JEB BUSH'S BROTHERLY LOVE

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED JEB BUSH STYLE

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart slammed Jeb Bush for his flip-flopping answers on the Iraq war, and for the way he's run his "unofficial" presidential campaign, so he can coordinate with his PAC.


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There is no quantity of soap and water which can cleanse the stain of his brother's grotesque foreign policy fuck-ups. Bush 43's legacy of bloody preemptive war and supply side debt-based economic chicanery shall resonate for decades, even centuries, assuming there's a USA in which it can resonate. And it shall never be forgotten that it was Jeb himself who aided the installation of his moronic brother into the White House. Hanging Chad reference.

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Roger West

BABY BUSH PROVES HIMSELF UNFIT FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly to air Monday night, Jeb Bush says that he would have authorized the 2003 Iraq War.

Kelly asks Bush, “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?”

Bush effectively dodges that question but says that “confronted with the intelligence that [the George W. Bush administration] got” in 2003, he would have authorized the invasion. He argues that the intelligence provided to his brother’s administration left them with no choice but to invade.



The Iraq War, however, was not dictated by intelligence. Rather the administration cherry-picked, manipulated and ignored intelligence to support their predetermined outcome.

This is the view of the CIA official who oversaw Middle East intelligence during that time, Paul Pillar. In 2006, Pillar published an article in Foreign Affairs, writing:

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made… and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments.

Pillar concluded that “Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war.”

A bipartisan, if contentious, report of the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the George W. Bush administration “repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.” The report documented numerous statements made by the Bush administration to justify the war that were not supported by intelligence.

Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence under George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, found the administration “set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers” the intelligence community was giving them. Inside the Pentagon, an effort was led by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith to “reinterpret information” provided to them by intelligence. It was Feith’s group that produced and promoted “false links between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

Bush, however, is unmoved. “if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, Iraq might not be one of those,” he said.

We theses statements this Bush has declared himself to be unfit for the office of President.

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Roger West

DON'T BEE - DO BEE

Bill Maher went after Republicans in his New Rule tonight for the “same empty tough guy talk from chickenhawks” that was going on in the lead-up to the Iraq War, indicating to him they’ve learned nothing.

Maher borrowed from a Romper Room bit contrast “Do Bee” Barack Obama with “Don’t Bee” George W. Bush. He said Obama’s basically done all the right things, whereas Bush was a “huge fuck-up.”

And what troubled Maher was that just like back then, the U.S. is being “baited” by ISIS into another “unnecessary war” and the Republicans falling for it all over again.


VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

INFOTAINMENT CONFUSION SYNDROME

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart weighed in on the Brian Williams debacle and his tales about taking fire in Iraq and whether or not he was suffering from a case of "infotainment confusion syndrome" where the “celebrity cortex” gets its wires crossed with the "medulla-anchor-dala."

After having a bit more fun with Williams and showing the media frenzy over the scandal, Stewart told the audience that this might seem a bit overblown, but he was actually happy.

Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War! Finally! Now, it might not necessarily be the first person you'd want held accountable on that list, but never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot at in a war we probably wouldn't have ended up in if the media had applied this level of certainty to the actual fucking war.

After verbally bitch slapping the whiners opining over whether the media has a "credibility problem" following the ruckus with Williams, Stewart reminded his audience of the batch of lies we were fed leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and wondered if the incident with Williams would cause any reflection on their part. I think we all already know what the answer to that question is.

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Blogger-In Chief

Roger West

GEORGE W. BUSH, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

In a recently released poll, Americans by an almost 2 to 1 margin blame the current turmoil in Iraq more on former president George W. Bush than the White House’s current occupant, though giving Obama low marks for his handling of the crisis.

In the survey, conducted between June 24 -30, Quinnipiac University contacted 1,446 registered voters and asked them point blank: “Who do you blame more for the situation in Iraq, President Obama or former President George W. Bush?” Of those polled, 51 percent said the blame rested with the 43rd president, while only 27 percent said Obama is more at fault. In military households, a plurality — 44 percent — still said that Bush is more at fault. Voters also by a sizable margin — 58 to 37 percent — believe that going to war with Iraq in 2003 in the first place was a bad idea.

