Above: October 6th, 1981. The last time all current & former presidents met at the White House.
Read a good account of this encounter here.
It’s happening again today with President Bush, the President-Elect, & the surviving presidents having a White House lunch.
Read more about that here.
& this reminds me of one of my favorite Presidential jokes:
Q: Which 4 U.S. presidents aren’t buried on U.S. soil?
“How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.
Washington Post crank columnist Richard Cohen, on the topic of this post from yesterday:
“It is awfully late in the day for Rove — and, presumably, Bush — to assert the president’s intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol’ boy persona and picking up the ol’ bifocals one. But the books themselves reveal — actually, confirm — something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks — and sees — vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.
Francis Bacon:
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, & some few to be chewed & digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts;; others to be read but not curiously; & some few to be read wholly, & with diligence & attention.”
“Read not to contradict & confute, nor to believe & take for granted, nor to find talk & discourse, but to weigh & consider.”
(both from “Of Studies,” 1625)
“It all started on New Year’s Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year’s resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who’d gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, “I’m on my second. Where are you?” Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.
West-Tennessee based Right at Home sees the light on the failed Bush presidency, in the wake of his last week’s rescue of the auto industry, & I thought this remark was interesting:
“In the process, he’s not only damaging our country, our financial systems, and capitalism, he’s continuing to damage conservatism (as I’ve discussed in a previous post) and future prospects for conservatives. A whole new generation believes that George W. Bush = the Republican Party = Conservatism. On the basis of that belief, as they reject GW and his failed policies, they reject the Republican Party and conservatives… and once something like that happens, it is incredibly hard to undo. Take that from one who came of age in the early 80’s and believed that Jimmy Carter = Democratic Party = Liberalism, and thus became a lifelong Reagan conservative.”
What do you think? Is Bush as toxic to the conservative brand as Carter was to liberalism? Or, are you like me, & believe the damage Bush did to his party is far greater than what Carter did to his?
Post a comment!
Note this quote in the above exchange from Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl:
KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.
That’s not true, according to last week’s bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on the topic:
[above: Iraqi detainees suffering at the hands of the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib.]
Do these pictures upset you?
I hope so.
& even more upsetting than that is this bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on detainee abuse & how it became national policy.
It wasn’t just ‘a few bad apples,’ as was reported at the time.
No, the responsibility lays squarely at the feet of this man:
Well, sheesh.
I think we can all agree this is quite disturbing.
Especially when you note the time it takes between the throwing incident & the Secret-Service takedown.
This represents a gesture of contempt in Iraq.
Read more about this incident, which has become the talk of the country, here.
There’s no denying the man above had a failed presidency.
& while a case could be made that the blame rests upon his party’s principles, such an argument will likely cause Bush’s supporters to close their ears to a fatal flaw I’m highlighting below.
Part of the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate which qualities President Bush didn’t live up to, so we never make the same mistake again.
& I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many areas where party didn’t figure into it one bit.
Newsweeks’ Jacob Weisberg presents Exhibit A, Bush’s ‘loyalty’ problem:
“In a sense, Bush’s inactivity is even less excusable than Hoover’s. Unlike Hoover, Bush could learn from the successes of New Deal and World War II-era programs to revive the economy. Keynes’s general theory of how to defeat depressions wasn’t around when Hoover was president, but it’s been with us now for 72 years. What’s more, virtually every reputable conservative economist, from Martin Feldstein on down, now supports a government stimulus program. But Bush, drawing on no known body of economic thought, remains opposed. (So does Republican House leader John Boehner, who seems determined to elevate stupidity to a party principle.) And with each passing day, the economic hole out of which we will have to climb grows deeper.”
[above: Snow Geese & Blue Geese, October, 1973. photo by my father]
Who said that?
Recommended: Play them both at the same time: begin the bottom clip 1st, & then play the top clip at about 30 seconds in.
(above: the Pardon of Robert E. Lee, illustration from Harper’s Weekly)
To date President Bush has pardoned 14 individuals & commuted 2 prison sentences.
Read more of who those people are (including a man from Rossville, Georgia) after the jump.
Well, this is interesting - check out the surprisingly anti-Bush e-mail we just got from Senator Bob Corker’s office reacting to this morning’s unveiling of Obama’s economic team:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush says there could be more decisions like the government’s dramatic rescue of Citigroup if other institutions need help.
Bush also says he consulted with President-elect Barack Obama on the Citigroup rescue. Bush says “There is close cooperation” between his administration and the Obama camp.
