Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth

Read this now:

So it is hard for me to reconcile this mass approbation of blatant stupidity with the achievements we Americans have given to the world. We as a nation and as a culture have had so many shining, glorious moments where stupidity was forced to STFU. We put a man on the moon - several, in fact - and it was the Failure Is Not An Option inventiveness that got Lovell, Swigert and Haise back to earth alive. We split the atom. We invented the light bulb, the telephone, the airplane, peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

We invented the circular saw, the electric hot water heater, the elevated railway system, the engine muffler, the fire escape, Kevlar, the life raft, the medical syringe, the railway crossing gate, the rotary engine, the submarine telescope, the windscreen wiper – all inventions by American women, by the way.

The pictures are priceless...

8 Years and No Conservative Mentions Him

Funny how quickly that conservatives erased the name "George W. Bush" from their vocabularies. How quickly he went from God's Warrior to the invisible man. But then again, I guess it's hard to lecture people on the constitution when you supported a man who violated American's 4th amendment right to be free from illegal search and seizure and whose administration was successfully sued for violating the first amendment rights of citizens:

The Ranks, who wanted to attend the President's Fourth of July address without being mistaken for supporters of his policies, wore homemade t-shirts bearing the international "no" symbol (a circle with a diagonal line across it) superimposed over the word "Bush." One t-shirt said "Love America, Hate Bush" on the back and the other said "Regime Change Starts At Home." Event staff and law enforcement ordered them either to leave the event or remove or cover their shirts. The couple responded by insisting they had a First Amendment right to remain and express their views. The two were arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, and hauled away in a police van. The charges against them were later dismissed and the City of Charleston, not a defendant in the case, apologized for the incident.

Another great example of the conservative's "free speech for me, but not for thee" attitude. I guess their mistake was not showing up with guns strapped to their legs.

I'm also guessing that it also could put a crimp in your "Obama is Hitler" meme if you start counting the unprovoked wars he's started compared to Bush (0-1), or if you start talking about Bush's refusal to comply with the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture.

But the main reason why they have erased him from view is his legacy:

Bush's record on poverty is equally bleak. When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008.


The trends were comparably daunting for children in poverty. When Clinton left office nearly 11.6 million children lived in poverty, according to the Census. When Bush left office that number had swelled to just under 14.1 million, an increase of more than 21 per cent.

That's what the healthcare fight (and more fights to come) is really about, the fact that Americans are suffering tangibly from Republican policies. If healthcare reform and other "liberal" policies are successful, it will be a huge blow to conservative ideology in the eyes of non-partisan americans. It's telling that the conservatives are fighting so desparately to prevent people from ever seeing those policies in action.

They're so desparate that they are willing to incite the simple-minded in their ranks to violence, while trying to maintain plausible deniability ("I had no idea you would interpret my calling the President a 'grandmother killer who must be stopped at all costs while we still have our guns' as a call to violence".) It's working, and it's dispicable.