Does anybody not see the irony of this?
I'll explain for those who can't figure it out. The media hated Bush. Now, a little over a year since he left office, they are playing him up? Evidently they must feel bad about how hard they were on the guy.
In this country we don't have news we have entertainment. The media "feels bad", now thats irony. The media has no baring on how I feel about ol' Georgie.
Not many people liked what he did. I hated my parents at times when I was growing up but now that I've been an adult for a while and have kids of my own I see that they had my best interest at heart. Maybe they weren't always right but they meant well and they did the best they could. Perhaps now that the smoke has cleared some people are seeing that Bush wasn't the seething monster that people thought. Again, I'm not defending him, I'm simply pointing out how silly and fickle people are.
Best interest, are you kidding me? George W. was a small minded, self important, asshole with his own personal agenda that he forced on Americans by use of fear. Name one good thing that George W. accomplished during his presidency. Now forget about the unsubstanciated war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the beggining of the bailouts of the companies that were "to big to fail", the deregulation of big corporations, and all the other shady dealings he was responsible for in office and lets look at what kind of person he was. Basically he was a true politician, a self serving uninformed liar.
Examples of being a liar: (as govener and during his campaign)
1. Bush: "We went into Russia, we said, 'Here's some IMF money,' and it ended up in Viktor Chernomyrdin's pocket and others."
Fact: "Bush appears to have tangled up whispers about possible wrongdoing by Chernomyrdin -- who co-chaired a commission with Gore on U.S.-Russian relations -- with other unrelated allegations concerning the diversion of International Monetary Fund money. While there has been speculation that Chernomyrdin profited from his relationship with Gazprom, a big Russian energy concern, there have been no allegations that he stole IMF money."
Washingon Post, 10/12/00
2. Bush: "We got one [a hate crime law] in Texas, and guess what? The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They're going to be put to death ... It's going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death....We're happy with our laws on our books."
Fact: "The three were convicted under Texas' capital murder statute...The state has a hate crime statute, but it is vague."
LA Times, 10/12/00.
"The original Texas hate-crimes bill, signed into law by Democrat Ann Richards, boosted penalties for crimes motivated by bigotry. As Gore correctly noted, Bush maneuvered to make sure a new hate-crimes law related to the Byrd killing did not make it to his desk. The new bill would have included homosexuals among the groups covered, which would have been anathema to social conservatives in the state."
Washington Post, 10/12/00
3. Bush: bragged that in Texas he was signing up children for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as "fast as any other state."
Fact: "As governor he fought to unsuccessfully to limit access to the program. He would have limited its coverage to children with family incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level, though federal law permitted up to 200 percent. The practical effect of Bush's efforts would have been to exclude 200,000 of the 500,000 possible enrollees."
Washington Post, 10/12/00
4. Bush: "He [Gore] is for registration of guns."
Fact: "Gore actually favors licensing for new handgun purchasers but nothing as vast as registering all guns."
Salon, 10/12/00
5. Bush: Said he found Gore's tendency to exaggerate "an issue in trying to defend my tax relief package. There was some exaggeration about the numbers" in the first debate.
Fact: "No, there wasn't, and Bush himself acknowledged that the next day on ABC's
Good Morning America when Charlie Gibson pinned him on it."
Salon, 10/12/00
6. Bush: "I felt during his debate with Senator [Bill] Bradley saying he [Gore] authored the EITC [earned-income tax credit] when it didn't happen."
Fact: "Actually, Gore had claimed to have authored an 'expansion of the earned-income tax credit,' which he did in 1991."
Salon, 10/12/00
7.Bush: "You can quote all the numbers you want but I'm telling you we care about our people in Texas. We spent a lot of money to make sure people get healthcare in the state of Texas."
7.
Fact: Gore noted that Texas "ranks 49th out of the 50 states in healthcare in children with healthcare, 49th for women with healthcare and 50th for families with healthcare"
8.
Fact: Gore said, "I'm no expert on the Texas procedures, but what my friends there tell me is that the governor opposed a measure put forward by Democrats in the Legislature to expand the number of children that would be covered ... And instead [he] directed the money toward a tax cut, a significant part of which went to wealthy interests."
Bush: "If he's trying to allege I'm a hardhearted person and don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."
9. Bush: "The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They'll be put to death. A jury found them guilty."
Fact: Two of the three are being put to death. The other was given life.