Referring to the Citigroup rescue, Bush said “We have made these kind of decisions in the past. We made one last night and if need be we will make these kind of decisions to safeguard our financial system in the future.”
He spoke outside the Treasury Department after consulting with Secretary Henry Paulson.
Read more about the Citigroup bailout here.
“The economic crisis presents a huge opportunity for Obama, and it’s going to be difficult for Republicans to oppose his initiatives, especially if they are aimed at bandaging our collective economic wounds. That will probably be the reality even if Obama governs with Democrats only. But if he taps some of the most well-known Republicans in America to serve in his administration, it will be tougher for conservative Republicans who are opposed in principle to Obama’s agenda. Even the Republicans are Democrats these days, is what the impression would be. In other words, liberal consensus.
The catch here is, Read the rest of this entry »
Above: a map from RealClearPolitics.com’s Jay Cost, measuring the degree of polarization between the parties going back to the 1976 election.
Cost is using the term ‘polarization’ to measure the depth of support for one side’s candidate or the other.
Interesting to note: Tennessee didn’t become a ‘polarized state’ until earlier this month, & Georgia hasn’t been a ‘polarized state’ since hometown boy Jimmy Carter won 32 years ago.
Also, take note: Utah is the only state with ‘polarized’ status every single election.
Cost’s advice for the president-elect, based on these numbers:
“History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much."
"Conservatives rightly think, or once did, that much, indeed most, government spreading of wealth is economically destructive and morally dubious — destructive because, by directing capital to suboptimum uses, it slows wealth creation; morally dubious because the wealth being spread belongs to those who created it, not government. But if conservatives call all such spreading by government "socialism," that becomes a classification that no longer classifies: It includes almost everything, including the refundable tax credit on which McCain’s health-care plan depended.
Above: the Cheneys welcome the Bidens to their new home.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when the cameras turned off.
Read a (not-very-enlightening) statement from the White House on the visit here.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, have arrived at the White House for a visit, their first since Obama’s landslide election victory.
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush were at the South Portico of the White House to greet the Obamas on a sunny fall day with moderate temperatures and colorful - but fading - autumn leaves.
Just a couple moments later, Bush and Obama were seen walking along the White House collonade to the Oval Office.
The Obamas’ arrival had the look of a foreign head-of-state state visit - although there were no fife and drum bands, speeches or official pageantry. The Obamas were driven up to the South Portico, where they were welcomed by the Bushes and escorted into the Executive Mansion that they’ll call home in a little more than two months.
EXTRA VIEWING: Watch Jackie Kennedy give a televised tour of the White House here.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Obama and President Bush have completed their private meeting at the White House.
Neither the incoming nor the current president spoke to reporters at Obama’s arrival or departure Monday afternoon.
Obama is leaving the mansion in their motorcade after he and his wife, Michelle, offered a symbolic glimpse of the new first family and administration that take office in January. Bush walked Obama to his limousine as he left.
The Obamas spent just under two hours at the White House.
Bush and Obama held their first-ever face-to-face session in the Oval Office. It was Obama’s first visit to the Oval Office. First lady Laura Bush and Michelle Obama held their own meeting in the White House residence.
Bush 2004 would’ve won
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“I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.”
-Sarah Palin, to the Anchorage Daily News
That’s her take. I’m more in the school of these essential reads:
More on that later.
This is not the 1st time the two men have met.
Read Obama’s account of that 1st meeting from ‘the Audacity of Hope’ here.
(above: McCain as a baby)
“I would prefer that Congress stay in session to develop a thoughtful and measured response to our fiscal crisis, but we have been watching the credit markets closely, and unfortunately, it appears the markets are responding to an artificial line in the sand drawn by Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke and are anticipating that we do something by this weekend. I believe the best, most prudent course is for Congress, at a minimum, to work through the weekend to get this right and we could still be done before the markets open on Monday.”
Those of you who are quick to point out that the approval rating of Congress is half of that of President Bush, consider this:
These people - admirably this week, in my opinion - are the only ones who stand in the way of having an untenable, unworkable, unprecedented bill being rammed down our throats.
Credit is due for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Senator Corker.
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From the Washington Post:
“The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.” “Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama’s to lose. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, expressed pride at what her former colleagues have been able to accomplish… Yet others, including some sympathetic Republicans, have begun to quietly question whether McCain and Palin are well served by strategists so firmly anchored in the Bush establishment when the candidates are presenting themselves as a ‘team of mavericks’ and agents of change. One Republican with long-standing ties to the Bush administration described the situation as a paradox in which Palin is especially vulnerable.”
