Bush Ancestor a Thief

Bert Mancuso Hart, a professional genealogical researcher, discovered that George W. Bush's great-great uncle, Remus I. Bush, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription:

Remus Bush; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.

Mr. Hart e-mailed the President for comments. The White House staff sent back the following biographical sketch:

Remus I. Bush was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.

Wasn't this funny? If you don't think so, click here.

Nothing Surprises Me Anymore

The New York Times is reporting that immunity was offered to Blackwater USA security guards. Well, of course it was. To not have offered immunity would have gone against everything this administration stands for. See below ....


WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.

The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.

Click here for more.

Irony is Dead (or they shot themselves in the foot again)

From The Mahablog:

Keith Olbermann pointed this out on Countdown last night. This is from yesterday’s White House press briefing by Dana Perino. She was commenting on the situation in Burma.

Q: And the protests, themselves, seem to have been stilled. What do you make of that?

MS. PERINO: Well, unfortunately, intimidation and force can chill peaceful demonstrations. And reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing; and we understand that some of the monasteries have been sealed. Now, obviously, this has, again, a chilling effect on protestors, but we would ask that everyone show restraint and allow those who want to express themselves to be able to do so in Burma.

Yes, very distressing.

What Might Have Been and What It Is

Just imagine for a moment if President Bush had resisted his baser urges and the machinations of the oil industry (using its proxies Rumsfeld and Cheney). With the warring parties in Afghanistan pacified, and its government growing in strength every day thanks to American generosity and military might, and with Al-Qaeda in Afghanstan and Pakistan routed after a long fierce battle, Bush would possibly be remembered as one of our greatest presidents ... one I would have supported. Instead, his arrogance and failure to be focused will ensure he is remembered for this (and the thousands of other innocent deaths his adminstration is indirectly responsible for).

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants hanged a teenager in southern Afghanistan because he had U.S. money in his pocket, and they stuffed five $1 bills in his mouth as a warning to others not to use dollars, police said Monday. Taliban militants elsewhere killed eight police.

The 15-year-old boy was hanged from a tree on Sunday in Helmand, the most violent province in the country and the world's No. 1 poppy-growing region.

You failed miserably, Mr. President. You wonder why people hold you in such disdain?

Be Very Wary

I can't improve on this. From Slate:

The Spanish newspaper El País recently published the transcript of a conversation between President George W. Bush and then-Prime Minister José María Aznar on Feb. 22, 2003—a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq—and it confirms some (though not all) of the most dreadful accounts and suspicions about Bush's intentions and nature.

It may be a bit late in the day for another round in the debate over how the war in Iraq began. But the time is ripe for a discussion of what qualities the next president should possess—and the transcript reveals that, in many aspects, they should be the opposite of President Bush's qualities.

The crucial exchange, in this respect, comes toward the end of the conversation, when the two leaders are discussing the magnitude of changing Saddam Hussein's regime by force.

AZNAR: The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.

BUSH: I'm an optimist because I believe that I'm right. I'm a person at peace with myself. It was our turn to face a serious threat to peace.

Here, in three sentences, is the first lesson on how to assess the current crop of presidential candidates: Don't pick anyone who utters, or seems capable of believing, those three sentences.

Read more here.

The Homophobes Are Coming

h/t Working for Change

This is important. I've already sent in my two-cents to our senators. You can too.

President Bush just doesn't seem to get it. He continues to propose right-wing nominees for top posts in our government as if Congress was still controlled by rubber-stamp Republicans, eager to please their fundamentalist base.

The latest in Bush's series of inappropriate and ideologically-slanted nominees is Dr. James Holsinger of Kentucky, whom Bush has nominated to the post of United States Surgeon General. Holsinger has exhibited a pattern of hostility to gays and lesbians that is evident throughout his career. Consider:

Dr. Holsinger, along with his wife, co-founded the Hope Springs Community Church in Lexington, which operates a so-called "ex-gay" ministry -- with the type of "conversion therapy" that has been condemned by both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

Holsinger currently serves as president of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church; in this capacity he opposed a decision to allow a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and supported a pastor who would not permit an openly gay man to join the church.

He also authored a white paper in 1991 -- "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" -- trying to make a medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. (A University of Minnesota professor on human sexuality has said this paper would have received a "failing grade" in his class.)

Holsinger is, of course, entitled to his private religious views, however narrow and exclusionary they may be. But the U.S. Surgeon General needs to be the chief medical officer for ALL Americans -- not just the heterosexual ones. Tell your Senators to reject this nomination and force President Bush to choose competence over ideology for his next nominee.

Are You Awake, Mr. President?

The vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney, will be briefly in power for a second time according to this report from MSNBC. The reason for his assumption of power on Saturday is the president will be under the effects of anesthesia while a colonoscopy is performed.

