#bush administration

[deadpresidents]

"For the first time, I think [George H.W.] Bush looks like he's in over his head. You know, any effective leader has got to be a son of a bitch. [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was as cold as ice. He had to be to do the damn job. And [Lyndon B.] Johnson? Forget it. You have to instill the fear of God in your people in order to get results. This is Bush's problem. He's nice; everyone likes him. But no one fears him."

-- Former President Richard Nixon, on President George H.W. Bush, to his aide Monica Crowley, November 22, 1991

[intersectionalpraxis]

HAPPY 15TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE DAY A SHOE WAS THROWN AT BUSH! 🤪

Happy 15th year!!

Muntadhar al-Zaidi is the Iraqi broadcast journalist who famously threw both his shoes at Bush in 2008. He said this:

“This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” al-Zaidi yelled as he tossed the shoe before being pinned to the floor by security personnel. “You killed the Iraqis!”

After he was released from Baghdad prison in 2009, he started a humanitarian foundation. Although I do not know what he is doing currently (aside from living in Lebanon for a decade and trying to run for President in Iraq back in 2018), I know that over the years when people have thanked him for throwing the shoe as a form of protest on social media, he has responded.

Much respect to him -and a huge FU to US imperialism and violence.

[dev-solovey]

Reading up on the history of American Idiot (album) and realizing exactly how revolutionary it was and I just have to yell about it for a hot second

So, before they started working on American Idiot, the band was having problems and they were thinking they were going to break up. But for a couple of reasons, they switched directions, most notably because they all felt strongly about the Iraq War and how it was manufactured by greed and warmongering from the Bush administration, which was amplified by the news media. I read a quote from Billie Joe Armstrong where he talked about how the news media was becoming "more of a reality show" than it was news, and he couldn't have been more right. In fact, that problem got worse, and now we're living in an era of rampant misinformation where everything is politicized to a point where just supporting human rights for marginalized people is considered controversial. The song American Idiot came out in 2004, and when Donald Trump first visited the UK at the beginning of his presidency, it was the top played song on every UK radio station, 12 years after it was released. Most things would be culturally irrelevant at that point.

When creating the album American Idiot, a lot of thought went into it - they had a very specific message in mind, and their goal was to send that message to youth. This is because they realized at some point that their fanbase was a bunch of teenagers, and even though they hadn't necessarily intended it that way, they suddenly had a platform with the youth of America and they decided they ought to do something good with it. The drummer, Tré Cool, said something along the lines of "I've never really liked the idea of preaching to kids, but I realized we don't really have a choice at this point." And I love that so much because like, so many people who get rich and famous just become completely out of touch, and when they get a platform, it's very easy to exploit that platform, influence them with terrible ideas, or encourage them to act in terrible ways for self-serving reasons (ex: JK Rowling, Andrew Tate, Dream, Logan Paul, Onision, etc etc). Green Day refused to allow themselves to get to that point. They know the platform they had gave them power and they made an active choice early on to be responsible with it. And a lot of that moral code comes from the fact that they came up in the DIY punk scene in Oakland, which held its members to a very high standard of ethics, a code that they still follow even after they were disowned by that scene when they signed on with a major record label in 1994.

The song American Idiot has a message of "this mass media hysteria is manufactured bullshit, don't fall for it," and it is not subtle about that message. It punches you right in the face. I remember being 12 years old and listening to it and thinking, "yeah, I don't want to be an American idiot." And now, at the age of 28, I am a staunch leftist who is firmly against the atrocities the US government commits, and I feel strongly about stopping misinformation. So I can say with absolute certainty that they succeeded.

I also get like, really upset when people say that American Idiot is the album where they sold out, because that's objectively not true, both for the reasons I've provided above, and also because of the song Wake Me Up When September Ends. Not a lot of people know the story behind this song, but it's actually a song that Billie Joe wrote about the experience of his dad dying of cancer when he was 10 years old. The story, as he tells it, is that when he came home from school, his mom gave him the news, and being (understandably!) upset, started crying, ran to his room and slammed the door. When she knocked on the door to try and talk to him, he shouted "wake me up when September ends!!" in response. It took him decades to be able to write this song, and it shows because it's the perfect grief song, having been played at benefits for 9/11, hurricane Katrina, and so on. The first time I heard that song it reduced me to tears, because you can hear the intense sadness in it. A "sellout" would never write a song like that!! (Side note: maybe stop tweeting at Green Day to wake up every October 1st, it's super tone deaf given the subject matter,,,)

Anyway, I think I'm done being autistic about Green Day (that's a lie, they'll forever be my special interest), so TL;DR:

Thank you, Green Day, for creating a generation of leftists who aren't about the bullshit

[dadsinsuits]

Robert Gates

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

George W. Bush, the infamously anti-gay and neoconservative former U.S. president who invaded Iraq on a lie, has criticized congressional Republicans for threatening to defund the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a largely successful African HIV-prevention program that he launched back in 2003. “There is no program more pro-life” than PEPFAR, he wrote.

Though PEPFAR is estimated to have saved over 25 million lives, its funding is set to expire on September 30. Congressional Republicans are falsely claiming that the program promotes abortion and using its re-funding as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. Republicans have threatened to defund the entire federal government at the end of the month unless they’re allowed to slash military diversity programs and military aid to Ukraine and to increase anti-immigration measures at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America’s word,” Bush wrote in a Wednesday opinion article in The Washington Post.

