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Tag: Bush

Time out, there’s a hurricane in my eyes.

Posted on September 1, 2008

I remember when we were kids, and we were losing a game of four square, the sun would conveniently be in our eyes. That’s why we lost. It wasn’t because we sucked.

Anyone notice how Hurricane Gustav has conveniently prevented George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the two least popular men in the Republican Party (if not the country), from speaking at the Republican Convention today? If they were anyone else, I might suspect they were exploiting a disaster for political purposes. But since these people have never done anything like that before, I’m sure they only have the interests of the citizens of New Orleans at heart. Thank God.

**UPDATE– Since the hurricane failed to deliver the blow the Media had hoped for (CNN’s now calling themselves the “election center” again, after being the “hurricane center” just yesterday), Bush is going to have to speak today (Tuesday). This reminds me of the times in the Eighties when I was supposed to do homework but got sidetracked by Robotech and He-Man. Then, of course, I had to ride my bike around the block a few times before dinner. And after dinner, there was always Three’s Company or the Cosby Show. Then, probably because of the bike riding, I was tired. Who could blame me? In the midst of self-hate and panic the next morning, I would sometimes see rainclouds gathering beyond the avocado tree in our backyard. I would pray for a hurricane or a twister to cause massive carnage and destruction so I wouldn’t have to face an angry teacher. But since this was Los Angeles, I never had that kind of luck. I always had to own up to my mistakes. But I always had a two hour school bus-ride to either do my homework or (almost as often) to think up a good excuse.

Maybe when he speaks at the convention (well, not really AT the convention, he’ll be putting in a brief cameo on video from the White House) Bush will offer one hell of an excuse tonight for the last eight years. One we haven’t already heard a thousand times, I mean.

Surprisingly, Bush Lied about the Golf Thing

Posted on May 15, 2008

As previously mentioned, GW Bush claimed to have experienced an epiphany after a horrible bombing in Iraq. No more would the families of dead and mutilated soldiers have to suffer alone — no, the President too would suffer along with them. By giving up golf.

  

Well, as Keith Olbermann pointed out in his latest special comment (toward the end), the president who lied a nation into war, who lied about the Valerie Plame incident, who lied about… well, it would probably be quicker to just list what he didn’t lie about. Anyway, he wasn’t even telling the truth about the golf thing. The AP photographed him playing golf two months after he said he’d made his fateful decision to give up playing his game.

   

“Stephanie Miller Show” goes slumming with Candorville’s Darrin Bell

Posted on July 19, 2007

For some unknown reason, Elayne Boosler, guest hosting the Stephanie Miller Show on Jones Radio Network (& aired on many Air America affiliates), decided to spend a few minutes interviewing yours truly this morning. I didn’t post about this beforehand or tell friends or family because it would scare the hell out of me knowing that people were actually listening to me live. “They” say most Americans fear public speaking more than they fear death, and for a cartoonist who’s used to spending his days alone, half-naked in a tiny studio with only his characters to keep him company, death would be #3. #2 would be having to wear pants.Still, I sit for interviews whenever I’m asked because, hell, this is a dream come true for me — creating cartoons that strangers (who don’t owe me anything) spend a few precious, irretrievable seconds out of their days to read — and when someone asks me to talk about that on the radio or TV or a panel discussion, it’s a reminder that it’s actually happening, that that little kid who “wasted time” drawing Optimus Prime and Snoopy in his textbooks actually became what he wanted to be.Here’s the interview. Behind this buffer of time, it isn’t so scary. From today’s Stephanie Miller Show:

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Obama’s odd reason for opposing impeachment

Posted on June 29, 2007

Barack Obama on the incompetence and secrecy of the Bush administration, and on why impeaching them is unacceptable:

“There’s a way to bring an end to those practices, you know: vote the bums out,” the presidential candidate said, without naming Bush or Cheney. “That’s how our system is designed.”-USA Today 

Well, no. Our system was actually designed so that we can remove criminal officials through impeachment.He goes on:

“I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority,” he said. 

Illegally spying on millions of Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment, holding American citizens without providing access to counsel for years, torturing captives, evidence of felonious vote caging (aimed at denying Blacks their right to vote), etc., don’t constitute “grave breeches”? Exactly what would constitute a “grave breech” in Obama’s mind? And what does he mean “intentional breeches”? Does he think Bush spied on Americans by accident?

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Candorville In The Loop

Posted on April 13, 2007

From today’s In the Loop column (Washington Post):

Speaking of the House oversight committee, it’s not often that someone below the rank of Cabinet member can merit a cameo appearance in a syndicated cartoon. But General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan, apparently to the amusement of some folks at the GSA, has won that unusual distinction, becoming a thinly disguised amnesiac in the cartoon Candorville.

Doan won the high honor after she repeatedly told the committee on March 28 that she could not remember details of a Jan. 26 videoconference presentation for top political appointees at her agency by White House deputy political director J. Scott Jennings, who works in Karl Rove’s shop.

