George H.W. Bush - Classic or Dud

is your friend Manuel Noriega? Tell him Poppy's on his way.

(my friend is Lee Atwater fwiw)

maybe i jut didn't pay enough attn to Ari back in the day but i gotta say it's a little odd to see him become one of the brain-wormiest of the OG W crew

was Reagan at the funeral or

lololol the body language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-YCbWZlRrw

xpost No he wasn't and I don't know how these republicans can claim to be about values when neither he nor his veep could be bothered to attend.

haha hillary's ice stare is so great

You can see Trump opening his mouth to take a gulp of air as he moves, like a big fish.

This is your "Christian" evangelical president. pic.twitter.com/u0478FoSyR

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) December 5, 2018

^this won't be even discussed in the "liberal" media, i.e. the same folks who would have shat their Depends every bit as full as Fox if this had been Obama

yeah but Obama was ARROGANT whereas Trump carries the world on his shoulders, probably thinkin bout tariffs

So, joeks aside, now that this man is almost in the ground, what's his legacy: approving new taxes, giving Kohl the okay to push for German reunification, giving Gorby support for post-glasnost (and dithering after the '88 election so as not to piss off the hardliners Reagan had already pissed off)? I've written my own denunciations but it's good to clear the air.

Souter

the last "who knows what this guy's even about?" SC pick

lol that grand asshole John Sununu vouched for Souter; bet he's had a few sleepless nights.

Carter is sort of an Old Testament figure. He has a limited feel for practical politics, and the high horse can be tiresome, but his force of will is like the God of the Jews. He remembers slights, and he comes with both the olive branch and the sword. https://t.co/SNMF1S3IIT

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) December 5, 2018

dick nixon is such a dork

jeez if he'd had a sword all along he shoulda whipped it out when he was campaigning for re-election

dick nixon is such a dork

― The Poppy Bush AutoZone (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

as Nixon said about Ike: "...in the best possible sense."

LGM alerted me to this long essay about the history of climate change politics published last August, and the Bush I administration's attempt to quash the science: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

there was some semi-interesting stuff in that Bag Man podcast about how HW tried to quash the investigation into Spiro Agnew

Don’t go all wobbly on us Claire. https://t.co/rRwmjT9bgc

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) December 6, 2018

it's so lame to feel compassion toward others

I’m with @tenuredradical. I really hate the whole “rest in hell motherfucker!!!!” 🔥🔥🤘🤘🤘🔥🔥 trend but I guess I would be.

Think the cure for this is go talk to a long, long line of people whose close family are dead because of his fucking wars?

yeah if anything the rest in hell motherfucker trend is a sign of increased awareness and worsening allergy to false narratives

Uh...

I do too, then I think: w/ drones strikes, Obama killed vastly more Afghans, Iraquis and Pakistanis - children & parents, leaving 1000s of orphans - than Bush, also deporting an unprecedented number of immigrants, & so presidential virtue is pretty damn complicated, isn't it?

— Claire Potter (@TenuredRadical) December 6, 2018

Anyone who had her for a history professor should get a refund.

there is no way that is remotely accurate

Obama didn't have anything like this on his hands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

her tweets are bad, but who is she?

she's right that presidential virtue is pretty damn complicated. no one gets into or out of that office with clean hands. but there is such a thing as factual accuracy and that "vastly more" has no contact with reality.

Presidential virtue isn't complicated, there is none.

yep

no president can be an "american hero" - another thing that bugs me with all this pagan death cult shit

there are very few indisputable "american heroes"

Bill Wilson
MLK
Jackie Robinson

that's off the top of my head. anyone else?

Obama didn't have anything like this on his hands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

― Οὖτις, Friday, December 7, 2018 11:29 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bush didn't really have direct responsibility for this in any way. improved relations with iraq and exports of chemicals, weapons etc. were a policy instigated by reagan

I think there's a not-small number of heroes - abolitionists, civil rights workers (from women's rights to gay rights and all stops in between), labor organizers, etc..

Bill Wilson
MLK
Jackie Robinson

Dawn Powell

to say there is no such thing as presidential virtue is facile and incorrect. each president makes thousands of consequential decisions that affect millions, if not billions of people. some percentage of these are intentionally beneficial and not based wholly upon cynical political calculation. pretending every president is being of pure viciousness is stupid and just reinforces a false conservative narrative about progressives.

Otm

That’s bably a controversial opinion on ilx though

Probably*

Committing or actively aiding crimes against humanity tends to zero out "intentionally beneficial" acts IMO. John Wayne Gacy made a lot of kids happy when he did his clown act.

To disregard those acts, one must assume that you can't be President without doing horrible, inhuman things for indefensible reasons. If true, then we deserve to be wiped off the face of the planet.

heroism is generally portioned out in small doses, but to a surprisingly large number of people. it's nearly impossible to maintain a conspicuous heroism consistently over decades, and we should never expect it of anyone. but ascribing more than the ordinary amount of heroism to G. H. W. Bush is just the usual political posturing.

I’m not saying Bush was good I just think it’s gross to gloat at someone’s death. I thought the same thing about people cheering when Bin Laden was killed.

If true, then we deserve to be wiped off the face of the planet.

It's closer to true than most of us would like to admit, but your conclusion is just more hyperbole.

Donne was wrong.

It makes the left look like assholes when they act like this for figures who 99% of America consider to be nothing like Bin Laden.

I’m not saying Bush was good I just think it’s gross to gloat at someone’s death. I thought the same thing about people cheering when Bin Laden was killed.

― Trϵϵship, Friday, December 7, 2018 11:58 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok i was going to give you shit for your initial statement but now that you've made it clear you extend this courtesy to bin laden i find you more consistent

I think it's a positive development in the Trump era that people are much less eager to cede to media narratives about "profiles in courage" or whatever and the "gloating" is, like Simon said, more of a corrective on this sickness than simply being glad a 94-year-old man finally died

cheering when Bin Laden was killed was muted anyway because it happened a decade after 9/11 and two awful unnecessary wars. it was a dulled, cloudy, anticlimactic feeling. if he were taken out in Tora Bora I think Americans would've celebrated as they did at the death of Hitler, not that much of a stretch.