurt was seniors' ability to transfer their assets to help pay for nursing home care.

 
• January 2006 State of the Union Address: Bush finally got around to saying America should stop its addiction to oil. Where's he been for five years? The next day, he defended Exxon-Mobil's just-reported RECORD PROFITS, which they made by gouging the public with ridiculous gas prices, which they blamed on global consumption and Hurricane Katrina. Interesting, how prices went up because of rising costs, and yet those rising costs didn't affect their bottom line.

Foreign policy is quite foreign 
             to Bush Jr. & company
 
 

November 2007: Iran and Venezuela are joining forces to screw with the United States. Bush has weakened the USA so badly that two-bit shitholes laugh at us. Way to go, George.

HOLY CRAP, READ THIS !!!!!!!   October 2007: On the same day it's announced that the highly incompetent Karen Hughes (see below) is leaving, several hundred State Department employees balked in loud fashion at a town hall style meeting that they didn't want to go to Iraq. Because of an understandable lack of volunteers, Iraq duty will now be forced.  Condi Rice didn't have the spine to meet with them personally, so she had lackies tell them, either serve a year in Baghdad or face losing your jobs. As one of the diplomats, Jack Croddy, put it, "It is one thing if someone believes in what is going on over there and volunteers, but it is another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment. And I'm sorry, but basically that is a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or wounded?"  So in other words, even the diplomatic corps doesn't believe in what is going on over there. 

October 2007: The administration completely bungled things with the Turks and the Kurds so bad that the USA's chosen representative, General Joe Ralston, QUIT. And after repeatedly screwing up with Iran, Bush let the increasingly evil PUTIN step right in and get friendly with them.

July 2006: Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon. Bush has no freaking clue what to do. He has zero influence over there, and even the head guy in Iraq, whom Bush and co. helped put in place, is attacking the USA in speeches. Bush dispatches Condi Rice, who has so little communication going on with Israel that just before she's to pull into Beirut, Israel bombs hell out of the town of Qana, and she gets cancelled.  Meantime, Bush won't communicate with Syria or Iran, the sponsors of Hezbollah, for fear of "rewaring bad behavior." Therefore, the USA doesn't speak with them. Of course, Iran and North Korea have both learned, if you make threats, suddenly the USA does wanna talk with you. So Bush never backs up the tough talk anyway. There IS no pre-emptive diplomacy, only diplomacy by reaction, after others have already acted.
 

Summer 2006: Bush is screwed. North Korea keeps firing test missiles, China and Russia won't help out because he keeps pissing them off, Iran is forging ahead on its own nuke program, Muslim nutjobs have taken over in Somalia after defeating the warlords that Bush has been backing, Israel and the Palestinians are at it BIG time, and even little dipshit countries now figure the USA is stretched so thin, they can tell him to f**k off.

Summer 2005: Bush names Karen Hughes, an old Texas crony, as his ambassador to the Arab world. At her first stop, in Saudi Arabia, she starts talking about freedoms for women, and is roundly ripped on by, hey, a roomful of Saudi women, who tell her she has no idea what she's talking about. At another stop, she justifies the war in Iraq by saying that Saddam Hussein "gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people." The audience quickly pointed out that Hussein has been accused of gassing 5000 people. Oops.
 

May 2005: Iran sends an envoy into Iraq to meet with Iraq's new leadership, just twelve hours after Condi Rice leaves. He immediately announces that the United States will one day withdraw, but that Iran is just next door. We've taken a country that a few years ago was in a long, bloody war with Iraq, and made them into an ally of Iraq's.  And guess what? It's a country that hates the United States. We have made our long-term situation in the Gulf region FAR WORSE.  Bush has no idea what he's doing.

May 2005: Bush once again calls Kim Jung Il of North Korea "a tyrant" with "concentration camps." Oh, and he's "an evil guy."  Yeah, and all that's true, but Bush originally screwed up successful talks by branding North Korea part of the "Axis of Evil." The South Koreans and our own U.S. State Department just recently asked Bush to stop with the name-calling as they try to push Kim into a corner. Then Bush gives the lunatic another excuse to back out of talks by calling him "evil."

Funny one:  Spring 2005, and Ariel Sharon comes to visit Bush at his ranch. Bush serves Sharon little chocolates in wrappers that look like Israeli flags. If that was candy wrapped in little American flags, what would you do with a wrapper after you were done chomping. WOuld you crumple it up and throw it away?

