Here's a panorama of issues and ideas served up piping hot, with seconds and thirds always welcome. Ring the bell, from A (Abortion) to Z (Zionism), and let's go!
Yes, ma'am, she's gunnin' to blow the slightest prospect of affordable health care right out of the water.
And disgraced governor Sarah Palin's pals at the NRA have inspired her to stock up on the ammo that has almost always worked for them: Fear and Loathing and some Supreme Double X OO Disinformation Buckshot. The Associated Press reports:
"Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course," the former vice Republican presidential candidate wrote on her Facebook page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters.
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote.
My Dear God. What on EARTH ARE WE GONNA DO, THEN???
There's only one thing TO do, obviously.
Release Palin's warriors upon town meetings and create the kind of hysteria that energized Medieval Europe's nobles to confront all the evil and witchery threatening their holy order.
What does the right-wing say to the "Obamacare Demon"?? No, you can't! The forces of status quo goodness, where sound health care still remains a privilege (hugely profitable privilege to the medical special interests) and not a right, shall prevail.....
And so it's no wonder, like the corporate medical sabotage unleashed in 1993, that the frightened and deluded--but well-programmed--"moral majority" of stage-managed protesters will make a spectacular splash on the evening news.
Yep, those "Tea Party" party folks are reaaaaaally lettin' 'em have it. The people "are not happy!"
Makes ya so proud to be an American, eh? Especially when vested corporate interests can stir up enough yokels to bury a critical issue under a cloud of trailer park methane.
As much as the Big Media can often screw things up, there are many times some of its pundits can in fact speak common sense volumes above a roaring rabble. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman summed up the whole sorry spectacle recently.
"There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled 'Freedom of Speech,'" he observed, "depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.
That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting 'This is America!' — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.
Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.
And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.
So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the 'Brooks Brothers riot' in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.
But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
The latter group, by the way, is run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain. Mr. Scott was forced out of that job amid a fraud investigation; the company eventually pleaded guilty to charges of overbilling state and federal health plans, paying $1.7 billion — yes, that’s 'billion' — in fines. You can’t make this stuff up.
But while the organizers are as crass as they come, I haven’t seen any evidence that the people disrupting those town halls are Florida-style rent-a-mobs. For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is, what are they angry about?
There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they 'oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.' Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.
Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the 'birther' movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.
And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.
Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.
Many people hoped that last year’s election would mark the end of the 'angry white voter' era in America. Indeed, voters who can be swayed by appeals to cultural and racial fear are a declining share of the electorate.
But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.
And if Mr. Obama can’t recapture some of the passion of 2008, can’t inspire his supporters to stand up and be heard, health care reform may well fail."
Well-said, Mr. Krugman.
Moreover, a grave admonition that if the real American public doesn't rally against the medical special interests and their vociferous performers, this "downright evil" current system of corporate bloodsucking will no doubt be the death of us.
An unforgivably huge hunk of time has elapsed since the last posting. This time I've made up my mind--promise--that it won't happen again. There's simply too much happening around us, especially since Obama's inauguration, to remain mute.
So many, many things to talk about. The passing of the very controversial but undisputed Pop King, Michael Jackson. The world economic meltdown and the melting of polar ice caps. North Korea's nuclear saber-rattling, Iran's rigged election & its own nuclear jitterbug that's got bully boy Israel fuming and flexing. The burning issue of superpower U.S.A.'s miserable neglect of tens of millions of its citizens, leaving them endangered by a broken-down medical system that strips their children of adequate health care.
The list flows on and on.
Whatya say we just kick start it with a grand salute to a cultural icon. But not just any icon. Raise your glasses to someone that had, nor will ever have any equal, ever, in the explosive world of martial arts.
It was 36 summers ago, on July 20, that the world was shocked by the death of the phenomenal "Little Dragon," Bruce Lee. Rumors ran amok over why this 32 year-old man in amazing physical condition would suddenly perish. Some wildly conjectured it was a mystical "death punch" by an ninja assassin that caused Lee's acute cerebral edema, a fatal swelling of the brain. He was showing the world "too much," went the argument, so the old masters decided he had to go.
