George W. Bush

Quinnipiac Poll On Worst President Since WW II Is Sign Of Total Ignorance And Stupidity!

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A new Quinnipiac poll for July 4th rates Presidents since World War II, and comes to the asinine conclusion that Barack Obama, engaged in the typical “sixth year” doldrums, is the worst President since 1945!

Really? Give all of us a break! This demonstrates total ignorance and stupidity of American history, and how quickly people forget past Presidents and the records they have in office.

How could Barack Obama be the worst President since 1945, with:

The highest stock market in history, up 150 percent.
Gaining back of all the millions of jobs lost in the Great Recession, plus more jobs created despite GOP obstructionism.
The deficit falling faster than at any time since Eisenhower.
Hunting down and killing of Osama Bin Laden.
The capture of the perpetrator of the Benghazi deaths in Libya.
The passage of the Affordable Care Act, giving more Americans health care coverage than at any time in American history.
The passage of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau despite opposition from Wall Street, corporations and Republicans.
The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
The advancement of environmental protection on the road to the level of Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon and Theodore Roosevelt.
The promotion of the interests of the middle class against the Republican aim to destroy the middle class by lack of action.

Of course, any person could make a list of programs and policies of Barack Obama which have not worked out to their or our satisfaction, including this author.

But come on, compare Obama to George W. Bush:

Two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both causing trillions of dollars in the national debt, and not accomplishing their goals, and the war in Iraq totally unnecessary, a war of choice.
The poor handling of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and Mississippi and Alabama.
The failed Social Security privatization plan, which would have destroyed the program in 2008.
The Great Recession of 2007-2009, worst since the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover.

And if we are to rate the worst Presidents, how about Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who both did so much harm in office, even while admitting certain positives for both?

And to rate Mitt Romney a better choice, 45 percent, to be President now, after the failed campaign of 2012–face the facts, the American people made the right choice in rejecting Romney, arguably the worst candidate of the Republican Party since Barry Goldwater in 1964. This was a man who lied, lied, lied, constantly, more than any Presidential nominee in American history!

The fact that the poll participants showed no real knowledge of American history is troubling, as to come to such a ridiculous conclusion demonstrates total lack of understanding of what has gone on in this nation in recent years! All they react to is charisma, so that Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton rank the highest, simply based on image!

What do these involved in the poll know about Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush, as well as the Presidents that are rated high, and those rated low in the poll? Clearly, NOTHING!

Greatest Domestic Accomplishments Of Presidents Since FDR

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So much attention is usually paid to foreign policy during any President’s administration, but domestic accomplishments are something that needs much more attention.

Following is what this author regards as the greatest domestic accomplishment of each President since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Franklin D. Roosevelt—Social Security Act of 1935

Harry Truman–Integration of the military and Washington DC in 1948

Dwight D. Eisenhower–Appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1953 and Associate Justice William Brennan in 1956

John F. Kennedy—Integration of University of Mississippi by James Meredith, with federal enforcement in 1962

Lyndon B. Johnson—Civil Rights Act of 1964

Richard Nixon–Creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970

Gerald Ford—Appointment of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens in 1975

Jimmy Carter—Environmental Reform and Expansion of Public Lands 1977-1981

Ronald Reagan—Social Security Reform in tandem with Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill in 1983

George H. W. Bush—Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990

Bill Clinton—Appointment of Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994

George W. Bush—Medicare Part D Prescription Law of 2003

Barack Obama—Affordable Care Act of 2010

Discussion and commentary on this list is welcome!

Cocky, Arrogant, Smug, Smirker Bill Kristol Gets Comeuppance On THIS WEEK On ABC News!

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Bill Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard, one of the leading conservative journals of opinion, and a leading Neoconservative, who advocated intervention in Iraq a decade ago, is always willing to promote US military intervention all over the world, as long as he does not, himself, have skin in the game.

A true “chicken hawk,” Kristol is one of the most obnoxious of all necons, being extremely cocky, arrogant, smug, and a smirker with an attitude that he knows it all. Watching him makes one wish he could wipe the smirk off his face!

