Shut up, George

[Baldwin]

Just in case former President George W. Bush is a member here:

Shut the fuck up, George. I don't want to see your monkey face and hear your whiny voice on my tv. Stop trying to justify your horrible, miserable term in office, and just be happy you aren't rotting in prison where you belong instead of giving interviews.

And I'd love it if you die real soon. Thanks.

[BJMoose]

Careful. If Veb sees this she may get a crush on you and move this to the Pit.

[The Futility of Nihilism]

Shut up, reeder. I mean, Baldwin. I got tired of hearing you guys whine about his "monkey face" and voice and all that other crap while he was president and I was really hoping I wouldn't have to hear that bullshit anymore.

You don't like the guys politics? Fine. But complaining about his looks and voice is not really all that different from the assholes who are going around hating on Obama because he's black.

[BJMoose]

Is it okay if we complain about his Mesopotamian War and ruinous tax policies and such?

[The Futility of Nihilism]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

Is it okay if we complain about his Mesopotamian War and ruinous tax policies and such?

What, are you asking me? I thought I had rather specifically worded my post regarding attacking people based on their physical attributes.

[Uthrecht]

Yeah, yeah! That guy on TV needs to shut up about his health care achievements!

Oh, sorry. When you said monkey face I thought you were talking about Obama.


I totally get finding Bush annoying (up to and including having a visceral reaction to him) based on how you felt about his policies. I agree with Nihilism that you should probably hold it to objecting to his professional stuff, and not caricaturing him. Well, no more so than he may or may not have done to himself professionally.

And by all means, rant about his getting us into a Mess O' Potamia.


_{(Also, if you're annoyed that he's not in prison, I think you're gonna get real mad at the Republican-controlled House in the next year or so)}

[Lord Blackmore]

Good ol' Dubya is in full on legacy preservation mode. He's going to go out of his way to paint himself in the best possible light and try to make sure that he's just a poor misunderstood Texas boy who doesn't deserve all of the bad things said about him.

I think he was a horrible President and made so many bad decisions that history needs to make sure that his legacy doesn't get laundered. But only the lens of time will reveal what his enduring legacy will be and how he will be remembered.

Mission Accomplished!

[backyard]

"Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment."

--G.W.B.

[Portia]

I was horrified that he'd not only include the miscarriage anecdote but note that his mother had then asked him not to share that private info outside the family. Shows what he thinks about a woman's right to privacy.

[The Superhero]

This guy says it all.

[Lungfish]

His comments were all about him. How he was hurt by Kanye West comment after Katrina "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and that he was angry that there no WMD in Iraq. Not one thought about other people. That is what annoys me.

[MarkF]

Originally Posted by The Superhero

This guy says it all.

Ha! Matthew Norman is usually a media commentator and shallow and vacuous etc. and I usually hate the little twerp but, when you're right, you're right.

[Katriona]

Originally Posted by The Superhero

This guy says it all.

I loved this part.

W has the self-awareness of a bison.

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Portia

I was horrified that he'd not only include the miscarriage anecdote but note that his mother had then asked him not to share that private info outside the family. Shows what he thinks about a woman's right to privacy.

Shows what he thinks of others, period.

[Baldwin]

Normally I don't comment on the appearance of politicians or pundits, and talk about them just in terms of espoused (or enacted) policies. Objectively, George Bush's face and voice aren't that unusual, and even if they are, it's of no importance.

It's just that in Bush's case, the policies were so bad, and carried out so incompetently and dishonestly, that bit by bit he destroyed any respect I might have had for him, then continued digging, to the point where his face or voice triggers physical nausea. Thus my uncharacteristically personal comments, which I regret. Obviously, it doesn't matter what the man looks like or sounds like.

The shutting up and dying parts are still my best advice for him, though.

[Chacoguy]

That's a shitty photo of him on the book's cover, just sayin'. Still, it sold 220,000 copies, the first day.

[mswas]

Is Bush Anosognosic?

[mswas]

This paragraph from the above article is great.

This blindness to visual imagery is quite a motif, judging by Times extracts and an interview with its editor. Apart from being attacked for indifference to black people by Kanye West, the rapper Obama dismissed as a jackass, all his greatest regrets are pictorial public relations disasters.