The notion fit just like a script from a Hong Kong karate movie. It was far more engaging than autopsy results pointing to a lethal adverse reaction Lee had after taking the prescription pain killing drug Equagesic. Of course, mystery clouds thickened when they also discovered trace amounts of, yep, cannabis in Lee's system. Sure, we all remember the recent hoopla of the photo of Olympic star Michael Phelps taking a bong hit. And anyone who's ever seen "Pumping Iron" will probably recall the scene of Mr. Universe--and California's current governor--Arnold Schwarzenegger toking away on that joint.
But Martial Arts Master Bruce Lee--a reefer fiend?? Come on.....
This was someone that Time Magazine crowned as "one of the 100 Most Important People of the Century, as one of the greatest heroes & icons, as an example of personal improvement through, in part, physical fitness, and among the most influential martial artists of the twentieth century."
Lee's Jeet Kune Do art of fighting was based on what he termed "the style of no style." He was convinced that traditional martial arts had been too rigid and formalistic to neutralize a skilled street fighter. Lee's system, thus, emphasized "practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency."
His workout regime to prove the point was set to maximum, and beyond. According to one source:
"Lee would do bicep curls at a weight of 70-to-80 lbs for three sets of eight repetitions, along with squats, push-ups, reverse curls, concentration curls, French presses, and both wrist curls and reverse wrist curls. He trained from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., including stomach, flexibility, and running, and from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. he would weight train and cycle. A typical exercise for Lee would be to run a distance of two to six miles in 15-to-45 minutes, in which he would vary speed in 3–5 minute intervals. Lee would ride the equivalent of 10 miles in 45 minutes on a stationary bike.
"Lee would sometimes exercise with the jump rope and put in 800 jumps after cycling. Lee would also do exercises to toughen the skin on his fists, including thrusting his hands into buckets of harsh rocks and gravel. He would do over 500 repetitions of this on a given day...."
Where his ganja breaks fit into this unbelievably grueling schedule is unknown. But there's absolutely no questioning the tangible results of his training, from his lightning-fast speed (where cameras had to be slowed down to get more than a blur in a scene), to the famed "one-inch punch" that could send someone hurling backwards, to those amazing high-flying kicks.
Just how many of the reported Lee exploits were out-and-out facts, and which of them may have been frosted with embellishment, is a continuing debate. According to biographer John Little, author of "Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body," the list of feats includes:
* Lee's striking speed from three feet with his hands down by his side reached five hundredths of a second.
* His combat movements were at times too fast to be captured on film for clear slow motion replay using the traditional 24 frames per second of that era, so many scenes were shot in 32 frames per second for better clarity.
* In a speed demonstration, Lee could snatch a dime off a person's open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind.
* Lee would hold an elevated v-sit position for 30 minutes or longer.
* He could throw grains of rice up into the air and then catch them in mid-flight using chopsticks.
* He could thrust his fingers through unopened cans of Coca-Cola. (This was when soft drinks cans were made of steel much thicker than today's aluminium cans).
* Lee performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.
* He performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.
* He could break wooden boards 6 inches (15 cm) thick.
* Lee could cause a 200-lb (90.72 kg) bag to fly towards and thump the ceiling with a sidekick.
* He performed a sidekick while training with James Coburn and broke a 150 lb punching bag.
* In a move that has been dubbed "Dragon Flag", Lee could perform leg lifts with only his shoulder blades resting on the edge of a bench and suspend his legs and torso horizontal midair.
Beyond any doubt was the reality of the Little Dragon's mesmerizing power and agility. This was guy you wouldn't want to antagonize; some foolhardy extras on a few of Lee's martial arts movie sets wanted instant fame, so they provoked Lee into fights in hopes of getting the best of the movie star.
This clip amply demonstrates just how foolish--and dangerous--that would prove.
The quintessential Ultimate Fighter.
Bruce Lee was more, however. His reflections on the actual philosophy underlying fighting stressed the principle of "fluid form."
"Be formless...shapeless, like water," he remarked, "If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend..."
Thirty-six years have now passed.
But the world continues to celebrate his gift, which one film critic called "poetry in motion." Nothing better displays this than that greatest martial arts film of them all, "Enter The Dragon." Like most fans, I've probably watched it 25 times or more since it was released the year of his tragic death.
Enjoy this spectacular scene from the film. Experience not just Bruce Lee's poetry in motion but the prima facie evidence of a veritable legend.
It's a stunningly bittersweet day for this nation.
The sweet part is more than obvious. The first black man sworn in to the highest office in a land for so long tragically betraying its loud promise of freedom and equality.
