Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

When we show up, we win.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Fables Of The Reconstruction / The Song Remains The Same

The Song Remains The Same

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Everything you need to know about Jeb Bush’s foreign policy:

So, yeah.  Also, his foreign policy speech today?

I can’t imagine why anyone would think Jebbie’s foreign policy would be just like his dad’s or his brother’s.

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  3. 3.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    The good news is that because John E. Bush isn’t a member of S&B, he isn’t obligated to prosecute a war.

  5. 5.

    jl

    Ugh… those scoundrels again. I don’t recognize half the names. But Hadley, Wolfowitz, Chertoff and Mukasey.. ? Ugh..
    The only (still unacceptable) people with an ounce of sense on that list whom I recognize are Baker and Shultz, and they are too old to do much anymore.

    ‘ Jeb Bush starts talking about Iran, calls it “Iraq”… ‘

    Go Jeb! And he is supposed to be better than Mitt? Doesn’t look like it so far.

  6. 6.

    Bobby B.

    Venn diagrams are good for setting up jokes, like in “Big Bang Theory”. But I don’t understand why they’re used to make points. Same with Schrodinger’s Cat references.

  9. 9.

    Roger Moore

    @Bobby B.:

    Venn diagrams are good for setting up jokes, like in “Big Bang Theory”.

    It’s a bad Venn diagram, too, because it includes only the people on Jeb’s foreign policy team. It would be more correct to include one that shows people who were on those other foreign policy teams who aren’t on Jeb’s. The point about Jeb’s team would still be made, but it would also give you an idea about who from those previous administrations was being included and who was being left out. That would give a more accurate idea if he was trying to get the good people or the bad ones from previous administrations.

  12. 12.

    Turgidson

    I don’t recognize all those names, but of the ones I do, the only one who doesn’t deserve to be put on a leaky rowboat to Siberia is Baker. And he’s not exactly a shining star of enlightenment himself.

  13. 13.

    mai naem mobile

    I personally have such a massive dislike for the Bushes, I just cannot get .beyond the issue of the MSM.and the GOP thinking that a Bush can be a viable.candidate? I can’t even think.of the equivalent on the Dem side. Running Kwame Kilpatrick for Michigan governor? Running Anthony Wiener or Rod Blagojevich for president? Seriously, a Bush? You.have absolutely nobody better?

  14. 14.

    Belafon

    @Bobby B.: We’re talking about Jeb. There’s not that much difference between making a point and making a joke.

    More seriously, we’re visual creatures, and this does a good job of showing the overlap between the parts. Jeb did describe himself as being his own man, a thinker independent of his dad.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Turgidson: Baker is one of the worst of the lot. He was the “fixer” that Poppy sent to Florida to assist the deserting coward and Jeb in blocking any meaningful recount of the vote there that might see Florida’s electoral votes go to Gore.

  18. 18.

    Turgidson

    @Roger Moore:

    True, but I’m having trouble thinking of many non-bad people in the greater Bush orbit. Scowcroft I guess, but like Baker he’s no angel. Just not demonstrably insane. Colin Powell passes for reasonable in this group, and we know how that turned out last time he was muscled into that role.

  23. 23.

    Turgidson

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Good point about him, but I was thinking more about foreign policy judgment, where Baker leans more realist than neocon. Realists are remorseless bastards with a lot of blood on their hands too, but not on the scale of the monumentally stupid bloodthirsty monster neocons. Or as Rob Delaney famously said about Rumsfeld, “blood-gargling psychopaths.”

    Anyway. They can all go the fuck away forever in any event.

  24. 24.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Wolfowitz, Baker, Shutlz and Negroponte have been running US foreign policy (and a fair amount of domestic policy) since 1980.

    That every member of the Reagan/Bush crime syndicate (most of Reagan’s people were HWs folks on loan) is showing up on JEB’s team is the opposite of “surprising” or “shocking”.

  25. 25.

    jl

    @Belafon:

    ” Jeb did describe himself as being his own man, a thinker ”

    Except for Shultz an Baker, no evidence that the people I recognize on that list can do what most people would recognize as ‘think’, so could be some truth in what Jeb! claims.

    If that is a good picture of his foreign policy team, other issues arise, like ‘Oh God, what new disasters would that crew cook up?”

  26. 26.

    srv

    @Turgidson:

    Colin Powell passes for reasonable in this group, and we know how that turned out last time he was muscled into that role.

    Reasonable if you think My Lai and Iran Contra were reasonable.

  28. 28.

    jl

    @Villago Delenda Est: Baker is one of worst in sense of being a ruthless, effective, realist ‘fixer’. He is not an idiot. The others I recognize on that list are worse in that latter sense.

