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GW Bush is Welcomed Back

When GW Bush left office, it was "Good Riddance." We might as well have kicked him to the curb and tossed him his clothes through his White House bedroom window.

Who would have believed he's now making the rounds, with humor, and being embraced by Democrats and late night talk show hosts alike? The answer? Anyone with the prescience to know that 2016 would usher in Donald Trump, a man deemed so horrible in all his orange unsplendor by so many, Bush now evokes, if not quite nostalgia, something close. (To be clear, no one's embracing Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, just GW.)

GW Bush does seem more upbeat and less of a threat these days, but that may be because he seemed more like a puppet doing the bidding of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Libby and on and on. He was considered incompetent, but not to the extent of Trump. (The only thing I can envision that would be worse than a Trump Presidency would be a Trump-Cheney or Trump-Giuliani Presidency.)

As for Bush, I'm glad to see him happy and painting. I would have been happier if he had picked painting for a career in 2000, when his term as Governor of Texas was up, but at least I can watch him now without reaching for the remote to change the channel, which I doubt I'll ever be able to say about Cheetolini.

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    Here is one (5.00 / 2) (#2)
    by Repack Rider on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:18:24 AM EST
    ...for the "mixed feelings" file.

    I signed a copy of my mountain bike book for Mr. Bush, who as you know is an avid practitioner of the sport.  A friend of mine who is a retired Secret Service agent and was on his detail picked it up from me and sent it to him.
    I received a very nice hand-written "thank you" note on presidential stationery from one of my least favorite politicians, which read:

    "Thank you for signing my copy of Fat Tire Flyer.  It is a very interesting history of the sport I love.  I'm rolling as fast as my 68-y.o. legs will allow.

    "George W. Bush"

    That's pretty cool Repack... (none / 0) (#3)
    by kdog on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:29:29 AM EST
    working with music legends and hand-written thank you notes from presidents...who's better than you Bro? ;)

    People are complicated...I can't help but get the decent deep down vibe from G-Dub these days too...decent guy who listened to bad hombres with indecent ideas.  

    This Trump motherf&cker is amazing at how he can make us wax nostalgic for a presidency that was so harmful to so many.  I'd take G-Dub back with a revised VP and Cabinet in a heartbeat...how crazy is that sh*t?

    Parent

    I don't know, dog (5.00 / 2) (#5)
    by jondee on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:40:12 AM EST
    I'd like to think he has a streak of decency deep down, but then I think back to his lethal injecting proclivities and how he went so far as to publicly mock the pleas of condemned prisoners, and that old feeling of deep repugnance kicks in again.


    Parent
    Oh yeah... (none / 0) (#7)
    by kdog on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:56:13 AM EST
    there is that dirty business...god damn it.

    Parent
    Yeah, I hate to be a wet blanket.. (none / 0) (#8)
    by jondee on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 11:08:02 AM EST
    I guess we should allow for change though. Right?

    Parent
    Right... (5.00 / 1) (#9)
    by kdog on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 11:12:36 AM EST
    and forgiveness, redemption.  All that good stuff the bueno hombres y buena mujeres believe in.

    Parent
    They do say marijuana effects (none / 0) (#6)
    by jondee on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:45:54 AM EST
    the memory..;-)

    I might take Dubya back with a very very very revised VP and cabinet..

    Parent

    I blame Michelle Obama. (5.00 / 3) (#11)
    by vml68 on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 11:28:57 AM EST
    omg!! (none / 0) (#27)
    by linea on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 06:20:58 PM EST
    this is too funny!!

    Parent
    The times must be grim indeed... (5.00 / 1) (#12)
    by desertswine on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 11:40:41 AM EST
    that make a murdering clown like George W Bush seem acceptable.  I'm the forgiving kind, but I'm not forgetting that Bush is responsible for the deaths of thousands.  Just because he's an amiable idiot doesn't mean he shouldn't be in prison.