Bush said that his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, his White House chief of staff Joshua Bolton, and his senior policy advisor Michael Gerson had advised him to begin PEPFAR. Gerson reportedly told Bush that it would be “a source of national shame” if the U.S. didn’t try to help end the worldwide HIV epidemic.

Bush’s opinion article cited words that Gerson himself had written in defense of PEPFAR in November 2017: “Are Republicans in Congress prepared to squander a legacy of GOP leadership that has won the United States considerable goodwill around the world? Among evangelical Christians, what definition of being ‘pro-life’ does not include saving millions of lives from preventable disease and death?”

Adding his own thoughts, Bush wrote, “There is no program more pro-life than one which has saved more than 25 million lives. I urge Congress to reauthorize PEPFAR for another five years without delay.”

During his presidency, Bush backed a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, and used bans on same-sex marriage to help him win re-election in 2004. While he served, 27 states banned same-sex marriage.

Despite Bush’s anti-gay record, PEPFAR was “a sound investment in U.S. security,” Ben Plumley, the former CEO of the now-defunct international HIV organization Pangea, said in a now-deleted interview with Hornet.com. Plumley said the program “generated very significant goodwill towards the United States” and countered “the spread of radical Islam or radical anti-Western attitudes in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Plumley also noted that most HIV transmissions in sub-Saharan Africa are heterosexual, meaning that conservative Republicans could support PEPFAR without worrying about seeming too overtly supportive of the LGBTQ+ community.

[defundthepolicedestroythegop]

[Plain text in image descriptions]

This article is from 2008.

[daddies-i-love]

Paul H. O'Neill

[mrbopst]

[george-rr-binks]

I think it’s a very not insignificant thing in the history of America that in the aftermath of 9/11 the first immediate priority of the government was not to protect citizens or prevent another attack it was to protect their economy by making sure the airlines didn’t go out of business

[thecapitolradar]

House Intelligence Committee chair warns of a serious national security threat

The gravity of this issue cannot be overstated. House Republicans need to quit playing around, and expose the national security threat posed by the addicts on Capitol Hill, who hostile foreign powers have been turning into assets in EVERY White House administration since the Clintons.

When addicts are chasing addictive supply (that'd be always), there are no political parties -- only politics without borders.

[1morespiral]

Referring to time in presidential administrations only to comment on something totally removed from politics simply because.

: "Cartoons during the Bush Administration were so unhinged."

: "Fashion during the Mbeki Administration was so American influenced"

[xoxo-bunnydumpling]

We are having a discussion/debate about who was ultimately most responsible for the post-9/11 cock up in the Middle East and my vote is for Donald Rumsfeld.

Just, ya know, polite after dinner conversation as you do.

[dadsinsuits]

Chuck Hagel

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former CIA director Michael Hayden, a Bush administration appointee, said Wednesday that today’s Republican Party is the most dangerous political force he’s ever seen.

Hayden, who is a retired U.S. Air Force four-star general and also the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), made his claim on Twitter, in response to a tweet by Financial Times associate editor Edward Luce.

“I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous and contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close,” Luce wrote in the tweet.

“I agree,” Hayden wrote in response to the tweet. “And I was the CIA Director.”

Hayden served as the CIA’s chief from May 2006 until February 2009. He was appointed by former President George W. Bush, and he was confirmed to his post by every Senate Republican who was present that day, except for one, Sen. Arlen Specter (PA).

Hayden was also the NSA director from March 1999 until April 2005, appointed by former President Bill Clinton. During his tenure, he oversaw the NSA’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Hayden has recently been warning about the damage that former President Donald Trump is doing to the country. Despite being a Republican, he endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and even cut a video for him.

“If there is another term for President Trump, I don’t know what will happen to America,” Hayden said in the Oct. 2020 video released by Republican Voters Against Trump. He cited Trump’s disregard for the truth, his refusal to reject the actions of violent white supremacist groups and his disregard for America’s allies as reasons the nation could be in jeopardy.

Republican National Committee spokesperson Emma Vaughn criticized Hayden for “labeling half of Americans” as worse than the Islamic State group or al-Qaeda.

“Dangerous rhetoric from the left led to an assassination attempt on a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice, Molotov cocktails at pregnancy centers, rampant crime in major cities, and an open border,” said Vaughn, despite no evidence that any of those matters are the result of Democratic rhetoric. “Call out the left on their threatening hyperbole, then we will talk.”

[michaelwapshot]

what was it like being a young child during the bush administration? ask my blingees* 🙃

*ok my off-brand blingees

[charismat1c-megafauna]

The Terror AU but it's a shitty chain restaurant and Sir John is the out of touch owner of the franchise and Crozier and Fitzjames are the managers who are constantly at each others throats but eventually start making out in the back. The lieuts are servers or shift leads or something, Blanky is that line cook who's been there for god knows how long, Hickey is the guy they send to clean the bathrooms when nobody else wants to do it and is never not smoking out back (me). Maybe Bridgens is a prep cook and Peglar is a food runner and they hang out after closing.

The docs and surgeons are bartenders.

Silna is the county health inspector and Goodsir has a big stupid crush on her.