Bush never liked Mr. Al-Baradei, the guy from the international nuclear commission who was trying to get everybody to play nice with regard to Iran's nuclear program. So what happened? Iran told George to f___k himself, while Al-Baradei get a Nobel peace prize.
 

March 2005 : Bush nominated for ambassador to the United Nations a clown named John Bolton. Previously, Bolton opposed arms reduction, claimed that Syria and Cuba were producing biological weapons, worked as a paid researcher for Taiwan (supporting sovereignty just as China is pushing up the tension), and has opposed numerous well-intentioned treaties.  He takes a completely hardline stance on the U.N.   Sure, the U.N. hasn't always been the best-run organization in the world, but it's what we've got. 

Always the rubber-stamper, Condi Rice said the guy was great. Then she started shitting on him. In the meantime, FIFTY-NINE former U.S. diplomats, including guys who served under Reagan, Ford, and Nixon (i.e. GOPers), sent a letter to the Senate, asking them to reject the guy's nomination. Colin Powell told senators he didn't like the guy. Former colleagues and underlings say he's a brute who tried to fire people whose analyses disagreed with the administration's agenda (sounds awfully familiar in the Bush era).

John Bolton has utterly ignored Iraq. He's pissed off everybody in New York City. His whole reason for being at the UN was supposedly to help reform the place. So what did he do? Introduced a shitload of last-minute amendments to a reform package,
destroying almost two years of negotiations, and turning the final result into gruel. He threatened to withhold American funding as a stick to force reform, but after plenty of member countries complained over his clumsy tactics, he dropped the threat.

U.S. relations with a slew of countries is still in the shitter, thanks to this caveman. He didn't bother with attending any of the meetings for the U.N. Human Rights Council, then at the last minute he popped in, said some strange shit, and Condi Rice's
office had to back off on Bolton's statements. In fact, Rice has seemed more than unhappy with Bolton at different points. But remember, he was a recess appointment of a dufus who refuses to admit when he's done something wrong.
 
 

Fall 2004: A large group of retired diplomats and military men banded together to recommend that our citizens vote Bush out of office, saying that Bush's policies have endangered natioanl security and wrecked our relations with just about every other nation on Earth. They didn't specifically advocate Kerry, they only know they wanted Bush out.  These include the man who headed Middle East forces under the senior Bush, as well as Ronald Reagan's head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
 

Blanket statement, but true: all the sympathy we had from countries around the world, following 9/11, has effectively evaporated, due to Bush's relentless badgering and unilateralism.  Even our allies are against us now.  How the hell did he manage THAT?
 

The Axis of Evil

In his first State of the Union address, Bush once again put certain foreign relations back months by lumping Iran, Iraq, and North Korea into an "axis of evil."  The same Iranian students who had been showing sympathy for the USA after 9/11 in open public demonstrations against terrorism suddenly were shouting "Death to Bush" in the streets, and the moderate elements we were courting were getting their asses kicked.  Just brilliant.
    Similarly, South Koreans wanted Bush to shut up, since they felt they were making headway with North Korea.
    If he had to say something, he should have contained his remarks to Iraq.
 

Venezuela

Bush didn't like Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela.  And sure, Hugo is buddies with Castro.  But when Hugo got tossed after people were killed in a heavy-handed reaction to economic riots, Bush celebrated while the rest of Latin America complained about yet another military coup displacing a democratically-elected leader.  The other Latins dumped on Bush for supporting the army coup, and when Hugo came back into power, Bush looked REALLY stupid.  Now he's stuck with the guy, whose first act after coming back into office was to call Castro.
 

China

Bush keeps sticking to a missile defense policy that scares hell out of our allies and our enemies.  The last time a president did something so lunkheaded, it was Kennedy, ordering up more missiles that even his defense folk wanted, prompting the Russians into overproducing their own missiles in response.  The missile defense proposal will push the Chinese into mass-producing their own missiles, and further upset our European allies, who foresee a new arms race resulting from this wrongheaded policy.  It'll never work anyway, but he keeps pushing it.  China has announced in March 2001 that they're massively upping their defense budget, including for new missiles.  The new volume they're proposing will easily overwhelm any defense we might concoct.

Bush kept his mouth shut during the Chinese crisis with our downed spy plane.  He was highly encouraged by staff not to call the Chinese premier directly, despite his desire to do so.  Good advice.  The one time he did open his mouth was to call the situation a "stalemate," a truly idiotic choice of words at a crucial time.  Shut up and let the smart people do the job, W.   To show that he was involved with the crisis, Bush repeatedly inquired if the American hostages had Bibles in captivity.

