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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Venality / Late Night Open Thread: Me, I’m Praying for A Meteor

Late Night Open Thread: Me, I’m Praying for A Meteor

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There are people, even Democrats, who will forgive George Herbert Walker Bush for stealing the election from Mike Dukakis. (I am not among those people; proof of Jefferson’s electoral diddling turned up after 200 years, but I’m thinking it will take rather less than that for evidence of Lee Atwater fiddling the 1988 Ohio results to burble to the surface of the swamp.) There are people willing to forgive his tenure (official or otherwise) in the CIA. There are even people who are willing to forgive GHWB sandbagging the Iran-Contra investigation, staging the first Gulf War for his paymasters in Saudi Arabia, “spearheading” NAFTA, and nuturing The C-Plus Augustus.

Those people are idiots, criminals, or both:

The elder George Bush will not give a speech. He is done with all that, he tells friends. But he will mingle and reminisce and bask in the admiration of graying men and women who helped him govern at a time when, some thought, they had reached the end of history.

As it happens, history is not done with Mr. Bush, at least not if his advocates have anything to say about it. More than 800 supporters, allies, aides and even former opponents of Mr. Bush, the 41st president, will gather in College Station, Tex., on Friday for a three-day reunion to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Bush administration and try to burnish its legacy along the way…

Frail from a form of Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Bush, 89, has benefited from a wave of historical revisionism that has transformed him from the biggest incumbent loser since William Howard Taft to, by at least one measure, the most popular former president of the past half century….

Even for anyone stupid, or venal, enough to forgive George Herbert Walker Bush his many other crimes, one name will forever remain as a stain against him and his Presidential tenure:


Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

Reader Interactions

131Comments

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Agreed.

    Thomas is an abomination…an incompetent unfit to sit as a justice of the peace, let alone the US Supreme Court.

  7. 7.

    Biscuits

    Am I remembering correctly, did he not replace Thurgood Marshall? Because that makes it even more unforgivable and spite filled. The entire Bush family has been a disaster for this country.

  9. 9.

    scav

    That is one freaking tiny bubble that regards him as anything pretending to be most popular. The lack of idolized card-board cutouts, tattered photographs and hand-crafted macaroni icons at CPAC conventions and other purveys of fine tea might be the first clue. Granted, we’re arguing about a restricted and shallow pool to dominate here.

  11. 11.

    moderateindy

    The Bush administration may have been in charge of negotiating NAFTA, but it was Clinton that helped push it through and signed it into law. Without Clinton’s advocacy of the trade agreement it would have not become law.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    AL, the ’88 election was 426 -111 in the electoral college. And like 53-47 %. Too far apart to blame on theft. Bush I did unforgivable things like appointing Tomas, but he did win in ’88.

  26. 26.

    different-church-lady

    …who will forgive George Herbert Walker Bush for stealing the election from Mike Dukakis.

    Wait… wha?

  32. 32.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @different-church-lady: Yeah, I wondered as well.

    ETA: I didn’t vote in that election as I was under the belief that it was inappropriate for a serving army officer to be political. Silly me. I was happy that that my home state of Wisconsin got it right though.

  33. 33.

    different-church-lady

    @Steeplejack: Oh yeah, whomever ripped that from vinyl (you can hear the crackle) either had a fast turntable or screwed up the sample rate somewhere along the line. (Really easy to accidentally turn 44.1 into 48 when moving to video)

  37. 37.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve voted for every Dem nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1980. Clinton’s election was special since until then I’d gone 0-3.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Little Boots: FWIW Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar are probably the best rhythm section ever. I have never heard a thing that they have done that is less than perfect.

  48. 48.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Little Boots: Will you two just get a room. [/snark]

    BTW: If you didn’t watch that youtube clip, interesting who’s in the band.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    AL: I am interested in your theory that George H.W. Bush stole the 1988 election. Please explain it.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    There’s a railroad track less than a mile from my house, and it’s quite a busy one. Lots of Tropicana trains hauling citrus and god knows what else.

    When trains pass by during the day, I can barely hear them. At night (like just now), it sounds like they’re blasting through my yard. Is it the lack of ambient noise that makes this so?

  74. 74.