The result of these questions, however, was highly partisan in nature. On the first question, 54 percent of Republicans inquired preferred to say Obama’s policies are behind the current situation; only five percent of Democrats said the same. And on launching the war in the first place, 56 percent of GOP members surveyed still approve of the war, while 80 percent of Democrats remain opposed.

Despite protestations from conservatives, Americans also back Obama’s decision to withdraw all troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. 58 percent of respondents agree that pulling troops was the right thing, compared to 37 percent who think it was a mistake. Again, the survey breaks down along partisan lines, with a full 90 percent of Democrats supporting the decision, compared to 62 percent of Republicans who believe it was a mistake. Compared to a similar question in late 2011, Quinnipiac found that slightly fewer Americans support the pull out, showing a 16 point drop over the years.

A slight plurality also disagree with the notion that the U.S. should carry out airstrikes in Iraq, an option that remains on the table as the Obama administration determines how best to aid Iraq in pushing back militants allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). When asked if the U.S. should use piloted aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft or cruise missiles, or both, just two percent advocated strikes using just fighter jets, while 20 percent were in favor of solely using drone strikes and missile launches. A full 39 percent said that neither option should be used, slightly edging out the 30 percent who called for both.

The survey also came to a similar conclusion as a previous Public Policy Polling (PPP) poll on the prospect of placing troops on the ground in Iraq. In PPP’s findings, 74 percent of Americans were opposed to the idea of sending in ground troops to help fight against ISIS. Several weeks later, Quinnipiac’s survey says that 63 percent of voters — including 56 percent of Republicans — are against the idea of ground combat troops to help defeat the Islamic militants.

And while Republican hawks like Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain continue to draw comparisons between the Iraq withdrawal and the pending pullout of combat troops in Afghanistan, Americans want Obama to stay the course on ending the longest war in American history. Forty-six percent of Americans, the survey finds, think that based on what they've heard the troop withdrawal rate from Afghanistan is “about right.”

While some of these numbers will be comforting for the White House, the poll isn’t all good news. When asked if they approve or disapprove of the way that Obama is handling the current Iraq crisis, a full 55 percent thought the effort was being mismanaged. Likewise, voters believe that Obama’s foreign policy-making skills are either on par or worse than those of Bush: 25 percent believe the former, while 39 percent believe the latter.


Meanwhile in Iraq, while the Iraqi military has made some gains against ISIS, the political crisis that has been running parallel to the takeover of several cities and towns continues. Iraq’s parliament, which was meant to form a new government after its most recent elections last week, has opted instead to adjourn until August. In the meantime, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s caretaker government is still in place, despite increasing calls for the Shiite leader to step down from his role to help facilitate reconciliation with Iraq’s Sunni population. (HT: TPM)

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Roger West

GEORGIA TEA BAGGER SAYS WATERBOARDING IS NOT TORTURE

Much like the dipshit Sean Hannity , the tea bagger from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss told Norah O'Donnell that waterboarding is not torture.



For all those "special" conservatives who claim the same, please come to my humble abode so that I may not torture you....then you can truly tell the country first hand whether it is or isn't, but something tells me your scrotum ain't that big!

Sean, Saxby, please email me, I'll be waiting to hear from you when you're ready!

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service lost two years of Lois Lerner's emails has Republicans and their right-wing echo chamber dredging up Watergate comparisons. Peggy Noonan, James Poulos and Paul Mirengoff are just some of the conservatives "paging Rosemary Woods" and gleefully making comparisons to Richard Nixon's 18 minutes of erased tape.

But the GOP's flying monkeys hoping to put the former IRS official at the center of a massive Obama administration plot to target right-wing "social welfare" organizations need not go back in time to 1973 to decry the lost data. After all, in 2008 current House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa explained how the Bush White House conveniently lost 22 million emails during the Plamegate investigation that led to the conviction of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby.