    I realize that is not saying much for any of them.

  30. 30.

    Turgidson

    @mai naem mobile:

    Somehow that fucking family is like a phoenix. Vox wrote a classic slate-pitch article about how Jeb is smart to emulate GWB at this stage, and though I couldn’t make it through the whole thing without stroking out in rage, it did include a claim that 50+% of the country now has a favorable opinion of his asshole failure brother.

    I know that ex-presidents always become more popular as their presidencies recede into memory, but this country is more hopeless than I ever thought if more than half of this country has already forgiven/forgotten what that miserable piece of shit’s slow-motion atrocity of a presidency is still putting this country through. Un.fucking.believable.

    It doesn’t help that the elite media still hasn’t figured out why people stopped adoring the guy (they never really did and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to his tanking poll numbers), so they’ve done yeoman’s work repairing his image. But he was such a historic calamity that it should take longer than six years.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Right to Rise. Jeb’s PAC.

    More like “Rise to Rule” or “Rise to Reich”.

    Something that Leni Reifenstahl would use for a propaganda film title.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    I am paying no attention to Jeb! or Rand! or any of the Klown Kar.

    2016 will get here soon enough, and there are better things to do with one’s time than read about those fools or worry over much. Who thought Barack Obama would be the nominee at this point in 2007?

  39. 39.

    WiscoJoe

    Hey, everyone, lets keep this stuff in mind when some among us inevitably start with the bullshit “Clinton=Bush” rhetoric come 2016.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    OT: One downside to being the newly crowned beagle Westminster champion: I see Miss P was scheduled to meet with Donald Trump today.

    But she got lunch out and plenty of snacks. Chances are he’s not talking trash about her, or her papers.

    Miss P was likely very nice to Donald Trump; she’s a champion after all. But she prefers Elizabeth Warren.

    Sadly, she cannot vote. (1) She’s Canadian (I think) and (2) she is a beagle.

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    I couldn’t help but think of the “gangland execution” fantasy sequence (I think that was band manager Peter Grant’s fantasy) from the Led Zeppelin concert movie.

  44. 44.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @srv: The Bar. The Ma Barker of late 20th/early 21st century American presidential politics.

    Well, at least the Ma Barker as J. Edger Hoover invented her.

  46. 46.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Boy I thought Jeb was supposed to be a smart one, but if he can’t tell Iraq from Iran at this point, saying he’s the smart one is assertion without the support of evidence.

  49. 49.

    shelley

    From Mitt to Jeb; the sense of entitlement just oozes from these guys.
    ******

    do we know for sure that Romney is NOT running again?

  50. 50.

    sdhays

    @Turgidson: Personally, I strongly approve of W not being President and mostly keeping his stupid pie-hole shut. Maybe 50+% of Americans feel the same way.

  51. 51.

    gene108

    I can’t imagine why anyone would think Jebbie’s foreign policy would be just like his dad’s or his brother’s.

    Is there any possible Republican Presidential candidate, who will not have his foreign policy team staffed to the rafters with neo-cons?

    Neo-cons are what Republican foreign policy has been and will be.

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elizabelle:
    I’ve been very disappointed so far by the Republican Klowns’ failure to properly entertain. They’re simply not acting very Klownish. Where is 2016’s Herman Cain, or Rick Perry? Even Governor Chris Harkkonen has let us down. And he’s usually the one who lives up in every way to his namesake Dune character’s example of a middle-management hoodlum out of his depth in the big leagues.

  55. 55.

    dmsilev

    @Amir Khalid: It’s still pretty early. Wait until this summer when the campaigns are actually overtly campaigning and the debates have started and so forth. Also, I’m pretty sure Ben Carson is this year’s Herman Cain and Rick Perry is this year’s Rick Perry.

  56. 56.

    Mike in NC

    JEB would hire the exact same neocon hacks and courtiers that Rmoney employed. And how did John Bolton not make the list?

  57. 57.

    Mike in NC

    @shelley: It’ only the middle of February 2015. Plenty of time for Mitt the Shit to jump back in and out of the Klown Kar several times.

  58. 58.

    Elizabelle

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, they don’t seem to be really trying.

    The 2016 race is anathema to me. I never watch MSNBC — they seem to be always discussing GOP candidates when I flip past — and have become a Law & Order rerun junkie instead. And movies.

    No interest in ISIS either. That’s shorthand for “it’s a scary world out there, folks.”

    What scares me is that in January 2017 Obama will no longer be president, and we have a not zero chance of a Republican in the White House.

