George W. Bush: President or Hesitant?

[blaker23]

Bush's Slow Response To The Two Major Crises Of His "Presidency":

http://www.airfarceone.net/hesitantbush.html

http://www.bartcop.com/goatboy.jpg


(n) to W's leadership

[Space]

THIS ,MAN SAVED 25,000 PEOPLE FROM THEIR FLOODED HOMES, WHILE CNN REPORTED THE MAYOR OF nola REQUESTING 25,000 BODY BAGS.

GET THE SOAP OUT YOUR MOUTH, AND SUPPORT THE REAL WORLD, AND NOT THE GLOOM.

[blaker23]

The Bush era will be remembered as a time of crisis. Too bad that, in a pinch, the president is such a COWARD.

The president’s brand of nuttiness was first glimpsed on September 11 and then crystallized to a fine focus with hurricane Katrina. Bush was entering the fifth and final week of his marathon summer vacation when forecasters predicted the storm would hit New Orleans dead-on as a category five hurricane. The president declared a state of emergency for Louisiana, but then callously continued his vacation, booking trips to Arizona and California even as the storm pummeled New Orleans, trapping tens of thousands of residents without food or water. It wasn’t until Wednesday, August 31—two and a half days after Katrina struck—that Bush finally cut his vacation short by two days and returned to Washington. By that point, New Orleans had already been lost.

During times of national crisis the White House’s motto seems to be: When the going gets tough, the president hides. On September 11, 2001, the president was missing in action for most of the day after the planes struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, prompting ABC News’s Peter Jennings to inquire where the hell he was: “I don’t mean to say this in melodramatic terms,” Jennings told his audience at 12:30 p.m. eastern time. “Where is the president of the United States?


http://www.radarmagazine.com (http://www.radarmagazine.com/web-only/politics/2005/09/when-the-going-gets-tough.php)

:mad:

[Ace42X]

THIS ,MAN SAVED 25,000 PEOPLE FROM THEIR FLOODED HOMES

Bullshit. The guy's a midget, and he has to wear a heart-monitor just to go on TV. He couldn't even lift one man, let alone 25,000.

[QueenAdrock]

I was looking around a military message board and saw them say that "President Bush might very well be the finest president America has ever seen."

If I had water in my mouth, I woulda spit-taked it all over my keyboard.

Yeah, I bet your friends with infectious stumps and PTSD agree as well. I know that the military pretty much has to support the President in order to give positive meaning to their lives and what they're doing, but goddamn. A lot of them are in la-la land where they think that fighting in Iraq is stopping terrorism. I support them in their struggle, but Iraq's not where we should be, and it's sad that people are STILL brainwashed into thinking that 9/11 somehow = Iraqi war.

[Medellia]

THIS ,MAN SAVED 25,000 PEOPLE FROM THEIR FLOODED HOMES
Oh really? Can you support this claim? Or did you just pull it out of your ass?

[QueenAdrock]

hasn't saved a single soul from war

He got himself out of Vietnam pretty quickly.

BADUM-*CHING*!

[blaker23]

I was looking around a military message board and saw them say that "President Bush might very well be the finest president America has ever seen."

Must be a parallel universe, like the Trek episode with the evil Spock.

:p

[QueenAdrock]

Like Bizarro World? I bet their George W. has an evil goatee.

[D_Raay]

Suppose it could be proven that the integrity of the vote-counting in the 2004 election had been seriously compromised, and that Bush-Cheney probably lost.

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration told huge lies to get the U.S. military into Iraq, thus leading to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, the maiming of tens of thousands of others, the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration effectively has turned over the writing of pollution-control legislation to the corporations that create much of the pollution?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush inner circle knew that a huge terrorist attack was about to go down in the Fall of 2001 and chose, for whatever reason, to ignore the warnings.

Suppose it could be proven that high officials of the Bush Administration, for political reasons, deliberately revealed the identity of a covert CIA officer, and that of a CIA mole inside Osama bin Laden's inner circle?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration concocted a legal philosophy that would permit the President to ignore laws passed by Congress, and has "disappeared" a number of American citizens into military-base prisons away from public or legal scrutiny -- in effect, making the President into a kind of dictator?

Suppose it could be proven that under rules devised by the Bush Administration, confidentiality between lawyer and client no longer exists, federal agents can enter your home and conduct a search without you being present or even being told it happened ("sneak&peak," it's called), can hack into your computer and read your private emails without you being informed, can check what library books you're reading and prevent librarians from telling you they've done that.

