The Iraq Boondoggle, Ten Years After

Photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters

Ten years is a long time, but apparently not long enough for some wingnuts to apologize for the largest foreign policy disaster in the history of America. Dick Cheney is still out there pushing the same bullshit that got us into his massive quagmire. GW Bush occasionally pops his head up to remind us that he still thinks so highly of himself that he paints himself wash himself, maybe some psychological attempt to get the blood of millions off his hands. Other assorted neo-con adventurers managed to sign on with Willard Romney's failed bid to become President and lie us into another multi-trillion dollar war.

So, if you haven't apologized for supporting that war, and calling people who opposed it, like me, a traitor, then here's your chance for a little soul searching. Since most of you warmongers also happen to be deficit hawks, except for Dick Cheney who famously said deficits don't matter, maybe you'll take a look at the new report from Costs of War.

Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion.

Add it up, warmongers, if your math skills will let you. That's a total of $6.2 Trillion for the boondoggle you helped lie us into. And you assholes have the balls to bitch that Obama, who has lowered the deficit every year since he got in office, and almost halved it now, is a profligate spender? Wow. Just wow.

See, at this point, if you still want to defend the Iraq War, then I have two things I can think of to say to you. One, please, keep talking, wingnuts. And two? Fuck you. Just fuck you and the Supreme Court you and the traitors Bush and Cheney rode in on.

George W. Bush Has a Rich History of Symbolic Gestures

I can't think of a better metaphor (for their unwavering feeling of self-satisfaction despite 8 years of disaster capitalism that Cheney, Inc., unleashed on America) than George W Bush, along with thousands of his fellow Texans, setting the world record for most people wearing sunglasses at night.

Every senior member of the warmongering, economy wrecking, environment poisoning "administration" that ran amok after Cheney's coronation--by the five crooked conservative justices of the Supreme Court--should be arrested and sitting in the Hague for war crimes. That their deranged, vicious mascot can sit in the dark and surround himself with more dark is testament to his will to spend every last day of his life not feeling guilty for this shit.

Anyone who has not yet apologized for their support of George W. Bush should be ashamed of themselves.  I'm sure you'll trip over something (WMD?) in that self-imposed darkness soon enough.

Bush Wrote a Book!

I've been sickened by Bush for years now, and here he is again to put me off food for weeks. First he admits to committing a war crime ("Damn right") when ordering waterboarding. Then he calls Scooter Libby a loyal American (outing CIA agents used to be called treason). And now he says, hey, Olmert wanted me to bomb Syria but I said no. Small favors.

So, I'd been thinking of ways to encourage people to deal with Bush's book, and today I stumbled on Bill's Cheers and Jeers, which hits the nail on the head.

A Brief Publisher's Message

Dear Reader,

Tomorrow, November 9, 2010, we are officially releasing former president George W. Bush's new book, Decision Points, and we would like to make the following request:

> Please do not take copies off the shelf, open them to a random page, insert a quantity of spit, nasal discharge or chewing gum, slam them shut and put them back on the shelf.

> Please do not draw horns on Mr. Bush's head---be they a ram's, a goat's or Satan's. Please also no forked tails or thought-bubbles that say "Heckuva Job."

> Please do not throw the book to the ground and stomp on it while yelling, "You suck!"

> Please do not knock over the bookcase on which Decision Points is displayed, as this could result in a domino effect on the other bookcases and cause damage and/or injury to other customers.

> Please do not attempt to move copies of the book from the Non-fiction section of the store to the Humor or Fantasy sections.

> Please do not whip out a Sharpie and add "Awesome book---if properly shredded" to the list of testimonial blurbs on the back cover.

We know you're upset at how badly he screwed you over, but please: let's be civil.

Thank you,

Your Friends at Crown Publishing

P.S. Democrats, this letter applies to you, too.

Job losses pre- and post-Obama policies

Via Ezra, nuff said.

The Electoral College is Tried and True

Well, of course some Republican would say that. They love George W. Bush. If enough states had passed this bill before 2000, we wouldn't be in this mess. As I point out at on my web site, people in Massachusetts had, in 2000, a vote that counted for about half of what the people of Wyoming have.

