George W. Bush

3 recessions under Bush presidents. (3 Republican recessions, many would say.) But this one is the worst since the post-War period [audio].

Should we really be surprised?

Book says Souter mulled resignation after Bush v. Gore.

In “The Nine,” which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, vid Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case. “For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice,” Toobin continues. “That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same.”

What happened in those deliberations?

Redstate notes that "Cheney Warned Of Iraq 'Quagmire'":

I don't know what to say. Maybe something like I hate it when he's right? I don't think Iraq is a quagmire. Progress is being made. So much so that even the New York Times had to acknowledged it and there is talk of some Democrats being worried about facing a voter backlash for pandering to the left wing defeatists.

I was speaking with a Marine Master Sargent last week. He was getting ready for his second deployment to Iraq. Asked what he thought of our efforts he said He has 25 years in the Corps, looking to make it 30, he expects he will have three more Iraq tours. He thought for a moment and said 'we just need more time. You have to give us more time.'

The problem with Cheney's use of the q-word is that ever since we gave up in Vietnam, quagmire equates to failure in our political lexicon. We have not failed in Iraq, not yet, regardless of what the Democrats and the main stream media say. Another problem is that we can't look at the post-9/11 world through pre-9/11 lenses. September 11th changed everything.

Did September 11th change anything but the level of fear-mongering by the right? I'm still waiting for someone to explain how 9/11 changed anything fundamental about our strategic security. Yeah it was scary, but was it "throw out the Constitution" scary? Blitzkrieg in Poland changed everything. Pearl Harbor changed everything. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand changed everything. The "shot heard 'round the world" changed everything.

But did the mass-murderous fanaticism of 19 criminal skyjackers change everything? Or did it just change us?

Karl Rove's departure announcement comes while we as a country wrestle with the utter debacle that he helped create: the violent occupation of Iraq. It was our ill-intentioned, ill-conceived and woefully ineptly executed invasion and occupation of Iraq, not 9/11, that changed everything. It was our polarization of the world by an administration hell-bent on destroying Saddam Hussein, the man who betrayed the oil men (and let's all now remember all those photos of Saddam shaking hands with American "statesmen"), that changed everything.

It is the continuing state of the State of Iraq that has changed everything. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. (Hello? Is anyone on the right keeping their ears unplugged?)

This isn't about party. Most of the Democrats in Washington are culpable in enabling the worst foreign policy blunder in America's history, too. This is about bringing America back to the good fight, the smart play, the leadership role in the world -- leading by example, not by sending our finest fighting men and women into neighborhoods to establish democracy at the point of a gun, not by keeping our soldiers and Marines (and as many, if not more, private "contractors") in those neighborhoods with the impossible mission of policing a civil war.

Meanwhile the guy behind the attacks that supposedly "changed everything" -- Osama bin Laden, remember him? -- where is he? "Oh, don't talk about him. Al-Qaeda is in Iraq!" the right cries a cappella. Yeah, some of them are. I wonder why.

The right seems to be obsessed with appearing strong rather than being strong. While the mission of the war on Iraq and the definition of "victory" remain terribly vague, what's becoming quite clear is that this war has become a point of pride for the fragile ego of the modern American conservative.

Conservatism once stood for small government and balanced budgets. Conservatism once opposed "nation building." Conservatism once fought for civil liberties. No longer.

The takeover of the Republican Party by the neocons and "holy rollers" (as Victor Gold calls them) -- that changed everything.

So it turns out Bush was treated for lyme disease:

WASHINGTON - President Bush was treated for Lyme disease last August, the White House announced Wednesday after failing to disclose the problem for nearly a year.

The treatment was revealed only when the White House made public all the results of Bush's annual physical exam on Wednesday. It showed up in the "past medical history" section and in the summary along with other skin conditions....

...Symptoms can include lethargy, joint pain, fever, limping and loss of appetite. A bacterial disease, it can be eradicated with antibiotic treatment in the early stages, but can become more complicated to treat if not caught early.