Late April 2001, at a very inopportune time, Bush decided to undo the policies of six previous presidents and declare outright that the USA would do whatever it needed to do to defend Taiwan, while at the same time saying he hoped Taiwan would stick to the "One China" policy.   None of that makes any sense, and it was all too provocative a statement at a tense time in China relations.  Later on, his staff tried to claim that this gaffe was intentional, but it VERY obvious damage control. 
 

Israel

Bush foolishly thought he could sit out the massive problems Israel and the Palestinians have had in 2001.  But he finally had to jump in anyway.  Or rather, he let Colin Powell do it, since it's far too sensitive a situation to let some ham-fisted, thick-tongued dolt deal with it.  it was inevitable, but all they've done by sitting on the sidelines in the meantime is allow the situation to get further and further out of control.
          At a time when a policy was needed here, namely during the Afghan conflict, Bush and company took forever to articulate a policy between the Jews and the Palestinians.  November 2001, they finally send a guy in to "push and prod" the parties toward peace.  But so little, and so delayed.  This is a mess of a policy.
          April 2002: After sitting it out, then supporting Israel in its push to fight terrorists, Bush completely turned around and called for Israel to pull out of the West Bank.  It took the media to pressure him into even having a policy.  Colin Powell went over there, sounded like the most logical guy in the administration, and GW and Rumsfeld both contradicted him.  Way to go ..... present no policy, flip flop like hell ("We support Israel ...  now, wait, they gotta pull out"), then put out some bad PR by screwing with the single most popular and logical guy you've got. 
 

Korea

Despite two years of progress with North Korea, Bush pissed them off from the beginning.  At first, he even refused to speak with them.    He said, "We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements."  In fact, we had only one agreement with North Korea, and there's no evidence they broke any terms at the time.   When asked about this, a Bush spokesman explained that the president was commenting on possible non-compliance with future agreements.  When told that the president did not speak in future tense, the spokesman said, "That's how the president speaks." In other words, the president wasn't paying attention at the time.  Or maybe ever. 
 

Diplomacy in general

As of April 2001, 22 of 27 ambassadors nominated by Bush  were big contributors, including the new ambassador to France who doesn't speak French.
 

He's a divider, NOT a uniter.... Bush is a disloyal dog
 

Bush has bludgeoned the country with his conservative agenda.  He keeps talking about bipartisanship, but it'll all hot air.  He means NONE of it. In the meantime, even longtime party and administration loyalists who have a disagreement get thrown under the bus. Bush and his cohorts stab people in the back kif they don't mindlessly get with the program. Here are a few examples of how disloyal Bush can be.
 

The Valerie Plame Affair

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to check out the story that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium with which to build nuclear weapons. Some badly forged documents seemed to indicate this. The docs were in fact VERY poorly done. Wilson reported back that the story was bogus. The Bush administration didn't want to hear that, and went forward with the nuke story anyway. Bush even included it in a State of the Union address, and it was included in Colin Powell's address to the U.N. in which the administration made its case for the use of force against Iraq.

Wilson went public, saying the story was baloney, Hussein wasn't trying to buy uranium. To get even with Wilson, Bush officials outed Wilson's wife, a covert CIA agent. In other words, Bush's cabinet compromised national security just to do a number on a critic, who was only trying to set straight their bogus intelligence.

January 2007: Scooter Libby's trial opens with scathing charges from Libby's lawyers that he was sacrificed to protect Karl Rove. There were even notes in Cheney's archives supporting this, and another Cheney aide also backed up this assertion on the second day. In other words, Rove was the GOP brainchild, and Libby was just a staffer, who took the bullet for Rove's leaking strategy.

November 2007: Former press secretary Scott McLellan is putting out a book in which he says that Bush and the whole White House gang were in on outing Valerie Plame. The publisher has put out an initial excerpt:
 

Federal prosecutors

When it turns out that several federal prosecutors, all loyal Republican political appointees, were fired for political reasons, in some cases because they refused to expedite investigations or indictments of Democrats in time to make headlines in advance of the 2006 midterm elections, the Justice Department went into spin mode. Attorney General Gonzalez called the situation "an overblown personnel matter," and somebody else at Justice called the prosecutors "disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress."

But then the whole of Congress, including some big hitter GOP members, went after the J.D., and the Department quickly stopped the ridiculous attacks. Of course, Karl Rove still managed to say it was simply a "political stink."

So these public servants got canned for doing their jobs the right way, and were stabbed in the back, insulted, and used for political purposes by the GOP and Bush's so-called Justice Department.