Bush Watch, 10/12/00
10. Bush: said he favored "equal" rights for gays and lesbians, but not "special" rights.
Fact: "Bush has supported a Texas law that allows the state to take adopted children from gay and lesbian couples to place the kids with straight couples."
Salon, 10/12/00.
"Bush supports hate crime protections for other minorities! So Bush doesn't believe that gays should have the same 'special' rights in this regard as blacks, Jews, Wiccans and others. Employment discrimination? Again, Bush supports those rights for other Americans, but not gays. Military service? Bush again supports the right to military service for all qualified people--as long as they don't tell anyone they're gay. Marriage? How on earth is that a special right when every heterosexual in America already has it? But again, Bush thinks it should be out-of-bounds for gays. What else is there? The right to privacy? Nuh-huh. Bush supports a gays-only sodomy law in his own state that criminalizes consensual sex in private between two homosexuals."
New Republic, 10/13/00
11. Bush. "We ought to do everything we can to end racial profiling."
Fact: The Texas Department of Public Safety has just this year begun keeping detailed information about the race and sex of all people stopped by its troopers, the sixth year Bush has been in office.
Salon, 10/12/00
12. Bush got caught not giving the full story on Texas air pollution laws. He was correct in saying the 1999 utility deregulation bill he signed into law had mandatory emissions standards.
Fact: "What was missing, as Gore's campaign pointed out, was that many more non-utility industrial plants are not mandated to reduce air quality. The issue is an important one because Texas ranks near the bottom in air-quality standards. Bush instead approved a voluntary program allowing grandfathered oil, coal, and other industrial plants to cut down on pollution."
Boston Globe, 10/12/00
13. Bush: About the Balkans, "I think it ought to be one of our priorities to work with our European friends to convince them to put troops on the ground."
Fact: "European forces already make up a large majority of the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo."
Washington Post, 10/12/00
14. Bush: "One of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot of places around the world" and cited Haiti as an example.
Fact: "Though approximately 20,000 U.S. troops went to Haiti in 1994, as of late August this year, there were only 109 U.S. troops in Haiti and most were rotating through as part of an exercise."
Washington Post, 10/12/00
15. Bush: "I don't think we ought to be selling guns to people who shouldn't have them. That's why I support instant background checks at gun shows. One of the reasons we have an instant background check is so that we instantly know whether or not someone should have a gun or not."
Fact: "Bush overstates the effectiveness of instant background checks for people trying to buy guns ... The
Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 3 that during Bush's term as governor, Texas granted licenses for carrying concealed guns to hundreds of people with criminal records and histories of drug problems, violence or psychological disorders."
Washington Post, 10/12/00
"He didn't mention that Texas failed to perform full background checks on 407 people who had prior criminal convictions but were granted concealed handgun licenses under a law he signed in 1995. Of those, 71 had convictions that should have excluded them from having a concealed gun permit, the Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged." AP, 10/12/00
16. Bush:"Said the number of Texans without health insurance had declined while the number in the United States had risen."
Fact: " A new Census Bureau report says the number of uninsured Americans declined last year for the first time since statistics were kept in 1987. About 42.5 million people, or 15.5 percent of the population, lacked insurance in 1999, compared with 44.2 million, or 16.3 percent, in 1998, the agency reported. Texas ranked next-to-last in the nation last year with 23.3 percent of its residents uninsured. But that was an improvement from 1998, when it ranked 50th at 24.5 percent." AP, 10/12/00
17. Bush: When Jim Lehrer asked Bush if he approved of the U.S. intervention in Lebanon during the Reagan years, Bush answered a quick "yes" and moved on.
Fact: "Lebanon was a disaster in the history of American foreign affairs. Next to Iran-Contra, it was the Reagan administration's greatest overseas fiasco. Quoting from the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency: '[In 1983] Reagan stumbled into a disastrous intervention in the Middle East when he sent U.S. Marines into Lebanon on an ill-defined mission as part of an international peacekeeping force.' In December, according to Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, 'two days before Christmas, a Pentagon commission of inquiry into the Beirut barracks bombing humiliated [Secretary of State] Shultz [who had backed the intervention], and embarrassed Reagan, by concluding that the dead Marines had been victims of a myopic Middle Eastern policy.'"
tompaine.com, 10/11/00
18. Bush: "I thought the president made the right decision in joining NATO and bombing Serbia. I supported him when they did so."