That doesn't quite catch it. Some Googling will reveal that lyme disease has neurological effects, too. Is that why it was kept secret?

ACP Online says:

Symptoms—Second Stage

The second stage of Lyme disease is known as early disseminated Lyme disease, which means that the infection of bacteria is beginning to spread and is affecting certain body functions. This stage occurs weeks to months after the bite of an infected tick. Problems can include:

* Numbness and pain in arms or legs
* Paralysis of facial muscles (usually on one side of the face)
* Meningitis—fever, stiff neck, and severe headaches
* Abnormal heart beat (rare)

Symptoms—Third Stage

The third stage of Lyme disease is called late (or chronic) Lyme disease. This stage can occur weeks, months, or even years after infection in patients who either never received antibiotic treatment for early Lyme disease or whose treatment did not kill all of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Patients with late Lyme disease may get:

Impeachment of the worst White House administration in history comes up every day in the blogosphere -- and not without its skeptics. I've been rather skeptical about it all myself. What with how the Republicans trivialized impeachment in the '90s, it's hard to take impeachment with any sort of Constitutional seriousness. (And do we really want to follow their lead, anyway?)

However, it took a Republican to convince me that the question is not at all trivial. Especially not today.

Bruce Fein was Ronald Reagan's Justice Department official, and general council to the FCC. Hardly a shill for MoveOn. And yet he made the most powerful argument for impeachment of Bush and Cheney a couple of weeks ago, on Bill Moyers Journal. And his words still haunt me.

Well, this is an unusual affair of president/vice-president, where the vice-president is de facto president most of the time. And that's why most of people recognize that these decisions, especially when it comes to overreaching with executive power, are the product of Dick Cheney and his aide, David Addington, not George Bush and Alberto Gonzalez or Harriet Miers, who don't have the cerebral capacity to think of these devilish ideas. And for that reason, they equate the administration more with Dick Cheney than with George Bush....

...It means asserting powers and claiming that there are no other branches that have the authority to question it. Take, for instance, the assertion that he's made that when he is out to collect foreign intelligence, no other branch can tell him what to do. That means he can intercept your e-mails, your phone calls, open your regular mail, he can break and enter your home. He can even kidnap you, claiming I am seeking foreign intelligence and there's no other branch Congress can't say it's illegal--judges can't say this is illegal. I can do anything I want. That is overreaching. When he says that all of the world, all of the United States is a military battlefield because Osama bin Laden says he wants to kill us there, and I can then use the military to go into your homes and kill anyone there who I think is al-Qaeda or drop a rocket, that is overreaching. That is a claim even King George III didn't make--

....Opening your mail, your e-mails, your phone calls. Breaking and entering your homes. Creating a pall of fear and intimidation if you say anything against the president you may find retaliation very quickly. We're claiming he's setting precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons anytime there's another 9/11.

Right now the victims are people whose names most Americans can't pronounce. And that's why they're not so concerned. They will start being Browns and Jones and Smiths. And that precedent is being set right now. And one of the dangers that I see is it's not just President Bush but the presidential candidates for 2008 aren't standing up and saying--

--"If I'm president, I won't imitate George Bush." That shows me that this is a far deeper problem than Mr. Bush and Cheney.

A deeper problem.

[The Democrats in Congress] have basically renounced-- walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And I think the reason why this is. They do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution. It's what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through the processes of review and vetting one individual's perception to be checked and-- counterbalanced by another's. And when you abandon that process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it's going to capsize....

...This is something that needs to set a precedent, whoever occupies the White House in 2009. You do not want to have that occupant, whether it's John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani or John Edwards to have this authority to go outside the law and say, "I am the law. I do what I want. No one else's view matters."

What about Bush's claim that these are extraordinary times?