As you'll recall, millions of Bush White House emails conveniently went missing between 2003 and 2005, including those in the critical days during which the administration formulated its response to Ambassador Joe Wilson and his covert CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame. In July 2007, Darrell Issa accused Plame of perjury. Then, in February 2008, Issa turned IT expert and brushed off the email imbroglio as merely a software problem. As Mother Jones reported that March:

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last month on the preservation of White House records, an indignant Rep. Darrell Issa, a frequent critic of Chairman Henry Waxman's investigations, did his best to play down the extent of the Bush administration's now well-documented email archiving problems. Defending the White House's decision to switch from the Lotus Notes-based archiving system used by the Clinton administration, Issa compared the software to "using wooden wagon wheels" and Sony Betamax tapes. To observers of the missing emails controversy, Issa's comments seemed little more than an attempt to deflect blame from the White House for replacing a working system for archiving presidential records with an ad hoc substitute. But to IT professionals who use Lotus at their companies, Issa's remarks seemed controversial, if not downright slanderous. Now, according to an executive at IBM, the software's manufacturer, the California congressman has apologized for his characterization of Lotus and offered to correct the congressional record.

Complicating matters, some 50 Bush White House staffers had used email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee to sidestep federal laws regarding the preservation of digital records. But as CNET reported at the time, Congressman Issa wasn't concerned about potential crimes, but only the cost of investigating them:

"Are we simply going on a fishing expedition at $40,000 to $50,000 a month?" Rep. Darrell Issa asked National Archives and White House officials at the hearing. "Do any of you know of a single document, because this committee doesn't, that should've been in the archives but in fact was done at the RNC?"

Thanks to a now-settled lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW], Americans learned in 2009 that "the Bush White House, which initially denied that any e-mails had gone missing, announced in January it had located more than 22 million messages that had been mislabeled after a search by computer technicians, according to court records filed by the government on the day after Bush left office."

Alas, that was then and this is now. And now a Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office. And with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testimony before two House committees regarding what even Democrats like Sandy Levin agree constitute "gross mismanagement" by IRS information technology personnel, Chairman Issa is singing a different tune. With his probe having already cost the IRS a quarter of a million man hours and some $10 million, Issa has done a 180 degree turn from his days pretending to be the Bush administration's IT expert. As he wrote to Koskinen this week:

"I will not tolerate your continued obstruction and game-playing."

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Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

George W Bush Would Have Made Same Deal To Free Sgt. Bergdahl

Ex-Bush administration official John Bellinger told Fox News that "we don't leave soldiers behind" and defended Obama's decision to make the trade. “I think we would have made the same decision in the Bush administration.”

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CHASING WINDMILLS

LINDSEY GRAHAM, BENGHAZI YOU SAY?

On Monday we wrote about Lindsey Graham wanting to hold presidential nominees hostage - until he vetted the Benghazi issue just one more time. And now the rest of the story:

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday made clear that President Obama’s nominees to become the Chair of the Federal Reserve and Secretary of Homeland Security would be his latest hostages in his ongoing quest to unearth the “truth” about Benghazi.

Since the attack last year that ended in the death of four American citizens in Benghazi, Libya, Graham has been a stalwart crusader on the hunt to expose the supposed White House cover-up that he knows exists. On Monday, he indicated that a new push would be coming, warning on Fox News, “I’m going to block every appointment in the United States Senate until the survivors are being made available to the Congress.”

Graham followed through on Wednesday, announcing at a news conference that he would be placing a hold on Janet Yellen’s nomination to become the new Federal Reserve Chair and Jeh Johnson’s to replace Janet Napolitano at DHS. “That is the only leverage we have,” he told the assembled reporters. Yellen’s nomination is also being threatened by Sen. Rand Paul over different demands.

“Before you can close the books on Benghazi, I think Congress needs to look over the administration’s shoulder,” Graham told CNN on Thursday, “it’s called oversight.” Graham insisted that he’s “not asking for too much” in holding up the nominations. “Is it really too much for me to want to talk to the people who were in Benghazi independent of the administration?” he asked rhetorically, refusing to answer critiques asking if his Tea Party challengers had anything to do with the singular focus on the issue.