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I don’t think “robust” means what Bush thinks it means

Posted on April 9, 2007

From the people who brought us such hits as “Uraniam Tubes from Africa” and “Saddam Hussein blah blah blah 9/11” comes a new classic: “This economy sure kicks ass.”Apparently the White House feels its policies have created a more robust economy than existed during the late ’90s. We all must have just imagined we were better off. Sure, the amount of people living in poverty has skyrocketed, but what does that matter?If you keep in mind an early quote about the Bush administration’s governing philosophy, allegedly from a White House aide, it all makes perfect sense:

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’‘ he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Another quote that may be helpful when listening to the White House tell you why it’s technically not such a bad thing that you’ve gone from working on a Ford assembly line to working at a Wal-Mart checkout line:”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”-Mark Twain (or possibly Benjamin Disraeli)

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Get ready for President Clinton

Posted on January 25, 2007

Dick Cheney, the man who’s been consistently wrong about every major prediction, took a break from gathering flowers and candy from the Baghdad streets to weigh in on the ’08 election:

US Vice President Dick Cheney said that Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton will not win the White House in 2008 and would not make a good president if she does. 

I guess this is proof positive that Hillary Clinton will win the White House in 2008 and will make a good president when she does. I’m not much for dynastic presidencies. I think it’s dangerous when running the country becomes a family business, so somebody, anybody, tell Cheney to shut up before his astonishing bizarro-powers jinx another Clinton into the White House.By the way, if the President is serious about the need for less polarization in Washington, he might want to mention that to his hatchet-man:

Cheney, who in October had called Hillary Clinton a “formidable candidate” who “could win” the race to replace US President George W. Bush, told CNN television “I don’t” think she would make a good leader. Asked why, Cheney replied: “Because she’s a Democrat. I don’t agree with her philosophically and from a policy standpoint.”

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An incipient dictator spends his political capital

Posted on January 10, 2007

His victory was determined by electronic voting machines that are indirectly under his control, he’s consolidating the Media and the now virtually one-party state under his command, and he’s planning to assume special legislative powers – powers previously outside the domain of the executive branch. For those of us who’ve criticized the GOP’s determination to govern without Democratic input the past five+ years and their tendency to ignore or support the President’s legally-dubious domestic spying, it’s tempting to say he’s George Bush’s Liberal mirror image. But here’s one major distinction (among several): Bush and his party never tried to eliminate Presidential term limits. I think it’s necessary to say now that what we have in Venezuela is an incipient dictator.From Yahoo News:

A leading anti-U.S. voice in the world and in the vanguard of a shift to the left in Latin America, Chavez now wants to scrap presidential term limits and lead the OPEC nation for decades. 

Many of us agree with most of Chavez’s stated goals; chief among them the novel idea that Venezuelans should benefit more than foreign investors do from their own natural resources, and that the United States’ Monroe Doctrine (used by Presidents to justify numerous invasions and subversions of Latin American governments) is an anachronism. We agree with Chavez that the nations of Latin America have a right to self determination, they have a right to deny foreign exploitation of their own resources and to insist that the United States stay out of their political affairs. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the very real prospect that an even more fundamental right – the right of people to govern themselves – looks like it may be endangered in Venezuela.If Hugo Chavez grows a long beard, we’ll know it’s game over in Caracas.***EDIT: As a reader points out in the comments to this thread, the leaders of Chile and Brazil – whose acceptance has been credited in no small part to the popularit of Hugo Chavez – have so far demonstrated that socialist values are not incompatible with Democracy. Perhaps the teacher should start taking notes.

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Merry Christmas, Iraq, three years late

Posted on December 24, 2006

Is it just me, or does anyone else think this is something we should have done THREE @#$% YEARS AGO?

THE White House is expected to announce a reconstruction package for Iraq as part of a plan for a “surge” of up to 30,000 troops into Baghdad when President George W Bush unveils America’s new strategy next month.Bush is being urged to give up to $10 billion (£5.1 billion) to Iraq as part of a “New Deal” that would create work for unemployed Iraqis, following the model of President Franklin D Roosevelt during the 1930s depression. 

But while some of us were suggesting this very plan the moment our tanks began their dash across the desert, the Bush administration was busy laying the foundations for the insurgency by carrying out their plan to carve up Iraq and feed the white meat to Haliburton and its no-bid contract winning no-Iraqi-hiring, no-work-finishing, tax-payer-money-squandering subcontractors from Hell. Instead of putting Iraqis to work, the Bush administration was busy freezing them out of possibilities to rebuild their own country. Now with possibly 600,000 Iraqis dead and the country embroiled in a vicious, bloody civil war, the Bush team may have finally decided to allow Iraqis to go to work to rebuild their country. If only they’d come to this conclusion before the Iraqis came to feel they had nothing left to do but destroy it. In keeping with their pattern, the Bushes are a few years late to the party. Merry @#$% Christmas, Iraq.One other thing to note here: Apparently $10 billion U.S. is now worth only 5.1 billion British pounds. Historically, that 10-large should have been worth over £6.5 billion. Anyone else bothered by this?

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