Bush allowed Cheney to block a promotion for a DOJ official who opposed the pressure on John Ashcroft to authorize, while he was extremely ill in the hospital, an illegal wiretapping scheme.
 
 

Anti-war Republicans 

When Dick Armey was dragging his feet on going to war with Iraq, Bush and Cheney simultaneously courted, hassled, and tried to humiliate him, until they bullied him into supporting the invasion.

But it only gets worse. Four years later, the highly respected John Warner tries to mitigate the ongoing risks of yet another troop buildup, White House mouthpiece Tony Snow suggests that his actions will encourage Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists. So much for Reagan's commandment on Republicans not speaking ill of other Republicans.
 
 

Tony Blair

Getting beat to hell by his own countrymen, and even his own party, Tony Blair got no visible support from Bush, whose rush to war (and dragging Blair along) is the main reason Blair's in political trouble to begin with.
 
 

Jim Jeffords

Former Republican James Jeffords, senator from Vermont, had been in office a quarter-century, fighting for small government, child care, education, health care, and working families.  Those people the GOP kinda ignores, in other words.

But he disagreed strongly with Bush's tax plan, and his vote helped make the difference in trimming it way back.  Bush jumped all over Jeffords.  How?  Here's how.

• Bush aides let it slip to reporters that they would get even with Jeffords.
• Bush cut Jeffords from the planning for his education bill, even though Jeffords was chairing the Senate Health,Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
• Bush didn't bother inviting Jeffords to the White House for the National Teacher of the Year Award ceremony, even though the winner was a Vermonter.
• Bush dropped support for the northeastern dairy compact, which is big stuff in Vermont.

War good, critics evil

Anybody in or out of the administration who said anything bad leading up to, or even after the war started, got pasted, even stabbed in the back. For example, Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki suggested that it would take a whole lot more troops than Bush was planning for in order to keep the peace in Iraq after the fall of Hussein. He was PUBLICLY HUMILIATED. He was forced into early retirement, and nobody from the top bothered attending his retirement ceremony. Economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey said the war would cost at least $200 million, and he was FIRED. Well, guess what? It's going to cost a whole lot more than THAT. Richard Clarke was in charge of security, including making the decision to ground all flights, on 9/11. But when he disagreed with the administration on subsequent actions, including the invasion of Iraq, he was harpooned, and described by the GOP attack dogs as being "out of the loop." In fact, he was the one warning the administration for months about Al Qaeada, and most of the time Condi Rice, the security adviser, didn't know what he was talking about. The adminstration has crapped all over Clarke, because he wasn't on board with regard to Iraq.
 

George Bush vs. veterans

The United States continues to cut benefits for veterans. A whole lotta boys and girls wounded in Iraq will find out just how little their gummint thinks of them in the months and years to come. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) was stripped of his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after he expressed his concern that the White House was taking away healthcare benefits for veterans. Smith says it "all came down to the fact I wanted to spend too much on veterans......I am not a yes man. I am a loyal Republican who believes in fighting for good public policy and that is the best way to show loyalty."
 
 

George Bush vs. Old People They helped elect him, but now they're the enemy

The same scumbags who put out some very sleazy material on John Kerry during the 2004 campaign (the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), lying like hell about Kerry's war record, were given the task of going after AARP, when their members and leaders disagreed publicly with Bush's ridiculous Social Security "fix." Calling themselves USA Next, these idiots have decided that old people are the enemy. Charlie Jarvis, their head idiot (and a former under deputy secretary of the interior under Reagan and Bush Sr. ..... shades of James Watt) said of the AARP, "They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts. We will be the dynamite that removes them." He also said of AARP, "We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand combat."  He actually, truly said these things.  What a boob. He also lied when he said that a picture of two gay guys kissing, used in one of their ads, was purchased from a Portland newspaper that says it has no record of ever selling the pic.
 

The CIA agent affair   .... another backstab by Bush

A former US ambassador, Richard Wilson, pointed out the falsehood of the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from from Africa.  Two senior administration officials leaked to bonehead conservative columnist Robert Novak the name of the guy's wife, Valerie Plame, who happens to be a covert CIA officer.  This act immediately rendered her incapable of doing her job, and endangered herself, her husband, and her overseas contacts.  Bush finally allowed an investigation, but only after massive pressure, and Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted.

July 22nd, 2005: A whooooooole bunch of former CIA officers testified before Congress that Bush's lack of action on the Plame affair has endangered our security, and made it difficult for our intelligence agents to recruit new informants. They called on Bush to discipline, if not fire, Karl Rove.