    I wish he had taken up painting (none / 0) (#13)
    by jondee on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 12:51:20 PM EST
    before he became Governor.

    For awhile there he was reminding me of that blithering sadist in The Green Mile who "forgot" to wet the sponge.

    His Presidency was also a good reminder of how far gone the right wing "base" has gotten, and how much they're willing embrace a distorted reality as long as the other items on their agenda are being addressed..

    Who can forget their continuous post-9/11 refrain: "he's kept this country safe by not allowing another 9/11"..


    Parent

    Hague Tribunal (none / 0) (#24)
    by linea on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 05:37:30 PM EST
    I probably miss George W. Bush ... (5.00 / 3) (#14)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 02:33:13 PM EST
    ... as much as I would a case of dysentery. He caused a lot of damage to this country during his eight yeas in office. I really wish people would remember that.

    You folks like W now because (2.33 / 3) (#17)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 09:24:37 AM EST
    he offers no threat.

    He, like all ex-presidents should, went into retirement and stayed out of sight.

    Yep (5.00 / 1) (#18)
    by FlJoe on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 09:33:12 AM EST
    retired war criminals are much less threatening then active ones.

    Parent
    "Like all ex-presidents should" (5.00 / 1) (#21)
    by Yman on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 10:08:16 AM EST
    Pffffttt ...

    Parent
    Well...cept for that wiretapping (none / 0) (#28)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 06:34:01 PM EST
    Obummer. That guy doesn't seem to know when to retire. He's stalking the Donald trying to trip him up.

    Parent
    Who's this "you folks"? (5.00 / 3) (#22)
    by jondee on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 10:32:38 AM EST
    your overheated imagination is working overtime again, Uncle Troll.

    Parent
    Duh (none / 0) (#19)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 10:02:34 AM EST
    One reason for his "comeback" is (none / 0) (#1)
    by Green26 on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:15:19 AM EST
    probably that he apparently is, and always was, a good guy that people enjoyed being around. It's my understanding that most people who know him like him. Obviously, his policies and decisions as president overshadowed almost all of his personality.

    I'd call it more a resurfacing (none / 0) (#4)
    by jondee on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 10:31:03 AM EST
    or a reappearance than a "comeback."

    The timing? Maybe because it takes a Trump to make a Dubya look good.

    Parent

    Bushitler (3.67 / 3) (#15)
    by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 08:32:43 AM EST
    Remember Bush was just like Hitler. This whole evolution on the left is because this time they really really mean it when they say Trump is like Hitler.

    Of course it was FDR that had internment camps. It was Progressives that were big on forced sterilization.

    Come 2040 whoever the Republican president candidate is will be Hitler not like that really nice Trump.

    Parent

    Don't be absurd. (5.00 / 4) (#23)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 12:13:18 PM EST
    There were more than a few Republicans who also offered similar Nazi analogies about Barack Obama.

    As a rule of thumb Nazi analogies are generally inappropriate, because Nazi Germany was a unique horror show in modern history, and any comparisons to modern political figures serve only to cheapen and normalize what the Nazis actually did. As a political movement gone horribly awry, they are a class unto themselves.

    And regardless of their flaws, it was President Franklin Roosevelt and Progressives who led this country to victory during the Second World War, because most Republicans were isolationists who insisted that Nazi Germany was invincible militarily, and opposed FDR's proposal that the United States aid a beleaguered Great Britain during the summer and fall of 1940.

    Those isolationist Republicans even turned on their own presidential nominee that year, Wendell Wilkie, when he broke from the GOP pack and supported the Roosevelt administration's Lend-Lease program, which had been submitted to Congress for approval.

    Aloha.

    Parent

    thank you (5.00 / 1) (#25)
    by linea on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 05:59:01 PM EST
    Nazi Germany was a unique horror show in modern history, and any comparisons to modern political figures serve only to cheapen and normalize what the Nazis actually did.

    reading the "trump is hitler" posts by some TLers is infuriating.  it's the sort of mind-numbingly stupid thing you see on forums where secondary-school boys posting ridiculous garbage while wanking.

    i can't even!

