Former George W. Bush “brain” Karl Rove is totally delusional, as yesterday, he declared on Fox News Channel that George W. Bush belonged with the “greats” among the Presidency, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan!
This is the same man who failed to elect most of the Republicans that he supported through his campaign organization, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy patrons who believed he knew who to back and could win seats in Congress.
This is the same man who said on Election night that Mitt Romney was going to win, and denied the obvious Barack Obama victory when it was already happening!
Bush will make the list of Presidents as one of the FAILURES of the Presidency, in the company of James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Pierce.
Rove has conveniently forgotten Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, all of whom rank better than Ronald Reagan, who might be number 11, but not in the top ten of all Presidents!
And Bill Clinton may eventually rank above Reagan as well, and Barack Obama might also make the top ten to twelve list, when he has left the Presidency, and passions have cooled down!
Obama’s legacy;
“Now that we have the first estimate of Q1 GDP growth in both rate of change and absolute current dollar terms ($16,010 billion), we can finally assign the appropriate debt number, which we know on a daily basis and which was $16,771.4 billion as of March 31, to the growth number. The end result: as of March 31, 2013, the US debt/GDP was 104.8%, up from 103% as of December 31, 2012 or a debt growth rate that would make the most insolvent Eurozone nation blush. There was a time when people were concerned about this unsustainable trajectory, but then there was an infamous excel error, and now nobody cares anymore.
In fact, moar debt is moar best-er.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-26/total-us-debt-gdp-105
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/04/Debt%20to%20GDP%20Q1%202013.jpg
Oh yes I know, it’s Bush’s fault…or better yet Reagan’s.
To counteract Juan’s negativity:
President Obama’s accomplishments: http://www.winningprogressive.org/president-obamas-accomplishments
I would say that about 80% of the Obama’s administrations so called accomplishments are actually the reasons why he is one the worst Presidents. What some see as positive accomplishments others see as disastrous policies. The majority of them being generational theft and demagogic in nature. This is the future Obama wants for the U.S. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ) A nation of “Robert Nielsen’s” , a man who proudly said last year that he had basically been on welfare since 2001. “Luckily, I am born and live in Denmark, where the government is willing to support my life,†In other words, a progressive’s “wet dream”.
I think Obama has been a very good president in extraordinarily difficult times. Of course, I have a wish list and some disappointments, but I am not overwhelmed by them.
My greatest concerns are about the right, not Obama. Will the right participate in governance? Will they take responsibility for any of the nation’s problems? Will they lead, or will they simply talk more?
The radicalization of the right is the biggest challenge Obama faces.
The right is moving in strange directions–blocking voting rights, proposing bizarre Constitutional interpretations, denying fact and science, welcoming unlimited corporate money in the political system, and eager to destroy Social Security and Medicare. While Obama is in office, right wingers are perfecting the art of obstruction–gumming up the basic functioning of government–denying confirmations of judges, starving agencies of resources, and entertaining the idea of default on our obligations. This is far outside the norm of our political history. It is an assault on governance, reason, and compromise – on our ability to use government to solve our society’s problems and meet its needs. As a result, citizens are struggling for “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” However, if the right is given power, it will remove all those obstructions and use government in frightening and destructive ways.
It’s not just Obama they hate – They hate the values he represents, the people he represents, the hope he embodies. They hate his heritage. They hate his optimism. (He’s not American, they say.) The hate is blinding. It is fearsome, unreasonable, ominous, ugly. We should know better – but it is poisoning us. We are a better country than this. We know better. We know better than to put our future in the hands of haters.
“Supreme Court nominee David Souter wants the world to stop viewing him as a nerd. Senate Democrats want to know if, instead, Souter is a neanderthal — a mean-spirited conservative bent on wrecking constitutional protections for women, minorities, and accused criminals.â€
— Beginning of September 13, 1990 USA Today cover story by legal reporter Tony Mauro.
“I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease….He is an absolutely reprehensible person.â€
— USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4, 1994 PBS’s To the Contrary.
“The whole week was double-ply, wall-to-wall ugly….The Republican Party reached an unimaginable slouchy, and brazen, and constant, level of mendacity last week….[President Bush] is in ‘campaign mode’ now, which means mendacity doesn’t matter, aggression is all and wall-to-wall ugly is the order of battle for the duration.â€
— Senior Editor Joe Klein on the Republican convention, August 31, 1992 Newsweek.
“The case is being fomented by right-wing nuts, and yes, she is not a very credible witness, and it’s really not a law case at all…some sleazy woman with big hair coming out of the trailer parks…I think she’s a dubious witness, I really do.â€
— Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas discussing Paula Jones, May 7, 1994 Inside Washington. ( Sandra Fluke??)
“Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week [electing a GOP Congress]….Parenting and governing don’t have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.â€
— Peter Jennings in his daily ABC Radio commentary, November 14, 1994.
“You called Gingrich and his ilk, your words, ‘trickle-down terrorists who base their agenda on division, exclusion, and fear.’ Do you think middle class Americans are in need of protection from that group?â€
— NBC’s Bryant Gumbel to House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, January 4, 1995 Today.
“The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor.â€
— Dan Rather, March 16, 1995 CBS Evening News.
Host Tina Gulland: “I don’t think I have any Jesse Helms defenders here. Nina?â€
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “Not me. I think he ought to be worried about what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.â€
— Exchange on the July 8, 1995 Inside Washington, after Helms said the government spends too much on AIDS.
“This is a party that is dominated by men, and this convention is dominated by men as well….Do you think before tonight they thought very much about what happens in America with rape?â€
— NBC anchor Tom Brokaw interviewing rape victim Jan Licence after her victims-rights speech to the GOP convention, August 13, 1996.
“In light of the new welfare reform bill, do you think the children need more prayers than ever before?â€
— Bryant Gumbel to Children’s Defense Fund leader Marian Wright Edelman, September 23, 1996 Today.
“If there were an Ig-Nobel Peace Prize, who would win it?
• Slobodan Milosevic
• Osama bin Laden
• Saddam Hussein
• Linda Trippâ€
— “What do you think?†question of the day on the ABCNews.com home page, October 15, 1998.
“Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.”
The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold – Jan 13 2004 (http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-01-13/theater/foreman-s-wake-up-call/1/)
“You have made so many offensive comments over the years. Do you regret any of them?…You seem indifferent to suffering. Have you ever suffered yourself?â€
— Two of the questions posed to National Review founder William F. Buckley by the New York Times Magazine’s Deborah Solomon, July 11, 2004.
“As I watched Tuesday night’s network coverage of the unrelenting political propaganda hour known as the Republican National Convention, the first thought that came to mind was of old newsreels of those self-congratulatory Nazi rallies held in Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler.†— Hugh Pearson, Newsday 2004
“The man who, how do I phrase this diplomatically, who will put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.” New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, introducing Senator Schumer at a college commencement in 2006 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r_cOiPmIOIA)
“I don’t support our troops….When you volunteer for the U.S. military…you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism….I’m not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea.â€
— Los Angeles Times columnist and former Time staff writer Joel Stein in a January 24, 2006 column.
Bush hanging (http://forum.darwincentral.org/download/file.php?id=8642&sid=d002765957bdd95e377287bbea0b4efa&mode=view)
Bush burned (http://forum.darwincentral.org/download/file.php?id=8643&sid=d002765957bdd95e377287bbea0b4efa&mode=view)
George Bush terrorist burn in fire!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-8vKVne7Vg)
Pro illegal immigrant leftist in the streets America burning Bush on fire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-RV2MHNwnM)
Sarah Palin effigy hung in Halloween display (http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/10/27/us-usa-politics-palin-effigy-idUSTRE49Q79N20081027)
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.†Barack Obama in July 2008
“F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
“I want you to argue with them and get in their face!†Barack Obama, September 2008
“Drudge? Aw, Drudge, somebody ought to wrap a strong Republican entrail around his neck and hoist him up about six feet in the air and watch him bounce.” — Liberal radio host, Mike Malloy
“Here’s the problem: It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger.†Barack Obama on banks, March 2009
“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!†Barack Obama on ACORN Mobs, March 2010
“We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.†Barack Obama on the private sector, June 2010
“A Republican majority in Congress would mean ‘hand-to-hand combat’ on Capitol Hill for the next two years, threatening policies Democrats have enacted to stabilize the economy.†Barack Obama, October 6, 2010
“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.†Barack Obama to Latinos, October 2010
“It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed…The hostage is the American people”–Barack Obama on December 7, 2010
The classic Twitter users death threats to Palin:( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9z65qwfjd0&feature=player_embedded#!)
Congressman Paul Kanjorski on Governor elect Rick Scott: “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.” ( http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/editorials-columns/roderick-random/kanjorski-ponders-nuts-bolts-from-blue-1.1052739)
And the list divisive leftist progressive hateful rhetoric is endless.Our present is in the hands of the haters.
And, Juan, the divisive right wing conservative hateful rhetoric is miles longer and more endless, and they will stop at nothing to encourage violence and bloodshed against people and groups they see as unAmerican, including gays and lesbians, immigrants, and people of minority background, and they support rape and deny contraception as they “put women in their place”–in the bedroom and the kitchen, and a 1950s mentality!
And many of these people claim to be “religious” and to be “good Christians”! What a mockery! You will not stop at trying to promote hateful propaganda against those who wish to prevent progress for the masses of people in America, and instead, favor the privileged and powerful who wish to bring us back to the 19th century Gilded Age!
