Blogging Blue

President-elect Barack Obama may have called Wednesday’s gathering of the three living ex-presidents, the current president, and the future president an “extraordinary event,” but I call it a full house - Democrats over Republicans.

In honor of President George W. Bush’s final days in office, here’s a few of my favorite “Bushisms:”

• “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” — September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.

• “There’s no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail.” — Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.
• “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” — Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.
• “Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” — Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

  And here’s what has to be my all-time favorite “Bushism:”

• “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” — Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

  ‘Nuff said…

  

According to two former Bush White House advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government’s handling of the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina, the poor handling of Katrina knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, making it much more difficult for Bush to govern with credibility (emphasis mine):

“Katrina to me was the tipping point,” said Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. “The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter.”

As if Dowd’s statements aren’t damning enough, another top aide compared GWB to Gov. Sarah Palin when he took office:

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

“It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let’s face it, that’s what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire,”

That’s some legacy George W. Bush is leaving behind…

That’s a question I’ve been pondering. What do you think GWB will do?

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Among the pardons issued by President George W. Bush as he prepares to leave office was a pardon for Isaac Toussie, who was convicted in 2001 of mail fraud and of making false statements to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, charges that stemmed from a mortgage fraud scheme. However, shortly after the pardon was issued, it was revoked by the White House and ordered to be reviewed more thoroughly after allegations came to light that Toussie’s father donated almost $40,000 to various Republicans in 2008. Additionally, Toussie and his father are defendants in an active lawsuit related to the charges Toussie was convicted of:

Toussie and his father, also a developer, are defendants in a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on behalf of more than 400 minority home purchasers who allege a conspiracy involving racial steering, racketeering and fraud related to homes the Toussies built on Staten Island, attorney Peter Seidman told CNN.

What I’d like to know is how and why Isaac Toussie was cleared for a pardon despite these lingering problems related to his father’s political activities and the pending lawsuit. Who determined Toussie was “good to go” for pardon, and I’d also like to know how and why he was even selected as a candidate for a pardon in the first place, given the red flags surrounding his situation.

On his final visit to Iraq, President George W. Bush got a reminder of his unpopularity, as an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference:

“This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” shouted the protester in Arabic, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

Here’s some video of the incident:

While I don’t condone throwing anything at the president - or anyone else for that matter - as a means of expressing your displeasure, I do think this incident speaks volumes about how President Bush is perceived by the very people he “liberated.”

At a press conference outside the White House today, President George W. Bush finally admitted what he’s been loathe to admit since our nation’s economy started a downward slide - that our economy has entered a recession. President Bush’s admission we’ve entered a recession isn’t necessarily newsworthy, considering recent announcements that our nation has been in a recession since December 2007, but what I’m left to wonder is if we’re already past the point of a recession and have entered a mini-depression. After all, if George W. Bush isn’t willing to admit we’re in a recession until the recession is already a year old, then how long must we wait to hear him admit we’re in a depression?

I know I’ve been rather pessimistic about the state of our nation’s economy over the past year or so, and while I’d like to paint a rosier picture of our economy in the short term, I just don’t see things getting significantly better in the short term. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that 533,000 jobs were lost nationally in the month of November, exceeding the government’s own projections by roughly 180,000 jobs, and as bad as those numbers are, some economists think things
could still get worse (emphasis mine):

“The economy is now deteriorating with frightening speed and ferocity - it’s truly horrific,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “We’ll see significant declines going forward.”

Baumohl expects December’s job loss total to exceed November’s 533,000 announced by the government Friday, but remain in the 550,000 to 600,000 range. He predicts the economy will have lost 3 million to 4 million jobs for the two years ending Dec. 31, 2009.

Keeping in mind this grim news and dire predictions, ponder the notion that our nation’s “Big Three” automakers are teetering on the brink of failure, which would undoubtedly leave millions of American workers without jobs and would only exacerbate our current economic downturn.

Scary stuff, folks….scary stuff!

Now I’ve been saying our economy was in the toilet for a while now, and it turns out, I wasn’t too far off base, at least according to to the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER):

The world’s stock markets suffered another round of falls yesterday as the body regarded as the arbiter of US recessions said the American economy’s 73-month economic expansion ended in December 2007.

The news came as surveys of business confidence across continents displayed further catastrophic declines. The US economy decreased at an annualised rate of 0.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2008, having grown by an annualised 2.8 per cent in the second quarter. Although it thus does not yet qualify as a recession according to the common definition of two successive quarters of negative growth, the US National Bureau of Economic Research’s business cycle dating committee employs a much more flexible definition of recession, as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity.”

Manufacturing in the US contracted in November at the fastest pace in 26 years, putting American factories at the sharp end of a global industrial slump, according to the Arizona-based Institute for Supply Management’s factory index. At 36.2, the reading is at its lowest level since 1982. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. Similar measures from China, the UK, the euro area, and Russia also all dropped to record lows.

Interestingly, while the NBER thinks the nation’s been in a recession since December 2007, back in April of 2008 President Bush said we absolutely weren’t in a recession:

And while we’re at it, I think the announcement by the NBER debunks former McCain campaign economic advisor Phil Gramm’s argument that America was just a nation of whiners and that we were in a “mental recession,” not an actual recession.

In keeping with tradition, President Bush has begun issuing pardons in advance of leaving office in January 2009. Today fourteen people received pardons from President George Bush, while the sentences of two others were commuted.

Noticeably absent among the pardons and commutations President Bush issued today was any news of a pardon or commutation of the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, two former Border Patrol agents who many feel were wrongly convicted of discharging a firearm during the act of a crime, a criminal offense that carries a mandatory 10-year sentence under federal law. Lawmakers from both parties have called for leniency for Ramos and Compean, so it will be interesting to see if the two end up being pardoned or having their sentences commuted by President Bush.

I’ve read a report issued by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, and while I’m no legal expert, it seems pretty clear to me that Ramos and Compean did engage in a coverup of the shooting they were alleged to have been involved in, and in my experience, innocent people don’t go to the lengths Ramos and Compean did to cover up their involvement in the shooting they were ultimately convicted of. I think these guys got what they deserved for the crimes they committed, and while some may paint Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean as heroes, they’re far from heroes.

The Dow dropped again today, finishing below 8,000 for the first time since March 2003. While some folks on the conservative end of the political spectrum have become fond of blaming president-elect Barack Obama for any bad economic news, I blame George W. Bush.

After all, we can only have one president at a time, and until January 20, 2009 George W. Bush is the president, and as President Harry S. Truman was fond of saying, the buck stops with him.