  59. 59.

    catclub

    @Mike in NC:

    And how did John Bolton not make the list?

    As long as Bolton makes noises that he might be running, he won’t be on the list of advisors.
    Bolton would sort of be this year’s Tom Tancredo.

  60. 60.

    PurpleGirl

    @Elizabelle:

    … and have become a Law & Order rerun junkie instead.

    And there are so many L&O episodes to watch. I think you can find at least one at any time of day. (I’m a rerun junkie too. And while they are on, I can still concentrate on my on-line reading or puzzle making.))

  61. 61.

    David Fud

    Meat puppets will be meat puppets. The real competition will be to see who has his hand up Jebbie’s ass. Who gets to run Jeb’s transition team?

  63. 63.

    bemused

    @Mike in NC:

    Ugh, not enjoying memories of Bush years popping up just seeing some of those names. One who I haven’t heard mentioned in years is Scooter Libby. What ever happened to that guy? Usually they end up in some rightwing welfare outfit somewhere, don’t they?

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    That every member of the Reagan/Bush crime syndicate (most of Reagan’s people were HWs folks on loan) is showing up on JEB’s team is the opposite of “surprising” or “shocking”.

    The real diagram needs to show how many of these flunkies trace their roots back to Nixon and how many think Nixon’s problem with Watergate is he got caught.

  65. 65.

    sharl

    Hey, let’s not forget to bring back the old supporting cast as well!

    Bad lieutenant: American police brutality, exported from Chicago to Guantánamo

    Exclusive: At the notorious wartime prison, Richard Zuley oversaw a shocking military interrogation that has become a permanent stain on his country. Part one of a Guardian investigation reveals he used disturbingly similar tactics to extract confessions from minorities for years – as a police officer in urban America

  67. 67.

    Another Holocene Human

    So JEBbie’s only friend he didn’t inherit is a Cuban-Republican from a South Florida GOP dynasty that has like 5 family members in the Lege at any one time?!

    Okay.

  68. 68.

    Another Holocene Human

    @trollhattan: Isn’t that more of a Cali GOP pipe dream thing? If the GOP block-votes, they make it to runoff against whoever the strongest Dem is and then the Dems run the table, unless something has changed that I don’t know about. The article was interesting, sounds like California Dems have a lot of candidates. To bad they can’t, you know, have a primary. Because libertarians.

  69. 69.

    Another Holocene Human

    @sharl: I’m glad the Guard is telling this story. I don’t really think it’s gotten a national airing. What’s killing me is that all of these was going on without a peep in the media for years while the press was investigating corruption by cops in NYC, Philly, and Miami. The Federal government was brought into LA. While this was going on in Chicago. It’s outrageous, so outrageous you don’t want to believe it’s real. And nobody’s getting prosecuted or if they do it’s nothing more than a slap on the wrist. God damn, America.

  71. 71.

    jl

    @trollhattan: @Another Holocene Human:

    I heard an interview with the pollster. He just listed a bunch of high profile names and subjects could tick off whether they would be likely to vote for the person or not. He said the results looked more like name recognition than anything else, and it didn’t work out like he expected. Said he thought results for Villaraigosa were absurdly low.

    So, my take is it is a crappy poll, but the guy released it to get some press. That’s part of how he makes money.

  72. 72.

    Another Holocene Human

    @dmsilev: That is so unfair to Herman Cain. At least the Cainmeister knew to dazzle ’em with bullshit–and put on a show. Ben Carson not only has turned into a sad and pitiable case study of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but he gives off true believer vibes when he rants about so-con topics.

    Herman Cain was selling a wink-wink, nudge-nudge shuck-n-jive act to a bunch of bigots who desperately wanted to be told they weren’t racist. Ben Carson is running for Rick Santorum and he can’t out-Santorum Santorum.

    1) Not weird enough
    2) Sorry, Ben, never ran for anything, never held office
    3) Talibangelicals WILL pick the white, right-wing Catholic over the Black Protestant, and if you don’t believe me, just keep going, Ben, and find out for yourself
    4) You can’t out-anti-abortion Santorum. He’s the ultimate guy on this issue because he is a giant hypocrite and a fetus fetishizer and he’s had way more practice than yourself
    5) The secret to Rick’s sweater-vested je ne sais quoi is that suppressed sexual desire (for men) right under the surface. When he drags out his whole family the suppressed and subverted desire just rolls off of all of them, the kids because of how their lives are controlled and the wife because duh. Ben, the only answer here is to develop some sort of bizarre sexual fetish until it takes over your brain, then set on a quest to never think about it ever again. Then you will have the personal magnetism of Rih Santorum

  73. 73.

    jl

    @Amir Khalid: @Elizabelle:

    Hope this was a crummy poll too, but read about one that found Rand Paul does best against HRC in swing states. That will give him a boost. Rand will provide some excitement.

