From the New York Times:
From the New York Times, article by Teresa Tritch, "How the deficit got this big"
How did we get into this deficit mess?
July 26, 2011
102 Comments | 
Barack Obama, Economics, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: Budget, Deficits, Economics, Politics, President Bush, President Obama | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Domestic terrorist at the White House
December 16, 2008Old joke said Nixon took crime off the streets, and put it into the White House. It’s not really funny, though. Read the story at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and more at Secular Right.
Where are those who worry about Bill Ayers when the terrorists actually show up at the White House? Chuck Colson got a medal?
There’s an air of hypocrisy about the whole thing, and an air of sadness, and oddly, an air of fire and brimstone that makes Hugo Chavez look like a prophet. Anything with anyone who makes Hugo Chavez look good is beyond funny. Farce or tragedy, Madison worried, or maybe both; in this case tragedy eclipses farce.
There were deserving medal winners, too. Perhaps much good, with the bad. January 21, 2009, cannot come too soon.
Leave a Comment » | Bill of Rights, Presidents, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Richard M. Nixon, Watergate scandal | Tagged: Chuck Colson, Constitution, Domestic Terrorism, Politics, President Bush, Watergate scandal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Proof Bush has America backwards
August 13, 2008Photographic proof that George Bush has America backwards. (Avert your Cub Scout’s eyes — he shouldn’t see his president doing that to the U.S. flag. Your Cub Scout knows that the union should always be displayed to its own right — to Bush’s right, the opposite of how he’s holding it here.)
President Bush displays U.S. flag backwards, at Beijing Olympics. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Worse, there’s more:
But, by God! He’s wearing his lapel pin! Wearing the pin makes one immune to the rules of respectful flag display, one would assume, from the complaints of Sen. Barack Obama’s not wearing the lapel pin, and the remarkable silence from those same people about Bush’s many insults to the flag.
George Bush makes the case: We don’t need a Constitutional Amendment to make flag desecration illegal. We need Americans who pay attention to flag etiquette, instead.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Larry Perez, and to BuzzFlash, “The Diplomatic Decathlon: Bush’s Marathon of Olympic Blunders”
8 Comments | Flag etiquette, Patriotism, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: Flag Code, Flag etiquette, Patriotism, Politics, President Bush, US Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Not for children, not for sleeping: Goodnight Bush
July 21, 2008Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd is one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it when I was in college, but it was a toddler favorite of both of our sons, and it rapidly became one of mine, too. Reading it to them at bedtime helped calm them down and put them to sleep. There is from the book a feeling of safety, of warmth, coziness, and love. I may have liked reading it to them more than they liked being read to.
With our youngest off to college this fall, I wish there were some book to give them that would reproduce those good feelings of nearly 20 years ago.
::sigh::
Here’s what we have instead. Goodnight Bush.
This image is scary enough (see the bugging microphone? the burning ballot box? the tilted scales of justice? the polluting smokestacks?).
Cover of Goodnight Bush
This is the one that makes the more serious statement:
Goodnight human rights, everywhere
A story on this book at NPR was the “most e-mailed” last week.
- ‘Goodnight Bush’ closes chapter on Bush years (audio link to story, there)
- Website for the book, Goodnight Bush
- Update, August 6, 2008: I bought the book just over a week ago – it’s better than the glowing reviews say it is. It’s more incisive, better drawn, and more thought provoking that you thought possible. American President’s Blog also talks about the book. It won’t make you seep easier, but the laughs may make you live longer.
Images by Gan Golen and Erich Origen, Goodnight Bush, copyright © 2008, Little, Brown and Co.
4 Comments | Books, Elections, History, Human Rights, Political cartoons, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: Books, Cartoons, Elections, Human Rights, Political cartoons, Politics, President Bush | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 