Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

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Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:35 pm

NOVEMBER 25, 2015
Like Father Like Son: George W. Bush Was Bad, His Father May Have Been Worse
by TED RALL


The curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush, known colloquially as Bush 41, or simply 41. The patriarch is, if not exactly dying, no longer doing well enough to want to be seen much in public. The final taxi, as Wreckless Eric sang memorably though not famously, awaits.

Do not believe the soon-to-be-everywhere hype.

Dubya’s dad is and was a very bad man.

No one should forget that.

The old Skull and Bones man has skillfully set the stage for — not his rehabilitation exactly, for he was never shamed (though he much deserved it) — his rescue from the presidential footnotery familiar to schoolchildren, that of the Adamsian “oh yeah, there was also that Quincy” variety. The centerpiece of this so-far-going-splendidly historical legacy offensive is his authorized biography by Jon Meacham, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” a demi-hagiographic positioning of HW as a moderate last half of the 20th century Zelig.

This has been done before, compellingly and brilliantly, in Robert Caro’s soon-to-be five-volume (!) biography of LBJ. Caro uses LBJ as a window into his times; that’s what Meacham is up to too. But there’s a big whopping difference between the subjects. LBJ was a man of principle who was also a cynical SOB; Vietnam tarnished his amazing civil-rights legacy. He knew that and regretted it until he died. Dude was complicated.

There is, sadly, little evidence that Bush ever had a big ol’ destiny in mind, good or bad. He may be the first of that crop of presidents who followed them (excepting, perhaps, ironically, his son after 9/11) whose main goal in life was accomplished when he won a presidential election. Clinton and Obama and perhaps Hillary next, they all figured they’d figure out how and why to change America after they took office and some stuff to react to happened (OK, that includes W).

“Mr. Bush may never have achieved greatness. But he’s led a long and remarkable life, which has spanned the better part of the 20th century. He fought in World War II. He started a successful oil business. He spent two terms in the House of Representatives; he served as ambassador to the United Nations and as American liaison to China; he ran the Republican National Committee and, far more important, the C.I.A. He was vice president for eight years and president for four. At 90, he jumped out of an airplane,” Jennifer Senior writes in the New York Times Book Review.

Pardon my shrug. Dude’s a boy Hillary. Great résumé. What did you accomplish at all those gigs? Even at the CIA, he’s remembered for…

Yeah.

Where there’s a record starts with his 1988 run for president. Neither the advantages of incumbency as Reagan’s vice president nor his Democratic rival Michael Dukakis’ awkwardness on the campaign trail were enough for him; he felt it necessary to deploy scorched-earth tactics to obliterate a good man, albeit a politician not prepared for the national stage against a GOP that had turned rabidly right under Reagan. Lee Atwater’s “Willie Horton” ad remains a colossus of scurrilous race-baiting, a dismal precedent that paved the way for Bush 43’s racist whispering campaign targeting John McCain’s adopted daughter in the South Carolina primary and Donald Trump’s glib desire to subject the nation’s Muslims to an Americanized Nuremberg Law.

We won’t hear about Willie Horton during “ain’t it sad HW died” week.

“His campaign tactics may have been ruthless, but in person he was unfailingly decent and courteous, commanding remarkable levels of loyalty. Character was his calling card, not ideas. To the extent that he had one at all, his governing philosophy was solid stewardship: leading calmly and prudently, making sure the ship was in good form, with the chairs properly arranged on the decks,” Senior writes.

Of course he was polite. He’s a WASP. But does it matter? A public figure isn’t notable for what he does behind closed doors.

And Hitler liked dogs and kids.

Bush deserves, as do we all, to be judged for what he set out to do.

It is by his own standards — his wish to leave the ship of state ship-shape when he left for Kennebunkport in 1993 — that he falls terribly short.

It was the economy, stupid…and he was the stupid one. After the stock market crashed in 1989, HW sat on his hands, waiting for the recession to magically go away. As the invisible hand of the marketplace dithered and dawdled, the housing market crashed too. Millions lost their jobs. Countless businesses went under. Lots of misery, much of it avoidable. Much of which could have been mitigated with a little action from the Fed and a Keynesian stimulus package. He did little.

By the time he left, everyone, not least Wall Street traders, breathed a sigh of relief that there was going to be someone at the wheel going forward.