The facts are: As Media Matters points out, the crux of Graham’s demands have already been met. Two “key witnesses in last year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, were summoned to Capitol Hill this month and grilled for hours in separate legal depositions,” the Los Angeles Times reported just days ago. The Department of Justice, however, has urged House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa to keep the interviews under wraps to prevent them from corrupting ongoing prosecution efforts.

This is not a new modus operandi for Graham, as he has opted to use these same tactic in the past, and like most hostage taking scenarios, the results have not always come out in Dear Lindsey's favor. When he got his wish to have the names revealed of who deleted references to al Qaeda from then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points in the days after the attack, the released emails showed clearly that the CIA itself was the one who did so, not the White House, thus debunking the right-wing myth that the changes were political. Likewise, when Graham demanded that then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta took the opportunity to chide the SASC’s Republicans for treating the military like a 911 service and debunk many of the rumors about available military assistance at the time of the attack.

Remember when readers, remember when 13 Benghazi's occurred on George W. Bush's watch without a peep from Lindsey Graham or the GOP? For the record, here are Bush's 13 Benghazi's:

January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.

June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al Qaeda attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.

October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of "Bali Bombings." No fatalities.

February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.

May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.

July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.

December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.

March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name "David Foy." This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what's considered American soil.)

September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar" storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.

January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.

March 18, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.

July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.

September 17, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.

Even if Lindsey and his band of banshees never arrive at their goal, they have in their possession a cudgel formed of horseshit - a means of flogging the dead horse yet again.

Very seldom do these teahadists discuss the truth or history- not to mention dubiously sourced chunks of "truth" proffered by radio and cable news conspiracy theorists who, if nothing else, are masters at telling angry tea baggers precisely what they want to hear: that this Muslim Koran thumping president is the main source of failure for the Benghazi incident. And so they'll keep repeating "Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate!" without any regard for history or reality. All to well we have come to know nothing else from the American Taliban - which is to forget all history prior to 2009. When in doubt, at all costs, invoke "Bushensia"!

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

REMEMBER WHEN......

BUSH'S BITTER PILL WAS TOUGH TO SWALLOW

........Millions of Americans tried to enroll in health care benefits during the first days of a new government health care program. They were to rely on indispensable government website that had been touted and “pitched as a high-tech way” to sort through available coverage options. They’re encountering countless glitches and technical errors: the website freezes, displays incorrect plan information and sends insurers erroneous reports.

Administration officials — clearly caught off guard by the surge of technical difficulties — respond to “tens of thousands of complaints” from angry beneficiaries and promise to “fix every problem as quickly possible.”

Doesn't this sounds like the familiar story of the last few days of the Obama administration’s roll-out of the exchanges? But, actually, the above quotes, and the scenarios, are taken from the Bush administration’s efforts to implement the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2005 and 2006.

Not only was Bush’s roll-out “anything but smooth,” but administration officials had “some trouble getting the [online] tool up and running” and had to delay its debut for weeks. What’s more, computer glitches caused low-income beneficiaries to go without needed medications and sent pharmacies the wrong drug information. Before it was all resolved, Dr. Mark McClellan, Bush’s head of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), appeared at hearings before the House Committee On Energy And Commerce, laying out the flaws in the law’s implementation and detailing how the administration would address them.

As the House Energy and Commerce Committee holds its first hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act this morning, it’s worth noting that some of the very same Teahadists who are lashing out against Obamacare - arguing that the botched roll-out is proof that the government cannot implement effectively and should repeal the law entirely - gave the Bush administration a free get out trouble pass and urged Americans not to pre-judge such a complicated process. At least four of these Teahadists are still on the committee had argued that early implementation hurdles should not taint the entirety of reform:

REP. JOE BARTON (R-TX): “This is a huge undertaking and there are going to be glitches. My goal is the same as yours: Get rid of the glitches. The committee will work closely with yourself and Dr. Mark McClellan at CMS to get problems noticed and solved.” [Barton Statement via Archive.org, 2/15/2006] 

