Stop the Idiocracy: George W. Bush

Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

The manufacturing of collapse in Trumpistan

A surreal editorial illustration portrays the American economy as an enormous industrial machine lurching towards breakdown. A glamorous blonde woman stands precariously amid a bewildering forest of levers, gauges, pipes and machinery as workers struggle desperately to keep the apparatus functioning. Mountains of paperwork overwhelm a set of scales, suggesting bureaucracy, debt and fiscal imbalance, whilst shipping containers curve unnaturally through the sky and tumble around a congested port. Packaged beef and cattle move through another mechanical production line, linking trade disruption with food prices. Flying documents, ruptured machinery, smoke and an overloaded gauge transform economic policy into a chaotic system being pushed dangerously beyond its limits.

image generated via ChatGPT

Columnist James Downie: Trump must be deliberately destroying the US economy. {Raw Story 26 August}

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-economy-2677779664/

FTA: Rather than resulting from external shocks, the 80-year-old president's economic struggles stem largely from his own administration's decisions, MS NOW's James Downie argued Wednesday.

The column opens with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's exasperated response Monday, while announcing new sanctions on Iran, to the suggestion he might have deliberately damaged the economy: "Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?"

Downie argues he might have unwittingly made a reasonable point.

"Bessent may think that’s still a self-evidently ridiculous question," Downie wrote. "George W. Bush didn’t want a Great Financial Crisis, nor did Herbert Hoover seek to start a Great Depression. Surely no White House would deliberately hurt the global economy."

"Yet for the first time ever, that’s not the case," he added. "At home and abroad, the past few days have laid bare the extent to which President Trump’s troubles on the economy are self-inflicted."

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

No more pretences: the majority of the American people either rejoice or shrug their shoulders as the POTUS justifies murder of anyone opposed to him

Imagine but for a moment, if Barack Obama had so much as hinted—let alone declared outright—that a notable conservative or Republican figure had been murdered because his or her deranged slayer had been driven to distraction by the victim’s anti-Obama rhetoric, irrespective of the actual motives or tragic circumstances involved. Imagine, further, one’s disbelief had greater than half the American public responded with a gleeful ‘amen’, or with a shrug of chilly indifference, whilst those who were justly outraged were mocked, dismissed, and threatened with violence. Even a decade ago, in what now feels a more sober age, such a spectacle would have been unthinkable: that an American president would exploit another’s private grief so nakedly in order to menace the roughly forty per cent of the population who oppose him.

We all know precisely what would have followed had this been Obama—or Biden, or Clinton, or even George W. Bush, who long ago fell from favour with the very voters who once rallied behind him in the aftermath of 9/11. But most of all, had it been the black guy. The same #MAGA partisans who now rush to defend Donald Trump’s grotesque exploitation of the deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner—using their passings as a blunt cudgel to chill political dissent—would be marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks, bellowing (rightly, in that hypothetical) of tyranny and persecution. They know it; we know it; the hypocrisy is so brazen it scarcely troubles itself to counterfeit disguise.

Nay, now it doth not hide at all. Beginning in earnest with the January 6 insurrection, accelerating through the 2024 presidential election and the rise of the ‘manosphere’ that presently poisoneth the hearts and minds of young men at scale, and culminating in Trump’s return to office, #MAGA hath cast off any remaining pretences. What remains is an unambiguous supremacist movement: racial, gendered, and theocratic in equal measure. Roughly sixty per cent of the population is being mobilised—a fair number actively, but more commonly by enforcing passivity and apathy—against the approximate forty per cent of us who resist this nation-killing and soul-killing frenzy. I should like to claim some residue of optimism, yet truthfully I cannot summon the least glimmer of it.

We inhabit a profoundly dark chapter of national life when a majority of the public either tolerates or actively revels in a president willing to rationalise the killing of individuals on account of their political persuasions (or, more to the point, that they hurt his little feelings). We are no longer poised at the brink of the abyss; we have passed within its gate. Trump and his coterie manipulate the American populace with the effortless virtuosity of a master fiddler, and mass bloodshed—spontaneous and orchestrated—is not hypothetical, but imminent.

Most disquieting of all is the truth that remains largely unspoken—though I shall articulate it plainly: many of you reading this are not dreading what comes next. NO… you eagerly await it! For forty-eight humiliating years upon this benighted planet I have sensed, however dimly, that most of you are, at your core, rotten and malign; yet I lacked the vocabulary, the conceptual framework, to name the malignancy. Now I can. And I know, with no small measure of grim consolation, that many others have come to the same conclusion regarding people in general… yet I am entirely alone in my recognition and pain.