Fact: The bombing of Serbia began on March 24, 1999, and Bush did not express even measured support until April 8, 1999 -- nearly two weeks later. Prior to April 8, 1999, every comment by Bush about the bombing was non-committal. Finally, he offered a measured endorsement: "It's important for the United States to be slow to engage the military, but once the military is engaged, it must be engaged with one thing in mind, and that is victory," he said after being pressed by reporters. A Houston Chronicle story documented the Governor's statements on the crisis and reported that "Bush has been widely criticized for being slow to adopt a position on Kosovo and then for making vague statements on the subject."
Houston Chronicle, 4/9/99
19. Bush: Discussing International Loans: "And there's some pretty egregious examples recently, one being Russia where we had IMF loans that ended up in the pockets of a lot of powerful people and didn't help the nation."
Fact: Bush's own vice presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, lobbied for U.S.-backed loan to Russia that helped his own company. "Halliburton Co. lobbied for and received $ 292 million in loan guarantees to develop one of the world's largest oil fields in Russia. Cheney said: 'This is exactly the type of project we should be encouraging if Russia is to succeed in reforming its economy ... We at Halliburton appreciate the support of the Export-Import Bank and look forward to beginning work on this important project.."
PR Newswire 4/6/2000.
The State Department, armed with a CIA report detailing corruption by Halliburton's Russian partner, invoked a seldom-used prerogative and ordered suspension of the loan. The loan guarantee "ran counter to America's 'national interest," the State Department ruled.
New Republic, 8/7/00
20. Bush "There's a lot of talk about trigger locks being on guns sold in the future. I support that."
Fact: When asked in 1999, if he was in support of mandatory safety locks, Bush said, " No, I'm not, I'm for voluntary safety locks on guns." In March of 2000, Bush said he would not push for trigger lock legislation, but would sign it if it passed [
Washington Post, 3/3/00;ABC,
Good Morning America, 5/10/99]. When Bush was asked, "when two bills were introduced in the Texas legislature to require the sale of child safety locks with newly purchased handguns, and you never addressed the issue with the legislature, and both bills died. If you support it, why did that happen?" Bush said, "Because those bills had no votes in committee." When asked again if he supported the bills, Bush said, "I wasn't even aware of those bills because they never even got out of committee." NBC,
Today Show, 5/12/00
21. Bush: "Africa is important and we've got to do a lot of work in Africa to promote democracy and trade." Fact "While Africa may be important, it doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them," Bush said earlier. When he was asked for his vision of the U.S. national interests, he named every continent except Africa. According to Time magazine, "[Bush] focused exclusively on big ticket issues ... Huge chunks of the globe -- Africa and Latin America, for example -- were not addressed at all."
Time, 12/6/99; PBS
News Hour, 2/16/00;
Toronto Star, 2/16/00
22. Bush: "There's only been one governor ever elected to back-to-back four year terms and that was me."
Fact: The governors who served two consecutive four-year terms (meeting Bush's statement criteria are): Coke R. Stevenson (2 consecutive 4-year terms) August 4, 1941-January 21, 1947. Allan Shivers (2 consecutive four-year terms) July 11, 1949-January 15, 1957. Price Daniel (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 15, 1957-January 15, 1963. John Connally (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 15, 1963-January 21, 1969. Dolph Briscoe (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 16, 1973-January 16, 1979. George W. Bush (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 17, 1995 to present. Source: Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission.
23. Bush: "We spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in the state of Texas."
Fact: The state of Texas came up with less than $1B for this purpose. $3.5 came from local governments, private providers, and charities, $198M from the federal government, and just less than $1B from Texas state agencies. Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
This is even before his presidency. If you want to go into his presidency we can. This just shows you what kind of person he was, a politician out for his own personal agenda.
Yeah that George W. Bush is a stand up guy, I guess people can be pretty fickle. For people to expect a president who is honest and out for the best interest of the American people is just asking too much.
I understand it's the fashionable thing to bash G Dub. I've never been a trendy guy. I've never owned a pair of jeans that cost more than $30. Never had a $100 pair of sneakers. I've never had a fancy car. I'm a relatively simple guy. I don't go around digging information like this up so I'm having a hard time relating to someone who has the time to do so just to prove a point.