Whining about the rapper Obama dismissed as a jackass is perfect.

[SmartAleq]

Originally Posted by mswas

Is Bush Anosognosic?

Interesting--when I looked it up I ran into this:

Anosognosia may occur as part of Wernicke's aphasia, a language disorder that causes poor comprehension of speech and the production of fluent but incomprehensible sentences. A patient with Wernicke's aphasia cannot correct his own phonetic errors and shows "anger and disappointment with the person with whom he is speaking because that person fails to understand him." This may be a result of brain damage to the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus, believed to contain representations of word sounds. With those representations destroyed, patients with Wernicke's aphasia are unable to monitor their mistakes.[1] Other patients with Wernicke's aphasia are fully aware of their condition and speech inhibitions, but cannot monitor their condition, which is not the same as anosognosia and therefore cannot explain the occurrence of neologistic jargon. [6]

It would explain much, wouldn't it?

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

That's a shitty photo of him on the book's cover, just sayin'. Still, it sold 220,000 copies, the first day.

Now there's a setup I can't pass up. Some other first-day-sales figures:

Bill Clinton, My Life - 400,000

Sarah Palin, Going Rogue - 300,000 (to paraphrase a line from The West Wing, "George is getting his ass whipped by a girl!)

Hillary Clinton, Living History - 200,000

the last Harry Potter book - 8,300,000

[Baldwin]

Hard to compete with Harry Potter!

[Uthrecht]

The obvious point to be gleaned from this is: Potter 2012!

[Bumbazine]

I don't really care if Dubya dies real soon or not, just as long as I don't have to see his smirky face or hear his voice again, ever.

Who I would like to see die soon, and painfully, is Karl Rove.
Also, if all the other Bush handlers and advisers could fall off their perches, that would be okay. Especially the heartless cynical sons of a thousand bastards who thought up the Iraq war just so that Georgie could prance around in his flight suit and garner a few more votes. Actually, I don't think the Iraq war was just about politics, it also served as a terrific vehicle to transfer billions of taxpayer dollars nto the coffers of certain of the party's faithful supporters, (I'm looking especially hard at Halliburton here), via no-bid contracts.

While I'm at it, could I get a little death visited on the idiots who though deregulating the banks, thus allowing their short-sighted greed and stupidity to destroy our economy, was a good idea?

One more thought; how about the lint-likers in congress, who, with all that power in their hands, couldn't look past their own self-interest long enough to fashion real health care reform, but instead gave us the abortion we are bound to endure in the next few years?

Sorry about the hijacking there, Baldwin

Umm, yeah, Shut up George!

[The Superhero]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

That's a shitty photo of him on the book's cover, just sayin'.

Yup. Since I first saw the cover, I thought they should have gone with this.

It is, after all, a picture of Bush making the biggest and most frequent decision he made during his entire Presidency: "Am I going to pretend to be John Wayne or Marshall Dillon today?"

[mswas]

Originally Posted by SmartAleq

Interesting--when I looked it up I ran into this:

It would explain much, wouldn't it?

That's interesting. Sometimes the truth is said in jest eh?

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by Lord Blackmore

Good ol' Dubya is in full on legacy preservation mode. He's going to go out of his way to paint himself in the best possible light and try to make sure that he's just a poor misunderstood Texas boy who doesn't deserve all of the bad things said about him.

Look, this is a guy about whom John Dean wrote an ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK entitled, "Worse Than Nixon."

WORSE THAN FUCKING NIXON!?!?!?!?!

I mean, JOHN DEAN WROTE THAT!!!!!

Thirty years on, Nixon's apologists can't rehab HIS gawdawful image. His son-in-law doesn't even try any more.

Yeah, George, shut the fuck up!

[HongKongFooey]

You guys want Dubya to shut up?


Why do you hate comedy so?

[BJMoose]

Perhaps because the conquest of Iraq was no laughing matter; the trashing of the economy is no laughing matter; gutting the regulatory agencies is no laughing matter. . . .

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

Thirty years on, Nixon's apologists can't rehab HIS gawdawful image. His son-in-law doesn't even try any more.

And yet in some ways Nixon was a good President.

[Bumbazine]

Nixon was, believe it or not, pretty strong on environmental protection.

