Political quotes of the moment

[Iason Ouabache]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-12/sharron-angle-and-the-anti-muslim-scare-about-sharia-law-in-america/full/

Now I admit that we Muslims are a pretty powerful bunch. But in all the secret Muslim gatherings I have attended to discuss our plans for destroying democracy and taking over the White House (we meet every Friday night directly atop Ground Zero), we have come to the conclusion that we will need to raise our numbers from the 1% of the US population we currently represent, to at least 2% before we can begin stoning people at random.

[Salty]

 
Yoinked.

[Iason Ouabache]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/bush_i_was_a_dissenting_voice_on_iraq_war.php

"Not everybody thought you should go to war, though," Lauer said. "There were dissenting voices."

"I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force," Bush said. "I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world's better off without Saddam in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis."

He's trolling us again!

[AFK]

I guess he's made the calculation that it's better to go down in history as a pussy/pushover President rather than a neocon warmonger hawk. 

[Cramulus]

the current motto for any tea partier: "No no, I was one of the good republicans that opposed Bush."

hilarious that Bush is trying to jump onto that platform too 


anybody found any good tidbits re: his memoirs?

[Jenne]

the current motto for any tea partier: "No no, I was one of the good republicans that opposed Bush."

hilarious that Bush is trying to jump onto that platform too 


anybody found any good tidbits re: his memoirs?

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/11/02/excerpts-from-nbc-news-matt-lauer-reports-interview-with-george-w-bush-airs-monday-november-8-at-8pm-et/70650

A few of those made me lol.  His basic answers to Matt Lauer were, of course, "I don't care about any criticism" and "Read the book."

[Cain]

Also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11715577

British lives were saved by the use of information obtained from terrorist suspects by "waterboarding", according to former US President George W Bush.

In his memoir, he said the simulated drowning technique helped break plots on Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf.

Number 10 declined to comment directly on the claims but said it considered waterboarding to be torture.

"We don't condone it [torture], nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf," a spokeswoman said.

Mr Bush's memoir, Decision Points, is being serialised in the Times.

In an interview with the paper the former president said: "Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives."

He confirmed he had authorised the use of waterboarding to extract information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attack.

Mr Bush tells the paper: "Damn right!

"We capture the guy, the chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who kills 3,000 people. We felt he had the information about another attack.

"He says, 'I'll talk to you when I get my lawyer'. I say, 'What options are available and legal?'"

In the book, Mr Bush writes: "Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States."

Note there is currently a lot of controversy in the UK due to an investigation showing there was systematic prisoner abuse by British soliders in Iraq, along with information that "unauthorized" manuals were being distributed by the Joint Intelligence Centre in the run-up to the Iraq War (none of which have been found, however their existence is well established).

[Cramulus]

the current motto for any tea partier: "No no, I was one of the good republicans that opposed Bush."

hilarious that Bush is trying to jump onto that platform too 


anybody found any good tidbits re: his memoirs?

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/11/02/excerpts-from-nbc-news-matt-lauer-reports-interview-with-george-w-bush-airs-monday-november-8-at-8pm-et/70650

A few of those made me lol.  His basic answers to Matt Lauer were, of course, "I don't care about any criticism" and "Read the book."

oh man ...



BUSH ON KANYE WEST:

MATT LAUER:
About a week after the storm hit NBC aired a telethon asking for help for the victims of Katrina. We had celebrities coming in to ask for money. And I remember it vividly because I hosted it. And at one part of the evening I introduced Kanye West. Were you watching?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Nope.

MATT LAUER:
You remember what he said?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:

Yes, I do. He called me a racist.

MATT LAUER:
Well, what he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
That's — "he's a racist." And I didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now. It's one thing to say, "I don't appreciate the way he's handled his business." It's another thing to say, "This man's a racist." I resent it, it's not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency.

MATT LAUER:
This from the book. "Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust." You go on. "I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low."

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt 'em when I heard 'em, felt 'em when I wrote 'em and I felt 'em when I'm listening to 'em.

MATT LAUER:
You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And– it was a disgusting moment.

MATT LAUER:
I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you've written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this–

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Don't care.

MATT LAUER:
Well, here's the reason. You're not saying that the worst moment in you're Presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You're saying it was when someone insulted you because of that.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
No — that– and I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There's a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.

[Cain]

It's a good reminder of how shallow Bush really is.  The "worst moment of his presidency" wasn't when 3000 people burnt or leapt to their deaths while he was reading "My Pet Goat", it wasn't launching two wars, nor the destruction of New Orleans, the financial collapse, authorizing torture etc etc it was that KANYE WEST, also noted for his statements on gay fish, thought he was a racist.