On ABC’s THIS WEEK on Sunday, Kristol finally got his comeuppance, when Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the publisher of The Nation,which is one of the leading progressive-liberal journals of opinion, and Matthew Dowd, who was an aide to President George W. Bush, both went on the attack against Kristol and other necons, and effectively shut him up, although it is clear Kristol does not wish to listen or to learn, as he has all the answers, with his intellectual snobbery!

Vanden Heuvel suggested that if Kristol really believed in further military intervention in the Middle East, that he enlist in the military, and put his own skin in the game, to which Kristol had no answer.

It is amazing how many necons, including the most infamous, former Vice President Dick Cheney, never served in the military, but are only too willing to send the sons and daughters of others to war!

Hostile Relationship Of Former Presidents With Incumbent Presidents

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The question of the relationship of former Presidents with incumbent Presidents is an interesting one, with usually the former Presidents avoiding open criticism of their successors, even if they are of a different political persuasions, and did not support the nomination or election of their successors.

There are only a few cases of open criticism and attack, including:

John Quincy Adams highly critical of Andrew Jackson, and returning to Washington, DC as a Congressman to “keep watch” over his policies and actions. Adams was also a sharp critic of the slavery and expansionist policies of John Tyler and James K. Polk.

Martin Van Buren being a major critic of the expansionist policies of John Tyler and James K. Polk in the 1840s, and of the slavery policies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan in the 1850s.

John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan all critical of the policies of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Grover Cleveland being a sharp critic of Benjamin Harrison, who he had lost to, and then ran against again and defeated in 1892, and then opposed William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt on the issue of imperialism and expansion.

Theodore Roosevelt very critical of his successor William Howard Taft, who he ran against on the Progressive Party line in 1912, and then against Woodrow Wilson’s policies toward World War I, after losing to him in 1912. Also, TR was resentful that Wilson “stole” some of his progressive ideas, and enacted them as President in his first term.

Herbert Hoover harshly critical of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies during the Great Depression and World War II.

Harry Truman very critical of Richard Nixon for years before he became President, and never really making peace even when Nixon gave the Truman library the piano in the White House that Truman had played. Also, Truman was critical of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the two men only resolved their differences at the funeral of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Jimmy Carter very critical of the policies of his successor, Ronald Reagan, and at times, of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Otherwise, the tendency has been to sit on the sidelines and avoid open criticism of one’s successors to the Oval Office!

Former Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker Dead, A Major Loss!

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Former Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker has died at the age of 88, and his death reminds us of what the Republican Party used to be a few decades ago.

Baker was a man of principle, decency, dignity, and substance. He was a moderate centrist conservative, with the ability to cross the aisle and be bipartisan with Democrats.

He served with distinction in the US Senate for eighteen years, and was Senate Majority Leader in the first Ronald Reagan Administration term, and was Chief of Staff to Reagan for the last couple of years of his Presidency. He also was Ambassador to Japan in the first term of President George W. Bush.

He also sought the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980, against Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole, and this author considered him, by far, the preferable choice among that group.

He was on the Senate Watergate Committee, and backed away from support of Richard Nixon without any qualms, and was famous for asking what did the President know, and when did he know it?

He was the son in law of former Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, and later married Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas, the daughter of former Kansas Governor and 1936 Republican Presidential nominee Alf Landon.

If there were more Howard Bakers in the Republican Party, that party would be so much better off, but Baker would not fit well in today’s GOP, sadly!

Tennessee and the nation have lost a giant figure in the history of American politics and the US Senate!

Foreign Policy And The Republican Party: Time For Jon Huntsman, NOT Rand Paul Nor Dick Cheney Viewpoint!

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Foreign policy is tearing the Republican Party into factions, nothing really new, as the same situation arose in the time of World War II and the Cold War.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is calling for a return to military options in the Iraq mess, with much of the nation being take over by Sunni Muslims, establishing Sharia Law and slaughtering Shiite Muslims, and also endangering Iraq’s neighbors, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and alarming Shiite Iran.

This whole mess was caused by the US intervention in Iraq in 2003, based on false premises promoted by Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives, who want a similar intervention now to overcome ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), a group even rejected by Al Qaeda as too violent and extremist!

This is a nightmare in the making, and also threatens Israel, and is bound to lead to a wider war in the Middle East very soon, as it is believed ISIS is not content to gain control of Iraq.