"I wouldn't be here this morning if President Bush had done the one thing required of him as commander in chief : protect and defend the Constitution," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst. "The minute that Valerie Plame's identity was outed, he should have delivered a strict and strong message to his employees."
 
 

Cheney gets in on the disloyalty act

Cheney was the main culprit in alternately bribing and theatening Dick Armey into going along with the Iraq war vote. And Cheney never bothered calling his "very good friend" Scooter Libby, from the beginning of his trial (in which Libby was convicted of perjury for doing Cheney's own bidding) until clear through his appeal. In June 2007, Libby was given 2 1/2 years.

Bush allowed Cheney to block a promotion for a DOJ official who opposed the pressure on John Ashcroft to authorize, while he was extremely ill in the hospital, an illegal wiretapping scheme.

George Bush refuses to uphold the Constitution

When you become the US president, you must swear to uphold the law of the land. Bush has consistently refused to do so, especially when ignoring the law enriches his friends or promotes his own political agenda. Literally HUNDREDS of times, Bush has produced so-called "signing statements" when he's signed bills into law. These statements are his way of saying "I'm not actually going to enforce this thing I just signed," or else "this is HOW I intend to enforce this thing I just signed." When Bush signed into law a war funding bill that included language banning torture, his signing statement actually negated the torture part.
 

October 2007: Jose Ernesto Medellin and a gang of scumbags gang-raped and strangled two teenage girls. it turns out that Medellin, who grew up in Houston, was born in Mexico, and supposedly had the right, as a Mexican national, to appeal to the Mexican consulate. Now Bush is siding with Mexico in denying this killer his legal right to lethal f___g injection. The Republicans running Texas want this guy offed, justice demands it, and Bush won't do it. The guy who fast-tracked killers to the chair or the gurney as governor is now screwing Texas out of justice.

October 2007: As we already knew, a report has come out detailing how the Bush administration has not bothered prosecuting massive polluters. Penalties for polluters are down by more than 70 percent. It's okay to dump shit into the air and water, under this president. if it's okay for Big Business, it's okay for Bush.

JULY 2007: Just in time for the nation's birthday, Bush commutes the 30-month sentence thatScooter Libby got for lying to the FBI, to Congress, to everybody else about the Valerie Plame affair. In keeping Libby out of jail, Bush called the sentence "excessive," IGNORING the fact that a very good federal judge followed sentencing guidelines, and that Libby got in hot water for lying to a grand jury AND obstructing justice. Holy shit, this guy got nailed for lying and bullshitting the justice system in the process of covering up the Bush administration's crimes. Thirty months ain't too much for THAT. Bush said he "respects" the jury's decision, but then he went and undermined it ANYWAY. So much for the rule of law. PARIS FREAKING HILTON did more time than Scooter Libby. 

Let's remember what this is REALLY all about: Bush is throwing a bone to a former loyalist who's been reaching out to old friends who've left him to dangle for THEIR crimes. So to help the cover-up about the outing of Valerie Plame, which was committed by Karl Rove and Richard Armitage and with the full blessing of Dick Cheney, Bush pardoned a guy who might have talked rather than rot in jail for a couple of years.
 

Sept 2006: U.S. Attorney-General Gonzalez said that there will be less federal funds for crime-fighting, despite a spike in crime, especially violent crime, because more money is going into the "war on terror." Of course, much of that money has been misspent, just like the billions wasted (through fraud and unbelievable FEMA mismanagement) on Hurricane Katrina relief.

Bush consistently flauts the law. He makes up laws when he feels like it, he interprets laws broadly so that they fit his needs, he ignores the law, and he certainly fails to enforce the laws of the United States of America. He has even been consistent in ignoring the Constitution he swore to uphold.

Bush has consistently refused to enforce environmental laws, setting aside judgments against corporation for pollution violations. 

Bush has failed to enforce immigration laws. Fines against employers of illegal aliens have plummeted from four figures in one year to SINGLE DIGITS in the next. yes, that's correct. From thousands of fines to FOUR.

Bush has been told by multiple judges that his wiretapping is unconstitutional. What's he do? Ask for the laws to be changed.

Enemy combatants: I'm all for throwing people in a hole when they're a threat. But there are a whole slew of people who've passed through Guantanamo who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They government has even had to admit that some of those people were
wrongly apprehended. And yet they're still being held. Are they afraid of the stories of torture that will come out?

