Bush by the Numbers

Posted by admin on January 18, 2009 under Environment, Internet, Politics, Science | Comments are off for this article

As we bid a fond farewell to George Walker Bush, here’s a sort of retrospective. A Bush by the Numbers if you will, excerpted from Harpers Index.

Days Bush was President: 2922
Days Bush was on Vacation: 964

Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0

Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677

Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002: 2,500

Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody: 8

Minimum number of extraordinary renditions that the United States has made since 2006: 200
Percent of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 75

Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001: 196
Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890

Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60

Percent of the five directors of the No Child Left Behind reading program with financial ties to a curriculum they developed: 80

Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement NCLB: $71,000,000,000

Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating: 1

Navy Skipper Calls for Bikini’s

Posted by admin on January 16, 2009 under Humor, news | Comments are off for this article

Commander Tom Phillips, appointed to the Australian navy’s HMAS Farncomb, has come under criticism down under for suggesting in an interview that female sailors be outfitted in bikini’s to help with recruiting more male sailors. (Source)

The Aussie skipper was interviewed by Ralph magazine, after which he found himself in hot water.

RALPH: “If female sailors all had to be hot and had to wear bikinis, would that help recruitment?”
Phillips: “It would certainly get the right demographic of young men in. I’m not sure how feasible it is, however.”

BubbleMixx offers these suggestions to the Australian Navy:

Sunday Funnies

Posted by admin on January 11, 2009 under Humor, Internet | Comments are off for this article

Why You Should Be Pissed at Revisionist History

Posted by admin on January 8, 2009 under Economy, Environment, Politics | Comments are off for this article

Have you heard the one about the Great Depression? How it was “the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, not the economic polices of FDR,” that got the US out of the great depression? To hear them tell it, FDR made the depression worse. Pretty funny, huh?

George Will and the other Far Right Wingnuts have been telling that chestnut on Fox News a lot in the last few weeks. The problem is they’re not joking. They’re trying to re-write history, again.

They’re using spurious arguments and outright baldface lies to attack the economic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt, the man who lead us out of the greatest depression the U.S. has ever seen.(Source)(Source)(Source)(Source)

                                                                                 Ben Bernanke                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
“Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”

To hear these Wingnuts tell it putting starving people back to work in meaningful jobs that built the infrastructure of modern America, was a bad idea. Regulating banks and investment companies that had gone completely off the rails, that idea was to these poor deranged souls, nearly criminal.

But why are they attacking FDR now? Why attack an American icon, the man who brought us 40 hour work weeks, Social Security, the FDIC, , what’s the point of bashing him? The reason is clearly that they want to oppose the recovery efforts of President-Elect Obama, who’s crafting a New Deal like plan of his own to rebuild our economy and save the country.

So do their “arguments” have any merit at all? Not according to George W. Bush’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, “Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”(Source)

Daniel Gross, NYT Columnist and author put’s it this way:

“The financial infrastructure laid down by the government in the New Deal helped pave the way for the immense growth seen in America’s capital markets, banking system, credit industry, and housing markets over the past 70 years.” (Source)

George Will and the Republican political machine are using revisionist history in the most cynical way imaginable. They’re deliberately lying about the rescue plan for the economy, for their party’s own political gain. It’s so shockingly vile, that I wouldn’t have believed them capable of stooping so low.

They’re beating up FDR as a way to bash Obama. He’s too popular to attack directly, so by attacking the policies of FDR the Right Wing Noise Machine sets about undermining policies of a President who hasn’t even taken office yet.

Clearly there are no depths too low for them.