[HongKongFooey]

Originally Posted by Bumbazine

Nixon was, believe it or not, pretty strong on environmental protection.

Really? Colour this non-American surprised. The only thing I knew about Nixon as a President was that he freed up Gold so the market would set the price but then tried to set price controls on a variety of other areas and basically made a hash of the whole thing.

BJMoose, you're absolutely right. Those are no laughing matters but sometimes you can't do anything *but* laugh at them.

[Fish]

I note that there's some evidence that Bush griggs'd his own memoirs. He recounts his recollections using words borrowed from other peoples' books about him, he recounts things that people didn't say to him, he recalls events he wasn't present for.

[Lungfish]

Originally Posted by HongKongFooey

Really? Colour this non-American surprised.

That was my reaction years ago when I learned that he was the one who created the EPA.

[Dubya]

Make me.

Heh heh.

[teela brown]

Dubya, there was one thing you did that really impressed me. You dodged those shoes like a pro. Fred Astaire couldn't have done it better.

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by mswas

And yet in some ways Nixon was a good President.

In what ways? He signed legislation promulgated by a Democratic Congress and about which he didn't give a rat's ass? Nixon's disgrace isn't just about the Watergate break-in. It's about years of constant vendettas and revenge plots. It's about the first president in history to have typed up an "enemies list." It's about a president who actually expanded the war in Vietnam before he finally gave it up and accepted "peace with honor." Dick Nixon lied every single day he was in office, about every single thing anyone ever asked about. He slapped a wage/price freeze on the American economy after ALL of his advisors said it would only make things worse. They were right.

Oh, yeah, I forgot; he went to China. There was some ping pong played. Big fucking deal; now China owns our asses, so maybe "opening up China" wasn't such a great idea after all.

Sorry, bud, I know you're trying to be fair to Tricky Dicky, but the man was evil incarnate. I remember Nixon. I voted for him. Twice. And then I watched the hearings. I followed the drama for almost two years, and I literally quivered and wept with joy the day that man left the White House in disgrace. It's really too bad that the Democrats were too corrupt, too content, too "establishment" to do the same thing to Bush and his gang. They could have had twofers -- Bush skulking out of the White House and Cheney being wheeled away.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

[mswas]

China owns 6% of American debt. They hardly, 'own', us. But yeah, I was thinking about the EPA in terms of Nixon, mainly that.

[eleanorigby]

I wish Dubya would shut up as well, but I did savor his comment about his legacy. Some reporter had asked him what he thought history would say about his Presidencies and his reply? "I'll be dead."


Yes. I like that thought very much.

[Random Precision]

Originally Posted by mswas

China owns 6% of American debt. They hardly, 'own', us. But yeah, I was thinking about the EPA in terms of Nixon, mainly that.

:hijack:
[tinfoil hat hijack]
There's a reason Nixon supported creation of the EPA - to break the power of the labor unions. By creating an organization which would force large manufacturers to spend enormous amounts on cleaning up their emissions and simultaneously giving those corporations tax breaks to move their manufacturing to third world nations, he was able to reduce the power of the labor unions. There were simultaneous effects from reducing the labor base (remember all the plant closings in the 70's?) and of growing disenchantment among the remaining union members. We have cleaner air, but a more conservative population in the former rustbelt.
[/tinfoil hat hijack]

I state these things as fact, but my sources are a bit nebulous. Anyone who could corroborate or refute would be welcome. If needed, a mod could move this to another thread.

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by mswas

China owns 6% of American debt. They hardly, 'own', us. But yeah, I was thinking about the EPA in terms of Nixon, mainly that.

But that six percent they own is in the ass area, isn't it? I know, it's pure hysteria, but damn, I begin to lose my grip on reason when people start trying to rehab Nixon. The man was just plain evil.

[The Second Stone]

Just in case there was any doubt that he was a sleazy, drunk, lying idiot, his memoir removes all of that doubt. Nobody will ever admit to being the ghost writer on this one.

[Baldwin]

And it looks like sizeable portions of the memoir were lifted intact from writings by his former advisers and others.

[The Second Stone]

Originally Posted by Baldwin

And it looks like sizeable portions of the memoir were lifted intact from writings by his former advisers and others.

I am surprised and shocked. Really. Even I didn't think Dub was Sofa King stupid. How could his publishers have done this?