And if you really delve into it, you'll see why Republicans love the un-democratic method of choosing an executive: The little states that get a vote bonus are almost all Republican.

At its heart, though, this is an issue of fairness. If we keep using the Electoral College, then we are not democratically electing our Presidents. Simple as that.

So, whine away Republicans. This idea is going to win, and you'll just have to live with it.

in reference to:

"Senate minority leader Richard Tisei said the state was meddling with a system that was "tried and true" since the founding of the country."
- Mass. Legislature approves plan to bypass Electoral College - Local News Updates - MetroDesk - The Boston Globe (view on Google Sidewiki)

George Bush's Giant Balls Have Damaged His Brain

If ever there was a man who should just shut the fuck up...

Here we have GW, in the kind of massive irony (that could only be topped if he was giving this speech in the Gulf of Mexico) that only he could muster, lecturing someone (albeit deservedly in this case) for wasting resources while millions of gallons of the precious crude is being wasted in the gulf because he and Dick Cheney didn't give a shit about regulation or oversight. Wonder how much all the oil is worth, Dumbya?

Here we have GW lecturing on wasting resources while the fish, shrimp, crabs and other valuable life in the Gulf are lost, perhaps forever, because of his administration's greed and blatant preference for oil companies over life, jobs, and nature.

Here we have a man whose whole raison de etre is the mindless destruction of America's bounty for the profit of a few, extremely wealthy plutocrats, and he has the balls to lecture some petty dictator over "wasting" resources. George Fucking W Bush wasted more resources to help Halliburton in one day than the Dear Leader could waste in a year.

I was glad to see that someone had the guts to point out that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the very least not exactly "Christian." I hesitate to think how many resources were wasted in Iraq over Bush's bullshit lies. We can't even accurately count how many people died...

George W Bush is the last man on earth who should be talking about wasting resources.

in reference to:

"But some local Christian organisations, including the Christian Alliance for Church Reform, criticised Bush's presence at a time when cross-border tensions are high."It is just nonsense to bring to the Korean War prayer meeting the former US President Bush, who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have him give testimony," they said in a joint statement."
- AFP: Bush blasts N.Korea's Kim for wasting resources (view on Google Sidewiki)

George Bush blames Jimmy Cater for His Miserable Life

JAFR (just another fucking republican) alert! Here's Dumbya, as quoted by CBS news today, referring to Jimmy Carter calling his handling of the war a "flat out disaster."

"I have no desire to see myself on television. I don't want to be a panel of formers instructing the currents on what to do... I'm trying to regain a sense of anonymity. I didn't like it when a certain former president -- and it wasn't 41 or 42 -- made my life miserable."

Because, yeah, it's all Carter's fault that you're a miserable failure. And I love the way he reveals that he thinks of himself as a whole panel. Get all the classic Bush quotes here.

Compare and Contrast: GWB v BHO

Everybody's talking about the enormous amount of time Obama spent communicating with people during his first year and the worst depression since the last one, as compared to the much lesser amount of time that, say, W spent on TV.

See, when you're in charge of a White House where Obama is the President, during a national disaster that was the rubble left after 8 years of W, the first thing you want to do is get him out there talking. If you're in charge of the George Dumbya Bush White House, not so much.

Then there is, of course, the matter of total debt added under your watch. Over 8 years for W, it's 5 trillion. Despite Karl Rove's complete and utter I-dare-you-to-look-it-up declaration that Obama has already added more to the debt in one year than Bush did in 8, the debt has gone up 1.693 trillion in Obama's first year. So, yeah, fuck you Karl, you lying scum.

To me the telling stat in Bush vs. Obama is the vacation time, which I cover in this Side-wiki post on Obama's first year numbers.

On the Definition of Treason

I sometimes cross post what I write here at the Daily Kos, where I'm sure to get a few comments anytime I bring up the T word. I enjoy the smart comments there, as the dKos readers are some of the smartest on the net. It's why I'm a longtime member there.

Regarding my last post about why I call it Bush Treason, I got a response that laments the dilution of the term.