REP. TIM MURPHY (R-PA): “Any time something is new, there is going to be some glitches. All of us, when our children were new, well, we knew as parents we didn’t exactly know everything we were doing and we had a foul-up or two, but we persevered and our children turned out well. No matter what one does in life, when it is something new in learning the ropes of it, it is going to take a little adjustment.” [Murphy Floor Speech via Congressional Record, 4/6/2006] 

REP. MICHAEL BURGESS (R-TX): “We can’t undo the past, but certainly they can make the argument that we are having this hearing a month late and perhaps we are, but the reality is the prescription drug benefit is 40 years late and seniors who signed up for Medicare those first days back in 1965 when they were 65 years of age are now 106 years of age waiting for that prescription drug benefit, so I hope it doesn't take us that long to get this right and I don’t believe that it will. And I do believe that fundamentally it is a good plan.” [“Medicare Part D: Implementation of the New Drug Benefit,” 3/1/2006] 

REP. PHIL GINGREY (R-GA): “I delivered 5,200 babies, but this may be the best delivery that I have ever been a part of, Mr. Speaker, and that is delivering, as I say, on a promise made by former Congresses and other Presidents over the 45-year history of the Medicare program, which was introduced in 1965 with no prescription drug benefit. And what we have done here is add part D, the ‘D’ for ‘drug’ or, if you want, the ‘delivery’ that we have finally provided to our American seniors.” [Gingrey Floor Speech via Congressional Record, 4/6/06]

Ultimately, the Bush administration fixed the law’s technical glitches, but more than half of the beneficiaries who ended up signing up for insurance didn’t do so until after the first of the year. Significantly, they signed up for coverage despite the Bush administration’s well-publicized initial glitches in extending coverage to low-income beneficiaries. Whereas only 21 percent of seniors had a favorable impression of the law and 66 percent didn't know what was in it in April of 2005, by November of 2006, “half of the seniors polled said the program was working well or that just minor changes were needed.”


Often is the case - that RWNJ's fail to recognize that American history existed prior to 2009.

The party who; wanted to stop the ACA in its tracks, lie about it, derail it, and defund it, are now frothing at the mouth and outraged at the ACA computer issues . Please make up my mind teabaggers, are you for it or against it?

I am reminded of the old adage in politics that says, "it is easier to throw a hand grenade than catch one". The ever so sad corollary says, "you can raise more money by throwing mud than fixing problems".

Right wing shill heads will implode, how dare anybody bash the "Welfare for Big Pharma Act," and compare it to the ACA? Its always acceptable if a "conservative" fucks up, but it's either a felony or a firing if someone else did.

It never ceases to amaze this blogger, the hypocrisy of the Right Wing Nut Job.

RELATED:

Despite bungling Bush's Medicare drug rollout, GOP still attacks Obamacare 'navigators'

How Democrats Saved Bush's Medicare Drug Program

Drug Addled

Bush Defends Medicare Drug Plan

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

YOU AGAIN?

In the last few minutes of her MSNBC show Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow took a look at some of the architects of the Iraq War who have been coming out of the woodwork over the last few weeks to weigh in on the Syria debate. Maddow had a strong message for people like Donald Rumsfeld, who have questioned President Obama’s decision: “Your opinion is no longer required.”

Maddow argued that the reason President Obama is having such a hard time convincing Americans that we should intervene in Syria because Bashar al-Assad has used WMD’s is “because of of the way the other guys broke that argument by misusing it, by lying when they made it.” And now, “the Bush Administration is staging a real time reunion” to weigh in on Syria.

The host proceeded to show how nobody is asking former FEMA chief Michael Brown for hurricane advice or Lance Armstrong to give his opinion on steroid use in sports. “You would not seek their advice, their counsel, their wisdom on the thing that ended their careers,” Maddow said.