Better late than never is, yeah, better late than never. I already had the electrifying thrill of seeing our new president speak, no more than about a hundred yards away, both times in Manassas, Virginia.
He is a mesmerizing orator. Obama speaks with a cadence reflecting the passion of a man who really does believe in the credo "Yes, We Can." This is going to be oh-so important in the coming days, weeks, months, years.
Because for this new, young president, it will take all the prayers, good luck, good effort, and good synergy to turn things around, from the utter mess that George Bush has created.
There are simply too many, many, horrendous facets of the Dubya Destruction Legacy but you could easily start with his outrageous environmental policy disasters.
The Washington Post reported that in Bush's so-called "midnight regulations" snuck in last month, he ordered the following changes:
1.) Concealed firearms now allowed in national parks. A new Interior Department rule allows an individual to carry a loaded weapon in a park or wildlife refuge — but only if the person has a permit for a concealed weapon, and if the state where the park or refuge is located also allows loaded firearms in parks.
2.) New rules for mountaintop-mining waste. A new rule from the Office of Surface Mining could ease the restrictions on what mining companies can do with the tons of dirt and rock they blast off Appalachian mountaintops to reach coal seams beneath. In many cases, this waste is dumped into nearby ravines, creating “valley fills” that be dozens of feet high. Previously, rules had barred most dumping within 100 yards of a stream, if the material would damage the stream’s water quality. The new rule would allow waste to be dumped in streams — if a company has no alternative, and if it tries to preserve the stream’s health “to the extent practicable.”
3.) Looser rules for air pollution from factory farms. A new regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency exempts factory farms from a requirement to report hazardous air pollution — including ammonia given off by animal waste — to the federal government.
4.) Permission to burn toxic wastes as fuel. A new rule from the EPA allows companies that create hazardous chemical wastes in industrial processes to burn them as fuel in their own incinerators, instead of paying highly regulated incineration firms to destroy them.
5.) Loosened protections for endangered and threatened species. A new rule from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would allow other government agencies to decide in some cases whether a project would harm an imperiled species, without having to submit to an independent scientific review.
6.) Easing restrictions on oil-shale drilling. The federal Bureau of Land Management has proposed allowing companies to drill for “oil shale,” which is oil contained in rock deposits, across the West. The bureau argued that the work would increase domestic oil production.
That would only cover probably one-tenth of one percent of the Bush Eight Year Train Wreck.
As far as everything else, domestic, foreign, or otherwise, the damage has been incalculable and has already been well-hashed over.
Why else, then, would this wretched, blithering oaf -- who THANK GOD is right now being shipped back to his Texas village -- be rated as one of the worst (if not THE worst) presidents in history??
The following, courtesy of a blogger identifying herself only as "Karen", provides a nice, albeit a bit succinct, summary of the "gifts" that George H. just kept on givin', and givin', and givin', with spectacular and relentless generosity:
He Failed to win the 2000 election.
He Failed to "unite".
He Failed to capitalize on the strong economy left by the previous administration.
He Failed to build on the ground breaking work in improving relations with N. Korea.
He Failed to listen to pre 9/11 terror warnings.
He Failed to find Osama Bin Ladin, the person behind the outrage that was 9/11.
He Failed to listen to all those who told him Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
He Failed to listen to all those who told him that Saddam didn't have WMD.
He Failed to understand the use and power of diplomacy to achieve anything!
He Failed the US army by lack of planning for "what happens later ...."
He Failed the people of New Orleans.
He Failed to protect the Constitution (his sworn duty!)
He Failed to recognize climate change and the need to address it.
He Failed the Office of the President.
He Failed the American people.
Now he gets rewarded by riding off into the sunset, receiving bags of cash for speeches, memoirs, etc.
Maybe he'll even take a few dancing gigs, too. Something that might even qualify him one day for "Dancing With The Stars." Some might recall Bush's little soft shoe shuffle while waiting for John McCaine early last year at the White House.
But it was the Bush Waltz in his 2007 Africa trip that really captured our hearts, folks! Yeah, well, almost. Anyhow, this painfully buffoonish but so very destructive man's only truly redeeming feature has to have been that self-effacing humor.
Now since he was appointed to office in 2000, in retrospect it seems altogether fitting that Bush really ought to have been installed as our National Court Jester, don't ya think?
