But it does need to be said: he was a terrible president, arguably the worst ever, and not just for the reasons many others are pointing out.
From what I’ve read, most of the pushback against revisionism focuses on just how bad Bush’s policies were, from the disaster in Iraq to the way he destroyed FEMA, from the way he squandered a budget surplus to the way he drove up Medicare’s costs. And all of that is fair.
But I think there was something even bigger, in some ways, than his policy failures: Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover.
Alan Watts - Living in the present (boat analogy) (by joeybenn)
For What It’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield (by woodenships82)
Bob Dylan - Only A Pawn In Their Game (by rgdoub)
Where Did the Debt Come From? (by seeprogress)
!!!!
Democalypse 2012 - Vague Against the Machine - The Numbers Guy
Self-proclaimed “numbers guy” Paul Ryan doesn’t elaborate on his revenue-neutral budget plan, and FDR issues a timely warning.
Why Obama Now - An animated short about the big choice in 2012’s presidential election
- by Simpsons / Family Guy animator Lucas Gray
- also available at http://whyobamanow.org/ (by WhyObamaNow)
“By Autumn of 1967, the “police action” in Vietnam had escalated. The United States of America waged War – that hideous manifestation of the human race’s worst instincts – against the small, distant, sovereign land. 485,600 American troops were then stationed in Nam; 9,353 would die in ’67 alone. We were there under false pretenses (the “attack’ at the Gulf of Tonkin that never happened), operating under a paranoid doctrine (the Domino Theory, fretting that Vietnamese Communists fighting a civil war in their own country with popular support would envelop all of Southeast Asia and end up invading Dubuque, Iowa). Seven million tons of bombs would eventually be dropped, as opposed to two million during World War II. Indiscriminate use of gruesome weaponry was deployed, most infamously napalm, a jelly that sticks to—and burns through—human skin. Saturation bombings, free-fire zones, massive defoliation with the carcinogen Agent Orange. “Destroying the village to save it,” as one American military man put it.
For a generation that remembered the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals after WW II, something had to be done. Genocidal fugitive Adolf Eichmann’s “I was just following orders” excuse would not fly. The draft was sending eighteen-year-olds off to die. A domestic anti-war movement emerged, as had a counterculture of hairy young people who rejected the militarism, greed, sexual repression, and stunted consciousness of their parents and leaders to pursue Joy and Sharing as well as Dope, Rock and Roll, and Fucking in the Streets. Pundits spoke of The Generation Gap. A quaking chasm had split the nation.”
Many of the Bush administration’s advisers who ignored the warnings, who pushed for the focus on Iraq, are now advisers on Mitt Romney’s team. As Eichenwald demonstrates, their casual references to the threat from the “Soviet Union” is the least of the reasons they should never ever be allowed near the levers of power in the future.
Dead Can Dance - How Fortunate the Man with None (by RockandRollRevised)
Eyes on the Prize - Episode 01 - Awakenings 1954-1956 (by juniebb02)
