Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Both Carter and the author of that article get their history appallingly wrong.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Not going into Iraq should not have been one of the hard decisions.

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Clearly this someone was an idiot (at least on this point).

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Is this a fucking joke?

Ha! Appoint respected blacks to positions of power, castrate them, make them the face of your fucked up policies and bullshit lies and then pat yourself on the back for appointing them. Brilliant.

I lost huge amounts of respect for Colin Powell and never had any for Rice. But who cares? It's like giving Bush I credit for appointing Clarence Thomas. If you were President and appointed Alan Keyes to the office of anything, I'd want to kick your ass.

TM

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Powell got ignored and Condi laid low.

Powell's clearly happy he's gone. I'm looking forward to Condi's memoirs.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Why? Clinton appointed a large number of black judges (probably more significant than the Powell or Rice appointments) and had a large number of black appointments elsewhere as well.

TM

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

I'm not diving back into this- but, knowing that S.H. was disarmed, perhaps the war was a mistake. He didn't know that- some of you feel he did, and of course that controls the evaluation. If he thought Iraq had WMDs it would have been insane to leave that alone.

But you'd say the same things about half his white appointees, right? I'm not trying to convince GGG, or you, that he was a great President after all. I was simply trying to get an acknowledgement of one small positive thing he did.

As to colin, didn't his endorsement of Obama get some of that back?

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Because the statement was "Bush only appointed black people to unimportant positions." National security advisor and secretary of state are not unimportant positions.

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It isn't that Hank. It's that they first asked themselves if Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States, concluded no, and then decided that the threat didn't need to be imminent. Having accomplished that, any old justification would do and it was just a matter of selling to the public (like any other point on the political agenda).

ETA: It's the same lower of standards that seems to be pervasive in the administration whose decision makes seems to have been based on imagining the worst case scenario and then doing whatever it felt necessary (constitution be damned) to prevent it. It's better than callous nobility (if that is this right word) but it is ultimately government by shortcut.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

You guys can own the Iraq war. That's fine. Take it. You deserve it.

And if 4 years from now you can make the case that Rs should be elected because they can bring us more Iraq wars, well, go for it.

As to Powell, his legacy will long be interesting. I think he was too much of a soldier as secretary of state, following his Commander-in-Chief's orders under fire. Whatever happens over the next 8 years, I don't expect Hillary to make that particular mistake.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

and the civil war, it turns out, according to your elder statesman.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

All of this would be very interesting in the alternate universe in which the North attacked the South in a bid to end slavery. In the universe we actually live in, the North made no such move, and it was the South that fired the first shots in anger at their fellow Americans when the Army tried to resupply Fort Sumter.

You and the author are reading from the perspective of Northerners, who think that "the Civil War never should have happened" is being addressed to the North. A goodly number of people would read it quite differently. It's part of a long tradition of self-flagellation by liberal Southerners for which modern Northerners never seem to want to extend moral credit.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

re-elections are about the guy in office, not the ones outside. if Obama does take decent steps he should get re-elected.
but it will be about what he has done and where we are.

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what the fuck? "Lincoln acted wrong..." is Carter blaming the south? really?

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The Republican Party's finest moment was the moment of it's birth. All down hill since then.

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This is just an amazing analysis. After all we've learned, if you still think that administration thought there were WMDs, then you're right. No one should have this conversation with you.

Yes. But I'm not going to give anyone credit for appointing someone who has no interest in black people at all (or worse yet, like Thomas, actively works against their interests), no matter what color they are. I thought Powell thought he could do some good (and probably loved the power) and got fucking gamed and (i) allowed it to happen and (ii) had too much respect for the chain of command to properly criticize it. Respect lost.

He was the worst President in the history of presidents. And that includes the president of the Elk's club in Yonkers.

I know. And I told you why I don't think he should be acknowledged for your example.

Not really. He knows better than most how fucked up a bunch of Republicans with too much power can be. Why would he endorse McCain?

TM

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Oh, come on. Buchanan set up the Civil War, that's pretty bad. Hoover can claim the Great Depression. And John Adams was the first President to openly shred and spit on the Constitution.

Granted, Buchanan didn't screw up the economy as badly as Bush, or have the foreign policy disasters. And Hoover's foreign policy sucked wind, and his economic policy is right up there with Bush's, but he did show some semblance of respect for the constitution. And Adams actually did pretty well on foreign policy and helped build the US Treasury....

OK. Bush wins. Worst U.S. President ever. But tell me more about the Yonkers' Elk's Club.

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the nomination was before there was a 9/11. you can hardly judge the nomination in light of what you perceived happened to the appointee because of 9/11.

I like it better when you say the President of the Eva Silverstein fan club.
I liked how he said "there is nothing wrong with being an arab," echoing perhaps the most insightful thing posted here throughtout the election process.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Yes, dummy.

• "[T]he tragic combat might have been avoided altogether, and that the leaders of both sides, overwhelmingly Christian, were violating a basic premise of their belief as followers of the Prince of Peace." He concludes: "A legitimate question for historians is how soon the blight of slavery would have been terminated peacefully in America, as in Great Britain and other civilized societies."

{Emphasis added.}

In other words, he was saying that two Christian countries should have been able to end slavery another way because their ideals compelled them to. When he says "both sides," do you seriously think he was saying the North should have tolerated slavery in the name of Christianity? An author who disagrees with the notion that civil war is un-Christian probably doesn't understand why Carter is bothering to say such a thing to a largely Christian audience (i.e., one that wouldn't gag on reading "Prince of Peace" in a book they'd paid for).

