WataugaWatch

Here's a sight we thought we might never see.

The mind races with apt captions, with parting shots, with poetical adieus, but we're far too dignified to set them down here.

You may, however, consider this your open thread for getting your own thoughts off your chest.

Labels: Bush administration, George W. Bush

By guest blogger Matthew B. Robinson, Ph.D. (Professor of Government & Justice Studies, Appalachian State University):

In November 2004, George W. Bush had just won reelection, and I reacted as honestly as I could in an essay that was published here on Watauga Watch. Now that the Bush disaster –– I mean, presidency –– is finally over, I thought it might be useful to review that column for its prophetic accuracy.

FYI, my kids are now 7 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old, respectively. They managed to survive the Bush presidency, although not unscathed. Fortunately, each is happy and healthy, still too young to know what they've actually managed to live through. But they're also much poorer than they would have been had someone else –– probably anyone else –– been elected in 2000 or 2004.

Thankfully, I was wrong in my prediction that we'd be attacked again on our soil by al Qaeda. There has not been another attack against America on our soil under the Bush presidency, and Bush takes credit for this every chance he gets.

Frankly, he does deserve some credit but maybe not as much as some think. I've read numerous accounts of al Qaeda –– what its goals are and how it operates. Each attack, they think, must be bigger and more dramatic than the last. The first time al Qaeda attacked us on American soil was in 1993. The next time was in 2001. That eight-year gap gave them time for something much bigger and more horrific.

It's now been about eight years since 9/11. Had we done nothing to weaken al Qaeda in America, it'd be just about time again for another major attack.

You might say that George Bush gave al Qaeda a much easier way to attack us, not here but in Iraq. The group known as "al Qaeda in Iraq" did not exist until our invasion, and there simply was no al Qaeda presence in Iraq prior to 2003 when we started the war. Now that we are there, so too are they, and Americans have paid with their lives.

Which brings me to my next 2004 prediction –– that we'd be in Iraq for 5-10 years and lose as many as 5,000 to 10,000 military personnel. Four years later, we're still there. Fortunately, we haven't hit 5,000 deaths yet -– not quite -- but about 600,000 Iraqis has died prematurely as a result of our invasion and occupation.

We didn't start another war against a country not involved in the 9/11 attacks, as I thought likely. But the Iranian influence in Iraq and in the Middle East is far greater now, and Bush policies are the proximate cause. "The Iranian problem" is being passed on to President Obama, along with the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Sure enough, we've swelled the ranks of al Qaeda, creating more enemies and putting our country at greater risk. U.S. intelligence shows that al Qaeda is stronger and larger now than on 9/11 and is operating freely in portions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The rest of my predictions were 100% accurate. Bush gave us Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. These two individuals are young and healthy and will continue to push the Supreme Court to the right for decades to come.

Medicare and social security are still in deep trouble. The gap between the rich and the poor is greater than ever. Poverty, child poverty, true unemployment, and the number of people without health insurance have increased steadily throughout the Bush Administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency was reduced to a good old boy hangout, just like FEMA, and now plant and animal species are threatened. Further, literally nothing has been done to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy. Funding for education (and for just about every social service) is in serious jeopardy. Cuts are occurring everywhere.

We are less free because of the USA PATRIOT Act (now permanent law), domestic eavesdropping/warrantless wiretapping (in violation of U.S. law), the suspension of habeas corpus, the detention of US citizens as enemy combatants, and the official use of torture as part of the war on terror.

What I was probably most wrong about was that George W. Bush would finally be forced to take responsibility for all of this. Just the other day, Bush held a farewell press conference, saying he was disappointed that we did not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that one of his greatest mistakes was hanging that "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier. What a warped sense of morality this guy has!

The last four years of the Bush Administration did in fact give us tens of thousands of Americans who are poorer, more uneducated, more uninsured, more polluted, sicker, more threatened, definitely more hated, more monitored by Big Brother, and even deader. But thankfully, I was also right that the last four years of George W. Bush shifted the political pendulum to the left.

We can credit George W. Bush for giving us a black man named Barack Hussein Obama, the 43rd President of the United States of America. Think about it –– would this have been even remotely possible without a George W. Bush presidency?

