A Methodist Horse Thief

Here is the president's favorite painting.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2250558,00.html






Bush has a great passion for a 1916 cowboy scene by WHD Koerner that hangs in his office. He told staff that the painting was called A Charge To Keep, a quote from his favourite Methodist hymn by Charles Wesley. He urged them to absorb the moral lesson of this "beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us," he said. But the picture originally portrayed a bad man, not a good man. It was first used in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 to illustrate a story about a horse thief, and was captioned as a picture of his flight from the law.

Bush's Destruction of the GOP

Peggy Noonan

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

And this needs saying, because if you don't know what broke the elephant you can't put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can't trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.

The Bush Years

The Huffington Post sponsored the following posters that powerfully invoke the case for change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffposts-the-bush-year_b_75722.html

There are three posters that are meant to capture "the lunacy of the Bush years". I recall a similar poster created for the 1968 Nixon campagn that did much of the same thing, but using illustrations from the LBJ era. Like all propaganda, it is unfair but compelling.




Events



Slogans



People

However, these posters beg the question. Surely, there should be change. But what kind of change? If the change is a Clintonian restoration, then we could create similar posters for those years as well. Here are some reminders of those good old years.

THE CLINTON YEARS

Events

NAFTA
BIMBO ERUPTIONS
TASK FORCE ON NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM
TRAVELGATE
NO-FLY ZONE
GOOD FRIDAY PEACE ACCORDS
STARR REPORT
OPERATION DESERT FOX
DAYTON ACCORDS
IMPEACHMENT

Slogans

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE
I DIDN'T INHALE
IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
BOXERS OR BRIEFS
HILLARYCARE
TRIANGULATION
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
I DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH THAT WOMAN, MISS LEWINSKY
FIRST BLACK PRSIDENT

People

SISTER SOULJAH
GENNIFER FLOWERS
ARSENIO HALL
JAMES CARVILLE
JANET RENO
DICK MORRIS
VERNON JORDAN
LINDA TRIPP
DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
SLICK WILLIE

"Nothing Has Changed"

said the president in response to the most recent NIE that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program.

Three questions.

First, what set of facts does the president need so that something will change?

Secondly, why should we trust the NIE when it has been wrong before?

Thirdly, is World War III on hold?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071204/bush/

George Bush Denies a Holocaust

George Bush in 2000:

"The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people."

http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=3

Bush Flip Flops:

"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. But this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings. Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21221278/from/RS.2/

The Facts:

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html

What is the Armenian Genocide?

"The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people was subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. "

Who was responsible for the Armenian Genocide?

"The decision to carry out a genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire. This was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (or Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti), popularly known as the Young Turks. "

How many people died in the Armenian Genocide?

"It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps."

Photographs of the Armenian Genocide:

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/photo_elder_view.html?photo=orphanboys.jpg&collection=elder&caption=Armenian+orphans

Funny how the dims will waste time on another NON-BINDING resolution about something that HAPPENED IN THE PAST, but refuses to deal with IRAN in the present.

The Turkish President warned us a few days ago that if this Resolution does go forward then the chances are high that Turkey might stop one of the main lines of supply to our troops in Iraq through Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.Pelosi knows this but allowed the Resolution to go forward anyway. This Resolution has been floating around for many years and I think that the bitch did this just to cause problems for Bush and the troops in Iraq.

You cannot have it both ways-- call it a waste of time and then wring your hands at the prospect that this action is effective. It is but one of many tactics to derail Bush's war. Clearly, there are presently not enough votes in Congress to off funding to the war, but that could change after the 2008 elections. After all, 40,000 Americans had to die in the Viet Nam war while there was a draft before it dawned on Congress that stomping through rice paddies in the name of democracy perhaps wasn't the best idea.

