Thursday, March 24, 2011

A Little More Perspective on Bush Junior

I feel the need to remind my colleagues that Mr. Bush (2) was not the first President to ever start (or extend) a war under false pretenses; Polk and the Mexican-American War, McKinley and the Spanish-American and Philippines Wars, LBJ and Nixon and Vietnam. And (unfortunately) he certainly won't be the last..................................................................................................And neither has Mr. Bush been the only President to have pushed the bounds of the Constitution. Lincoln and Nixon (with highly differing motives, obviously) both did. And FDR (yes, he, the Progressive darling) practically used the Constitution as toilet paper (thankfully, the courts struck down various aspects of his boondoggle, and the Congress voted down his court-packing scheme)...................................................................................................Now, am I in any way defending Mr. Bush and his policies? Clearly, I am not (let's just say that one of my supreme motivations for blogging early on was my opposition to the war). I'm just trying to introduce my colleagues to the concept of historical perspective. Yes, Mr. Lincoln had the Civil War to deal with. But, so, too, Mr. Bush had 9/11. It is not conceivable that people 50 years from now will be seeing some of the latter's action (the idiotic Iraq invasion probably excepted) in a similar vein to the way that we see some of Lincoln's (the detention of people for political dissent, especially)?..................................................................................................And let me just address the issue of torture here. Yes, folks, it was wrong to water-board those lunkheads. But, I ask you, which was a bigger atrocity, the Bush administration's water-boarding of these these admitted terrorists or the Churchill directed carpet-bombing of Dresden, an act of retribution that literally murdered tens of thousands of women and children?..................................................................................................And, to me, folks, it wasn't so much the water-boarding itself that was gruesome. It was more the fact that Dick Cheney went all over the country years later bragging about it. That, and it doesn't frigging work, for Christ!

13 comments:

Les Carpenter said...

History has a way of sorting things out and passing judgment.

If only there weren't so many revisionists.

Commander Zaius said...

One person's revisionist is anothers speaker of the truth.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

If we were alive in the 1830s, we'd be trashing Polk for the 14,000 dead American cavalrymen, Manifest Destiny, etc. (especially if were were residing in the northeast). If were were alive in the 1860s, we'd be trashing Andrew Johnson for being such a racist bastard (ditto, the northeast thing).......Look, I'll admit it. I've written some pretty tough posts on Bush myself (tax-cuts and war-mongering just don't mix). I'm just not sure that he's the worst President ever - especially since this country has already had some extremely bad ones; A. Johnson, Harding, Pierce, Buchanan (a hard core boozehound/racist, supposedly), Nixon, etc..

Les Carpenter said...

Don't forget Grant. He was a drunk and his administration was pretty corrupt as well.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

You're right, RN. Mr. Grant made the bottom 10 on quite a few lists. And, yes, a humongous alkie.

John Myste said...

I posted this elsewhere, but because it targets O'Reilly, I wanted to include it here:

Bill O’Reilly said today that GE earned five billion dollars last year and paid zero dollars in taxes. He repeatedly pointed out that GE is a “friend” of Obama. According to O’Reilly, GE supported Obama more aggressively than any corporation ever represented a candidate, and in return, O’Reilly implied, Obama permitted his corporate cronies to use tax loopholes that allow them to pay no taxes at all.

Mr. O’Reilly failed to state when these loopholes were created, or on whose watch. The reason is simple: how the loopholes came to be is irrelevant. The fact is Obama has been in office for more than two years, and he still hasn’t initiated a bill that says GE cannot take advantage of corporate loopholes. It is true that the Commander in Chief cannot initiate bills, but that really isn’t the point. The fact that neither republicans nor democrats have proposed the GE tax law is also irrelevant. Only one thing matters: Mr. Obama failed to create a law denying GE the right to take advantage of republican tax loopholes. Now GE is not paying any taxes because of Obama’s negligence.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Thanks for posting, John. It doesn't sound like either party much wants to confront this shit.......Public financing of elections. I mean, I hate to sound like a broken record and all but, really, what in the hell else do we have?

Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

The 5 billion was just in the USA. It was 14 billion worldwide.

I bought some GE stock.

If you can't beat em, let em make money for you I always say.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Ride the wave, my brother.

Dervish Sanders said...

So your argument is... two wrongs make a right? I wasn't alive when any of those other transgressions by past leaders you mention occurred. None of those leaders are alive either. bush is still alive and could serve some time in prison for his crimes.

Dervish Sanders said...

I heard on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program last night that GE's 2006 tax return was 24 thousand pages. Maybe Will thinks they'll move their HQ to Ireland for the lower tax rate -- given the fact that 12.5 is less than zero. LOL!

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I already said, wd, that I wouldn't be opposed to an investigation where certain people are held accountable (you really need to contact Obama and Holder on this one). My whole point here is one of perspective; Dresden vs. water-boarding lunk-heads.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Actually, wd, what a lot of these companies do (Google and Microsoft amongst them, I believe) is something called the "Double Irish". They move some of their operations to Ireland and THEN move them again to the Caribbean (zero taxes there). I believe that Cisco (a Rachel Maddow sponsor, ironically) has pretty much stayed in Ireland.