Tag: Pres. Bush

2009 Anal-Ocity

In recent weeks Bushites have been hitting the airwaves trying to prop up the Bush legacy.  So far their efforts are pretty damn lame and boring.  And they should be a great source of anal statements.

But my fav, so far,  is from Bushite Gaffney, whose first name has escaped me, said on MSNBC’s Hardball when talking about Iraq and Saddam and the Bush legacy.

“There is circumstantial evidence that Saddam was involved with the 1993 Twin Towers attack and the Oklahoma City bombing”.  (I paraphrase)

So now Timothy McVey was working as an agent of Saddam…….these guys NEVER cease to amaze and amuse……

What Did He Say?

A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.

An Iraqi journalist was wrestled to the floor by security guards after he called Mr Bush “a dog” and threw his footwear, just missing the president.

In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him.

Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.

With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.”

Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away.

“If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw,” Mr Bush joked afterwards.

Al-Baghdadiya’s bureau chief told the Associated Press that he had no idea what prompted Mr Zaidi to attack President Bush, although reports say he was once kidnapped by a militia and beaten up.

“I am trying to reach Muntadar since the incident, but in vain,” said Fityan Mohammed. “His phone is switched off.”

Correspondents said the attack was symbolic. Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat Saddam Hussein’s statue after his overthrow.

Some people cannot take a joke (sarcasm intended).

The Bush Legacy

On topics as diverse as Iraq, veterans care, education and AIDS relief, Bush has been using his final days in office to help shape how he is remembered.

Bush lauded his own administration for beefing up and reshaping its intelligence community, cutting off the assets of terrorist groups, and employing diplomacy to attract world partners. He even gave a rare shout out to his former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for leading the charge for a more nimble military.

Bush, who has recently expressed regret over the false intelligence that led to the Iraq war, did not mention the issue Tuesday. Instead, he characterized the U.S.-led invasion as a necessary act to remove a dangerous dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Bush also said that the results of his strategy of promoting democracy and civil societies to counter the ideology of extremist Islam — rather than taking what he called the easy option of installing “friendly strongmen” in places like Iraq — were “unfolding slowly and unevenly.”

Finally, while Bush mentioned the killing or capture of hundreds of al-Qaida members around the world, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, he also noted that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, whom Bush did not identify by name, have evaded capture.

The Washington Post and New York Times contributed to this report.

Is anyone really listening? Better yet, is anyone buying this line of bovine fecal matter?

“A Wide Range Of Tools”

Words of encouragement from GW on the direction of the economy.

The U.S. president said the government has acted on several fronts, including injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system, coordinating a global cut in interest rates, and expanding the amount of money that is insured in savings accounts.

“Fellow citizens, we can solve this crisis and we will,” Bush said.

`Aggressive’ Plan

“The plan we are executing is aggressive,” Bush said. “It will take time to have its full impact. It is flexible enough to adapt as the situation changes. And it is big enough to work.”

Bush meets tomorrow with finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial nations, as his predecessor, former President Bill Clinton, did with the group during a 1998 financial crisis.

Tomorrow’s meeting will be at 7:15 a.m. at the White House, and the president will make a statement at 8:05 a.m., White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Perino, responding to questions, said Bush remains “open to the idea of a G-8 meeting at some point.” The G-7 includes the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada. The G-8 includes Russia as well.

The G-7 ministers and central bankers are meeting today in Washington, facing a breakdown in investor confidence in their ability to end the credit freeze endangering the global economy.

Threatened by the worst economic outlook in a quarter century, officials arrived in Washington still without the broad- based strategy that investors were seeking, raising the risk of further turmoil if their remedies disappoint.

Among the options: a proposal by U.K. Chancellor Alistair Darling for nations to guarantee lending between banks, a suggestion that U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson hasn’t ruled out.

I feel so much better about everything now. But may I suggest that they need to pick a tool and get to f*cking work!

