Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

White supremacy is terrorism.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: We Are Never Going to Be Rid of The Horrible Bush Family

Open Thread: We Are Never Going to Be Rid of The Horrible Bush Family

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bush torture crimes luckovich
(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

… Despite my and Bar’s fervent wishes. Alex Pareene thinks the fooferaw over the manure locker is not so much about Fortunate Dim Son, but the “Bush family furiously selling itself to Americans once again“:

… After presidents are done being presidents, they get to build big museums about themselves, because a tradition that originally involved simply making the documents and papers and records of a president available to researchers and the public obviously became this giant, expensive, pseudo-regal tribute thing, because this is America and we’re really weird about presidents.

Every president gets a library, even the bad ones. Nixon’s library is supposed to be a pretty cool place now that the National Archives people are running it instead of his surviving cronies. For some reason Ford — Ford! — has a library and a museum. Like, separate buildings in different cities. The Bush library so far sounds terrible, dishonest and hilarious, just as much of the coverage surrounding its dedication has been. (It will likely get more honest with time, as the National Archives people fix the hagiography the Bush Foundation people created.) At the library opening ceremony, the current president has to say nice things about the last president, even if the last president was a terrible president…

The orchestrated rehabilitation of the Bush name isn’t just happening because of the library. It’s also pretty urgently politically necessary. George P. Bush, the president’s nephew, is running for statewide office in Texas in 2014. (P. Bush is apparently terrible at giving speeches and is utterly unable to answer questions from the press so he will obviously be president one day.) Texas is friendly territory for a Bush. The country at large, one poll notwithstanding, isn’t yet. Bush’s brother Jeb desperately needs it to be, because he plans on running for president in a few years.…

One reason you can already start despising Jeb Bush: Terri Schiavo.

Also, thanks to commentor Hal, Steven Rosenfeld at Jezebel has a meticulous list of “50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush’s Presidency” — and the commentors are coming up with even more…

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  2. 2.

    Mike in NC

    As I’ve noted before here, this country will not be safe until the entire Bush family is marched into a field and machine-gunned into oblivion. Is the new Bush grandchild named Joffrey by chance?

  3. 3.

    Hill Dweller

    While I’d love nothing more than to see the whole Bush clan ride of into the sunset, all my ire is directed at the current group of vile Republicans. They are way outside the mainstream of modern American politics, and engaging in a level of nihilism no one has ever seen, but the hacks in the Beltway refuse to acknowledge it.

  4. 4.

    Todd

    Jesus. What a bunch of total fuckups. My hatred of Bushes and their imbecility is now boundless.

  5. 5.

    Todd

    BTW – OT – Have restarted Foyles War from the beginning as there are supposed to be new episodes coming, plus, am crushing on Strawberry Months or whatever her name is.

    +8

  7. 7.

    Chris

    @Todd:

    Any idea when the new episodes are supposed to start airing in the U.S? And on what channel? I love that show.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    Repeating (and expanding), as previous thread pretty much dead.

    Y’know, now that I’ve had the chance to listen to some of the speechifying at the ceremony, I find Dubya’s repeated emphasis on “convictions” an odd (almost Freudian?) evocation, or perhaps even a deliberate in-yer-face raspberry to his detractors.

    Because convictions of the criminal sort are what were/remain most deserved to be laid upon so many of that woebegone administration.

    “We stood by our convictions.” is not praiseworthy when the convictions cited are flawed, deceptive, destructive, malevolent, despotic, illegal and (add your own string of descriptions here).

  12. 12.

    amk

    @Omnes Omnibus: A country as forgiving as murka that brought back the same destructive clowns to the congress within 2 years of dumbya regime? Of course, it is unpossible.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    Open thread?

    This manifestation of time’s relentless passage made me sad.

    Comic Billy Connolly has told an audience he is terrified by memory losses he has begun to suffer.

    The 70-year-old was hit repeatedly by gaps in memory during the gig and had to be reminded of what he was talking about.

    He said: “This is f*****g terrifying. I feel like I’m going out of my mind.”

    His problems with memory loss were previously acknowledged by his wife Pamela Stephenson.  Source

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @amk: The Congressional assholes did not have the name Bush. No fucking chance. W screwed his brother.