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Random Precision

:hijack:
[tinfoil hat hijack]
There's a reason Nixon supported creation of the EPA - to break the power of the labor unions. By creating an organization which would force large manufacturers to spend enormous amounts on cleaning up their emissions and simultaneously giving those corporations tax breaks to move their manufacturing to third world nations, he was able to reduce the power of the labor unions. There were simultaneous effects from reducing the labor base (remember all the plant closings in the 70's?) and of growing disenchantment among the remaining union members. We have cleaner air, but a more conservative population in the former rustbelt.
[/tinfoil hat hijack]

I state these things as fact, but my sources are a bit nebulous. Anyone who could corroborate or refute would be welcome. If needed, a mod could move this to another thread.

If you have some backup for that I'd certainly love to see it.

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

But that six percent they own is in the ass area, isn't it? I know, it's pure hysteria, but damn, I begin to lose my grip on reason when people start trying to rehab Nixon. The man was just plain evil.

Well, I didn't live through his term, so I don't know.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

But that six percent they own is in the ass area, isn't it? I know, it's pure hysteria, but damn, I begin to lose my grip on reason when people start trying to rehab Nixon. The man was just plain evil.

But the saddest commentary possible is that Bush et al made Nixon look good--in terms of his legislation. Nixon was a paranoid nutcase, but he was a moderate Republican (now an extinct species--thanks Reagan!). I was 10 or so when Watergate all went down (and nobody explained a damned thing to us, believe me), but regardless of the motivations behind things like the EPA, the fact is they were enacted. The fact that now they are actively attacked, dismantled and rendered impotent does not invalidate the passage.

[SmartAleq]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

I am surprised and shocked. Really. Even I didn't think Dub was Sofa King stupid. How could his publishers have done this?

Considering he's gotten away with explicitly confessing to war crimes on national TV, to lying us into war, trashing the economy, and just a whole mess of other malfeasances that nobody seems to be interested in locking him up in Gitmo for the rest of his scummy life for I doubt the specter of plagiarism is terribly daunting to the little fucktard.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by mswas

Is Bush Anosognosic?

I don't know, but I bet Sarah Palin is.


RE the plagiarism: keep in mind we are talking about a party of people who think it's ok that the victim of a shooting apologized to and for the shooter! I highly doubt any one of them is going to call Bush on his plagiarism. I'd say the publisher should die of shame, but that thought is an oxymoron.

[The Second Stone]

I am a bit surprised that Bush's ghost writer did this, and I'd be even more surprised if Bush actually read stuff to plagarize. Any confirmation on this? Or is the MSM silent about it?

[Veb]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

I am a bit surprised that Bush's ghost writer did this, and I'd be even more surprised if Bush actually read stuff to plagarize. Any confirmation on this? Or is the MSM silent about it?

All the articles I found on this refer back to the Huffington Post source. As far as refuting Bush's plagarism was a fairly transparent Ariana Huffington did it first counterattack, which isn't really the point. Plagarism is a pretty basic faux pas but the stakes aren't equal here. Thus far, the side-by-side comparisons look pretty damning. If the comparisons were wrong I'd expect loud denials by now.

This is a surprisingly scummy, stupid move by Bush. As already aptly noted, the memoir was an attempt to resurrect his legacy. Bad enough that it was jarringly unreflective. The things he regretted most were appearances, things that made him look bad. He--and his ghost writer(s)--HAD to have known the book would be picked over microscopically. To blatantly plagarize material and screw up on basic things like recollections of events he didn't even attend--matters of record--is fairly mind-boggling.

I loathe the arrogant little pissant. He screwed over the country and he screwed over conservatism until the crazies took over. IMO he was always painfully superficial, in his understanding and breadth, but I thought his crew of spinmeisters were slicker than that.

[Baldwin]

Guys. Plagiarism. Plagiarize.

Now, anosognosia is a new one on me. Interesting. There's something wrong with the guy. I know a lot of people thought GWB showed signs of being a "dry drunk" during his administration. Given all the bullshit moralistic War on Drugs stuff that every administration has pushed for decades, it always seemed weird to me that the alleged liberal media never talked about the possibility that the President of the U.S. was an untreated drug addict.