There were, of course, the wars. There’s his good war against Iraq, for which he gets credit for merely slaughtering Saddam’s army as they retreated down the “highway of death” and not going on to kill everyone in Baghdad, as his stupid bloodthirsty son tried to do. Mainly, the Gulf War is a plus because few Americans died in combat (some “war” dead were killed in forklift accidents). Still, it was a war that needn’t have been fought in the first place.

In a now largely forgotten episode, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — then a U.S. buddy — asked permission to invade Kuwait, which was “slant drilling” into Iraqi oilfields and undercutting OPEC cartel prices. It being August, all the big names were away on vacation, so Saddam took the word of a low-level drone at the State Department that everything was cool.

It wasn’t.

If Bush had been a decent manager — the kind of guy who arranges the deck chairs — he would have had better people handling his pet tyrants.

Then there’s the truly sorry invasion of Panama. No one remembers now, but this was Bush’s first personnel dispute with a dictator. General Manuel Noriega was getting uppity, HW decided to put him in his place, the Marines slaughtered thousands of Panamanians. Really, for no reason.

Certainly without justification. Noriega is still in a US prison, having spent more than two decades on trumped-up cocaine charges. Which you might care about. Noriega wasn’t a nice guy, right?

The trouble is, treating a sovereign head of state like a common criminal scumbag sets some bad precedents.

Now, when the US approaches guys like Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad to suggest that he leave office, he digs in his heels for fear of winding up in prison or worse. Back in the pre-Panama days, you could convince a guy like the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos to fly to Hawaii with a duffel bag full of bullion, so everyone could move on.

There’s the goose-gander thing. Why shouldn’t Assad be able to argue that Obama ought to be imprisoned for breaking Syrian law, like those against funding terrorist groups like ISIS?

Bush’s biggest boner may have been his hands-off approach to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather than help Russia and the other former Soviet republics come in for a soft post-socialist landing, as in China after Mao, Bush’s guys quietly rejoiced in the mayhem.

Clinton gave us “shock economics,” Yeltsin, mass starvation, the destruction of Grozny and the oligarchs — but Bush set the stage for a mess with which we, and more importantly the Russians, are dealing today.

Any way you look at it, George Bush Senior left the world worse off than it was.

The possibility that he may have been courteous to his minions and henchmen doesn’t change that.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby Nordic » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:39 pm

Gee. I figured Ted Rall might actually get into the good stuff. This is nothing. Well maybe not "nothing" but it's hardly an expose, not even of the stuff already known to us here at RI. C'mon, Ted, dish!!
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:41 pm

can't we wait till he's in the ground before we really start trashing him? :P
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby elfismiles » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:49 pm

As CIA Director, Bush Sought to Restrict Probe of Agency Officials by Justice Dept.
September 30, 1988|JIM MANN | Times Staff Writer
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-30/ ... -officials
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby elfismiles » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:55 pm

Haven't had a chance yet to listen to the archived show but my friend Mack White was the guest...

SHOUTING OUT WHO KILLED THE KENNEDYS
Posted on November 23, 2015
Image
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/shouting ... -kennedys/
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/1123-sho ... mac-white/
https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/ ... er-23-2015
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby slimmouse » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:58 pm

Whilst I know that Webster Tarpley might come under some scrutiny from riggies, his unnofficial Biography of Poppy must merit some acclaim.

It sure as hell opened my eyes back then.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 25, 2015 3:07 pm

I used to post his stuff all the time at DU ....until Skinner decided he had enough of me :P
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby Elvis » Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:13 pm

Nordic » Wed Nov 25, 2015 11:39 am wrote:Gee. I figured Ted Rall might actually get into the good stuff. This is nothing. Well maybe not "nothing" but it's hardly an expose, not even of the stuff already known to us here at RI. C'mon, Ted, dish!!



That's my feeling too, reading this. GHW wasn't "stupid" nor did he seek power merely for its own sake. And he didn't 'figure out how and why to change America after he took office', he came into it with fully formed 'ways to change fuck America' (I would say that was true for Clinton, but not GHW). And the first Gulf War was a "good war"?

Also some plain sloppiness, e.g. Noriega hasn't been in a U.S. prison since 2007.

