By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Last Saturday in Brandon’s Clayton Park, approximately 200 citizens gathered for a TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already) organized by conservative activist Terry Kemple, and featuring a rally-the-troops speech by State Senator Ronda Storms (right).
It was one of what was supposed to be over 1,000 such expressions of outrage at government spending under the Obama administration around the country on Independence Day, and followed a similar outburst of conservative sentiment at the first “Teabag” parties held on Tax Day, April 15th.
That day was also dedicated to federal largesse, though you may recall it more as a media battle between the seeming outright advocacy of the Fox News network, and the derision of it by more liberal commentators, including way too many allusions to what the phrase ‘teabagging’ meant. (This Keith Olbermann bit was just part of that onslaught.)
The growing federal deficit was on the minds of most of the citizenry. Despite the fact that a large part of the current deficit can be laid at the feet of former President George W. Bush (as my previous column, referring NY Times columnist David Leonhardt, can attest to), those in attendance on Saturday were of no mind to hear such specific facts. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2009, at 12:29 pm
President Barack Obama has reveresed himself on how open his Administration will be on the torture approved by the previous George W. Bush Administration of Horrors, refusing to release Abu Ghraib torture photos. Daily Dish reports:
In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can’t help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 16, 2009, at 11:44 am
Lincoln reads "The Pet Goat" to his son, Tad
It’s Presidents Day, our annual ignored holiday that pretends to pay homage to the 42 men who have held the highest office in the land. C-SPAN rescues a brutally slow news day with its annual survey of historians and their rankings of the presidents, best to worst.
Atop the list is the old rail-splitter himself, is-he-bi-or-is-he-not Abraham Lincoln. George “No, I didn’t have to pick splinters out of Martha’s vagina because of my wooden teeth!” Washington wins you the place bet, and Franklin D. Roosevelt completes the trifecta.
Sure, some of the rankings are nostalgia-oriented, throwbacks to a time when the press and public didn’t ask so many questions of its leaders. As the LA Timespoints out:
It may not be a coincidence that the top five presidents of all time, as ranked by the cable channel’s panel of 65 historians, all come from the era before video clips and television.
Would Abe still be No. 1 if we’d seen a million replays of that vintage Civil War footage of him hitting his burly head on the log cabin door?
Or would a bald George Washington be No. 2 if his powdered wig had gotten blown out of the presidential carriage in a Washington wind, revealing the shiny presidential pate?
Or FDR, TR and Harry Truman at Nos. 3, 4 and 5 if we’d heard audio tapes of their candid opinions of Henry Wallace, William Howard Taft and Strom Thurmond, respectively?
As evidence suggesting that absence does make the memory grow softer, Bill Clinton slipped up from No. 21 in 2000 to No. 15 now, Ronald Reagan up to 10 from 11 and Bush I from 20 to 18. His son, Bush II, remains mired at No. 36 since he became a former president nearly four weeks ago. Hasn’t budged a notch.
So if Dubya is No. 36 on the list, you ask, which six presidents were worse than he was? Well, you know from my headline that James Buchanan was the worst. The other five The other five are after the jump plus a funny American History video from Robert Wuhl:
Despite Rick Warren’s odious appearance and a bumbling exchange between the new president and Chief Justice Roberts, Barack Obama’s inauguration was as moving and powerful as the rest of his journey to the White House as been.
With empowering rhetorical style in his speech this afternoon, Obama elicited misty eyes and wide smiles from the immense D.C. crowd – while simultaneously managing to ensure the American people that this presidency will be nothing like the previous.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 20, 2009, at 8:00 am
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field. She becomes a regular contributor to PoHo with this entry:
Watching HBO Sunday night, I caught some of the musical guests who were performing with exuberance in front of the Lincoln Memorial. My heart soared while legends like Stevie Wonder and Pete Seeger teamed up with Usher and Bruce Springsteen, all of them looking and sounding better than ever. Their optimism and love for this country shining through every lyric, musical note, and facial expression.
For me, the end of U2’s performance summed it up best.
“Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel,” Bono said.
Then he repeated himself.
For the last eight years, we’ve been told throughout the nation and around the world, through deeds and through actions, that to disagree with America’s governing body meant you were turning your back on America.
“You’re either with us or against us,” President Bush said.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 19, 2009, at 2:16 pm
In his final hours, President George W. Bush goes down blazin’ for conservatives by setting free two US Border Patrol officers who shot an unarmed drug dealer in the ass as he tried to escape from them and then tried to cover it up. Their cases had been taken up by the right wing, who viewed the shooting as simply defending the nation’s border. From The Hill:
President Bush, in his last full day in the White House, commuted the sentences of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who are in prison for shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler.