    And the grifters will start getting creative as more eyeballs start concentrating on the race, and their absurd BS has high payoff in terms of contributions and sign-ups for mailing lists they want to sell.

    Have some patience, please. Trump is barely warming up.

  74. 74.

    Elizabelle

    @PurpleGirl: Yesh. And they’re not kidding about “ripped from the headlines.” You can kind of figure out when some of the episodes aired. I didn’t see most of them in original run. They hold up well.

    Plus: commercials. Refresh your drink and get a snack. I like that.

  75. 75.

    Elizabelle

    Appears C-Span 1 will air President Obama’s speech on combating extremism at home live at 4 Eastern. Believe that’s when it’s scheduled.

  76. 76.

    Another Holocene Human

    @trollhattan: The troll union would collapse when none of them would pay dues, 50% would be screaming “I AM YOUR LEADER” while the other 50% would be gadflying to the grave whoever was the leader, and the contract would be shredded as each of them took a piss on solidarity and tried to make a separate peace with management because their personal problem is speshull and the contract should really be read this way, in their benefit.

    Then the employer would lock them out and hire scabs just to be rid of them.

  77. 77.

    Another Holocene Human

    ETA: Oops, my bad, didn’t read entire thread and thought UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH was back.

    Does the right really pay trolls? I can see companies paying trolls/shills. But you could do a reverse auction on right-wing trolling and not stop at zero.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    @jl: I see Rand! doing pretty well if he can tamp down the oddities.

    We saw from Joni Ernst that national corporate-owned media salivates at someone new and “refreshing.”

    Libertarians are basically Republicans whom circumstances have not punished enough to realize government can be an asset. They don’t see the value of community. They call it collectivism.

    They don’t see the actual path to becoming a serf, via corporations not hiring or paying fairly and tax avoidance leading to very poor public services and infrastructure (education, for one).

  79. 79.

    jl

    @Another Holocene Human: Maybe paid trolling for GOP is one of those fake ‘earn big money at home’ scams that their mailing list customers pitch to the rubes. Those guys know how to make bank on anything, as long as it is not actual productive work, that is one thing they are competent at.

  80. 80.

    Shana

    @gene108: I have long said that anyone associated with Nixon’s presidency should have been permanently barred from ever working in government again. Nothing in the Reagan, Bush I or Bush II administrations has caused me to change my mind about that.

  81. 81.

    Cckids

    I can’t link because I’m on my phone & have no clue how to make it happen, but:

    Check out Andy Borowitz’s New Yorker column.
    “Jeb Bush Says He Will Harm Nation Differently From His Brother”.

    Good for laffs.

  82. 82.

    Another Holocene Human

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    Wolfowitz, Baker, Shutlz and Negroponte have been running US foreign policy (and a fair amount of domestic policy) since 1980.

    Exactly. They, with some Soviet assistance, are the fathers of the Mideast mess and the Central American human rights crisis that Obama has been so desperately attempting to repair. The latter with little institutional help.

  84. 84.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Elizabelle: In my experience, libertarians do see the path to becoming a serf (it’s one of their obsessions) but they believe they can opt out by right think, right eating, right actions.

    So, basically a cult.

  85. 85.

    mai naem mobile

    @Elizabelle: i hope Miss P either bites his pecker, his tongue or chews on his hairpiece like she did the ribbons last.night. Jeez,I knew there was another reason I wanted the Springer to win last night. The Springer would have mistaken the hairpiece for a bird and grabbed it off right off the.bat.

  86. 86.

    trollhattan

    @Another Holocene Human: @jl:
    My calculus at this early date is she (Rice) is the only establishment Republican who has a ghost of a chance to snag a rare open Senate seat and they’re very willing to throw ginormous amounts of money giving it a try. She’s going to be hounded to run but even if someone else snags the nom, it will be the nation’s most expensive statewide election campaign by a large margin.

  87. 87.

    Turgidson

    @trollhattan:

    Somehow, being a lying incompetent has hurt Condi even less than the rest of the Bush Fail Parade of War Criminals.

    But it sounds from the article like it was more of an informal “could you imagine voting for this person” canvass than an actual poll. Condi has better name recognition than Harris or any of the other potential Dem candidates.

    Still disheartening though. In a sane world, anyone that deeply involved with the Bush Administration would poll no higher than 27%, no matter where, for what office, or when. It ain’t a sane world however.

  89. 89.