Now that we're on the subject of misplaced performers, how about Ronald Reagan, that intellectual colossus but mighty fine performer, as National Cheer Leader??
I can only imagine the vocational possibilities for Bad Boy Billy Clinton, but we'll save that for another post. Let's finish up with some of Barack's stirring words today that brought tears to your eyes -- and don't tell me they didn't, cause I was sobbing brazenly.
"So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it. America....In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.
"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
Like the other two Obama speeches, I was left in a contemplative mood. On this especially important day, I started to wonder about relevant sayings to apply to the spirit of our new leader.
Didn't take long.
Chinese proverb. Very simple, as they usually are. But so very, very sound.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with....a single step."
......perhaps now he, along with the rest of the Republicans, will finally take better care about who THEY associate with, at the very least.
On the other hand, perhaps they're just too hopelessly wedded to the past. Maybe no matter how much of a crushing victory Barack Obama and the Democrats deliver on this glorious night, our shameless gaggle of right-wing ideologues will never, ever relent.
Pity. They tried so desperately to smear our next president by the company he kept, when all the while that crazed, dangerous elephant in the room was running amok, and will depart office fat and flush with cash, while leaving our economy and foreign policy in a shambles.
That, however, never seemed to bother Mister John McCain, only when he was caught debating with himself.
Now, however, there need be no more doubt about McCain's true character, an angry, reactionary, and regressive politician.
And in this, his political Waterloo, he can rest assured that he can turn to his old pal for comfort.
Just, the next time Johnny, be careful about the company YOU keep.
"OBAMA, BABY!!" shouted the young black man selling T-shirts, walking by my car last night as it slowly drifted into one of Northern Virginia's merciless traffic jams.
The air wasn't just filled with excitement. It crackled. Thunderously.
Drivers were pulling their cars over in all directions along the stretch of Prince William Parkway and quickly hopping out to join the masses of people moving towards the county fairgrounds less than a mile away. It turned out that the last official "Change We Need Rally" was now in motion and the next president of the United States was there to join the Virginians in sealing the deal.
I managed to get to a quiet neighborhood nearby, parked my car, and started walking towards some townhouses in the direction of the fairgrounds.
Climbed over one large wooden fence and then found myself battling through thick brush, big thorny vines, and tall grass--all in the darkness--but trying to appreciate the adventure (and sacrifice to my office clothes) of blazing my own trail to get to Barack's Big Party. I finally made it through to the street and joined the masses as they flowed onward to the fairground gates.
Inside was a rainbow of inspiration. Americans of all ages, colors, and classes, perfectly integrated, illuminated by the same voltage line of faith. If you have been to an Obama rally, you'll know the sensation I'm talking about. When he finally appeared, the crowd of nearly 100,000 erupted as if he had whipped out a Fender Stratocaster and unleashed a barrage of lightening fast riffs.....
Now just suppose for a moment that Barack Obama was something of a rocker. Can you imagine how much energy his rapidly disintegrating bridge-to-nowhere opponents would work up in trying to manufacture that into a smear?? I have faith, though, that enough voters across the nation--and those devastating poll results bear this out--are fed up with John "I Voted 90 percent of the time with Bush!" McCain & his Alaska Sarah, the amazing barbie doll bimbo.
Sad but true, folks. These really are two desperate, unscrupulous candidates with nothing to offer but more of the same heaping helpings of Bush poison. Which explains why they take to character assassination with the verve of delirious helocopter hunters in a canned ice hunt.
As Americans go the polls today to put the finishing touches on one of the most unique and memorable presidential campaigns in history, maybe the lesson will finally be learned on how to catch the telltale stench of contemptible Republicans using the Karl Rove "Moral Bankruptcy Playbook."
Monika Robinson, where ever she is, probably gave us the best summation of the capacity of the GOP Sleaze Machine to coat election issues with the most dazzling Orwellian colors. Late in the campaign she wrote:
"I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight......
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids 'Willow', 'Trig', and 'Track', you're a 'maverick.'
* Graduate from Harvard Law School -- you are unstable.
* Attend five different small colleges before graduating -- you are well-grounded.
* If you spend three years as a brilliant community organizer, becme the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,00 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend eight years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the State Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, spend four years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs Committees -- you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, four years on a city council and six years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, twenty months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people -- then you're qualified to becme the nation's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for nineteen years, while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches -- you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month -- you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control -- you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly adovocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant -- you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard Graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family -- your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA -- your family is extremely admirable.