Because the Constitution, which I remember even if Dick Cheney tried to shred it, actually defines treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

That is a high standard to attain.

Did the Bush administration actually invade the United States? No. Did they actually help the terrorists in their plot? No.

No treason. There are a variety of reasons to consider the Bush administration the worst ever, but debasing the word treason does not help.

My response:

Did they actually help the terrorists with their plot? Well, could the plot have been carried out if they had done their job? Would the plot have been carried out if Bush had read the PDB and done something about it? Would the plot have been carried out if Ashcroft hadn't told people to stop telling him about terrorism?

...adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Is it that much of a stretch to say that we created Osama, and that the neo-cons (especially Cheney) funded him, supported him, and basically created him? Same with Saddam... These people were not exactly friendly to the US, but in the neo-con zeal to fight the USSR, Cheney et al certainly gave Aid and Comfort to future enemies.

But, say, OK, but they weren't our enemies at the time. Well, then when they got reports about imminent terror attacks and chose to ignore them, isn't that aid and comfort? When Ashcroft said he didn't want to hear anymore about terror, that's willful ignorance which led to our enemies operating without any kind of Justice Department effort to stop them.

But, again, I'll go with you and say, no, ignoring a threat is not the same as helping someone attack us. Even then, when you come out after the attack and lie about what you did to stop it... When you lie to make yourself look more heroic, when you cover up what went wrong, when you attack someone who had nothing to do with it thereby sucking resources away from the good fight, are you not helping the enemy get away with it? When you have the guy who did it cornered in Tora Bora and you let him get away, isn't that being an accessory after the fact?

I could go on and on. To me, I am not debasing the word treason because I don't limit it's definition. I'm trying to say that there's a whole series of actions by Dick Cheney et al which actually did give aid and comfort to our enemies. Just because Dick wasn't on a plane with a box cutter doesn't mean that he didn't do his damndest to make sure we got ourselves a Pearl Harbor Type Event. All he had to do was not do his job.

Further, I haven't even delved into a possible alternative explanation of the definition of enemies. Since the P and VP are sworn to protect and defend the constitution, and by extension US Law, then by torturing, wiretapping, and who knows what all, they actually became the enemy!

I do see your point, but I don't understand why sticking to such a narrow definition of treason is so important. By sending this country into an illegal war based on bullshit and lies, they essentially declared war on the US. They helped those who are truly our enemies with recruiting, with milking us dry economically (think the trillion dollars we will spend on Iraq is going to help us economically?), and by taking our focus away from the people who really attacked us. To me, that's treason.

Why Do I Call It Bush Treason?

Maybe the better question is why don't more people call it treason. George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and most of the administration ignored warnings about Al Qaeda, were incompetent (My Pet Goat is just the tip of the iceberg) in the response to defend the nation, and then lied about it.

The following is from Jacob Heilbrunn's book review in today's NYT of John Farmer's The Ground Truth:

Preoccupied with building a costly missile defense system to counter a spurious menace from Russia and with maintaining “full spectrum dominance” over the rest of the globe, most Bush administration officials blithely ignored the danger emanating from the caves of Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his acolytes plotted against America. Confronted by a small group of mostly Saudi nationals armed with box cutters, the central nervous system of the country’s defense agencies went into a state of cataleptic shock. The only decisive action taken on 9/11 came not from the military, but from the courageous passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, leading the hijackers to crash the plane over Pennsylvania farmland before it could reach its intended target in Washington.

That's bad enough, of course, but then, like dirty little boys lying to their mother that they hadn't been playing in the mud, they claimed everything was just fine. I'm sure someone idiot will claim this lie was heroic, for stopping the spread of panic over their own incompetence, but to me, it's further evidence of treason. They knew they had fucked up, and they'd never get re-elected if everyone knew it, so they lied about it. Heilbrunn:

[...] Farmer superbly renders the knuckle-biting tension and confusion engendered by the hijackings, and says the leadership of the F.A.A. and the Defense Department “would remain largely irrelevant to the critical decision making and unaware of the evolving situation ‘on the ground’ until the attacks were completed” — thereby making it close to impossible for the military to inter­cept any aircraft.

Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad rec­ords to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that “fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.”

Farmer further observes that the Bush administration wrongly asserted that the chain of command functioned on 9/11; that President Bush issued an authorization to shoot down hijacked commercial flights; and that top officials at F.A.A. headquarters coordinated their actions with the military. Farmer’s verdict: “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”

Of course, misleading people after such a shocking event proved easy enough, so they just kept doing it. The lies just kept piling up. Pat Tillman comes to mind. So does Iraq (you know, the place Fox News doesn't seem to remember).

It's just too much. You don't have to be a genius to see why so many conspiracy theories have formed around the attacks. The picture that is becoming more and more clear is that the Bush Administration ignored repeated warnings and signs of attack, told officials to stop telling them about it (Ashcroft), spent all their time on other things (planning to invade Iraq, spend billions of missile defense boondoggles, and suck cash away from the poor with massive tax cuts to the rich while drowning non-rich-corporation-subsidization domestic programs in a bathtub), fucked up their response to the attack, and then lied about it to make themselves seem more heroic.

How can anyone possibly call that anything other than treason?

You Go, Girl!

From Wanda Sykes' new show:

I went to sleep, and when I woke up people were mad at Obama. And I thought, 'Did I miss something? Did Obama start an illegal war? Did he fly over a flood zone and just wave? Did he torture detainees in a secret prison? Did he start illegally tapping phones? Did he alienate the world and squander a surplus? Because if he did any of that, we need to impeach that jackass.'

Epic Fail: The Bush [Criminal] Record

The reverse Robin Hood crime syndicate known as the Cheney Cabal never hid the fact that they wanted to put more money in the hands of the richest, based on the twisted theory that once they had more, the rich would invest, create jobs, and more money would magically appear everywhere.

Right.

The hopeless idiots who voted for these crooks, meaning all the working class fools who hate hippies from the sixties so much that they still vote for the fascists who will beat them up on the news, are now trying to blame their new President for the full latrine hole in which they now find themselves. They're not going to pay attention to the latest proof that they were used by the cynical politics of KKKarl Rove in order to steal a lot of money, followed by a last minute bail out (Bush's TARP) of all the rich people who were standing around saying "We don't know where all the money went."

Maybe they thought that the war on poverty they inherited meant they were supposed to kill poor people? What other excuse could there be for the draconian policies of tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for the poor, and bailouts for the ultra-rich? Looking back, they were so successful at screwing poor people that it must've been a plan from the get-go, since the only things these people were successful at were things they had planned from the start, like starting war in Iraq.

Of course, they were good at planning the starts of things. Not so good at the rest. How's that ownership society going now? The ultimate pottery barn rule: Bush broke everything, now we own it, and it's worthless.

If only we were really Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy:

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.

The one success story? The rich got much, much richer.

Since poverty is the lagging indicator, we're going to be seeing numbers like this go up for a while yet, and we're going to see the treasonous apologists for these war criminals try to blame the new guy, just like they tried to blame Clinton for 9/11, despite the warnings that OBL was determined to strike IN the US.

Thousands died that day because the Bushies were asleep at the National Security wheel. Or drunk. Or choking on pretzels. Or just didn't care, since, as the PNAC (project for a new american century) said late in the Clinton years, they'd need a new Pearl Harbor to really get involved in the Middle East. Now, since they got what they wanted (don't the spoiled frat brats always?), I'm assuming they, at the very least, did nothing to stop what they were hoping for. So, they used the same kind of indifference on programs that actually helped people get out of poverty, or get affordable health insurance, or a mortgage within the means of which they could live.

Say, for example, you want to milk all the money you can out of people at the bottom, and make sure it goes to the top. Obviously, you'd cut taxes on the wealthy and cut programs for the poor. But there's plenty of other things you can do. Ignore hurricanes that hit black people, for example. Make sure you decrease funding into things that might protect black neighborhoods: levees, for one. Or cut superfund sites funding, since a disproportionate share of minorities live near those sites. Or, you could string out a costly racket known as the Iraq war, sucking money up into the military industrial complex, lining Halliburton pockets, while running up a deficit designed to starve "a beast" that you're trying to shrink to a size that you can drown in a bath-tub, although Grover Norquist's bathtub must be a little bigger than most. Or, speaking of water, you could just not prosecute clean water act violations. Millions "saved." Unless by millions, you mean people...