She concluded her show with this plea:

“If you’re an architect or a conspirator or one of the primary actors in the Iraq War–in arguably the grandest and most craven foreign policy disaster in American history–your opinion is no longer required on matters of war and peace. Please enjoy painting portraits of dogs or something. Painting portraits of yourself in the bathroom, trying to get clean. Please enjoy the loving comfort of your family and loved ones, and your god. But we as a country never ever need to hear from you about war, ever again. You can go now.”

YOU AGAIN

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ONE MAN'S HUBRIS

READ THIS BOOK OR WATCH THE MADDOW DOCUMENTARY

Hubris: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/, also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic".


Bill Maher last night attacked former President George W Bus over Bush’s third annual Wounded Warrior 100K with veterans of the Iraq War.


How disgusting is it, that a man that lied his ass off to get the Untied States into the Iraqi war, now has the testicle fortitude to ride bikes with the very  lives he put in harms way. Very Aleistar Crowley like!

I have made no bones about my views regarding Dick "Dick" Cheney, and his [compadre- in-arms] sideshow sidekick, and fellow war criminal, George W. Bush.

This bike ride, this would be like Ariel Castro [Cleveland Kidnapper] hosting a barbeque summer party for the victims and their families!


MAHER ON THE BIKE RIDE




Quotes from the clip I found worth noting:

“I found this to be nauseating,” Maher said. “First he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off, then he has them over for a barbecue".

 “I think it’s sort of sadistic when something like that happens,” actress Brit Marling said. “The idea that these amputees—the technology that’s allowing them to do this is somehow something to celebrate? People shouldn't be over there losing limbs in the first place.”

“Well, wait a minute, these guys are certainly celebrating their prosthetic limbs,” said James Poulos, a HuffPost Live producer. “W said ‘I don’t pity these guys, because they don’t pity themselves.’ That doesn't transcend the fact that the Iraq War was a colossal shit show, but it does transcend the fact that there’s kind of this uncomfortable irony between Bush’s relationship and these guys. They’re all out there biking together, and that’s okay.”

 “I never know what side you’re on,” Maher told Poulos. “Are you with us or against us?”

“What was really jarring about that interview was the fact that President Bush needed to tell himself that he really tried diplomacy,” said Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress. “It’s sort of a weird thing that he has to look back and make up things that he did.”

 “Certainly doesn’t sound like the George Bush I remember,” Maher said.

Listening to the American Taliban defend Bush's concocted WMD Iraqi war, is like Germans still trying to defend the Holocaust. Vets biking with the guy who cooked up intelligence to send them to war - well it sends a clear message to how truly f*cked up this man is.

Let's keep an on eye on the ball here readers, thousands of American soldiers and Iraqis are dead because of this one man's hubris. Speaking for myself only- I certainly sleep much better at night knowing that Bush is no longer in office haunted by visions of Gog and Magog.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

IF YOU DON'T COUNT WHAT HE DID IN OFFICE, GEORGE W. BUSH WAS A GREAT PRESIDENT

G.W. BUSH GETS A LIBRARY?

The five living presidents will meet in Texas on Thursday to dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And while Bush and his aides are using the occasion to soften the 43 president’s image and solidify his legacy, a recounting of Bush-era policies — from his deregulation of Wall Street to the invasion of Iraq — greatly undermine the new rosy narrative of the Bush years:

Authorized the use of torture:

Though the US Code bans torture, Bush personally issued a memorandum six days after the September 11th attacks instructing the CIA that it could use “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists. The methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and “stress positions.” A recently-released bipartisan committee concluded it was “indisputable” that these techniques constituted torture, and that the highest authorities in the country bore responsibility for the creation of a torture programs at Guantanamo Bay and CIA “black sites” around the world.

Politicized climate science:

Bush’s “do-nothing” approach to climate change prevented the U.S. from pursuing meaningful action. Though he claimed that global warming was a serious problem that was either a natural phenomenon or caused by humans, the administration routinely edited scientific reports to downplay the threat of climate change, censored CDC testimony that climate change was a public health threat, and promoted climate denying studies financed by Exxon Mobil. At the end of the Bush presidency, a top intelligence adviser warned the incoming president that climate change was a massive destabilizing national security threat that would lead to “Dust Bowl” conditions in the Southwest.