[Jenne]

Matt Lauer tried real hard to get at the "but the people in NOLA suffering wasn't WORSE?" bit, but Bushie would have none of it. 

Yeah, so much lail & fail.

[Cramulus]

[AFK]

Geez, I wonder if Taylor Swift holds a grudge that long. 

[Cain]

Bush does at least have a Freudian Excuse as to why he is kinda fucked up:

http://feeds.wonkette.com/click.phdo?i=676760942dd9f04e36290f588a52fd8f

Some people give lame reasons to be pro-life, but George W. Bush really has a pretty good excuse. While on his current "Say Anything To Get People To Buy My Book Nobody Would Read Otherwise" tour, Bush revealed to Matt Lauer the reason he dislikes abortion: His mother had a miscarriage when he was a teenager and liked to parade around her dead offspring in a jar. Holy hell, this family. "Junior, please pass sister fetus jar the mashed potatoes." "Junior, please drive your brother the fetus jar to school." "Junior, doesn't your sister the fetus jar look beautiful in her prom dress? Pull her out of the goo and pin that corsage on her, wouldn't you? Then give her a kiss goodbye. She'd best be going or she'll be late!"

"She said to her teenage kid, 'Here's the fetus,' " the shockingly candid Bush told NBC's Matt Lauer, gesturing as if he were holding the jar during the TV chat, a DVD of which The Post exclusively obtained.

"There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life," said the former president [...]

But "the purpose of the story wasn't to try show the evolution of a pro-life point of view," Bush insisted to Lauer.

It was to scare children on Halloween?

"It was really to show how my mom and I developed a relationship."

Oh Lord, did the two of them have sex? This almost excuses the whole torture thing.

Also, Jonah Goldberg, he of Liberal Fascism fame, has a new book out.  Thers, one of the people who ensured that Liberal Fascism got exactly the kind of literary recognition it deserved (ie; unending mockery across the net) has gained a copy of this magical and exciting tome which delves deep into the philosophy of current day American conservatism:

Over the next week I'm going to go contemplate this issue in some detail. Are the contributors to this book smart?

Perhaps surprisingly, they are not.

We shall begin with Micahel Warren's "Prosperity: The Choice of a New Generation," which wittily recalls the advertising slogan of a soft drink corporation.

Warren says he went on a study abroad program in Ireland, where he learned that Irish teenagers are very similar to American teenagers, in that they go to school, listen to music, and wear clothing. Also he explains that even though he has no actual understanding of modern Irish history, economic or otherwise, Ireland needs to do what he says because he has Seen the Light of True Religious Economic Policy.

Among the howlers: after 1921, in Ireland, the "Anglo-American political tradition was not particularly welcome." This makes no sense. The Saorstat for openers swallowed whole the corpus of British law for purposes of precedents. The civil service barely burped at the change of sovereign governments. Kevin O'Higgins... ahrg! I could go on, oh Lord could I go on, but the point is, Warren clearly has no idea what he's talking about whatsoever. Even after de Valera came to power, this is nuts. And it leads to even more abject nonsense like this, about Ireland's current desperate economic straits:

A victim of the entrnched feudal system in Europe and its own self-immolation by refusing to co-opt the capitalist traditions of its hated British neighbors, the Emerald Isle does not have the institutions from which to gain inspiration and fortitude.

If only Ireland had "institutions" like the Electoral College and the House of Lords, it would be properly equipped for the 21st century.

The "capitalist" stuff is fantastic. Since '21 Ireland has always hewed closer to the currently fashionable capitalist line, regardless of whether or not it made any particular sense to do so. And the results have usually been pretty brutal. Here is Current Reality.

What Warren says in his piece is, flatly, crazy.

But in terms of ideological purity, it's purely ideological, so whatever.

And that's the point; Goldberg's young geniuses are talking incomprehensible crap except to each other, but have no idea why they should even think this even matters.

[Juana]

Republicans Are Really Weird, Chapter CCVII

Ben Armbruster:

    In 2008, Bush Said He 'Probably Won't Vote For' McCain: With stories about President Bush's new memoir dominating the headlines this week, Financial Times Westminster correspondent Alex Barker reports on his "favourite Bush anecdote," which he writes, "for various reasons we couldn't publish at the time. Some of the witnesses still dine out on it":
       

The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor.

        Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain's campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate.

        Not a chance. "I probably won't even vote for the guy," Bush told the group, according to two people present."I had to endorse him. But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me."

    Barker said that British officials looked "dumbfounded" and that Brown's "poker face gave way to a flash of astonishment."

[Cain]

Breaking Brown's poker face should be considered just another international crime Bush has caused.  Have you ever seen Brown when he isn't scowling?  Not a pretty sight, not at all.