So what to do? Until the votes materialize, the only hope is to attack on the periphery and indirectly. Thus, there will be investigations into recruiting, VA hospitals, military contracts, private defense firms, and the draft dodging our the Republican candidates (except for McCain). The weakening of our so-called allies in this so-called war on terror is just one fight in the broader war against the Republicans. This would have never happened in WWII, because there was a national consensus that it was the right war. The outing of a CIA operative and the disclosure of the al Qaeda video provided to the White House by SITE along with Petreaus' testimony are just a few examples of how politicized the war has become. The goal of the Democrats is to make the war the issue of the 2008 election make Bush and Cheney the Republican's phantom candidates.

The loss of the support of Turkey is a small price to pay if it will bring to and end one day earlier the Iraqi war.

GW denied a holocaust? He says it didn't happen? Where did you come up with that?

While I am a Zionist, I will also assert that the word holocaust is not a trade mark of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or any one else. It can refer to any genocide or mass murder aimed at the liquidation of any entire people. Besides the Shoah, other holocausts include the Africans, the Native Americans, the Asians under the Japanese Empire, the Ukranians, and others. What George Bush has done is exactly what many Nazi revisionists do. They allow that there was suffering and even mass killings of Jewish people and others but they disassociate those killings from any governmental authority or intentionality. Thus, a Nazi revisionists would say that the people died because of bombings or disease, not as part of a systematic planned program of extermination. Bush is effectively asserting the same dishonest lie-- that, yes, Armenians died, but only as a consequence of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and not because of a policy of eradication by the Turks.

Certainly it would piss off the Turks and if the Turks were pissed off enough to withdraw basing rights would shut down the war pretty decisively. But it would be a lousy tactic to that end because it would be unbelievably messy.

You make a good point. I think however the Democrat think this will apply pressure to the White House without causing the Turks to close down the bases and lines of communciation. The military scenerio that to me is more alarming is what happens if the center doesn't hold and it appears that collapse of Ameriraq is eminent? The first to withdraw will be the private militias, such as Blackwater. We are pinning much of Iraq's security on a civilian agency with no accountability to our military. My guess however is that our involvement will end with a whimper due to the Democrat's death by a thousand cuts-- a restriction here, and investigation there. But I also think the war will not end until after Bush leaves office.

The wild card of course is Iran. I see an involving alliance between Russia, China, and Iran against the US and its Iraq war allies primarily with the goal of maintaining a buffer between their countries and the war and also in defense of its own resource-related interests. China and Russia are both starting to flex their economic muscles and it will only be a matter of time before they extend that push for influence geo-politically.

The Ethics of Supporting Bush

With the perspective of six years of the Bush administration, is it possible to ethically support the Bush administration, or is such support inherently unethical?

Why or why not?

I support Bush as the lesser of the two evils that were available to choose from. Without that restriction I would pick someone with significantly better qualifications. It would be someone who is not religious, who is more rational, who is more principled, who is less pragmatic, who is more decisive, and who is more articulate.

On paper, the credentials of Bush and Cheney are beyond reproach with formal education at the best schools, experience in the legislature and the business world, and access to world leaders. But none of that seemed to matter in the end.

By your statement-- someone who is not religious-- I assume you mean someone who is not dogmatic. It appears that Bush's relgion in particular is Methodist through his wife's affiliation by convenience and for politicals ends. It's hard for me to accept that a serial liar-- and one who lies with such regularity, ease, and deadly consequences to so many people-- in any wise a moral person and a follower of Christ.

More principled? Are you sure? At his last press conference, the president said: “I can look in the mirror and I know that I made a decision based on principle not on public opinion”. I think what Bush means is that he is committed to upholding universal norms that transcend the clamor of the mob. What it really means is that he is infected with a virus that blinds him to such irrelevancies as facts, logic, the rule of law, and the will of the people.

More decisive? Bush's great virtue to his base is that he doesn't flip flop, that he doesn't do nuance, that he stays the course, that he doesn't ask for permission slips before acting with cowboy like dispatch. The flip side of this of course is that he doesn't consider the expereince and judgement of generals and former secretaries of state and that the mistakes he makes in consequence are of biblical proportions.