Apparently, a previous operation was performed in 2002. At the time:

The 2002 procedure began at 7:09 a.m and ended at 7:29 a.m. Bush woke up two minutes later but did not resume his presidential office until 9:24 a.m., after [Doctor] Tubb conducted an overall examination. Tubb said he recommended the additional time to make sure the sedative had no aftereffects.

My question: How could the doctor tell the difference?

Bush on Global Warming

This is too funny. Click here.

Geez!

Just wanted to echo Jay Bullock’s comments over at folkbum’s rambles and rants. The incident at the Army recruiting center is deplorable. I hope the perpetrators are caught and they spend some serious time for their stupid, inane actions. The only thing they have accomplished is to besmirch those who protested this illegal war with compassion, honor and respect.

Having said that, another prediction is coming true that the wing-nuts would be jumping all over this. Charlie Sykes used the phrase “well-coordinated” four times during the short amount of time I actually was able to listen this morning … this phrase obviously designed to give the impression that this kind of behavior is breaking out all over the country in perfect synchronicity. It’s not, by the way.

What is really well-coordinated is the constant assault of the right-wing noise machine (and their blogger sycophants) as they spread the verbal equivalent of human feces on the airwaves.

An Angry Lefty for One Day

I’m just angry today. Yep, I’m an angry person today and I am a liberal so … viola … I’m a member of the angry left … today.

My good friend and blogging buddy, James Wigderson, author of Wigderson Library and Pub (which is a very fine blog) annoyed me yesterday and today (perhaps it was his intention) with his rant about the right needing to reach for a higher standard … a standard higher than liberal offensive speech … and his off-handed defense of Newt Gingrich's indiscretions.

I was flabbergasted at both the audacity and sagaciousness of his posts. Flabbergasted at the audacity because, other than some punks out in blogger land who write some truly offensive things about the President, who say offensive things about the vice president … you know, ordinary citizens who admittedly have the IQs of mice … it’s conservatives who dominate the mean-spirited end of the free speech spectrum. I’ve documented the notorious members of this brigade of hate, so I will not repeat myself.

But, I’m also flabbergasted at his sagaciousness because … well, James would be a great speech writer. I can see the less informed members of the conservative coalition (most of them) nodding their heads in unison at his seemingly convincing words.

Tom Tomorrow covers the Coulter phenomenon well … and the fact that she does not get it. No matter how many times James and others decry Coulter, the fact is a vast majority of conservatives enjoy and support her filthy mouthings.

The mouth that roared

Coulter explains her harmless, inoffensive little joke:
Right and I suspect everyone listening to your show knows about that. I mean, I know — well, I guess Pat is out in America now; you’re primarily in New York City. I give a lot of speeches out in America, I frequently visit America, and Americans are pretty freaked out about somebody going to rehab for using a word, and that’s of course what I was referring to. And I don’t think there’s anything offensive about any variation of faggy, faggotry, faggot, fag. It’s a schoolyard taunt. It means — it means wussy. It means, you know, Hillary giving a speech in a fake Southern drawl — that’s faggy. A trial lawyer who weeps before juries is faggy. Lifetime-type TV, faggy. Everyone understood I was not literally calling — well, I was not calling — well, for one thing, I wasn’t calling John Edwards anything. That was the whole point. I couldn’t talk about him, his life’s work, his appeasement policies, his wimpiness on foreign policy, because that word is out of bounds. So, in point of fact, I called John Edwards nothing. I said I couldn’t even discuss him because using any variation of that totally excellent word would send me into rehab.

This is, of course, the woman who “jokes” about murdering New York Times reporters en masse and assassinating Supreme Court judges and Democratic Presidents. Nonetheless, I find this defense extraordinary. Up until last week, there wasn’t a person in this country who would have argued that “faggot” is just a harmless word, offensive to no one. To say that it’s just a “schoolyard taunt” — well, I spent my middle school years in the south at the height of the integration battles (America being the place where I grew up and live today, unlike Ann, who apparently views it as a foreign land she sometimes has to visit). There were plenty of “schoolyard taunts” in those days targeted toward race, far beyond the “n” word. By Ann’s logic, she should be free to use any of them in discussing Barack Obama, because they were nothing more than harmless “taunts.” Why, if she phrased the joke properly — “I can’t call Obama a —— because it would be sooooo politically incorrect, ha ha ha!” — she could even claim that she hadn’t called him anything at all.
I invite her to try.

… it’s also sad that Ann, allegedly a professional writer, can’t think of a single way to discuss her negative feelings toward a presidential candidate without using a term that is considered hateful and offensive by most rational people. Maybe she should consider another line of work.


Lastly, James posts that the media still doesn’t get it about the Clinton impeachment. I’ve already commented at James’ site … the problem is James doesn’t get it. It really is about hypocrisy … James, and Gingrich, once again use that tried and true argument called equivalency in an attempt to sway the meager minds of their audience, however, the fact is Gingrich had an affair. For him to claim to be an authority on what is moral and a value is a travesty. For him to sit in judgment of Bill Clinton is ridiculous. For James to ignore it and to twist it in a different direction is a travesty, too.