From DownWithTyranny! 3 January 2010:

I don’t know which single book I liked most in 2009. The DWT Bookstore has pages of my faves– the ones Ken and I are always referring to– from Idiot America, Nixonland, Dateline Havana, Bloggers on the Bus and Turkmeniscam to The Progressive Revolution, The Eliminationists and, of course, Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets, a 600 page thriller that digs more deeply into the Bush Family than anyone has ever done. The paperback is now in its third edition and I’ve been urging Russ to work with someone on doing a synopsis that we could use to turn people on who are intimidated by books with hundreds of pages. Yesterday he finally sent me something that can be used here at DWT. He starts with the questions many of us have asked over and over again: “How did the spectacularly unqualified George W. Bush come to be the President of the United States, and arguably the most powerful person in the world? What lay behind his improbable rise and disastrous policies? Was there more to his controversial reign than the pundits’ standard bromides?”…

Read more, including excerpts from the book at the below link.

via DownWithTyranny!: Family Of Secrets– All Your Worst Fears About The Bushs Were True.

Of course, he’s referring to Iraq in 2003, but it’s still wicked ironic.

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Originally Published @ Care2.com, 18 February 2009, by Aaron D. Pendell

The first month of the Obama administration has been a whirlwind. The president signed the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act–the most comprehensive (and most expensive) legislation in American history–into law on Tuesday in Denver. The following day, Obama began to implement the economic recovery package, no doubt continuing the frenetic pace established since his inauguration. Congress, however, will likely set about getting some answers out of the Bush administration.

That the Congress and the President will be traveling separate paths is inconsequential and should be expected. As Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com perceptively posted on Sunday, the liberal, or progressive, electorate is by no means a homogeneous bunch. He describes progressives as being divided into “rational” and “radical” contingents with countless individual members falling somewhere between the two.

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The conservative punditocracy that has spent the past eight years propping up a president who gave us an illegitimate war and leaves us with an almost unimaginably bad economic crisis apparently grows weary of defending this spectacular failure of a president. And so they’re trying to bring Franklin Roosevelt down to George W. Bush’s level.

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From ProPublica.org, 5 January 2009 post, by Jennifer LaFleur:

'I've got yur infurmation right here.'

As one of the most secretive presidential administrations in history gets ready to close up shop, it’s closing a few more things — records. Over the past few months, some federal agencies have issued rules that would eliminate public disclosure of information — or, in some cases, make it more difficult for requesters to get information.

While the federal Freedom of Information Act regulates what government information may be withheld from the public, internal rules determine how that law is carried out at the agency level. Those rules also may restrict access to information…

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B'bye GOP...

Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash.

And everything that has happened in recent years is a consequence of that decision.

From the New York Times, 1 January 2009 post, by Paul Krugman:

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation…

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As George W. Bush prepares to leave office, he and his staff appear to be attempting to rewrite history to cast him in a more favorable light — but it seems that history may have the last laugh.

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more about “The Raw Story | Olbermann: ‘The presi…”, posted with vodpod
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The most comprehensive guide to the Bush administration’s failures is a new list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity.

From The Raw Story, 10 December 2008 post, by Muriel Kane:

…Working from government investigations, news stories, and suggestions from experts and government employees, the team compiled a list of 250 failures, which it then narrowed down to just 128 “that attracted bipartisan criticism and had major impacts on the lives of ordinary Americans.”

The results of the investigation, which are summarized at CPI’s PaperTrail blog and presented in full at its Broken Government project, are stunning in their scope even for those who have been following the scandals of the last eight years.

According to the CPI, “Some of these problems were in place well before George W. Bush’s inauguration, but were exacerbated by his policies or worsened by his administration’s actions (or inactions). Many of the failings are tied to Bush appointees who appear to have been selected primarily on the basis of ideology and loyalty, rather than competence.”…

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