Do you need to have good communication skills to be effective? Lincoln had good communications skills, but Washington did not. I think it's a important skill but not a critical skill.

I support Bush as the lesser of the two evils that were available to choose from.

You seem to present the proposition as if it is a forced choice and if it is a single choice. Politics being the art of the possible is rarely a forced choice, say, between communism or fascism. A more reasonable approach is to figure out what is important to you in terms of your values and interests and then see which candidate, platform, or party best correlates to them. My beef with most partisans is that they correlate falsehoods and half-truths with the party they support.

Also, merely because you once supported a person or party, it doesn't mean that you are wedded to that. For most people, that isn't the case, and as circumstances warrent, they will switch their vote.

Whose ethics are we to use in making that judgment?

Your own. It is however a philosophical mistake that any two person's ethics (or principles) are equivalent. A klansman and a hit man have ethics, and it is more than a mere matter of opinion that yours are superior to theirs. What makes one person's ethics superior to another's? The answer are yet other principles that are not merely subjective, such rules of logic, emperical adequacy, rational coherence, categorical values, the reasonable person rule, community standards, and so on. There are of course flaws in any one of those standards, but taken together they suffice to render an ethical judgment.

Fighting for a Principle

I'm pondering what the president said at his press conference on Thursday: “I can look in the mirror and I know that I made a decision based on principle not on public opinion”.

I think what Bush means is that he is committed to upholding universal norms that transcend the clamor of the mob. What it really means is that he is infected with a virus that blinds him to such irrelevancies as facts, logic, the rule of law, and the will of the people.

My principle is to beware of principles.

Our Wild-eyed, Chest-thumping President

"Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny." "

Georgie Annie Geyer

The Worst President: Bush or Carter?

My heads hurts trying to figure that one out.

A President We Can Be Proud Of

My fingers went to my teeth as I watched the president arrive with the queen down the red carpet on C-Span. For a moment, it looked like Bush was going to give the royal buttocks a pat, something that we could only expect from a man who last year groped the German chancellor. When you dress a monkey in a monkey suit, you still see the monkey. And Bush on cue found a way to embarrass himself with his broken English causing the queen to mutter either "Some year", "Oh, dear", or "Bring me beer."

I just hope that in the next election cycle, we elect a president that we can take pride in. It would be a change from the Clinton-Bush legacy.

Bush Dancing

Mercy

Bush Poetry

(Harken Allen Ginsbergh and Jack Kerouac to the president's free verse as delivered in a single speech on April 19th in Ohio. Groovy. )

Everbody wants to be loved . . .not everybody.
If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about.
Death is terrible.
Polls just go poof.
Remember the rug?

Condemned to Repeat History

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This quotation from George Santayana seems apt given the travails of another George. The president's prep-school insouciant contempt for the lessons of history must surely be taking it toil. For those who read history, today's headlines is a story twice-told, an exercise in déjà vu, tragedy, and farce. A quagmire abroad with no end in sight, an administration with eroding credability, and a president hurtling towards a constitutional crisis is merely a replay of the the stupidity and dishonesty from the LBJ-Nixon era and other eras before that as well.

At present, the only hope that I see for the Republicans-- and this is a long shot-- is to collude with the Democrats to immediately impeach Bush and Cheney, hoping that the continuing downward spiral in Democratic hands will be sufficient to throw the election back into the hands of the Republicans. But the polls show that the current administration continues to hold a strong albeit weakening base, so I don't view impeachment as likely. The more likely scenerio will be a Democratic sweep of the executive branch and Congress in 2008, cynically facilitated by the Democrats allowing the president to continue to dig his way to disaster while Americans continue to die in Iraq for nothing. And this may prepare the way for possibly eight years of Democratic governance and the ascendency of as many as five liberal Supreme Court justices.

Honorable Public Servants

``We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants,'' Bush said in a statement from the White House.

Good one, Mr. President.