If you really wanted to be a vicious bastard, you could sue states that tried to let people who were suffering die with dignity (no big end-of-life bucks for the HMOs), you could make sure teen pregnancies skyrocket, (don't make me look up the Freakonomics on the chains of poverty in which pregnant teens and their kids get locked), and you could arrest cancer patients for smoking pot (no money for big pharma in an easy-to-grow plant).

All good plans, if you're looking to put money back into the hands of those who need it least. Of course, if you believe the Reagan lie that government is bad, then you probably love what Bush did. It's hard to go to church and explain to people how Jesus would have approved of more people in poverty, more children going to bed hungry, more people dying due to lack of adequate health care... But, fuck that, eh? Just make shit up!

"It's not my fault they're poor!" How about "The Lord helps those who help themselves"? Maybe "I shouldn't have to pay to help lazy bums or their kids"? That's a great one. Or, how about the biblical version of let them eat cake?

And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man.--Ezekiel 4:12

Never mind Mark 10:25. Everything can be explained away with the ultimate bumper-sticker legacy of the Book of Reagan (1:1):

I got mine, fuck you.

Of course, if you think government is always bad, you're wrong. But, like trying to convince you that the earth is 4 billion years old and we evolved from lower life forms, that our carbon blanket is warming us up, that the earth goes around the sun, that the government's not going to pull the plug on your Grandma, that our president was born in Hawaii, or that Hawaii is a US State, you're not going to believe me. You think what you think, and then there's the truth, and never the twain shall meet.

Good luck with that. And thanks for the shit sandwich.

Rethuglicans Just Makin' Shit Up (as usual)

I'm so sick of all this shit from the racist right. Under GW, we were much more fascist, if you actually care to look at the definition of fascism.

...a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

What we have right now is corporatism. It's like fascism, except the corporation, not the state, is really in control of everything. There is no racial or religious (left out of this definition, but most fascist movements come with religious bigotry as well) component (unless you want to make the argument that they worship money)...

We can take little bites out of corporate control here and there, nibble around the edges like rabbits, but the tasty vegies deep in the garden are for the corporate elite. When they're in trouble, we bail them out. When we're in trouble and try to use the democratic tools of our elected government to help us, we're fascists because, well, because they create the connotations and the definitions. We're fascist because they say so. Fuck the facts. Fuck the dictionary. Fuck reality. Just show up and shout over everyone: protect the companies from the fascists in Washington!

By letting our elected representatives craft a bill that keeps insurance companies honest, Obama is a Centralized Autocratic Dictatorial Leader? In what fucked up Universe does that logic work? Oh, right.... Guess that means Kim Jong Il is a socialist? If you say so...

I'm so sick of these idiots that I'm not even going to bother listing the fascist bullshit that GW Bush did to this country. Compare their warrior hero prezteldent with Obama on the fascist scale, and you break the fucking scale.

Epitaph for the Bush Years

As usual, Scott Horton sends the nail deep into the wood with one blow.

If it does not do justice, what is the government but a great criminal enterprise? For what are gangs of criminals but petty little governments?--Augustine

We Were Warned

When President Eisenhower told us, in his 1961 farewell address, to beware of the Military Industrial complex, America ignored him, and built the most powerful group of private corporations ever to supply a military.

But way before Ike did his best to tell us what was going to happen if we weren't careful, another president gave a farewell address that warned us about George Bush:

Political parties serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

That's from George Washington's farewell address (h/t Scott Horton). Did you have to be a George Washington to figure this out: "...unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..." I was physically attacked, made fun of, blacklisted by Republican co-workers who spread the word not to hire me, called a traitor and a commie, all because I tried to warn people, before he was even appointed by the Supreme Court, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unprincipled men who would subvert the power of the people.