Cheney and Bush have shown that these measures are optical. Take, for instance, these military conditions that combine judge, jury, and prosecutors. What have they done? They tried the same offenses that are tried in civilian courts. American Taliban John Walker Lindh got 20 years in the civilian courts. And then we have the same offense, David Hicks, he gets nine months in military prison. Why are you creating these extraordinary measures? They aren't needed....

...They're trying to create the appearance that they're tougher than all of their opponents 'cause they're willing to violate the law, even though the violations have nothing to do with actually defeating the terrorism. And we have instances where the president now for years has flouted the Foreign Intelligence Act. He's never said why the act has ever inhibited anybody....

...Certainly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we were in a fog. There could have been hundreds of thousands terrorist cells. You could understand the president, "I've got to take any action I need right now to uncover a possible second edition of 9/11." And, of course, as soon as I do that, I will go to Congress as soon as possible. I will seek ratification. That's an immediate aftermath of 9/11. We know a lot more in 2007, in July. We know this is not 100 or 1,000 terrorist cells.

We know this is not the danger of the Soviet Union or Hirohito or the Third Reich. And yet the president continues to insist. That's why we need military commissions. We need to say you're an enemy combatant and stick you in prison forever without any judicial review and otherwise.That is a total distortion of what the genuine nature of the problem is and our ability to fight and defeat these terrorists with ordinary civil-- the criminal proceedings....

...But it's saying no, it's the Constitution that's more important than your aggrandizing of power. And not just for you because the precedent that would be set would bind every successor in the presidency as well, no matter Republican, Democrat, Independent, or otherwise.

You should really watch the video, whether you're for or against impeachment. It's quite a conversation.

This is bigger than merely enduring the last dozen-plus months of Bush/Cheney. It's about what we allow to happen to our Constitution.

Impeach.

Even though President Bush, to my mind, is the worst president America has ever had -- and that we still have yet to realize just how much damage he has done to our foreign relations as well as our domestic politics -- I have to raise eyebrows at how the mainstream media have spun Bush's latest actions with regard to torture and the CIA.

The AP:

WASHINGTON - President Bush breathed new life into the CIA's terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire over the treatment of CIA detainees, on Friday ordered that agency interrogators comply with the Geneva Conventions against torture.

AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Friday forbid the CIA to torture suspected terrorists in its once-secret detention and interrogation program but was criticized for his vague, "trust us" approach.

Bloomberg:

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush signed an executive order today barring the Central Intelligence Agency from torturing terrorism suspects or subjecting them to ``cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.''

So what is the "news that's fit to print"?

And the media moguls, pundits and workers sitting in Aeron chairs decide what is the truth, pre-chewed for the rest of us. And we're not supposed to taste their spit.

What is the truth?

There really is no hope for redemption by this president.

In a written statement commuting the jail sentence, issued hours after Monday's ruling, Bush called the sentence "excessive," and suggested that Libby will pay a big enough price for his conviction.

"The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting," he said.

After all, we can't have a former Bush Administration official unable to cash in on K Street.

Watch Ms Digby!

Via Shakesville, we learn that Hearst Newspapers did a little reading between the Pentagon lines:

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.

I'm speechless.

"It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

I really really hope this analysis is wrong. What is definitely not reassuring is that we now have a military surge industry that is making very very big bucks on the war, and stand to lose out on mega cash flows when we withdraw. Dina Rasor writes in The Huffington Post:

This nation came to be in part because George Washington refused to be king. Instead he became our first president, and a monumental shift in world history began.

Now we have another George in power. The problem is that this George thinks he is king. And as a result, we've been watching another monumental shift in the course of world events. And so much that America earned over the years -- our nation's "political capital" -- has been spent by his would-be highness.

The question is whether the flatfooted Democrats, the party-first Republicans and the stars-in-their-eyes news media will respond to the latest revelations with any substance.

Once upon a time, privacy was held as a core American value. Now it seems only the president's privacy seems to be important.