The case of Ramos and Compean was initially a cause célèbre for conservatives who favor tight border security. However, other lawmakers have picked up their cause and applied pressure on the Bush administration to pardon them or at least commute the 11- and 12-year prison sentences.
“In reaching his decision, the president closely considered the views of people around the country who believe that the sentences these two men received were too harsh,” a White House official said. “A number of senators and congressmen from both parties and all parts of the country have expressed their strong view that Ramos and Compean’s sentences should be commuted. This includes almost the entire bipartisan delegation from Texas, the state in which the crimes occurred.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 15, 2009, at 7:06 am
As many pundits are noting these days, the normal niceities extended to a departing president aren’t being given to George W. Bush as he leaves office. The public actually seems to be getting more hostile to him by the day.
So tonight’s planned farewell address should prove very interesting. Expect him to be thankful for having served his nation, grateful for those who worked with him in the White House, and concerned about the nation’s ongoing safety from terror attacks. He’ll burnish his record. He’ll do that goofy smirk of his. Just how far he will go with his spin about “only history will judge if I was right or wrong” remains to be seen.
The 10-15 minutes of speechifying starts at 8 p.m.
Bonus Cut: Here are George Washington’s parting thoughts as he left the presidency. He couldn’t get any network air time, so he delivered them in writing.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 12, 2009, at 9:49 am
He’s still taking questions as I write this, but it strikes me that this (final) news conference being held by the outgoing President George Walker Bush is about all you need to see to understand why history will judge him as one of our nation’s worst.
Bush spent more time jibing/joking with individual reporters than actually giving substantive thoughts, but when he did answer questions about his actions regarding the economy or the war in Iraq, he showed his fundamental weakness as a president: his belief that his mistakes were simply good actions that are being attacked by partisan critics or a biased press. He is a walking compendium of malapropisms and slogans right to the end, without showing any real conviction or will.
He said he could have avoided making the tough decisions, but that is not his style. Hooey. Staying in Afghanistan to find Bin Laden would have been the tougher call than the easy military mission to remove Saddam Hussein (Mission Accomplished!!). Finding out the complexities of building a new government and society in that nation would be have the tough thing to do; guessing that Iraqis would welcome “democracy” and armed occupiers with open arms was shirking the tough decision.
Mistakes, he was asked, have you made a few (but then again, too few to mention)? “Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake,” Bush said, referring to the mission accomplished dog-and-pony. As for his response to Katrina. He said he has asked himself “could I have landed Air Force One there” and made a difference, but he worried that vital public safety workers would have been diverted from real work to an event for himself.
But there was good news from the press conference.
“When I get out of here, I’m getting off the stage,” Bush said. “I’ve had my time in the Klieg lights.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Dec. 15, 2008, at 8:09 am
A) This is how bad it has become in the waning days of George W. Bush’s disastrous eight years and B) real nice reaction time from the U.S. Secret Service.
Last night, Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain and was elected the 44th President of the United States. He then delivered the following speech to the incredible crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park. Here’s looking forward to the next four years …
It’s not so much that Bush says Wall Street got drunk and now has a hangover that stings. It’s that he brought the alcohol to the party in the first place.
Obama gets a little face-time with both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book reportedly makes the unbelievable claim that the Bush White House relied on lies and propaganda to sell the war in Iraq.
No way.
More specifically, no way McClellan is making this claim almost five years after it became common knowledge. Thank God he told us; now it’s official. (Although not according to the White House and Karl Rove, who are both denying the accusations in the McClellan book.)
Apparently, Bush lied about a lot of things — like golf. (Then again, what golfer hasn’t lied about his game?)
However, we found out about these lies a little late, I guess. It’s too bad we didn’t have this information in 2004. Maybe we could have avoided four more Bush years.
The sad thing is that the Bush administration making things up to justify an unnecessary war is old news. We know and we have all moved on. It has lost its immediacy and we seem to have lost our outrage.
It’s too bad GW didn’t lie about getting a blow job. Maybe then we would have had a chance of getting rid of him.
Last Saturday in Brandon’s Clayton Park, approximately 200 citizens gathered for a TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already) organized by conservative activist Terry Kemple, and featuring a rally-the-troops speech by State Senator Ronda Storms (right).