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

If extraordinary measures must be taken to prevent national suicide, then so be it: The Biden campaign needs to launch an an all-out, all encompassing PR assault on the bloody imbeciles of #Murica, putting the fear of God into them against restoring Trump

President Joe Biden. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

President Biden and his people urgently need to initiate a comprehensive public relations campaign, aiming to instill a sense of urgency and gravity over the repercussions of voting for Donald Trump, or most any GOP candidate on the ballot, this fall. Alas, I see scant evidence of this happening to a necessary-enough degree, and the MSM is not helping matters with its constant doom and gloom coverage of this White House.

The widespread and increasing animosity towards Israel and the Jewish people has stirred a significant portion of the left to oppose the president. Moreover, a considerable portion of the remaining population are misinformed, oft harbouring malice and attaching themselves to #Cult45. Additionally, the Department of Justice hath lamentably failed in its duty to dispense justice: Trump should have been incarcerated, at the very least, three years hence, following J6. The man incited a most egregious insurrection, and the indifference displayed is alarming, mayhap even from President Biden himself. Adhering strictly to conventional norms and taking the high road hath not yielded positive results for Mr. Biden, nor for those of us who have been steadfast in supporting him.

Donald Trump's presidency from 2017 to 2021 was a calamity on most fronts - even if he had performed perfectly otherwise, the grossly incompetent mishandling of the COVID pandemic would be a sole factor to forever disqualify him from any leadership henceforth (I would not entrust the man to oversee a Target or Walmart location). With 91 felony charges pending against him and his dubious association with America's worst adversary, Vladimir Putin, Trump's legal woes incessantly dominate the news. Despite all this, too many Americans are apathetic, allowing him to remain a credible contender for re-election.

Is this the image we desire to present to the world? Do we find contentment in being viewed as a jest amongst nations? We are going on, approximately, our third decade of being the most despised country on earth; remember, the world hated George W. Bush, and Mr. Bush is most decidedly a very benign figure in comparison to the useless golden boy that immediately followed him in office, and, verily, in comparison to Donald Trump.

I would advise President Biden that the extreme factions on both the right and left of America already harbour disdain for him and will support Trump or enable his return, regardless. Instead, I suggest Mr. Biden should give these various folks something to really hate him over. If the political centre is to hold, Mr. Biden must reach out to those who are still reachable but are not actively engaged and all too susceptible to outdated 'it's the economy, stupid' rhetoric; along with those millions who abstain from voting or paying any attention altogether. It is imperative to continually remind Americans how awfully Donald Trump performed as president during those four years. Because, at the moment, it appears a whole lot of them may be suffering from amnesia and chronic fatigue.

Our national security, Social Security, individual liberties, and even our very lives are at stake, yet we appear paralyzed and disoriented. If President Biden must take unconventional measures to prevent national suicide, I will support him wholeheartedly. He may never be Mr. Popularity, and that is more than acceptable to him so long as he serves honourably and begins the process of cleaning up all the filth polluting this land.

Copyright 2024, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social, and @arthurnewhook on POST. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Monday, March 28, 2022

Слава Україні - Ukraine: Defending humanity when the rest of the world will not

Olha Solodenko/Shutterstock

I have never been more in awe and appreciation of any group of people – and, in particular, their military who are the kicking the Russians’ asses hardcore - than I am of the Ukrainian people right now. We Americans are field mice compared to their lions.So as it turns out, are the Russians field mice as well. Let the Chinese, Indians, and Iranians try, none of the nations that constitute the modern Axis of Evil will succeed – and we in America are very much on the fence as to which side we will eventually settle on. Should we re-elect Donald Trump, or another GOP Fascist, in 2024, we then prove ourselves firmly in said Axis of Evil. Millions of Americans are begging to be part of such. So, we’re not counted out of that Axis in spite of having a great and humane leader in Joe Biden. But he is embattled, and much of the American people hates Ukraine – yes, a majority; a slim majority, but a majority - sympathizes with Putin, and hates humanity. I am now convinced the majority of Americans have embraced hate and there is going to be major reckonings due to such. The Democrats are not going to win the mid-term elections, and Joe Biden – should he run again – will not be re-elected. But no matter how much #Murcia hates him, he has proven for all time that he is the man for this moment, and one of America’s greatest presidents in our history. It is not his fault his country has grown cold and has embraced madness. #Ukraine, defenders of all humanity. They are fighting to protect Europe, and should Europe fall then the rest of the world will fall with it. Either be part of the solution, or keep on playing victim to imaginary enemies and grossly exaggerated grievances. American life is difficult, far from the paradise some in foreign lands may imagine, but keep your heads about you and learn some perspective. We have been blessed, but the country is determined to give up that blessing in place of pure hate. God help us, and I really mean that. Слава Україні ...