Prez Speaks To The Failure

He said this was a critical moment for the U.S. economy. “And we need legislation that decisively addresses the troubled assets now clogging the financial system, helps lenders resume the flow of credit to consumers and businesses, and allows the American economy to get moving again.”  Isn’t the credit thing that got us to this point?  Maybe a little tightening in the credit market might help, after all it probably could not hurt.

“Skin in the game”–the new buzz phrase for the politicos.  Remember when it was “boots on the ground”?  Or how about “country first”?  There is more, “Change we need”.  Slogans, everywhere there are slogans, and none of them will solve the damn problem.  These things sound good and are great for the 30 second sound bite in the media, but what do the accomplish?

If anyone puts their Faith in slogans then they deserve the fate that awaits them.  Americans have been totally amorous of slogans since the beginning and look where that got them.  Slogans are for the simple minded and address nothing more than that.  Most voters remember this slogan or that, “where’s the beef?” or “there you go again” or ….well you get the idea.

Meanwhile back at the Prez……he said the failure of a bill would effect job creation and growth…thinking….we are in the worst unemployment cycle in a while and growth is minimal at best.

Bush looked awful and confused.  There is no leadership in Washington at all…not from Prez or Dems or Repubs or candidates or anyone…they are all running around worrying about their next election.  The Prez needs to work on his poker face the one he has now is not working.

Time to regroup and state a New Year’s resolution, after all it is the Jewish New Year.  Someone needs to step up and take control of the situation.  Please stop using terms like socialism…it is not….it is just an extension of capitalism…no matter which way they go…it will protect capital and profits….that Irene…is NOT socialism!

Is Bush The New Hoover?

President Bush has long assumed the outcome of the Iraq war would define his legacy. But the catastrophic collapse of the housing bubble on his watch provides a new, perhaps more ominous, threat to how his stewardship will be ranked in history.

In a matter of weeks, an investment banking industry that survived the Civil War and the Great Depression virtually vanished from the scene, weighed down by faulty mortgages and other debts.

The Federal Reserve Board’s role in the economy has been transformed in ways even economists say they can’t yet fully appreciate, save for one: The government now has a dramatically bigger presence in the private market.

And the U.S. taxpayers are now likely to be put on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of faulty mortgages and already have become part-owners of a giant insurance house scheduled to be carved up and sold by the next administration.

“Bush runs a real danger of going down as a Herbert Hoover in this scenario,” said Beverly Gage, a presidential historian at Yale University. “He could be seen as the man held responsible for what is happening who stood by and didn’t forge a clear direction at a moment when a clear direction is what was needed.”

Among the most striking successes of his administration then was enabling the New York Stock Exchange to reopen in less than a week and send a signal that capitalism hadn’t been beaten.
Bush used that fresh influx of political capital to launch the Iraq war even as U.S. troops were still hunting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. But mismanagement, mistakes and the misinformation about the need to go to war sapped the administration of credibility.

There are other ties between White House economic policy and the financial crisis.
One of the Bush administration’s signature goals has been promoting an “ownership society.” To achieve that end, the administration promoted a series of programs designed to encourage consumers to buy homes, stocks and other goods that would convert them into free market advocates. The one-time plan to privatize Social Security benefits fit into that portfolio.

Your grandchildren will be reeling from this for years to come.

And The (Economic) Beat Goes On

We have a deal….candidates arrive at White House….Deal is shattered…Damn!  This is great political theater.

The day began with an agreement that Washington hoped would end the financial crisis that has gripped the nation. It dissolved into a verbal brawl in the Cabinet Room of the White House, urgent warnings from the president and pleas from a Treasury secretary who knelt before the House speaker and appealed for her support

When Congressional leaders and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the two major party presidential candidates, trooped to the White House on Thursday afternoon, most signs pointed toward a bipartisan agreement on a grand compromise that could be accepted by all sides and signed into law by the weekend. It was intended to pump billions of dollars into the financial system, restoring liquidity and keeping credit flowing to businesses and consumers.