    Parent

    People here, myself included (none / 0) (#31)
    by Chuck0 on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 08:51:11 AM EST
    have NOT said trump is Hitler. What we (or I) have said is that his campaign and now, even more so, his administration have employed strategies used by the Nazis in their rise to power

    Parent
    What's even More dumbfoundingly (none / 0) (#35)
    by jondee on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 11:18:24 AM EST
    stupid is to talk about the Nazis as if they were a singular occurrence in a distant galaxy long, long ago, far, far away, and that a similar mentality and complex of other causes that galvanized support for a movement like Hitler's couldn't possibly ever happen again.

    Which obviously isn't to say "Trump is Hitler."

    On that note, I see another "get out of my country" deplorable got out of his jar of formaldehyde long enough to shoot another Sikh man in Kent, Washington the other day..

    Parent

    Trump is not Hitler. (none / 0) (#40)
    by Chuck0 on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 04:49:09 PM EST
    Adolf Hitler was a lot smarter.

    Parent
    So FDR wasn't all bad. (none / 0) (#33)
    by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 10:49:23 AM EST
    The fact remains he did run the internment camps.

    Parent
    For which FDR and his administration ... (5.00 / 2) (#37)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 01:14:19 PM EST
    ... have since been rightly and roundly condemned by the verdict of history.

    But here's the dirty little secret about Executive Order No. 9066, Abdul. At the time it was first issued on February 19, 1942, there was a very real public fear -- bordering on panic, actually -- that the western United States was vulnerable to Japanese military attack and even invasion. So, the decision to round up and incarcerate AJAs (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) was understandably met with overwhelming public approval at the time, especially along the West Coast.

    Now, that fact in no way absolves the Roosevelt administration from primary responsibility for having carried out such a grotesque and massive civil right violation, once which targeted by race and ethnicity a select and then-unpopular class of citizens and residents.

    But it does offer some contemporaneous perspective on what subsequently happened to AJAs, and strongly suggests that white American citizens themselves rightly ought to rightly bear at least an equal amount of blame for having succumbed to their own worst fears and instincts, which led them to overwhelmingly support the now-controversial Executive Order No. 9066 in the first place.

    Further, the legality of that order was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States 323 U.S. 214 (1944), a dubious decision which has since been cast in a far less than flattering light by the very same verdict of history cited above.

    Although Korematsu has never been expressly reversed by a later SCOTUS ruling, plaintiff Fred Korematsu's original conviction for evading the internment order was eventually if belatedly overturned by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in November 1983, some 42 years after his initial arrest and incarceration for the crime of being a U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry.

    Finally, it's also important to note that the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which compensated AJAs financially for their collective misfortune and formally acknowledged the wrong done to them, was in fact opposed by a majority of congressional Republicans, as reflected by their actual votes at the time of the measure's passage and enactment.

    So, it's really unfair to specifically single out President Franklin Roosevelt for condemnation with regards to Executive Order No. 9066, while absolving the rest of America's citizenry of any culpability whatsoever, by conveniently ignoring their own role as both cheerleaders and active participants in the entire regrettable affair.

    As Walt Kelly's iconic comic strip character Pogo once observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

    Aloha.

    Parent

    The irony (5.00 / 3) (#29)
    by Ga6thDem on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 06:42:50 PM EST
    is liberals can admit that interment camps were wrong and a mistake and conservatives embrace them to this day and would love to reinstate them.

    Parent
    Michelle Malkin wrote a long piece (none / 0) (#34)
    by jondee on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 10:56:17 AM EST
    about how there was nothing wrong with the WWII internment camps.

    It also didn't take much reading between the lines to get the strong sense that she wished the U.S would reestablish them, or something similar.

