George W. Bush

Per my post earlier today, this is huge news if it holds:

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration told congressional aides it won't ask lawmakers to release $350 billion remaining as part of the $700 billion U.S. financial- rescue package, people familiar with the matter said.

The administration of President George W. Bush ends in less than 10 weeks, and a delay in requesting the cash would leave it to President-elect Barack Obama to tap remaining cash in the bailout money.

This is a really big win for all of us who ignored the elite media's drum-beating for the bailout and kept the pressure on Congress.  read more »

WASHINGTON — This week's economic summit should offer President George W. Bush a chance to take a final, sentimental bow on the international stage and give historians the image of a man in charge.

More like this please, Rahm:

Emanuel rejected the idea of tying a pending economic stimulus plan to a proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia in order to win President George W. Bush's support during a post-election lame duck session of Congress.

"You don't link those essential needs to some other trade deal," he said. "The lame duck is for immediate things - that's what should be the focus right now."

Emanuel's past record on trade policy is, ahem, sketchy to say the least. As a Clinton staffer, he was the chief proponent of NAFTA and as an investment banker, he penned a 2000 Wall Street Journal op-ed demanding congressional Democrats drop their opposition to the China trade deal on the eve of the vote on that pact.  read more »

In my previous diaries, "Three Lies of Saint Ronnie And One Truth From Michael Moore" and "Drilling Down Into Reagan's Big Lie About The Economy", I looked at some founding lies at the core of modern conservatism under the banner of Reagan, focusing in one economics in the second diary. The bottom line there was that Reagan continued relying on Keynsian economics-but without crediting Keynes and without following the principles inherent in Keynesian models for managing the economy responsibly.  Instead,  the new conservative economics was presented in a barrage of distracting explanations that appeared to be designed for maximum gut appeal regardless of whether they actually made any sense or not.

Democrats generally were totally flumoxed by this approach.  read more »

Doug Schoen is the DLC-affiliated pollster for Republicans like Mike Bloomberg - the guy who bashes progressive organizations from the right, the genius strategist who makes his name on perpetually telling Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on major issues (Think about where Barack Obama would be if he had followed this genius's advice and supported the Iraq War, for instance).

Yet, because the media rewards anyone who is a reliable progressive basher, Schoen is still billed as a political "expert" on the pages of fringe publications like the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (not to be confused with the much more credible news section of that same paper):

"This election is not a mandate for Democratic policies

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Local Glenn Beck ripoff Ken Schram insults breast-feeding mother.

In most of the country, the wave is breaking hard against Republicans, but in Seattle, the local media, which I'm more and more convinced is and has always been nothing more than a conservative interest group (as Upton Sinclair wrote as far back as 1919), is trying its best keep Republican Dave Reichert in Congress.  The Seattle PI, the 'liberal' newspaper in town, came out with its puff piece about Reichert, Reichert seasoned by 4 years in office.  Obviously, the Seattle Times used its position to issue a partisan attack on Burner by exploiting a bureaucratic oddity of Harvard.  read more »

Screening Liberally Big Picture
by Josh Bolotsky

Remember the line from King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;/ They kill us for their sport." That a wanton boy, at this moment in history, is the most powerful man in the world is an absurd fact.  read more »

Scott Horton has a story on a documentary that will make the case that the highest levels of the Bush administration authorized torture, at the level of even authorizing particular techniques on individual prisoners.  Problem is that PBS has refused to air it, until next year:

PBS would not run the show-at least not until President Bush has left office. The show delivers impressively on a promise to "connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody that became 'at a minimum, cruel and inhuman treatment and, at worst, torture'"

While this might lead one to indict PBS, I think the real story is more interesting, and highlights the importance of strong public media.  read more »

McCain today:

Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We're 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes...

Well, that was nice of McCain to say that he wants us to win. I also thought, via Hotline on Call, it was interesting that McCain sounded an awful lot like Bush did two years ago:

W. TO COCKY DEMS: STOP 'MEASURING THE DRAPES'

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Last night, on Bill Moyers Journal (transcript here), we saw both sides of Bill Moyers. In Part 1, I wrote about the good side, his interview with George Soros.  Now, I'm writing about his not-so-good side, his interview with Kathleen Hall Jamieson and her drum-beat "balanced" criticism of the presidential campaign.    

As I noted in that first diary, Jamieson actually does some very good work, and is sometimes extremely sharp.  But this time, not so much, as she showed her more conventional, intellectually lazy, sloppy side, and her addiction to the "balance" narrative, equating the McCain campaign's William Ayers attack ad with Barack Obama's Keating 5 web video.  read more »

Pres. George W. Bush is going on TV this morning to calm out fears about the economy. I stopped listening to W a long time ago, but others still think that the man will offer up some real policies instead of platitudes. Face it -- Bush, Cheney and the rest of their gang got us into this mess with their deregulation schemes. Some Democrats, damn their hides, went along for the ride. But not all of them.

With this election, we have a chance to elect a different philosophy. It's especially important now that all of us have at least some of our retirement money in the stock market, mainly through 401(K)s. If you tell people to put their money into financial instruments that depend on the vagaries of the market and then take away all the rules that govern bad behavior in that market, you're asking for trouble.
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Despite the stage-managed non-release of his medical records back in May, McCain's complicated health history continues to crop up as a campaign issue in these final weeks of the election season. This weekend, in a new, two-part series called "Fit to Lead" (as in, "Is the next president....?"), CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta "uncovers the health secrets of presidents past....and future."

TV Week:

The debut episode will follow Dr. Sanjay Gupta as he investigates the health and medical fitness of past, present and future presidents.

Dr. Gupta will interview former presidential press secretaries Ari Fleischer (George W.

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The bloom may be off Sarah Palin's rose for the majority of Americans, but there's no question that she continues to fire up the conservative masses. She's drawing record crowds at campaign stops, and her debate with Joe Biden was the most watched vice-presidential debate in history. Now, as much as we love Joe, we all know that it was Sarah who kept viewers - regardless of their political stripe- glued to their televisions. And while we all may cringe to admit it, the truth is that Palin didn't screw up.

Goshdarnit, just where did Sarah learn that poise under pressure?  read more »

WASHINGTON — Relocating from Washington and looking for lot — Highland Park area, close to George W. Bush Presidential Library. Security a must; will build green.

Not sure how I missed this yesterday, but with the new Gallup poll, George W. Bush has passed Nixon and Truman, and become the least popular President of all-time. According to the Roper Center, here is the worst net approval / disapproval result for every President in the Gallup poll since it began public polling in the late 1930's:  read more »