Alas, as it turned out, the only news on The Shrub that day was his reality check with some very vocal protesters at Monticello, while swearing in new citizens.
Imagine that--having the worst president in our history officially blessing your new American citizenship.
Of course, there's always the bright side, everyone: This was the very last time the Chief Executive Outlaw would ever have to blemish someone's new, legally-earned citizenship. The last time, for that matter, that he'll ever debase another Independence Day.
How do we love thee, Dubya?...Let us count the days....
Bush and Co-Conspirator Cheney, however, must be given credit for their astonishing achievements in at least one major policy: Evading impeachment! Yes, indeed. How many others could have matched the breath-taking level of Bush high crimes? On the other hand, considering their stunning opening night success in stealing the 2000 Presidential Election, it should be no surprise.
But as the avian flu-riddled lame duck flaps and flops his way through the dwindling days of power, the inevitable question continues to loom.
How will the history books explain these eight tortured years of the George W. Bush Regime? Good, bad, mediocre? Certainly there have been cases of presidents who were feverishly criticized while in office, but went on to be remembered for unquestioned greatness. Abraham Lincoln, Bush's fellow "war president," was obviously one of them.
Hmmmmmm......Bush, a 21st Century Lincoln??
“It would be difficult," commented one historian in a George Mason University poll earlier this year, "to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush." "His domestic policies,” another historian in the poll noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”
A third historian in the poll was no less candid, in a chilling assessment sparing little in terms of the grand repercussions of the Eight Year Bush Plague.
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” he remarked, “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every hen house, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”
True, predecessor Bill Clinton was definitely no Lincoln, either. But please, you'd be pulling one hell of a stretch to find any resemblance to the suffocating moral stench exuded by Little Bush.
Surely one of the best summations came from Columbia University Professor Eric Foner, in his 2006 Washington Post commentary, "What Will History Say?"
"Ever since 1948," wrote Foner, "when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from 'great' to 'failure,' such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.
Changes in presidential rankings reflect shifts in how we view history. When the first poll was taken, the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote.
As a result, President Andrew Johnson, a fervent white supremacist who opposed efforts to extend basic rights to former slaves, was rated 'near great.' Today, by contrast, scholars consider Reconstruction a flawed but noble attempt to build an interracial democracy from the ashes of slavery -- and Johnson a flat failure.
More often, however, the rankings display a remarkable year-to-year uniformity. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt always figure in the 'great' category. Most presidents are ranked 'average' or, to put it less charitably, mediocre.
Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them. A look at history, as well as Bush's policies, explains why.
At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues).
Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush's presidency certainly brings theirs to mind.
Harding and Coolidge are best remembered for the corruption of their years in office (1921-23 and 1923-29, respectively) and for channeling money and favors to big business. They slashed income and corporate taxes and supported employers' campaigns to eliminate unions. Members of their administrations received kickbacks and bribes from lobbyists and businessmen.
'Never before, here or anywhere else,' declared the Wall Street Journal, 'has a government been so completely fused with business.' The Journal could hardly have anticipated the even worse cronyism, corruption and pro-business bias of the Bush administration.
Despite some notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon is mostly associated today with disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power. Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law.
Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them.
In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world.
Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.
One other president bears comparison to Bush: James K. Polk. Some historians admire him, in part because he made their job easier by keeping a detailed diary during his administration, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States.
Lincoln, then a member of Congress from Illinois, condemned Polk for misleading Congress and the public about the cause of the war--an alleged Mexican incursion into the United States. Accepting the president's right to attack another country 'whenever he shall deem it necessary,' Lincoln observed, would make it impossible to 'fix any limit' to his power to make war. Today, one wishes that the country had heeded Lincoln's warning.
Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors.
I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history."
Prof. Foner, you have my vote. Oh, and remembering that every presidential chapter has a footnote or two, let's be sure to salute the rest of the iceberg......
I've lived on both coasts of the United States as well as Central America (where I became bilingual), and traveled to over two dozen countries. This afforded me an enriched perspective as a writer and teacher. "Incandescent Planet" and "Jonestown Apologists Alert" provide choice cuts from the human landscape, featuring politics, popular culture, and the senseless saga of a doomed cult.
I'm certain you'll find an abundance of well-seasoned food for thought. Let's eat.