    Another Holocene Human

    hoodie posted this earlier today (yesterday?) and I thought it was such a great insight I kind of want to put it on my wall and frame it. :)

    Conservatives tend to operate most effectively in limbic medium, where things like man[ner], body language and modes of response are more important than content. Maybe that’s why people who fall for conservative politicians can live with what seem like intolerable levels of hypocrisy and illogic, because the dissonance does not manifest itself in that limbic space. That’s also why there is probably something to the expression that DC is wired for conservatism, because the DC press environment is highly limbic, dominated by things like access and status. They’re particularly susceptible to the type of manipulation Rumsfeld engages in, so Rumsfeld becomes a Delphic sage rather than the third rate carnival barker that he is.

  78. 78.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Betty Cracker: Is it the lack of ambient noise that makes this so?

    Basically. Weather conditions, also, too.

    That ambient noise consists of daytime (rubber tire) traffic, airplanes overhead, central air units, stuff like that.

    As a kid I can remember hearing the highway at night, but could never hear that during the day.

    eta: birds make a lot of racket, quiet at night

  89. 89.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Hmmm, some of the suggestions on the youtube on my tablet are pretty good. “Everytime I thing of You” by the Babys.

  96. 96.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Little Boots: Couldn’t see the other one either, but I know the song. Weirdness comes with the territory considering the hour for you all towards the east.

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    Would attempt a quip, but this ain’t that kind of nightclub.

    An 80-year-old grandmother was allegedly still alive when she was zipped up in a body bag and put in the hospital morgue’s freezer — where she tried unsuccessfully to escape and froze to death.

    Her family is suing the hospital thanks to an appeals court that revived their medical malpractice suit on Wednesday. The case was previously thrown out by a lower court. Source

  106. 106.

    raven

    @NotMax: So I asked you about the 7 up’s and went to bed. It was pretty good to see after all these years but looking at Richard Lynch’s bio was something I didn’t expect:

    In 1967 after taking LSD (acid), he set himself on fire in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art near Cleopatra’s Needle.

  107. 107.

    ThresherK

    A part of me thinks that saying “Clarence Thomas, but let’s have an open thread” is like overturning an outhouse into a car sunroof and then saying “Shall we enjoy the scents at the flower show or the bakery?”

    @Another Holocene Human: Hey, how’s that laptop / keyboard situation coming along? Still all thumbs up for the Dell refurbishers from here.

  109. 109.

    Matt McIrvin

    The statement about 1988 would make more sense if it was about GWB vs. Kerry in 2004. (I’m personally skeptical that Kerry could have won a completely fair count in 2004, and he did lose the popular vote as well; but Ken Blackwell’s dinking with the election in Ohio was enough to at least call Ohio’s votes into question, and the win did turn on it.)

    Maybe the statement in the OP was a simple confusion between ’88 and ’04?

  111. 111.

    JoyfulA

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve been voting for president since 1968, and Obama was my first vote resulting in a president.* My late husband didn’t always vote, but his selections always won. We credited both of us voting for Gore for that outcome in 2000.

    *I voted for Ford because I couldn’t understand a word Carter said, and then I voted for Carter when he lost. I voted for Perot as the most liberal candidate over Clinton twice (NAFTA, Sister Soulja, triangulating, etc.), and I still can’t stand Bill Clinton.

  112. 112.

    Matt McIrvin

    Bush v. Dukakis was an extraordinarily nasty campaign, even by modern standards. Remember the month when it all turned into a referendum on forcing children to say the Pledge of Allegiance?

  113. 113.

    El Cid

    Regarding the deregulation, anti-labor, anti-peasant shit-show sold under the false label of “free trade” NAFTA, let’s give some credit where due: to Mexican PRI elected dictator Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who realized that his levels of profiting & corruption were far less than he could achieve.

  114. 114.

    Josie

    @moderateindy: You are correct. I remember Al Gore debating Perot on television over this and winning the debate decisively, in everyone’s opinion. It’s a shame that nobody understood what Perot was trying to tell us.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Oh, man, I just Googled “Dukakis Pledge of Allegiance” and a couple of old newspaper stories came up, and just looking at the excerpts in the Google results made my stomach clench up.