Now Democrats and Republicans of good will can get back to fixing the problems thrust upon us by eight years of the Bush Administration.

It's over.

And I'm feeling much better now!

Labels: Bush administration, George W. Bush

WASHINGTON -- Politics corroded Bush administration decisions on protecting endangered species in regions nationwide, federal investigators have concluded in a sweeping new report.

Former Interior Department official Julie MacDonald frequently bullied career scientists to reduce species protections, the Interior Department investigators found.

"The results of this investigation paint a picture of something akin to a secret society ... that was colluding to undermine the protection of endangered wildlife and covering for one another's misdeeds," Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said late Monday afternoon.

Call it "akin to a secret society," if you wish. We call it a criminal conspiracy that happens to still be in charge of our Capitol.

Labels: Bush administration, endangered species

As John McCain was using the financial crisis as a means to save his mortgaged candidacy, and decided to air-drop himself into the negotiations, El Presidente graciously invited both candidates and a host of Congressional leaders in this afternoon to share in the disgrace of his presidency.

For those many voters who told us in 2004 that, although they thought George W. was a bald-faced liar and multitudinously inept, they were afraid "to change horses in the middle of the stream," we wonder how they're feeling now that El Presidente has ridden us into the deep blue sea.

Thrown us into the drink and then announced that we'd have to pay MUCH more for a life preserver and that we needed to pay for it RIGHT NOW.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original demands of Congress are posted in their entirety here, for your amazement and edification. Be sure to get a load especially of the notorious Section 8, titled "Review," which runs one whole sentence, to wit:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

That's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

NUT. SHELL.

Sen. Chris Dodd's counter legislation is also posted here, but we understand that it's been tinkered with further in consultation with U.S. House leaders, so this isn't the final version being discussed this afternoon at the Booby-Hatch (a.k.a., White House).

John McCain's grandstanding about all of this is just this side of pathetic. We're supposed to get BACK on this particular horse/elephant? Gee thanks, but this time I think I'll walk.

Labels: bank failures, Bush administration, Chris Dodd, George W. Bush, John McCain

Maybe there's potential job growth in one sector of our economy at least ... forensic accountants.

We learn this a.m. that the F.B.I. is investigating the American International Group (AIG), Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros., IndyMac Bancorp Inc., and Countrywide Financial Corp. for accounting fraud, insider trading, and failure to disclose the value of mortgage-related securities and other investments. In fact, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller admits that he's got 24 large financial firms under investigation.

'Bout time.

But this news does raise another, related issue. The Bush administration wants Congress to donate up to $1 trillion to this bunch of thieves for their worthless paper "securities"? Boggles the mind.

Labels: bank failures, Bush administration, Bush economy

"There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, 'Wolf!' Why didn't you come?"

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

"We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth. "Nobody believes a liar ... even when he is telling the truth!"
--"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"

Reading congressional reaction to the Bush administration's attempt to scare our reps. into agreeing to El Presidente's latest attempt at a massive power grab (a.k.a., the Paulson plan to spend $800 billion hauling Wall Street's nuts out of the brazier), we are strongly reminded of the cautionary tale from kindergarten days, the ending of which is copied above as a life lesson. Our Little Boy in the White House has cried "wolf!" several times too many.

Virginia Foxx (who should know a wolf when she sees one) objected strenuously to the $85 billion bailout of AIG last week, but Foxx says now she's not sure how she'll vote on the $700 billion. If she reads her own quote in the press, surely she'll vote against it: "looks like a blank check with no accountability. Taxpayers deserve better." You betcha, Congresswoman. (Must be a blue moon tonight, since I'm agreeing with The Madam.)

