Tag: George W Bush

By Daily Mail Reporter Protesters called for George W. Bush to be arrested for his role in the Iraq and…

Editor: Marjorie Cohn teaches law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law – my old alma mater – plus she is the national president of the National Lawyers Guild. This interview with her on voiceofsandiego just appeared and we had to share.
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by Randy Dotinga / Voice of San Diego
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On the legal front, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have few bigger enemies than Marjorie Cohn, a professor at San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Bloomberg reports that, according to recently released IRS data, “the average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million.” Much of their income came from capital gains resulting from the Bush tax cuts:

The drop from 2001’s tax rate of 22.9 percent was due largely to ex-President George W. Bush’s push to cut tax rates on most capital gains to 15 percent in 2003.

Over 50 people and a gorilla created a carnival atmosphere at a sunset beach party on the last day of Bush’s presidency as they gave Bush the Boot! Inspired by the Baghdad journalist who threw his shoes at Bush as a sign of disrespect, Ground Zero Players constructed a life-size Bush effigy, stood it up on the beach in Ocean Beach, and invited people to hurl away. At the moment the sun disappeared below the horizon, spontaneous cheering, bell-ringing and drumming erupted. A simultaneous shoe hurl was accompanied by singing a few stanzas of Tanks in My Memory from bushisgone’s You Tube video.
Bye Bye Bush! Don’t let the shoes hit you as you slink out of Washington.

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.”

In the waning moments of the Bush Administration, our Commander in Chief and his cohorts are pushing through hundreds of so-called “Midnight Rules” that could take years to change (if challenged at all by the incoming Congress and Obama Administration) and may inevitably leave a lasting mark on environmental regulation for years to come.

It is common for outgoing Presidents to pardon criminals, or push through a few last minute Executive Orders to leave a legacy. But in the traditional Dubya manner, most of these Midnight Rules are of course in the best interest of Energy Conglomerates (particularly the dirty-ass COAL industry i.e. Tennessee environmental disaster) and not in the best interest of the environment.

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.

In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration’s 10 greatest moments — disastrous failures, all — is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush’s memory before we go to bed every night.

In D.C. yesterday morning, the Iraq Ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida’ie, paused during a presentation to address a handful of women from CODEPINK who were holding signs in the audience reading “Free al-Zaidi” and “al-Zaidi speaks for me.” The signs were to show support for the Iraqi journalist who was taken into police custody after throwing his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad press conference on Sunday.

The new movie Frost/Nixon, about the famous interview between the British talk show host and the disgraced former president, is providing a new occasion to consider the depths of the Bush presidency. James Reston, Jr., who has written a book about the Frost/Nixon interview, has said that the movie is driven by the fact that Nixon is a “metaphor” for George W. Bush. He’s wondered aloud “Who will be the David Frost who exposes him?”

As the Bush administration nears its end, the debate over what Obama should do about officials who authorized torture, humiliation or systematic abuse of detainees as part of the “war on terror” has become more urgent. Even as the pressure on Obama to take action grows, some prominent legal experts are urging restraint.

When it comes to protecting George W. Bush and his administration, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is stretching legal arguments as far as his predecessor Alberto Gonzales ever did – now even invoking the “Nixon Defense” for justifying presidential wrongdoing.