MADDOW BUSH LIBRARY




Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq:

Rather than consolidating gains after the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush and his neoconservative allies pushed for removing Saddam Hussein from power, kicking off a war that led to one mistake after another. Ten years later, the war is estimated to have costt up to $6 trillion and resulted in the death of more than 100,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Americans and another 31,000 wounded. Meanwhile, Afghanistan saw a resurgence of the Taliban after Bush shifted resources to Iraq.


Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina:

Bush appointed Michael Brown — a man whose only real qualifications were political connections and a sting at the International Arabian Horse Association — to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003 and he preceded to undo everything the Clinton Administration had done to make FEMA functional, botching the response to 2004′s Hurricane Frances so badly as to prompt calls for his firing. But Bush kept Brown on board and, as a detailed timeline of the response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates, neither man took the storm seriously until it was too late. Bush, who famously said “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” midway through the crisis, thus presided over the most deaths due to a single natural disaster in the United States since 1900.


JON STEWART PART 1

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Defunded stem cell research:

At the turn of the century there was perhaps no greater hope for finding cures to illnesses ranging from Alzheimer’s to diabetes than ongoing stem cell research. But months after taking office, Bush eliminated all federal funding for any new research involving stem cells, citing a religious objection to the use of embryos — even though the embryos in question were byproducts from couples undergoing in vitro fertilization and would have been destroyed by IVF clinics regardless. Twice more during his presidency, Bush vetoed legislation that would have restored funding.


Required Muslim men to register with the government:

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, instituted an anti-terrorism program to register all male immigrants between 18 and 40 years old from 20 Arab and South Asian countries. Thousands of innocent men came forward to register, only to be rounded up for minor visa violations. Roughly 1,000 men and boys in the process of applying for permanent residence were arrested and confined in standing-room-only centers, enduring invasive strip searches and beatings by guards. Many were deported, while others were held for months after their immigration cases were resolved, without a shred of evidence they had any links to terrorism.


JON STEWART PART 2

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Reinstated the global gag rule:

On Bush’s first day in office he reinstated a rule that prevented any non-profit doing work overseas from using any of their own, private money to fund family planning services. This so-called “Global Gag Rule” posed a serious threat to international maternal health, but it also cut off funding for HIV/AIDS initiatives, child health programs, and water and sanitation efforts.

Supported anti-gay discrimination:

In 2004, President Bush endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), which would have banned same-sex couples from marrying in the U.S. Constitution. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of marriage equality, and Bush hoped to block the ruling from taking effect because “a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization.” Though the FMA failed numerous times in Congress during Bush’s tenure, he exploited the issue of same-sex marriage to turn out conservative voters for the 2004 election. That year, 11 states added constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.

Further deregulated Wall Street:

Under Bush, federal agencies eliminated regulations on predatory lending, capital requirements, and other Wall Street practices, allowing banks to engage in riskier and more destructive practices that contributed to the financial crisis that started on his watch. Bush’s Treasury Department also pushed for even further deregulation that would have given Wall Street more oversight over its own practices even after the housing collapse had begun.

Widened income inequality:

The per-person benefits of Bush’s tax cuts accrued to the top one percent of Americans, as the rate for capital gains dropped to 15 percent. The CBO found that federal income taxes dropped far more as a percentage of the one percent’s income than for any other group after 2000.

Undermined worker protections:

Under Bush, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, whose mission is to protect safe working conditions, issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations and pulled 22 items from its agenda of proposed safety and health rules. The office’s funding and staff were also consistently reduced. Meanwhile, funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency charged with helping workers who claim discrimination against their employers, was similarly low and staffing fell even as the number of complaints increased, leading to a rising backlog of cases.

Ideological court appointments:

Bush filled the federal bench with ideologues, including two lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. These conservatives believe that corporations should be able to buy and sell elections, ruled against equal pay for equal work, and have sought to undermine a woman’s right to choose.