Washington even tried to warn us that these men would start dangerous wars of choice with their out-of-control military. He prayed that we would...

...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

If my union is the main prop of my liberty, then shouldn't I protect my union from another Bush/Cheney "administration" in order to preserve my liberty? Shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans aware of our history and the admonishments of past presidents, work to avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is inauspicious to liberty? Do we not have a duty to past Americans who have fought and died for our rights to fight for the liberty of our descendants?

What would be the best way to stop future presidents from usurping the power of the people? Should we move on and not bog ourselves down in the bickering that would accompany trials of war criminals from the highest echelons of government? Will we signal to future presidents that they will be considered above the law as long as their partisans promise to bicker and complain that the prosecution is not deserved because it is being controlled by someone from a different faction?

If fear of political harm prevents the prosecution of criminals, then wouldn't criminals simply threaten political division and wrangling in order to avoid prosecution? Has political calculation won over an executive's duty to uphold the law and the constitution?

Listen carefully to the oath of office on Tuesday. The promise that President Elect Obama makes will be:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This oath does not mention protecting Americans from terrorists no matter what the cost to liberty. It doesn't say anything about letting people avoid prosecution because it would be divisive or distracting. It doesn't even say anything about getting God's help. It says to protect and defend the Constitution, to the best of your ability. I know that the best of Obama'a ability is pretty damn good. I heard what his Attorney General Designate said about torture. I heard Obama say no one is above the law. He is capable of heeding the warnings of Eisenhower, Washington, and many other presidents.

As for how we managed to get to this place, it seems we just don't listen, do we? America has a long, rich history that we will be doomed to repeat if we don't study it, and prosecute those responsible for usurping the power of the people and ignoring the rule of law.

From Bush's Last Press Conference (as pResident)

And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile.—GW Bush

I can only answer with another quote, from his Vice pResident:

Go fuck yourself.—Dick Cheney

Not an Utter Failure for Rich Cronies

From the January Harper's Index: A retrospective of the Bush era:

Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4

Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172

Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15 ...

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

Justice After Bush, Prosecuting an outlaw administration

Scott Horton wrote in the December, 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine:

No prior administration has been so systematically or so brazenly lawless. Yet it is no simple matter to prosecute a former president or his senior officers. There is no precedent for such a prosecution, and even if there was, the very breadth and audacity of the administration’s activities would make the process so complex as to defy systems of justice far less fragmented than our own. But that only means choices must be made. Indeed, in weighing the enormity of the administration’s transgressions against the realistic prospect of justice, it is possible to determine not only the crime that calls most clearly for prosecution but also the crime that is most likely to be successfully prosecuted. In both cases, that crime is torture.

Anyone who thinks I'm some nutcase for wanting to prosecute the entire Bush "administration" for war crimes should read what Scott Horton has to say. I dare any wing nut Republican to argue any of it.

Who is Scott Horton?

A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.

Step on up, wing nuts.

Bush Should Have Signed This Guy with the Rangers

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."--Muntather Zaidi

The Penultimate Bush Quotes Update

I haven't updated my Bush quotes page in a while, and man did I miss some doozies, like this one:

"And I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president."—discussing flooding in the Midwest, Washington, D.C., June 17, 2008

Recently, the publishers of The War in Quotes sent me a copy of their book. It is horrifying! I wish I had read it before Halloween! It got me to thinking about how a lot of these quotes (not just Bush's) are actually windows that tell you exactly what these criminals are thinking! They're little Freudian slips of truthiness that tell you exactly what they're thinking.

Honestly, I'm so sick of the man that I might have just gone on without every touching that quote page again. But I've started to feel a tug toward forgiving this cruel, evil, spoiled little frat boy, and I just can't stand the thought of people saying "Oh, he meant well."

No he didn't. He meant to make a lot of money for himself and his friends in the military industrial complex. He meant to cripple the federal budget for years to come, and there's probably a whole bunch of shit he did, that he meant to do, that we will only learn about in the years to come.

And if he, and his cronies, aren't prosecuted, then it's proof that there is no justice, and this country is broken.

And we all know who broke it.