So along comes Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, often called an isolationist, who is against any intervention in the Middle East, and blames the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney administration for the present mess, rather than Barack Obama for having withdrawn all military forces at the end of 2011. But Rand Paul is seen by many as having no clue to foreign policy issues.

So one might wonder: Where can Republicans turn to for a rational, reasonable, intelligent foreign policy, not based on the advice of neoconservatives and Dick Cheney, but also not isolationist like Rand Paul?

The answer is former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who has the ONLY extensive foreign policy experience of any potential GOP nominee for President in 2016. No one is paying attention, because Huntsman is seen as not conservative enough, not Tea Party backed, not sufficiently anti Obama.

The only hope for the Republicans in 2016, however, is for them to overcome their divisions, and unite around Jon Huntsman as the only legitimate nominee, who is sensible, sane, and also able to deal with “real world” situations in the world, without the extreme reaction of the neoconservatives and Dick Cheney, or the isolationism of Rand Paul!

But will the GOP be smart enough to realize this? The betting odds are, sadly for them, and for the nation, NO!

The Contrast Of Dick Cheney And Joe Biden

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The last two Vice Presidents of the United States are a study in massive contrasts!

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden were qualified to become a heartbeat away from the Presidency when they took office.

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden displayed basic competency in their roles as Vice President. They were not Dan Quayle, for instance, or a similar situation if Sarah Palin had ever become Vice President!

Both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden are highly intelligent and, in many ways, were more ready to become President, based on their experience, than their “bosses”, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

But that is the extent of how Dick Cheney and Joe Biden are to be compared positively!

Dick Cheney has proved to be the most controversial former Vice President in modern history, far surpassing the outspokenness of John C. Calhoun, after serving under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s, and Henry A. Wallace, after serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early 1940s!

Neither Calhoun nor Wallace nor any other former Vice President has ever continued to be the subject of so much attention, all of it showing Cheney constantly on the attack against President Obama, and using the psychological idea of “transference” to blame Obama for all of the faults of the Bush-Cheney Administration over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Cheney and his daughter Liz are clearly out to destroy Barack Obama’s ability to govern, and Cheney’s neoconservative viewpoint is being repudiated by the American people, but the Cheneys are tone deaf!

The fact that Cheney was a “chicken hawk”, who avoided military service in the 1960s, but is only too willing to use military force everywhere in the world without limits, and that he has enriched himself through his connections with Halliburton, one of the major war profits corporations, and does not apologize one iota for it, is both hypocritical and infuriating, as Cheney has no shame!

The man is seen by many as a war criminal, who was totally wrong in his assessment of the Iraq War, but will not apologize for it, and refuses to go into the woodwork. He is defiant in every way possible, and sees no contradictions in his statements and the truth, as even Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel pointed out to him this week, as Cheney advocates a military intervention back into Iraq!

One would think that Cheney would go off into the sunset and shut his mouth, but just the opposite is occurring, and his daughter Liz is determined, despite her withdrawal from the Wyoming Senate race this year, to be a factor, and an inheritor of her father’s ideas and principles, whatever they might seem to be to others!

Dick Cheney also comes across as forbidding in personality, unpleasant, arrogant, harsh, and in fact so much so, that even his “boss”, George W. Bush, started to back away from contact with him in the second term.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been very supportive of Barack Obama all the way, and has shown his winning personality and his sincerity and genuine nature, and is now being shown to have been correct in his assessment years ago that the best solution for the Iraq mess is a division into three nations, each based on ethnic lines, not all that different than the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 1990s into separate nations.

Joe Biden has been, in so many ways, a positive force in the Vice Presidency, while Dick Cheney will, in the long run, as well as already in the short run, be seen as a negative force!

The Neocons: Despicable Hypocrites!

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The Neoncons, those conservatives and Republicans who drew us into the Iraq War on false intelligence, are at it again, advocating further intervention in a hopeless war, in a nation which should, and likely, will be, soon, three nations instead of one, as the concept of Iraq created by Great Britain and France after World War I, has been a total failure, accelerated by the US intervention in 2003!

The nerve and gall of the neocons–mostly “Chicken Hawks” who never served in the military–to advocate return to Iraq, and to blame the mess there on Barack Obama, rather than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, is beyond belief!