Rall concedes right off that GHW is "a very bad man"—a man who deserves some righteous finger-wagging!—but the takeaway is that GHW's public disservice is not indictable, but merely regrettable.

It's gonna be hard not to upchuck a little when the whitewashed venerations and apologies begin to flow.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:01 pm

perhaps Ted is worried the Bushes will take out their revenge as the Times did

Image


Ted Rall: To My Former Colleagues at The Los Angeles Times …

NewDomain commentary — Institutional corruption. Conflict of interest. Police who threaten journalists who dare to call them to account for violence and misconduct.

These are the kinds of stories that made us want to be journalists.

These are the kinds of issues that, especially when they all come together in one story, The Los Angeles Times should be at the forefront of covering.

This time, however, the Times itself is at the center of the story.

Not only is it failing to cover the story itself, it is refusing to answer questions about its actions from reporters at major news outlets. As a major media organization, the Times has an obligation to its readers to be transparent — a duty it is violating.

Institutional Corruption?
Someone at the highest level of authority within the Times leadership appears to have ordered that I be fired as the Times’ editorial cartoonist — as a favor to the LAPD or LAPPL police union, it seems. The police didn’t like my long record of holding them accountable.

ted rall vs la timesEditors who fired me didn’t let me talk to the editorial board. Editorial management rushed to judgement in fewer than 24 hours.

Editors used “evidence” that was almost certainly doctored to do so. And then, even after I used enhancement of the dubbed LAPD audiotape (legally inadmissable as evidence to clear my name), the Times refused to address the existence of the new evidence, much less act upon it.

Comments at latimes.com were shut down as soon as paid Times subscribers began stating dozens of opinions in my favor. Hundreds of letters to the editor were censored, readers claimed in comments around the Internet.

After three weeks, the Times doubled down with a second “Editor’s Note,” apparently written by legal counsel.

Never in 2500 words did it mention, for example, that one of the two audio experts hired by the Times, Ed Primeau, had the audiotape enhanced (as opposed to analyzed), and that his results confirmed the enhanced tape results I’d obtained from Post Haste Digital. Like ours, his transcript shows the presence of the angry crowd, which the LAPD and the Times deny were present at my 2001 jaywalking arrest.

This isn’t journalism.

This is cherry-picking to protect the wrongdoing of a corporation.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby Nordic » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:39 pm

Good point. Exposing the Senior Bushes for the evil goat-worshippers they are can be hazardous to one's health.

Always wondered about Bill Hicks' demise considering the Barbara Bush/Rudh Limbaugh routine he did.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby tapitsbo » Wed Nov 25, 2015 7:14 pm

How do you figure Russ Baker has gotten away with his publications, Nordic?
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby backtoiam » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:13 pm

Good point. Exposing the Senior Bushes for the evil goat-worshippers they are can be hazardous to one's health.

I know this might sound a bit crazy but I promise that I am being serious. There is something about the brain of a goat, physically and biologically that sets it apart from other mammals. I think it has to do with memory but I cannot remember for sure right now. I cannot remember what it is right off the top of my head right now. Right now I don't have the time nor inclination to look it up. Somebody here might know and flip the answer in. I might try to look it up in the next few days maybe if somebody does not supply the answer, but the brain of a goat has a distinct characteristic that sets it a bit apart from other mammals if I remember correctly.

Goats are incredibly clever when they want to be. A goat can also climb a tree, I know, I have seen it with my own eyes. One day I saw about 10 or 12 goats in a tree at the same time. Same tree. Amazing, but absolutely true.
Last edited by backtoiam on Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby Nordic » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:16 pm

tapitsbo » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:14 pm wrote:How do you figure Russ Baker has gotten away with his publications, Nordic?


Maybe he knew what to leave out?

There was also James Howard Hatfield
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Re: Curtain is about to fall on George Herbert Walker Bush

Postby Elvis » Wed Nov 25, 2015 9:27 pm

backtoiam » Wed Nov 25, 2015 5:13 pm wrote:
There is something about the brain of a goat, physically and biologically that sets it apart from other mammals.


I'm not so sure....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGjm9KVGkS4


I think it has to do with memory but I cannot remember for sure right now. I cannot remember what it is right off the top of my head right now.
:lol:


I don't have the time nor inclination to look it up.


But you have time to post this bit of non-information? :shrug:
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