GUNS: Bush promised law enforcement across the country that he supported a renewal of the assault weapons ban. Then when the time came, he shrank, much like his balls. Police across the board want it. The NRA, which claims to speak for the police but in fact is lying like hell, doesn't want it. And they spend more money than the police in shameless lobbying.

Bush's friends, in on the scam

Bush has always benefited from his daddy's name, just as he himself has. He, like Dad, has shamelessly promoted and connected his buddies, no matter what the cost to the rest of the world. 
 

• Dad's friends got George Jr. out of his military service. Georgie actually got to weasel out of his commitment to the reserves in order to work on the political campaign of a family friend. Holy shit!
• Junior was a terrible business owner, a cokehead, a drunk, and a bad baseball owner. Family friends helped him keep a DUI out of the news at a critical time, and even when his oil businesses went to hell, he still managed to make a profit on them, because Dad's friends wanted to kiss Dad's ass, and made sure Junior somehow came out on top.
• When most people decide to run for office, it's because they want to accomplish things. Junior did it backwards. He wanted to be a big shot, and THEN figure out what he should stand for. When it was time for him to aspire to the throne, Junior had no clue what his policies should be. One of the people he went to for advice was old family friend, and the ambassador from an authoritarian regime, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. Bandar helped George figure out his foreign policy positions. Holy shit #2!
• Bush has repeatedly promoted old friends from Texas, not because they were qualified, but because that way he could still pretend to be the smartest guy in the room. That's why the country ended up with Alberto Gonzalez as the unqualified Attorney-General, and Harriet Miers as the unbelievably unqualified Supreme Court nominee.
• H.L.Hunt, an oil billionaire, put his money into electing both Bush and his dad. He's bought the land to put Bush's eventual presidential library on the campus of SMU. And he's negotiated a (temporarily secret) oil deal with the Kurds in Iraq that pissed off all the other tribes to the point where it's endangering all the other negotiations they have going for oil revenue sharing. So an old friend wanted to cash in on the invasion. The White House claimed not to know of the agreement in advance, which is horseshit, but they've used it anyway as a sign that things are getting better there, somehow. An administration source said they'd like to know how it happened, because of the damage it's caused. Well, why doesn't Junior pick up the phone and find out?

The Great Communicator was also a Great Obfuscator

Ronald Reagan did the following:

• Brought back national pride after the "malaise" of Jimmy Carter
• Restored the perception of U.S. military might
• Provided tax relief
• Put additional pressure on the Soviet bloc, which was already suffering from economic and social disorder
• Read speeches, some of which he wrote himself, far more convincingly that George W., who couldn't write a frigging grocery list if his life depended on it
• -----------------------------------------------
• Ignored Saddam Hussein's atrocities, including the killing of 150,000 Kurds and many other Iraqis
• Opposed extending the Civil Rights Act
• Gutted the Civil Rights Commission
• Ignored minorities and the poor
• Lost the electorate in Washington DC by a wide margin
• Made it possible for corporations to "invest" previously protected pension funds, which in turn led to millions of Americans LOSING their pensions; it also led to corporate raiders buying other companies just so they could get their hands on those "untouchable" pension funds 
• Wrecked industry in Ohio, leading to giant marches calling for his impeachment
• Cut taxes AND bulked up the military simultaneously, leading to massive deficits which ultimately sunk his successor's presidency
• Traded weapons for hostages, after saying he'd NEVER do that, then conveniently forgot all the details under oath
• Supported the contras, who were less freedom fighters than they were terrorists who tortured and killed scores of innocent people
• Stated that homeless people slept outdoors because they WANTED to
• Sent the Marines to Beirut, then cut and ran when they got blown up; conservatives always crap on Clinton for doing the same thing in Somalia, but forget that Reagan did it first
• Named a Secretary of the Interior who bragged about hiring "a black, a woman, a cripple, and a Jew"   (good for him!!!!!)
• Let that same Interior idiot, James Watt, turn over our national resources to corporate interests, paving the way for George W. to do the same damn thing
• Appointed a Chief Justice who had opposed integration in the 1960's
• Lost cabinet members to extreme disgrace 
• Like GW Bush, stuff regulatory agencies with lobbyists, who regulated their respective areas as if they fully expected high-paying jobs back in their original industry when they left government.

Ronald Reagan did NOT do the following:

• End the Cold War all by his lonesome
• Support labor
• Support George W. Bush in his 1978 Congressional run
• Turn his love of the outdoors into a love of protecting the environment
• Impress all of his peers, including Gerald Ford, who called Reagan "competely uninformed" and "the worst possible manager"