    If it hadn’t been for Willie Horton, that would have been the nastiest episode in the campaign. Dukakis was defending the clear and court-affirmed First Amendment rights of a schoolgirl whose refusal to say the Pledge, as I recall, resulted in hate mail about how Hitler should have put her in the oven, and Bush successfully managed to frame it as Dukakis being against patriotism and apple pie.

  117. 117.

    Marc

    I’m thinking it will take rather less than that for evidence of Lee Atwater fiddling the 1988 Ohio results

    I love links that don’t actually have any relation to the statement that links to them.

    @Matt McIrvin: Maybe AL should take a look at this electoral map (warning: link actually leads to an electoral map), and then take a look at the margins in Ohio, and explain how Atwater “fiddled” the results.

    We all like to give the Great Orange Satan shit for some of its more dramatic diarists, but at least they hold the line against conspiracy theory bullshit.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Perot’s main legacy was bad: he was the guy who successfully convinced Americans that economic problems were mainly caused by the federal debt. It was a fine message to internalize during the boom that happened a few years later, but has caused us no end of grief post-2008.

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Marc: 2004 is the more interesting case. As I said, the election really was close and things really were rotten in Ohio, the crucial state. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Kerry really won.

    In that case, a lot of the theorizing was inspired by exit-poll leaks early on Election Day that seemed to show Kerry with significantly bigger margins across the whole country, and it led some people to think that there was a massive nationwide conspiracy to alter election results, because of a false belief that exit polls are always the most accurate kind of poll.

    But the results were actually pretty close to those of the last few days of pre-election state polls (Nate Silver wasn’t operating yet, but Sam Wang, Andrew Tanenbaum and others were aggregating them; pre-Silver, political chatter hadn’t yet internalized the idea that you could actually do a remarkably good job predicting elections this way).

  120. 120.

    Tripod

    @Matt McIrvin:

    When things are going south, Democratic operatives and websites have a bad habit of flogging specious (“first wave”, “second wave”) exit polling. I assume that this is because of history’s greatest monster admitting to his beatdown in 1980.

  121. 121.

    Mike in NC

    Both Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush are 89 years old. When the former dies, the media will shrug it off with a collective “meh”, but when the latter dies it will entail two weeks of national mourning, along with many fond recollections from the degenerate family and speculation about JEB! running in 2016.

  123. 123.

    different-church-lady

    @Marc: I’m beginning to think this one is just an April Fool’s Day post that got delayed 3 days.

  126. 126.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    No mention of Panama? The first Gulf War was over keeping the oil supply out of the hands of an aggressive dictator in the hands of more US friendly dictators, so I will give that to GH Bush, but there was no such excuse for Panama.

  128. 128.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t vote for Jimmy Carter, who I voted for in 1976, in 1980, went with John Anderson instead, but since then, it’s been nothing but Ds.

    I was a very happy camper in 1992, let me tell you.

    There was a time when Army officers simply did not vote at all, prior to WWII, so when there was speculation about Eisenhower running for office, no one knew what party he’d be inclined to represent…both parties wooed him.

    However, that rule pretty much went away after WWII, although when I was in it was considered somewhat bad form to be partisan among some officers, but not others (I distinctly remember an O-4 being jubilant at Reagan’s election in 1980). While it’s within regulations to have a bumper sticker on your POV, or to wear political buttons when in civvies, I’d never do it.

    After I got out it was Clinton/Gore all the way, baby!

  129. 129.

    Another Holocene Human

    @ThresherK: Something got in the way. End result, new filing cabinets, moving actual physical files around, lol.

  130. 130.

    Ajabu

    @mellowjohn:
    Because I’m even older, my first vote was for LBJ (who, if he hadn’t gotten mired in Vietnam, would have been 2nd only to FDR in 20th century presidents) and all others were the same as yours except 1980. I was in California and had already experienced the bumbling B-movie star up close & personal as Governor. I would have voted for anyone to the left of Hitler running against that fool. But had to be a Democrat.
    And. damn, hasn’t the last 30+ years shown how right I was?

  131. 131.

    Rex Everything

    @Marc: Yeah. I think this is uncharacteristic of AL, but the link she provided has nothing to do with her assertion about Ohio.

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