Yes it is Bush's fault. Not Cheney's - Bush's.

The entire eight year runoff Bush's Presidency was stamped with his personality.  Bush is an easily distracted, uncurious man who values personal relationships and loyalty above all else, and who believes that intuition is a more important deductive faculty than reason, at the complete expense of the latter.

As this administration bumbled its way from disaster to disaster, every scene that has been played out has been consistent with the man himself. Think back.

August 6, 2001 - "Bin Laden determined to strike America" goes ignored. And guess who happened to be on one of his many, many vacations at the time? George W. Bush.

More after the fold...

A fellow diarist made a provocative argument which merits discussion.  In part my good colleague said:

OK, we're not going to get an impeachment. We're not even going to see Rove hauled up on contempt charges.

We know your line, Nancy. These actions would only distract public attention from the really bad job the Republicans are doing with the economy and the war and stuff like that. That's the only way to guarantee a win in the Presidential race and to pick up supermajorities in Congress. Ya, sure, as they say in my neck of the woods...

We can yell, we can scream, we can demonstrate, we can camp on your lawn, but we can't redirect your oh-so pragmatic focus onto our naively idealistic issues...

But two things had Goddam well better happen after I do that. First, you better get your supermajority after casting away your principles to buy it...

And second, once you get a controlling grip on the Executive and Legislative branches, you had better start using that power fast. Get us out of the war. Institute a sane and progressive energy and environmental policy. Give us a good, cost-efficient and effective universal healthcare system.

The diarist is..

Bush Urges China to Improve Human Rights.

As the "long national nightmare" draws to a close I want to enter a preemptive protest to all future historians.  Do not lay this past eight years of the systematic destruction of American values entirely at the feet of George W. Bush.  To do so would allow the real culprits to escape with their place in this story untarnished by their crimes.

Bush is an insignificant, shallow, foolish man.  A man of no substance.  A cardboard cutout of trivial posturing, sold to an inattentive public, immersed in navel gazing.  He lacks the strength of character, intellect, or moral bearings to have committed the crimes for which his administration will be held accountable for generations.

Of the many criticisms that can be leveled at two terms of the Bush administration, a comparatively mild one is that its major actors were guilty, as a group, of poor decision making.  Nevertheless, I will spend this diary describing how a psychological phenomenon called groupthink seems to aptly describe how the administration behaves.  Almost amusingly so, in my opinion, if it weren't so catastrophic.  

This is my first diary ever on DailyKos. I was inspired to write about the book/cultural zeitgeist "The Secret" because I realized it has unsettling parallels to the Republican style of control of the collective unconscious. I realize I jump from topic to topic quite a bit, but these are just some musings I'm having this Thursday evening with a quantity of red wine, and I'd love to hear some other Kossack opinions.

Crossposted from Bluegrassroots:
http://bluegrassroots.org/...

The doc could not let this AP article pass without comment, so here ya go!

    The opening sentence in an 8-6-08 Associated Press article:  "Bound for the Beijing Olympics, President Bush is carrying a message of ‘deep concerns’ about the state of human rights in China..."  

    That’s right.  President Bush is lecturing China about human rights.  Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?   Feel free to follow me below the fold if you share my amazement...

Update: Link to video of the interview here (MSNBC's embed function doesn't work on dkos)

On Hardball today, Mike Barnicle just made a fairly explosive statement.  They were talking about Ron Suskind's new book The Way of the World, in which Suskind alleges via interviews with multiple colleagues and subordinates of George Tenet the explosive charge that the Bush Administration gave the CIA an actual paper ordering them to forge a document drawing connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Suskind was on the show, and faced fierce questioning from Barnicle--specifically about why Suskind didn't interview Tenet himself.  Suskind responded that Tenet was confused and "did not remember" a large number of incidents from the time, including the famous "slam dunk" remarks--but that numerous colleagues and subordinates keep detailed records.

The Bush Administration's military tribunal system, created in the aftermath of 9/11 to process terrorism suspects, was on the verge of going down in history without a single conviction under its belt - nearly seven full years since its inception.

Well, pop the fucking champagne bottles, baby!  They finally convicted a guy - bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan (of the famous Hamdan v Rumsfeld case) - of what he admitted to at the time of his capture in 2003 - being bin Laden's driver.

