Category: History

Editorial writers around the world have been taking their final printed whacks at George W. Bush, accusing the president of tarnishing America’s standing with what many saw as arrogant and incompetent leadership. Some newspaper editorials, for all their criticism, suggested historians might just be kinder later on than those now writing first drafts of history. A success often cited by those seeking a silver lining was the United States’ freedom from further homeland attacks following September 11.

Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, will be sworn in as the 44th U.S. president on Tuesday. “A weak leader, Bush was just overwhelmed in the job,” said Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung under a headline: “The Failure.”

History will record that George W. Bush made one critically important contribution to our country — and to the entire world. He and his administration provided unquestionable proof of the bankruptcy of radical-conservative ideology, and set the stage for a qualitatively different progressive era in American politics. History is not linear. It is not gradual or evolutionary. Human progress proceeds in fits and starts like a volcano, where pressure gradually builds over years and then erupts with enormous power.
Very often those explosions of progress — periods when we expand the realm of democratic values, human dignity, economic opportunity and optimism — are precipitated by periods of domination by the forces of privilege, inequality and selfishness.

By assuring that all of the fruits of the growth of productivity in our economy went to the wealthiest 2% of our population, the Bush administration set the stage for the current economic collapse.

BILL AYERS: In the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why. Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name.

OCEAN BEACH, CA. OB Rag – the blog – announces that we have scanned in another original OB Rag –…

For those tricksters in all of us, go here to a blog regarding the origins of April Fool’s Day.