Presided over a dysfunctional executive branch:

A 2008 analysis by the Center for Public Integrity documented more than 125 executive branch failures over Bush’s two terms. These included government breakdowns on “education, energy, the environment, justice and security, the military and veterans affairs, health care, transportation, financial management, consumer and worker safety,” and others. “I think we’ll look back on this period as one of the most destructive periods in American public life . . . both in terms of policy and process,” Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution observed, noting “genuine distortion in the constitutional system, an exaggerated sense of presidential power and prerogative and acquiescence by a Republican Congress in the face of the first unified Republican government since Dwight Eisenhower.”

Barbara Bush said yesterday that she thinks there have been enough Bush's in the White House, while I couldn't agree more, why didn't she say this 2000?



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR

This story is compelling, its mind boggling, and disgusting – one third of the pie [housing and banking other two pieces of the pie] – in the tanking of our country; by one G.W. Bush and his deviant underlings. So many plots thickened with this debacle, the outing of a CIA operative [Valerie Plame], the deaths of over 4 thousand soldiers, countless wounded, and a staggering monetary cost unmatched by none, tacked on to this beloved country.

The failings of this President are a plethora, which shall remain unmatched by any of his predecessors, and his followers. This buffoon did everything in his power to undermine the office of the President of the United States, all in one falling swoop, this Einstein lied at every corner and tried to pull the wool over this countries eyes.

“Hubris” - (pron.: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

While this word seems to apply to all GOPers, it certainly encapsulates and depicts G.W. Bush and his bland brand of banshees.

The documentary below, narrated by Rachael Maddow; the book written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, is a great look into this satanic, fiendish administration. Every Tea Bagger, American Taliban-er and GOPer should be forced to watch repeatedly until they understand how their beloved political GOD pooched our country.

So without further ado, below are six clips of the documentary, in its entirety, the fascinating story of how Bush, Cheney and plethora of others bamboozled the citizens of the United States of America.

All clips courtesy of MSNBC, Rachael Maddow, Michael Isikoff and David Corn:


HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART I

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HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART II

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HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART III

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HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART IV

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HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART V

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HUBRIS: SELLING THE IRAQI WAR PART VI

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NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

OBSTRUCTIONIST, LIARS AND HYPOCRITES

Graham [Dingbat] & McCain [Geezer]: Obstructionists, Liars and Hypocrites

Benghazi-Gate: Yes, Benghazi was a terrible thing, but as you can see below, 10 Benghazi-gate-esk type of attacks happened under the asshat G.W. Bush - in which 60 deaths occurred. Did we hear John McCain or his ogre sidekick Lindsey Graham speaking up in opposition then? No!


Photo courtesy of The Blue Street Journal:

EMBASSY ATTACKS UNDER G.W. BUSH

The picture above is why I despise the American Taliban so much. Lie, bullshit, and avoid the facts, these traitors of late - have filibustered a Presidential appointment to the Department of Defense. Why, because one of their own broke ranks and spoke the truth; and hurt their feelings.

And to think that once, Mitch McConnell said that Chuck Hagel was the most trusted figure in DC on matters of National Security; and John McCain had previously said how Hagel would be perfect for defense secretary when McCain was running for President.

 The "Guns Over People" [GOP], rarely take ownership for anything wrong in this country. These political hecklers, McCain and Graham, are living relics, of a time when troglodytes roamed the earth. The new Staler and Waldorf, Geezer and Dingbat, [John McCain, Lindsey Graham] - Nothing is beyond the pale of Mr. Bitter [McCain] and Mr. Un-lettered [Graham]. We are used to Statler [McCain] Waldorf [Graham] heckling the President, but holding our country hostage - it's time to put these cows out to pasture.

Really Geezer and Dingbat? You are going to water board the country over Bengahzi - when you failed to address your own kinds debacle ten times over? In true hypocritical fashion, the GOP shows us yet again why they are the party of ignorance.


McCain and Graham [GEEZER AND DINGBAT]:





John McCain and Lindsey Graham would be doing a much better service for America if they sat in a balcony and just insulted their fellow Muppets.





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West