  19. 19.

    Suffern ACE

    Arghh. I hate non-plans masquerading as plans, put in PowerPoint to make it seem that they should be presented.

  20. 20.

    mdblanche

    It’s good to see Shrub in public again. No, good’s the wrong word. It’s useful to see Shrub in public again. I can understand the desire of the country to unperson him, but having him around is a useful reminder of who got us where we are in the first place and whose allies are keeping us there.

  21. 21.

    Redshift

    @NotMax:

    “We stood by our convictions.” is not praiseworthy when the convictions cited are flawed, deceptive, destructive, malevolent, despotic, illegal and (add your own string of descriptions here).

    Pigheadedness is one of his few characteristics that everyone, friend or foe, seems to agree on, so of course he’s going to call it “standing by our convictions,” and claim it’s a virtue.

  22. 22.

    PeakVT

    Kudos to Jezebel for that particularly unflattering picture of the smirking one.

    dedication of the $500 million

    People are free to do what they want with their money, but $500 million? I wonder how much of that is more consultant grift.

  24. 24.

    amk

    @Omnes Omnibus: The white numbnutz will vote for any name with a R behind it. The only way the dems win in 2014 & 2016 is GOTV as done the kenyan muslin usurper. I have my own doubts about dems doing any such sane things.

  25. 25.

    Ted & Hellen

    Also, thanks to commentor Hal, Steven Rosenfeld at Jezebel has a meticulous list of “50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush’s Presidency”

    Would have been nice if our current president hadn’t spent the day today helping to rehabilitate the treasonous Bush Boy’s legacy…oh well. Oligarchs gotta oligate.

  27. 27.

    Redshift

    @PeakVT:

    People are free to do what they want with their money, but $500 million? I wonder how much of that is more consultant grift.

    Oh, at least as much as in most Republican campaigns these days, I’d imagine.

    Reminds me of the Ronald Reagan building, an office building in DC, which is in many ways the perfect monument to the Reagan Administration. It was announced with great fanfare that it was going to be entirely privately funded, but it became a huge white elephant and only was completed with government funding.

  28. 28.

    Suffern ACE

    @hamletta: so when rush was bitching about the photos if Jahar on that EW thread last night, he was railing against a bunch of teenaged girls?

  29. 29.

    mouse tolliver

    I usually have the news on during the day while I work, but yesterday I kept the channel fixed on the station that runs Charlie’s Angels all afternoon.

    When I finally switched to MSNBC, the coverage almost made me want to self-radicalize. Almost.

    Tweety and Chuck Todd had visible erections over this sloppy presidential bukkake. But I saw it as a reminder that The President of the United States of America is allowed to kill tens of thousands of people at a time — for no good reason.

    Also too, The President of the United States of America can ruin the lives of millions more people because of a spreadsheet error — or maybe even deliberate malfeasance.

    But its all good. Because they’re members of the world’s most exclusive club.

    We might as well go back to monarchy if this is what passes for “presidenting.”

  30. 30.

    Ted & Hellen

    At the library opening ceremony, the current president has to say nice things about the last president, even if the last president was a terrible president…

    What a load of cretinous horse shit. Obama could have stayed in D.C. and not said a word.

    But of course he wants to ensure that no one talks honestly about HIM when he’s done in three years….

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @

    but $500 million?

    $100 million for heavy black Sharpies to black out sections of FOIA-requested documents (which tentatively won’t be released until sometime after 2014) comes to mind.

    Related:

    Libraries, you will recall, are playgrounds for terrorists—which is why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made sure the that PATRIOT Act empowered the FBI to rummage through library records with impunity and without a warrant, confidentiality be damned. But now that there’s a lawsuit seeking records from their presidential libraries, Bush and Cheney are hiding behind the Librarian’s Code.
    [snip]
    …it’s a bit rich for the architects of a law that the American Library Association called “a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users” to be invoking those very privacy rights once someone wants to know what they’ve been reading at the library.  Source

  32. 32.