Ron: So now if you are a conservative/classic liberal, you encourage violence and bloodshed against minorities, support rape and want to deny women contraception. That is what all of us are? If you do not support open borders and amnesty that leads to citizenship you then are against a “civil right” a “human right” (according to AG Holder) and thus hate minorities. If you are against abortion on demand (except for rape or danger to mothers life) and late term abortion you somehow support rape and hate women. If one feeble minded candidate, (one in thousands of candidates) says such an idiotic and insulting thing as “women shut down their bodies during rape”, then all of conservatives/classic liberals, Republicans from Mitt Romney all the way to Ronald Reagan in his tomb,support rape and of course hate women. If you do not believe tax payers should be paying for free contraception and abortions, or that any religious institution and their affiliates should be force to provide them in their health plans due to their religious belief, then you invariably hate women, want to deny them contraception and invade their bodies. Last, but not least, if you oppose Obama’s policies then YOU MUST BE A RACIST! Notice that most of the positions on certain issues I mentioned are just that policy issues, except the infamous “women’s bodies shut themselves down” stupidity. All the rest does not call for death, bloodshed or violence. They are just different visions on how to approach certain policies. But instead of debating the policies, you and the left just avoid any debate by disqualifying the other party as promoting hate, violence and bloodshed, as being racist and bigots. You , the left and their allies in the media and Hollywood have been doing that for decades. Therefore there is no debate possible. You do realize that their is no debate possible when you demonize the other,don’t you? I know you do, of course you do. Thus, if someone proposes medicare reform for those under 45 yrs of age, what is the response? That “you wanna kill grandma and throw her over the cliff” and so on and so on. And of course the media, Hollywood and the professoriate run with it.
But just keep in mind, that I would be very surprised if you can find a single quote from President Reagan, or even either one of President Bush, in which they say that “Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are the enemy and that we should punish the enemy.” or that they are “hostage takers.” That was and is considered, by some of us, so unbecoming for the Presidency of the United States (not of course of Venezuela, Cuba, or any other demagogic Presidency). The only enemies they had were the socialist/communist and radical Islamist terrorist. Nevertheless, I could understand how some, not all, progressive leftist democrats who have sympathized with the socialist/communist soviet regime in the past (“better red than dead”) and how some, not all, who today sympathize with the radical Islamist terrorist (“after all, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”), have felt and would feel attacked by conservatives/classic liberals.
I’m pretty sure you will qualify this post and you did the previous ones, as a “promotion of hateful propaganda.”But all I really did on post 10:52 was show you how hateful your political and media idols really have been for decades and how they are still today. I even may have done something worse, I may have just put a mirror in front of you.
Juan, you are looking to start a fight, but I will not allow that to happen. I made it clear that the right wing is far from civilized in much of what it promotes and propagandizes. I never claimed that every utterance from the left is dignified, but the hate and evil from the right is far worse, except you are blind to it. In fact, you have used hyperbole yourself, trying to compare our President to leaders of left wing dictatorships, which is totally preposterous. I have no guilt in my feelings about the right being venal and uncompromising in trying to destroy the New Deal and Great Society, and that is what has made America a better nation!
Professor,
I was at the Columbus Museum of Art today and I saw a quote next to a Rothko painting that I have to pass on”
“Old myths, stories, and even ideas constantly go out of fashion but are reborn for new generations.”
I reflected on this and it came to me the Harry Truman’s quote, “The only thing new is the history you have not learned.”
Of course there are many more instances that can be given before this time line I have listed below, but I chose to limit it to just the last 100 years. It is the dolts and dullards that can be so easily led.
1915’s Young Turk Revolution (Committee of Union and Progress)
1870 – 1871 First American Klansmen Movement
1920 – 1921 Second American Klansmen Movement
1950 – 1960 Third American Klansmen Movement
1960’s John Burch Society funded by Fred Koch (Father)
2010’s Tea Party funded by David and Charles Koch (Sons)
Same message, same rhetoric, same nihilistic viewpoints that plays so well to the non-critical thinking demographics, …..All one in the same. Like I quoted before, “The only thing new is the history you have not learned.”
This demographic group has always been here from times long ago and will always be here in the future. Selective breeding and natural selection will weed most of them out by limiting the “Eloi†aspect to their proper stratification in the short term. This is why you have the sinusoidal waveform effect I mentioned before.
Now for Juan,
What is thirteen with an exponent of zero?
I will wait for your answer.
One more thought Professor,
Ever notice by the way someone writes and post comments that you know the wheel is turning but the hampers dead?
As always, Engineer of Knowledge, you impress me with your comments! Thanks! 🙂