BTW, when you put something in quotes, and add ellipses, you're pretty much promising the original writing contained those words. If you were my associate and you gave me a draft like your post above, I'd refer you to the State Bar.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

2. he actually fucked up Iceland's and China's economies too.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Have you seen Pia Glenn play Condi in the Will Farrell Broadway thing about Bush? No nudity, but probably NSFW: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...ondi-rice-gets

That is a bulletproof ass.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

if I were your associate, i'd consider going back to college. he was commenting on Lincoln's writing.

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My hope is that the making of Powell's legacy isn't over.

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He knew Hussein had no WMD. It was a pretext to get us over there. The idea was: (1) Better fight there than here; (2) We have to react swiftly and assert dominance in the region, and over radical Islam, lest the problem worsen; and (3) Place has a shitload of oil, so the war pays for itself.

It was a lie from the start, and that is beyond dispute.

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I agree with all of that except that I think Carter's positions have evolved a lot since 1980. I'm not sure I'd say he was not equipped to be President, although he was not a good one.
Well, ok.

S_A_M

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

okay. umm, your motives? (1) but you were saying there was no fight with Iraq. (2) We were in Afghanistan, where there actually was radical Islam and (3) how come he never took a step to "pay for the war" with the oil?

the guy controlled both houses of congress and had high approval when the war started. what possible reason would he have to lie?

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

I disagree -- although I would probably not have invaded.

It should not have been hard to plan and prepare better, but there were no good or easy answers to the Iraq problem.

S_A_M

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

As long as the film of his UN speech exists, he'll be digging out of a hole. But he wasn't running for President or any other high office anyway. He's too fucking normal for that. Watch him in interviews. This is a man about as self-actualized and comfortable with his ego as anybody working in the cesspool of politics could ever be. Frankly, I don't know how he got as far as he did. He can make stacks of money for the rest of his life in speaking and finance, and I think he's one of the few at his level to realize legacy's a fool's goal - an issue for egomaniacs. It's good to be Colin, I'm sure of that. And he probably doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

All of which makes me wish he'd have been convinced to run anyway.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Becuase if he said, "we want to invade Iraq and turn it into a shinging beacon of democracy in the region because we think that will be really good in the long term even though it isn't currently the threat to anyone" he would quickly have not had a high approval rating, and would have had the UN and all of our allies actively condemning him (rather than just not supporting him).

But I don't agree with Sebby that Bush "knew" there were no WMD. I think for him it was enough to justify an invasion if there was any chance at all of that possibility.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Sure I can. He nominated someone to make him look like he was someone else when he really had no respect for that nominee whatsoever (as proven by said nominee's lack of access or input).

That's what you're supposed to say. How much credit should you get for that? It's like when everyone on Fox News (hell, all the news outlets) was so excited about McCain correcting one of his idiot supporters who called Obama a muslim. McCain did the bare minimum by saying he wasn't. Well, not quite like that, but you know what I mean.

TM

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

Buchanan is the only one who compares to Bush II, in worse-ness. Despite Bush's efforts to tear the country in half, through the "permanent campaign" and the "with-us-or-against-us" attitude, he didn't pull it off. If anything, he united most people in their disgust with him.

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I don't think there was a serious Iraq problem (or at least any problem more serious than say Zimbabwe), which explains our difference of view on how difficult the decision should have been.

Of course, I also start with the presumption that war is a last resort to be used only when there is an imminent threat to the United States or its citizens.

Re: worst President ever hits bottom, starts digging
 

I think Attorney General is important, though I suppose the office has been so sullied over the last 8 years people want to put it out of mind...

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I'm not sure if that lack of respect existed at the time of the nomination. I suspect that it likely evolved as Powell kept saying, "um, we can't really do that."

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Thurgood? okay, but didn't Johnson admit he made the choice for shock value* and to tee up some of the rights issues he was going to drive.

Bush picked Powell and Rice because he thought they were best. He wasn't trying to make a point.

*I venture no opinion on whether Thurgood was or was not a good AG.

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Eric Holder. You said something about Obama not putting black people in positions of power at the beginning of this discusison.

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A distinction without a difference - a lawyerly pretext to allow plausible deniability. He figured he'd find some cobwebbed old warheads that might have once been modified to hold nuclear material, which he could use as a justification.

The idea was, "There has to be some shit over there we can paint as WMD!"

Wrong.

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Really. Either he's a trusted advisor in one of the most powerful positions in the world or he's not and his opinions are not to be respected. If Bush had any respect for the guy, he would have listened to his counsel instead of (or in addition to) the neo cons'. He sent Powell out to lie to the public about a war he wanted for no good reason. If you think that kind of lack of respect didn't exist at the time of appointment, then I flat-out disagree.

TM

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Even if the problem was no more serious than Zimbabwe, that's a pretty f-ing serious problem if you care about human rights and human life.

On top of that, if you put Zimbabwe at the cross-roads of the Middle East, give them a history of possessing WMD and using them against their people and neighbors, and give them tenuous ties with terrorists -- that is a fairly knotty problem.

The sanctions regime was keeping Iraq weak -- rotting it from the inside out -- but that caused its own geopolitical and PR problems for the US, and the average people were by far suffering the most. Not a good answer to continue that indefinitely.

S_A_M

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No. He said that "pre-Obama", Bush II was the best.

S_A_M