Getty Images

‘Mila Kunis left Ukraine for the US as a child. Now she’s helping Ukrainian refugees’ - I've long thought this woman is gorgeous, and she remains so. Young Ukrainian women, in general, are just beautiful. They age in a strange way, but then they earned that right, or privilege, or burden, or whatever that is. They're stronger than us. I care nothing about the '70s Show or the talking teddy bear movie, but bless Mila Kunis. (The Independent 3/27)

Poll: Nuclear fears in US amid Russia-Ukraine war - Not that I put any stock whatsoever in any poll, but it is fair to say that nuclear anxiety is probably running higher now than it has for a good while. As a kid in the ‘80s, of course, it was just a part of life - the nuclear threat from the East - and apparently that has now once again become the case. None of us realize how good we all had it during that period of grace in the ‘90s. I want to go back. (AP 3/28)

Finally - after 30 long years - America has a president who stands for American values and promotes peace across the universe, and he is met with nothing but universal hatred and unwarranted distrust from the American people. I am ashamed to even be living here. We were sold a bill of goods - LIES - that we were somehow better than the rest of the world. And the malevolent among us - which is 90% or more - took that to heart, and have decided to be bullies and tyrants upon the earth. Donald Trump gave them explicit permission to do so in 2016, and it’s been all downhill since then. When Trump retakes the office on January 20, 2025, it’s all over for us; we will officially have earned our place as the single most evil, tyrannical, genocidal nation in all of world history. Yeah, congratulations, motherf**kers on making that happen. Good grief ...

Barack Obama would have been nothing and would never have been elected without our current leader, Joe Biden. John McCain deserved to win that election and deserved to have served us, and I will never forgive that other guy for that. But that is not Joe Biden’s doing - Joe Biden stood beside that imbecile for eight years for the sake of his country, yet was always John McCain’s friend to the end.

Even though I like and even admire George W. Bush as a man, he failed as a president. And the other bastards, post-Reagan and not including Mr. Carter, all failed - most of all, Donald J. Trump. Joe Biden is restoring our honor, and nearly all of us are too blind to see it. His predecessors must admit their guilt in degrading America and blinding us to true leadership. We were once the greatest country on earth, now are blatant and deliberate s**t. No better than the world's biggest s**thole and the world's worst human beings, Russia and the Russians. I am so deeply ashamed, and so sad for President Biden, who is doing his best. We have a president who is trying to restore us, and 80% or more of this country hates him for it. I hate this country, that is until I love it again. Make me love it again.

Monday, August 16, 2021

Writer Tom Nichols: The American people bear responsibility for the fall of Afghanistan

Juan Carlos /Hans Lucas /Redux

All the caterwauling going on today over Afghanistan is proof that it’s ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ with a fickle, self-centered, ungrateful, unthinking, and proudly ignorant American populace. Tom Nichols lays his case out very well: This is your fault, America ...

Kabul has fallen. Americans will now exercise their usual partisan outrage for a few weeks, and then Afghanistan, like everything else in a nation with an attention span not much longer than a fast-food commercial, will be forgotten. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves.
Many Americans will bristle at the idea that this defeat overseas can be laid at their feet. When U.S. forces had to endure the misery of the retreat from North Korea back to the 38th parallel, no one made the argument that it had happened because of the voters. No one turned to the American people during the fall of Saigon and said, “This is on you.”
So why would I do that now?
Much of what happened in Korea and Vietnam—ultimately constituting a tie and a loss, if we are to be accurate—was beyond the control of the American public. Boys were drafted and sent into battle, sometimes in missions never intended to be revealed to the public.
Afghanistan was different. This was a war that was immensely popular at the outset and mostly conducted in full view of the American public. The problem was that, once the initial euphoria wore off, the public wasn’t much interested in it. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once a new adventure was launched in Iraq.
In post-2001 America, it became fashionable to speak of “war weariness,” but citizens who were not in the military or part of a military family or community did not have to endure even minor inconveniences, much less shoulder major burdens such as a draft, a war tax, or resource shortages. The soldiers who served overseas in those first years of major operations soon felt forgotten. “America’s not at war” was a common refrain among the troops. “We’re at war. America’s at the mall.”
And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. “You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade,” Biddle said early this year. “It’s been invisible.” But Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all ran on getting out of the war, and now we’re out.
What the public does care about, however, is using Afghanistan as raw material for cheap patriotism and partisan attacks (some right and some wrong, but few of them in good faith) on every president since 2001. After the worst attack on U.S. soil, Americans had no real interest in adult conversation about the reality of anti-terrorist operations in so harsh an environment as Afghanistan (which might have entailed a presence there long beyond 20 years), nor did they want to think about whether “draining the swamp” and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort. (Read more)