Other N.C. members of both House and Senate are expressing something steelier than mere skepticism. Let's hope their resistance spreads like a virus through Congress:

"I'm not willing to vote for $700 billion to save an industry that comes out just as crooked on the other end. I want real reforms." --Rep. Brad Miller (NC-13)

"Lots of people were asking 'Will there be something in this package for people who are trying to pay off their mortgages but having trouble, and not just people on Wall Street?' " --Rep. Mel Watt (NC-12)

"I just don't like the idea of these corporations, who made all these mistakes, all of a sudden saying, 'OK, Mr. Taxpayer, it's time for you to bail us out. [The Bush administration has] tried to panic the American people." --Walter Jones (NC-3)

"I don't think those advocating for the rescue have fully made their case. I have very serious concerns that this proposal could leave taxpayers holding the bag." --Sen. Elizabeth Dole

"Ultimately, my responsibility is to the American taxpayer, who will be the underwriter of this dramatic proposal." --Rep. Patrick McHenry (NC-10)

Okay, we're reading that the Bushies are compromising on some things, but greater over-sight and accountability...? Dunno. Who does?

Thing is, we can recognize an attempted stampede when we see one, a stampede caused by Grade-A known liars.

Labels: bank failures, Bush administration, Elizabeth Dole, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx

When Carter Wrenn calls Condi Rice an incompetent ninny and declares that the Bush administration is wholly lacking in credibility ... the bottom really is dropping out.

Labels: Bush administration, Carter Wrenn, Condoleezza Rice

The George W. Bush adminstration, those paragons of fabrication, want to enshrine their expansions of executive power into accepted law and practice, for the greater comfort of their successors in the presidency, especially the power to spy on us citizens and to build dossiers and to cook up great big stews of suspicion and paranoia based on secret intel.

So El Presidente, through his most excellent Justice Department, has published for comment a plan to "make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years."

As we wade ever deeper into the weeds of this lying, torturing, secretive Bush Deuce administration, our abilities are frankly waning to even be shocked yet again at their blatant defilement of the Constitution. The American people are generally just exhausted too, maybe, and not acquiescing in the rewriting of our founding documents (as one might suppose from the collective silence, as the Bush/Cheney/Scalia Police State encroaches on more and more of our American landscape).

What's the point of screaming ourselves hoarse when the general election is in sight that can wipe these criminals and their crimes into the dust of history?

Labels: Bush administration, George W. Bush

"Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute. But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

--Bush Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, yesterday, speaking before the American Bar Assoc. in Manhattan

Labels: Bush administration, lawlessness in government, Michael B. Mukasey

So there was King Belshazzar, feeling every inch the neo-con ruler of the world, and he threw a huge feast for a thousand of his lords and generals, and as he drank he became every more expansive in his arrogance, and he sent for the sacred vessels out of the Jewish temple that had been sacked by the Babylonians, and Belshazzar and his lords drank wine out of the vessels and caroused and carried on.

Until a moving hand wrote on the wall of the banqueting house (according to the King James version), "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," which turned out to indicate increasingly lighter weights of measure to symbolize the decline of the house of Belshazzar and the utter destruction of the arrogant Babylonian empire, destined to fade to nothingness ... sooner rather than later. You know the story.

Carter Wrenn, former political guru to former Sen. Jesse Helms, writes today that he has seen the new writing on the wall, and it seems to foretell the sweeping away of the Bushalonian Empire.

And who are we to argue with that?

Labels: Bush administration, Carter Wrenn

Everyone will be talking today and for days afterward about the new Scott McClellan account of his years as Bush White House press secretary. Politico's Mike Allen has the first sneak peak at its contents.

McClellan was widely viewed as a buffoon and a company suck from July 2003 to April 2006, his tenure as press secretary. Now he'll be a hero to Democrats for at least a day, a traitor to the Republicans for the rest of his life. For me it's hard to gin up much sympathy for the guy who is now in effect apologizing to the American people for lying to them repeatedly, day after day, about matters that stab to the soul of our identity as a nation ... lying with a big grin on that beefeater's face.

My first reaction on hearing the contents of his book? Shut up, please. Go cover yourself in ashes and dress your naked flesh in a tow-sack and sit in penance at the main gate of Arlington National Cemetery ... if you want to repent. Don't sell books.

I'll get over my disdain, maybe by the end of the day. But at the moment I'm feeling mean and unforgiving ... to be told at this late date that everything we thought all along about this administration and its nasty war were true.

Labels: Bush administration, Scott McClellan