    Ted & Hellen

    @amk:

    And idjits gonna be idjits.

    amk, you have such an objective and reliably non tribal view of Obama…perhaps you could enlighten the group as to how my comments indicated idiocy. Thanks.

  33. 33.

    TriassicSands

    I’ve never stopped despising Jeb.

    And George.

    And George H. W.

    And Neil.

    And Barbara.

    And Laura.

    They all give me the creeps.

    George W. most of all.

  39. 39.

    hamletta

    @MikeJ: Maybe, but they wouldn’t go back in time and start a One Direction Tumblr a year ago.

    And then there’s the guy who says he went to school with him and is using that connection to boost his nascent rap career.

  43. 43.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @Yutsano: I used to think it was great that I was able to connect to my extended family via Facebook, being so far away from all of them. Some of them are very nice, and I cherish them, but some of them are, unfortunately, beneath contempt, real shits: racists, homophobes, and Catholic-haters.

  44. 44.

    hamletta

    #InfoWarsPickupLines is trending on Twitter at the moment, and it’s a laff riot!

    “That wasn’t a false flag you just raised”

  45. 45.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @hamletta:

    I found that article earlier today and it made me want to punch things. Yeah, yeah, teenage girls, probably will grow out of it, blah blah. It’s still pretty fucking messed up. And in the comments there was some dimwit talking about her James Holmes fandom and bitching at people who were ‘judging’ her.

    Tumblr’s fandom sites are where decency goes to die. It’s all the banality of Facebook with all the viciousness of 4chan.

  48. 48.

    Chris

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    On most days I don’t believe in collective credit or collective guilt for any group.

    But fucking fuck, does that long procession of blind, entitled, petulant, smug, self absorbed, and yes, RACIST windbags cheering on that post ever make me ashamed to be white.

    This really is why we can’t have nice things.

  49. 49.

    TenguPhule

    We will not have peace until the last Bush is strangled with the Entrails of the Last Cheney.

  50. 50.

    Dan

    Don’t worry about it, everybody. 10 days to the 10th anniversary of Mission Accomplished!

  51. 51.

    mai naem

    I heard it was $250 million not $500.250 mil. blew me away. We had a pretty big building(multistory -1 mil square feet)in a high demand area in Phoenix go for $150 mil a few months ago.I know $250 mil includes labor and the contents of the building but still…

  53. 53.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Republican urgency to rehabilitate the Bush name is completely understandable. Look what happened to them the last couple of times they nominated a not-Bush for the presidency.

    Any similarities between the GOP, its base, and the Knights Who Say “Ni” are to be studiously ignored.

  54. 54.

    Fort Geek

    @PeakVT: Isn’t a pretty hefty chunk of that $500 million taxpayer money? ISTR seeing a figure in the last week of $200 million paid by the American people.

    An idea to generate revenue: as the Bushies (and his administration) die out, send their remains not to Gunther von Hagens, but to his Chinese counterparts (outsourcing!!) to be preserved and presented in amusing and humiliating ways–like depicting a Bush refusing taxpayer money, a Bush standing stalwart against torture and illegal wars…you know, being responsible human beings.

    Set up the exhibit in Fratboy’s Lieberry. Proceeds go to getting wingnuts into mental health treatment.

  55. 55.

    Jennifer

    If Dickens were still alive and writing a novel about the Bush years, it would begin with “It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times.”

  56. 56.

    gene108

    @Dan:

    Watched Washington Journal this a.m. First topic was “should US intervene in Syria” because Syria has been accused of using chemical weapons.

    Both Dems and Reps were vehemently opposed to US intervention. Neo-cons and neo-con wars are not very popular it seems.

  57. 57.

    dance around in your bones

    I’ma gonna repeat a comment I made last night regarding GWB.

    Gah! Gah! Gah! I’d hoped I’d never have to hear from Dubya again…..this lieberry thing is driving me ’round the bend.

    Just Go Away, por favor.

  60. 60.

    Ted & Hellen

    @amk:

    Yeah, he so wants to be in that elite club and that’s why they are knee-capping him at every turn. Fuckin’ idjit.

    He’s already in, you willfully ignorant ass.

    I mean, I realize ALL you care about is BO’s political career, the country be damned, but Christ…

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