The danger for McCain here is the creation of a blind spot; he’s got to establish daylight between him & President Bush. Having “loyal Bushies” on board getting his message out does not help.
The cartoon “Tom the Dancing Bug” also has a point to make on that score:
But wait, what about former Kerry & Gore staffers on Obama’s campaign? MSNBC’s First Read blog has the answer.
What do you think?
[PS: This is the Vote08 blog's 700th post! I'm hoping to have my 1000th be the one announcing the winner. Wish me luck.]
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Last two major investment banks get change OK
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Reserve has stepped in again to help Wall Street.
The Fed’s board has voted unanimously to give the last two major investment banks a status change that will let them get into the commercial banking business. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will become bank holding companies.
There were concerns about their ability to survive following last week’s collapse of Lehman Brothers and the forced sale of Merrill Lynch.
Goldman and Morgan Stanley will be able to set up banking subsidiaries to take deposits and also get access to the Fed’s emergency loan program. They’ll also be able to get short-term loans from the New York Federal Reserve Bank during a transition.
The change also means the two investment houses will fall under the direct regulation of the Fed, not the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Administration seeks quick action on rescue plan
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is pushing Congress for speedy passage of a financial industry bailout.
The plan would give the Treasury broad authority to buy up to 700 billion dollars in bad debt — a massive intervention the president hopes lawmakers can approve this week.
Democrats also see the need to move quickly but say the deal should include more protections for homeowners and taxpayers and if it takes a few extra days to negotiate, so be it.
They also want more oversight of which bad loans get bought up, and limits on executive payouts.
The president heads to New York today for the annual U.N. General Assembly session, but aides say he’ll be getting regular updates on the financial rescue between meetings with world leaders.
Asian rally continues
HONG KONG (AP) - The rally on overseas stock markets has continued today, a positive reaction to the 700-billion-dollar U.S. plan to shore up the financial system.
Congress is working on a Bush administration proposal to wipe out the financial industry’s credit crisis by buying up bad mortgage debt.
Japan’s Nikkei index finished the day 1.4 percent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 1.2 percent
The benchmarks in Australia and Taiwan also advanced strongly. And in China, the Shanghai Composite Index soared nearly eight percent. Investors were buoyed by Beijing’s efforts to stabilize China’s market.
Even so, stock index futures in the U.S. are down, suggesting Wall Street may open lower this morning.
Is this a time for partisanship? Let’s hope it can be held to a minimum.
But this is a time for anger. You have a right to be mad. This is your money!
There is lots of blame to go around.
As a voter for president in 2008, your duty is to do your homework to find out who got us in the current financial mess, & why, & vote accordingly.
You also have a right to demand that both the government & financial institutions be more transparent & accountable.
Part of the problem with these financial institutions right now is that no one knows exactly how much money is owed, & to whom.
We will be stuck in this mess for as long as it takes for that entanglement to sort itself out.
What do you think?
From Saturday’s New York Times:
“…while economists and other experts say there are plenty of culprits — Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Federal Reserve, an overzealous home-lending industry, banks and also Mr. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton - they do agree that the Bush administration bears part of the blame.
These experts, from both political parties, say Mr. Bush’s early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate, that, if it did not set off the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it.”
&:
“To his credit, Mr. Bush accurately foresaw the danger posed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and began calling as early as 2002 for greater regulation.’”
but:
“…experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market, and much more to police Wall Street, which transmitted those problems around the world.
Today, even some sympathetic to Mr. Bush say he cannot disentangle himself from a home-lending industry that ran amok or a banking industry that mortgaged its future on toxic loans.
“The crisis definitely happened on their watch,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard who advises Mr. McCain. “This is eight years into the Bush administration. There was a lot of time to deal with it.””
[Disclaimer: the views expressed in this post are completely my own & do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone else at WTVC NewsChannel9 or Freedom Communications]
Vice President Dick Cheney is visiting the Chattanooga area Friday; he will be present at the commemoration of the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga.
So please join me in welcoming America’s worst-ever Vice President.
I believe he is a man who, while in office, has done far more damage to the United States than any terrorist ever has or will in the future.
Sarah Palin didn’t know what it was.
The media defended her, saying “much of the country doesn’t know what it is:”
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.If you’re scratching your head, wondering what it is, you should educate yourself rather quickly. Among many extremely important issues to decide in this election, this is one near the top of the list.
From the Washington Post:
FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 — Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”
The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.
At least she can still find common ground with the current Vice President.
This claim is false. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
We’d like to urge the Governor of Alaska to do a little reading on the matter.