    Another Holocene Human

    @trollhattan: It seems like a stupid choice to me, I mean the “bidnis leaders” can always appeal to moderate whites by pretending to be something they’re not but Condi Rice can’t run away from being Bush’s SOS. Seems like she would be mobilizing some Millennials to turn up at the polls just to vote against her.

    Plus I wonder if she could handle the rigors of campaigning without the nasty coming out. Getting softballs weekly on Beat the Meat is completely different from getting challenged on your record. I’ve seen video from how she treated student protestors … whoa baby. Fangs.

    But it’s all good for the consultants, with that pedigree GOP donors will be obligated to give money, not that it would be grudging, the saps will be lining up and all over the country, too.

  90. 90.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Turgidson: I share your dream.

    I would caution not to get too down about a poll this early. The predictive power is about nil.

  91. 91.

    trollhattan

    @Turgidson:
    Well said. Am probably exposed to her more than most because of her perch at (relatively) nearby Stanford. (If a trip through the Hoover Institute’s list of fellows doesn’t make send chills down one’s spine they’re fashioned of molten lava.)

    At least in this region she keeps a pretty high profile for a disgraced bureaucrat.

  94. 94.

    jl

    @trollhattan: @Turgidson: Trollh’s link says Rice still not interested in Senate. From evidence available from her career, that makes sense to me: if she tried, or was forced to by her limitations, to slide by doing very little work with less thought, Senate seat repping CA would be unpleasant experience.

    I’ve seen no evidence that Rice is a GOP version of Boxer, or Harris or Sanders.

  98. 98.

    Sherparick

    @Another Holocene Human: The political press in this country now approaches political campaigns as a kind of combination of drama criticism, story telling, and celebrity gossip. The substance of what these people’s policies and appointments will do to citizens of the country and their well-being is irrelevant. Related to Bush and the Neocon threat, and really, the guy with the most talent for political darkness since Richard Nixon, is SteveM’s appreciation of Scott Walker’s mastery of the dark arts of resentment and portrayal of his victimhood at the forces of Liberals. http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-cornponevictimization-combo-thats.html

  99. 99.

    Turgidson

    @jl:

    Yeah, I don’t think she’ll run, for the reasons you give. I also don’t think she’d actually win if she ran. Kamala Harris as the nominee, in a presidential turnout year with Hillary (beat Obama in CA in 2008) at the top of the ticket…unless she gets hit with a monumental scandal, she’s pretty much a sure thing. Any GOPer who thinks s/he could win a statewide race should hope DiFi retires and run for that open seat in 2018, a midterm year. The Dems are due to blow a race like that here soon by sleepwalking through it or putting up a shitty candidate. Plus, we might be stuck with Gavin Newsom as the Democrat at the top of the ticket running for governor. In which case, who the hell knows. He could easily lose a high profile race in a midterm year as long as the GOP puts up someone with an IQ above room temperature (which is asking a lot, I realize).

    Plus, Condi’s never really had her views and past performance (or lack thereof) held up to the scrutiny a Senate race in a blue state would require. Even when she was up for Secretary of State in 2005, her confirmation hearings were a farce and only Barbara Boxer, coincidentally enough, asked her any difficult questions about her utterly failed time as Security Advisor. And she had all kinds of withered old GOP Senator farts ready to hit the fainting couches on her behalf at the first hint of critical questioning.

    A Senate race in California, where the media, while shitty, isn’t entirely in the GOP’s pocket, is too much for her to deal with, particularly in a presidential year. And why should she? She has a sweet gig now and can hop on and off the wingnut welfare train as she pleases.

  100. 100.

    Turgidson

    @jonas:

    He’s made noises about running for president.

    (I’ll wait until you stop laughing to continue)

    Until he says he’s not running, he won’t be anyone else’s advisor.

  101. 101.

    Tree With Water

    Were the beasts returned to power, their appetite would be whetted with an insatiable thirst to war. There were consequences inherent in looking “forward, not back”, all of them bad. This is one of them. Democrats should acknowledge that blunder as being one, but also as water under the bridge, and act accordingly in confronting the beasts as they plot their return to power. Those who failed to hold the Bush-Cheney administration to account for their war crimes, all committed in the name of the American people, have been proved wrong.. but now, there’s bigger fish to fry.

  103. 103.

    mai naem mobile

    Harris would have to run one single ad with one of the many Richard Clarke interviews where he says he told Condi she was going to be dealing with Al Qaeda a lot and she was like “Al Who?? We already beat Al Gore.” And then how she refused to set up a meeting with him to talk about OBL and AQ. That’s all it would take to send her polls down to single digits.

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