    Parent

    Michelle Malkin is a poisonous know-nothing. (5.00 / 1) (#38)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 01:24:13 PM EST
    And anyone who takes her seriously is a fckn moron.

    Parent
    Until (none / 0) (#16)
    by FlJoe on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 09:17:41 AM EST
    one day they they present us with the one true Hitler....or something. For now us poor lefties are left to rail against mere proto-Hitlers....why can't I live in interesting times.

    Parent
    proviso (none / 0) (#26)
    by linea on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 06:18:42 PM EST
    i 5-stared abdul's post because of my annoyance with the "trump is hitler" meme.  i neither endorse not understand the "it was progressives that(sic) were big on forced sterilization" comment.  i can only assume it is a spurious historical reference to Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States.

    Parent
    Go to Wikipedia again (5.00 / 1) (#30)
    by Towanda on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 12:17:41 AM EST
    and see Margaret Sanger and eugenics. . . .

    Then you will see that Abdul is about a century behind the times, back when the capital-P Progressives had a capital-P party.

    Parent

    Check proviso's link (none / 0) (#32)
    by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 10:47:11 AM EST
    The late 1970's are not a century out of date by most measures.  Less than 40 years.

    Parent
    It gets confusing sometimes.. (5.00 / 1) (#36)
    by jondee on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 11:47:13 AM EST
    on the one hand folks on the hard-right talk as if they place the highest value on "the right to life", on the other hand, they obviously place a higher priority on the right to flood the country with guns and ammo than they do on the simple right to life and liberty.

    Parent
    I checked it (none / 0) (#41)
    by Yman on Mon Mar 06, 2017 at 10:59:03 AM EST
    It was Progressives that were big on forced sterilization.

    It doesn't provide the slightest bit of corroboration for your specious, little slur.

    Parent

    There were A lot of people ... (none / 0) (#39)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sun Mar 05, 2017 at 02:03:50 PM EST
    ... who once bought into the pseudo-science of eugenics. A college friend of mine from UW is the namesake of his late great-grandfather, Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, a prominent and one-highly regarded eugenicist who died several years before my friend was born. In his heyday, Dr. DeJarnette was a fierce and quite vocal proponent of the practice of sterilizing the mentally ill. In 1938, he unfavoraly compared eugenics in the United States with that of Nazi Germany:

    "Germany in six years has sterilized about 80,000 of her unfit while the United States with approximately twice the population has only sterilized about 27,869 to January 1, 1938 in the past 20 years. The fact that there are 12,000,000 defectives in the U.S. should arouse our best endeavors to push this procedure to the maximum." (Emphasis is mine.)

    A decade earlier, Dr. DeJarnette testified as an expert witness in Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200 (1927), a case which ultimately found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which then affirmed the constitutionality of the Commonwealth of Virginia's eugenics law.

    Not surprisingly, my friend now calls himself by his middle name in order to distance himself from his now-notorious great-grandfather. And the Virginia General Assembly in 1996 voted to rename the Joseph DeJarnette Center for Human Development as the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents, which gives one an indication of just how far Dr. DeJarnette's professional and personal reputation has since fallen in the eyes of the general public. His own great-grandson testified in favor of that measure.

    Aloha.

    Parent

    If It Weren't For Paul Wolfowitz (none / 0) (#10)
    by RickyJim on Fri Mar 03, 2017 at 11:24:46 AM EST
    Bush might never have gone into Iraq and his presidency would have been much better for the country.  Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice were Bush's foreign policy tutors around the time he assumed the presidency.  An account of the fateful meeting on the eve of 43's presidency at Richard Perle's house of Wolfowitz with Ahmad Chalabi and other neocons is given in Bonin's, "Arrows of the Night".  The die was cast that night that the US would go into Iraq to topple Saddam and all they needed was a flimsy excuse, which of course we all know, they got.

    No comment (none / 0) (#20)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Mar 04, 2017 at 10:03:03 AM EST