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration devised legal rationales for torture of suspected terrorist-prisoners in U.S. care -- with more than 100 dying while being interrogated -- and that key detainees are being sent to U.S.-friendly countries where extreme torture methods are used?

Suppose it could be proven that because of their incompetence and delay in responding to the Gulf Coast Katrina catastrophe, more than a thousand innocent American citizens drowned or starved to death?

Suppose it could be proven that the Bush Administration, hostile to science, has denied the reality of global warming and its effects on regional weather changes, such as the increase in monster hurricanes like Katrina and Rita, and thus devoted little or no attention to the deadly implications.

Civil liberties decimated, church&state merging, humongous deficits, activist judges granting more and more power to the central government, certain citizens (especially women and gays) being discriminated against, etc. etc. And then we'd always come back to the same closing question: "What would you do about it?"

The reason I ask is that the Bush Administration has been caught in the spotlight on these issues for the past four-and-a-half years, with documented evidence reported in the mainstream media. Scandal after scandal, corruption after corruption, high crimes and misdemeanors -- and yet, nothing happens.

I suggest that anti-Bush critical mass is just about achieved in the body politic, especially after the disgraceful, shameful neglect and bungling associated with the Katrina scandal, which led to the deaths of so many American citizens. Nearly two-thirds of those polled these days agree that the Iraq War is a mistake, and the troops should be brought back home soon. Bush's approval rating is now in the high-30% range. If and when in the next few months indictments are unsealed against key Bush Administration officials -- perhaps including not only Karl Rove and Scooter Libby but John Bolton and, maybe as unindicted co-conspirators, Bush and Cheney -- true critical mass could be achieved.

At that point, we don't want to be just sitting there watching the unfolding of the Bush Administration's self-destruction, or witnessing their last, dangerous, martial-law death throes. We need to have protected ourselves, and helped prepare the way for the moral/legal/political turnaround that is coming.

One way to lay the necessary foundations is to get the citizenry talking seriously about the possibility of impeachment. Now. And, in addition to raising the issue amid the chattering class, perhaps the best way of getting the word out more widely is for an impeachment resolution to be introduced in the House. Now.

As I see it, such a resolution will have no chance of success if it is introduced only by a single, and easily dismissable, Member of Congress. No, this impeachment resolution -- calling for hearings into the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors of Bush and Cheney -- ideally should be introduced by a huge number of Representatives, including whatever courageous Republicans can be convinced to join.

There also is strength in numbers, perhaps giving members courage to take the giant step in the company of many of their peers. Who will start the process by talking along these lines to their fellow Members of Congress? My guess is that if someone with the stature of John Conyers and Jim Leach began talking up the idea of an impeachment resolution, others might well consider signing on. Even better would be if anti-war Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were to bite the bullet and join in. I'd say a minimum of 40 names would be necessary to break through into the major media as a "serious" movement afoot.

The basis for impeachment of Bush-Cheney would not be a personal indiscretion a la Clinton -- extremely bad judgment, but a private sexual act between consenting adults -- but crimes and misdemeanors that have resulted, and continue to result, in the death and destruction of American citizens and their property, both abroad and at home.

As for the wording of such a resolution, my guess is that the experts in such things will opt for a simple, all-inclusive indictment rather than a laundry-list of specific offenses, which will come later. For example, Bush and Cheney took their oaths of office swearing to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution and, by implication, the citizens of the United States. They have done neither.

The Constitutional protections designed to shield citizens from an overbearing federal government are in shreds; citizens are being killed in a war based on lies; we Americans are less secure than we were before the invasion of Iraq; and monster storms have become more deadly because of unfeeling incompetence and a denial of scientific realities.

It is long since time to take corrective action. Many progressives and Democrats have been moving in that direction for a long time, but the time may be ripe for significant factions of the Republican Party to join in the movement to pry the grasping fingers of Bush&Co. from the levers of power.

Introducing a resolution calling for impeachment hearings is the first serious step along that road back to political sanity and moral accountability for our country. Let's demand that our Representatives in Congress do it, and if they won't, we will elect those who will.

[blaker23]

Polls show public confidence in Bush plummeting
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - A series of polls shows public confidence in President George Bush’s leadership has fallen to unprecedented lows, while the national mood has become distinctly negative.

Even more worrisome for President Bush’s hopes of retaining his political potency, the surveys show that moderate Republicans are deserting his camp and that self-described independents say they intend to vote Democratic in next year’s congressional elections by a two-to-one margin.

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2209.shtml


It's over, George. Rove will be indicted. Where will you be without your brain.

:p