But once the doors closed, the smooth-talking House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, surprised many in the room by declaring that his caucus could not support the plan to allow the government to buy distressed mortgage assets from ailing financial companies.  Did he use his patent weeping as a tool?

Mr. Boehner pressed an alternative that involved a smaller role for the government, and Mr. McCain, whose support of the deal is critical if fellow Republicans are to sign on, declined to take a stand.

The talks broke up in angry recriminations, according to accounts provided by a participant and others who were briefed on the session, and were followed by dueling news conferences and interviews rife with partisan finger-pointing.

In other words, the candidates did not help the process at all—so why are they there?

President Speaks To America (Finally)

Bush’s 13-minute speech was a compendium of evasions, half-truths and outright lies. While declaring that the United States is “in the midst of a serious financial crisis” and demanding the immediate passage of legislation that will hand over at least $700 billion to Wall Street banks—by buying up their unsalable assets at inflated prices and placing the burden for their losses on millions of working class families—Bush offered no credible explanation of the cause of the crisis. Nor did he explain how the proposed bailout of the bank will be implemented, let alone how it will stave off economic disaster for the working class.

His claim that the “rescue effort” will “help American consumers and businesses get credit to meet their daily needs and create jobs” is patently untrue. There is a consensus in the financial press, especially outside the United States, that the bailout will accelerate the descent of the American and world economy into the deepest recession, if not depression, since the end of World War II.

“I know many Americans have questions tonight,” Bush stated. “How did we reach this point in our economy? How will the solution I propose work? And what does this mean for your financial future?”

“These are good questions,” he continued, “and they deserve clear answers.”

But no such answers were provided by Bush. Instead, he offered a bizarre narrative which presented the unfolding disaster as if it were the result of inexplicable cosmic forces.

You voted for this guy—Are you happy with that choice now?

More Troops Out Of Iraq

Is this a moot point, since Bush will be back home in Crawdad, Texas on that date?  This seems more like a PR stunt to try and help McCain and whats-her-name.

As reported by the AP.

President Bush plans to pull 8,000 more combat and support troops out of Iraq by February, a measured drawdown that will leave nearly the same level of U.S. forces in the war zone for the rest of the year.

Bush’s decision, to be delivered in a speech Tuesday, is perhaps his final stamp on the war that has defined his presidency. The scope and pace of the U.S. troop withdrawals are smaller than long anticipated, reflecting a desire by the military and the president not to jeopardize security gains in Iraq.

By the time the troops return home on the timeline Bush is proposing, someone else will be making the wartime decisions from the Oval Office.

There are about 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Bush hinted that more troops could return to the U.S. in the first half of 2009 if conditions improve.

“Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becomingly increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight,” Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Washington.

Russia Backs Georgian Rebels

Russia’s parliament has backed a motion urging the president to recognise the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Both houses voted unanimously in favour of the non-binding motion, which analysts say could help President Dmitry Medvedev in talks with the West.

The US said any move to recognise independence of the two regions would be contrary to international law.

Responding to the parliamentary vote, the US state department said recognition of the two provinces’ independence would be “a violation of Georgian territorial integrity” and “inconsistent with international law”.

President George W Bush said he was deeply concerned, adding: “I call on Russia’s leadership to meet its commitments and not recognise these separatist regions.”

In an interview in his office that stretched until nearly 2 a.m., Mr. Saakashvili said that Georgia had gained allies in the world and would embark upon a campaign of rebuilding.

He predicted continued American support and said that he spoke by phone with the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, as often as twice a day, and that he was in regular contact with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been picked to run for vice president on the Democratic ticket.

He also said that the Bush administration had not communicated disappointment or signaled a decline in its support for him since he gave the order on Aug. 7 to attack Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

And now Cindy McCain has been dispatched by the McCain campaign to Georgia for the media coverage….that is wrong…she is going on a humanitarian mission…wink…wink.