To see Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Kark Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, and so many other hypocrites, all liars and deceivers, advocate the same failed policies, is enough to make one vomit!

To see John McCain and Lindsey Graham call for more military intervention, despite their military service, is also hard to conceptualize, and makes one happy McCain was not elected President in 2008!

Somehow, particularly annoying, is Bill Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard, with that classic smirk on his face, calling for more intervention everywhere, despite the fact that everything he has ever stated and advocated, has proven to be totally wrong! One would love to meet Kristol, and put him on the defensive, and really, wipe that smirk off his cocky, arrogant face!

These people listed above are so outrageous and obnoxious, it makes one wish to send them to Iraq to the front lines to fight the battle they are so dedicated to, as long as they and others around them do not have to serve, with the only exception in this regard being the son of John McCain, who has followed in the distinct tradition of his dad, although his dad is so wrong headed right now on this matter!

On The Brink Of A Record Not Attained Since 1825–Three Presidents With Eight Years In Office!

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We are on the brink of accomplishing a record in the Presidency which has not occurred since the early days of the Republic–three Presidents in a row finishing eight years in office over 24 years!

The one and only time this happened was the administrations of Democratic Republicans Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), James Madison (1809-1817), and James Monroe (1817-1825).

With all of the controversies, divisions, emotions involved in the past two plus decades, IF Barack Obama can avoid any assassination threats in the next two and a half years, God willing, he will have done what Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009) did before him, finish two complete terms of office!

We have not even had two Presidents in a row finish two terms of office otherwise, an amazing record, demonstrating the trials and tribulations of the Presidency!

The only other Presidents to finish two consecutive terms of office include: Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan. Of course, FDR was also elected to a third and fourth term in office.

George Washington started his first term 57 days late, so did not complete a full eight years in office, and Grover Cleveland’s two terms were non-consecutive.

Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley were elected President twice, but both were assassinated early in the second term.

Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman inherited most of a term, but were only elected President once.

Richard Nixon was elected twice, but resigned early in his second term due to the Watergate Scandal.

So this is a record, three straight Presidencies over 24 years completed, worthy of note!

Barack Obama And Executive Orders: The Truth, Rather Than Myths!

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Conservatives and the Republican Party constantly lie about Barack Obama’s use of executive orders, stating that he has issued more than 1,000 such orders!

Obama has made it clear that he will override Congressional inaction where he can, and he is absolutely correct in such assertions, but he is far from overusing the concept of executive order.

Somehow, when a Republican President uses executive orders aggressively, that is seen as alright, and even positive!

The fact is that any President will use executive orders to promote his agenda, and he has a constitutional right to do just that, and it has been done by all Presidents!

News in the past two days that Obama will use executive orders to promote LGBT employment rights, and to declare a large area of ocean off limits to mining and fishing, therefore protecting the environment, is in support of goals that Congress has been unwilling to take action on, after five years, so Obama is asserting his Presidential authority to do what should be done!

In reality, Obama has issued approximately 180 executive orders up to this point, while George W. Bush used 291 in eight years; Bill Clinton a total of 364 in eight years; and Ronald Reagan a total of 381 in eight years. At the same time, Gerald Ford used 169 executive orders in just two years and five months in office; Jimmy Carter a total of 320 in four years; George H. W. Bush a total of 166 in four years; Richard Nixon a total of 346 in five and a half years; Lyndon B. Johnson a total of 325 in five years; John F. Kennedy a total of 214 in three years; Dwight D. Eisenhower a total of 484 in eight years; Harry Truman the very high total of 907 in almost eight years; and Franklin D. Roosevelt the overwhelming total of 3,522 in twelve years!

But even Theodore Roosevelt used a total of 1,081 in seven and a half years in office; William Howard Taft a total of 724 in four years in office; Woodrow Wilson a total of 1,803 in eight years in office; Warren G. Harding a total of 522 in two years and five months in office; Calvin Coolidge the high number of 1,203 in five and a half years in office; and Herbert Hoover the high total of 968 in four years in office.

So both conservatives and progressives, Republicans and Democrats, have used executive order in large numbers, and Barack Obama is definitely on the low side of usage after five and a half years in office!

But do conservatives and Republicans care to speak the truth? The reader knows the answer to that question!