Normally, I'd treat this as the smallest of small deals - but with Bush and company trumpeting this as a great acheivement, proof that military arbitration is a more effective (they never said fair) way to deal with these suspects than civilian courts, I had to point out what a complete and total goatfuck this whole thing has become.

For months now, we've been hearing about the Obama campaign's wishes to redraw the playing field and mix up the red state-blue state divide of the last few election cycles. At first I was skeptical that much terrain outside of the usual litany of "battleground states" would ultimately be in play, but I've seen enough state polls to where I'm convinced that we are indeed looking at an entirely different political map in 2008. As someone who has been obsessed with political demography since I was 11 years old, that premise has me fascinated with checking out the elections results map on the morning of November 5, so much so that I was actually dreaming last night about studying said maps. Nonetheless, I can't help but expect the county-by-county results maps are gonna look far more different from 2000 and 2004 than will the state-by-state maps.

Well, that's how I read it, is there any other way to read it?

This is from McCain's appearance in Ohio:

Aug 7, 4:06 PM (ET)
LIMA, Ohio (AP)

"Government is too big, he wants to grow it. Taxes are to [sic] high, he wants to raise them," McCain said. "Congress spends too much and he proposes more. We need more energy and he's against producing it. We're finally winning in Iraq, and he wants to forfeit."

"Impeach Bush!" I am starting to hear this waaay too much. so many people are so unhappy with Bush and our current government, they think that the solution to all their problems will just be to impeach Bush. They think that this will magically solve our job problem, economic problems, war problems, and every other problem that they have. They think that life would be just dandy if Bush was impeached.

There are some items up on News Unfiltered that may interest the community.

Will McCain stand up for Ohio jobs?:

John McCain will visit Ohio today amid new revelations about his role in a deal that will cost Ohio more than 8,000 jobs. Yesterday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that while Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain, and former DHL lobbyist and current campaign manager Rick Davis, played instrumental roles in helping DHL and its German parent company take over operations in Wilmington, Ohio in 2003, despite concerns about the local impact of the deal. Both companies hired Davis' firm to push the deal through Congress, with DHL-Airborne Express paying Davis and his business partner $185,000 in 2003 and $405,000 from the German company Deutsche Post for other work in 2004 and 2005. [Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/6/08]

Read more.

Check. This. Out. Literally. I figure with some 150+ thousand users we can run down a few questions...

After Army BioWarfare and Vaccines Researcher Bruce Ivins' suicide, We've heard a vertible gush of motives offered via Bush's Justice Department as to "Prime Suspect" Ivins "guilt" in the Anthrax attacks of 2001. We've heard the guy was motivated by a desire to be "needed", that he had a troubled home life and that he may have had addiction problems, mental illness, etc. Well, THAT should narrow down the Adult Male Suspect pool to 30 or 40 Milliion guys. For all the bullshit the Administration, the Justice Department and the FBI is flinging on the wall, surely some of it will stick and our questions will be answered, no?

Funny, because you'd think Cheney and the Pentagon might take the lead on this , huh?? < Crickets >

I'd like some F@*#!^& Answers after reading two reports that ARE in the Public Domain, noted below.

It used to be that George Bush was one of the biggest masters of dishing it out -- see, for instance, the Swift Boat attacks. But all of a sudden, George Bush is getting a dose of his own medicine -- House Republicans are calling him Beijing George for his refusal to call the House back into session to vote on drilling.

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he's shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I'd share it with you.- ek

NOTE: I'm an Internet Adviser to Hillary Clinton

I wanted to share Hillary's op-ed in the WSJ:

"Tucked away on the Cayman Islands sits Ugland House, an unassuming, nondescript building of modest scale and size. However, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), this five-story office building is home to more than 18,000 corporate entities, nearly half of which have U.S. ties.

When I finally stumbled upon Washington Journal a few years ago, I was happy to have something of substance to watch/listen to while I was getting ready for work.  While there are times that I have almost no interest in what’s being discussed, I still listen for the viewers who call in.  I often learn new things or something gets me curious enough to look deeper into an issue.  This morning was no different.