WHY WE HATE BUSH (It's the Stolen Election, Stupid)

Yahoo News ^ | Thu, Sep 25, 2003 | Ted Rall

[presidio9]

NEW YORK--"Have the Democrats totally flipped their lids?" asks David Brooks in The Weekly Standard, quasi-official organ of the Bush Administration. "Because every day some Democrat seems to make a manic or totally over-the-top statement about George Bush, the Republican party, and the state of the nation today."

True, Democrats loathe Dubya with greater intensity than any Republican standard-bearer in modern political history. Even the diabolical Richard Nixon--who, after all, created the EPA, went to China and imposed price controls to stop corporate gouging--rates higher in liberal eyes. "It's mystifying," writes Brooks.

Let me explain.

First but not foremost, Bush's detractors despise him viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn't recognize a hard day's work if it kicked him in his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less lead the free world. Another group, which includes me, is more patronizing than spiteful. I feel sorry for the dude; he looks so pathetic, so out of his depth, out there under the klieg lights, squinting, searching for nouns and verbs, looking like he's been snatched from his bed and beamed in, and is still half asleep, not sure where he is. Each speech looks as if Bush had been beamed from his bed fast asleep. And he's willfully ignorant. On Fox News, Bush admits that he doesn't even read the newspaper: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of [sic] a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read [sic] the news themselves." All these takes on Bush boil down to the same thing: The guy who holds the launch codes isn't smart enough to know that's he's stupid. And that's scary.

Fear breeds hatred, and Bush's policies create a lot of both. U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. A concentration camp rises at Guantánamo. Stasi-like spies tap our phones and read our mail; thanks to the ironically-named Patriot Act, these thugs don't even need a warrant. As individual rights are trampled, corporate profits are sacrosanct. An aggressive, expansionist military invades other nations "preemptively" to eliminate the threat of non-existent weapons, and American troops die to enrich a company that buys off the Vice President.

Time to dust off the F word. "Whenever people start locking up enemies because of national security without much legal care, you are coming close [to fascism]," warns Robert Paxton, emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book "Fascism in Action." We're supposed to hate fascists--or has that changed because of 9/11?

Bush bashers hate Bush for his personal hypocrisy--the draft-dodger who went AWOL during Vietnam yet sent other young men to die in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites), the philandering cocaine addict who dares to call gays immoral--as well as for his attacks on peace and prosperity. But even that doesn't explain why we hate him so much.

Bush is guilty of a single irredeemable act so heinous and anti-American that Nixon's corruption and Reagan's intellectual inferiority pale by comparison. No matter what he does, Democrats and Republicans who love their country more than their party will never forgive him for it.

Bush stole the presidency.

The United States enjoyed two centuries of uninterrupted democracy before George W. Bush came along. The Brits burned the White House, civil war slaughtered millions and depressions brought economic chaos, yet presidential elections always took place on schedule and the winners always took office. Bush ended all that, suing to stop a ballot count that subsequent newspaper recounts proved he had lost. He had his GOP-run Supreme Court, a federal institution, rule extrajurisdictionally on the disputed election, a matter that under our system of laws falls to the states. Bush's recount guru, James Baker, went on national TV to threaten to use force to install him as president if Gore didn't step aside: "If we keep being put in the position of having to respond to recount after recount after recount of the same ballots, then we just can't sit on our hands, and we will be forced to do what might be in our best personal interest--but not--it would not be in the best interest of our wonderful country."

Bush isn't president, but he plays one on TV. His presence in the White House is an affront to everything that this country stands for. His fake presidency is treasonous; our passive tolerance for it sad testimony to post-9/11 cowardice. As I wrote in December 2000, "George W. Bush is not the President of the United States of America." And millions of Americans agree.

Two months after 9/11, when Bush's job approval rating was soaring at 89 percent, 47 percent of Americans told a Gallup poll that he had not won the presidency legitimately. "The election controversy...could make a comeback if Bush's approval ratings were to fall significantly," predicted Byron York in The National Review. Two years later, 3 million jobs are gone, Bush's wars have gone sour, and just 50 percent of voters approve of his performance. If York is correct, most Americans now consider Bush to be no more legitimate than Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), who also came to power in a coup d'état.

And that's why we hate him.

[sphinx]

I have been around for nearly 70 years and I have never seen the country so polarized as it is today. It is scary. I do not know how it is going to end. We hated Clinton when he was in and now the Dems hate Bush even more than we detested Clinton. I thought perhaps after 9/11 we could all come together but you see how long that lasted.

Yes, we despised Clinton, but Clinton was, in truth, a profoundly dishonest man and an opportunistic criminal. Bush is an obviously decent man and a truth-talker. That doesn't mean he's always right, but it should produce civility in the political opposition. Instead, many of the Democrats hate him precisely, I think, for his virtues.

This kind of hatred is not unique to the Democrats re: Bush, and it is a sign of profound spiritual sickness.

[reagan_fanatic]

[cspackler]

Yes, im serious. Bush is a big boy and can distiguish rags from quality news. I dont see why it is such a big deal to open up a newspaper with your cup of coffee in the morning and say "Yea, I sometimes look over the headlines..." (which I have to believe he does)

Think seriously for a moment. In the last few years, have you ever really seen anything in the morning newspaper that you didn't already read about on FR the day before? Don't you think the President might have pretty good access to news long before it hits the morning rags?

[patj]

This piece is overheated, over-the-top BS.

When I hear this stuff from liberals I ask them if they know that democrats kill and eat babies. They look at me like I'm crazy and then I say, "If you believe that crap you are spreading around, I thought you would believe anything". Usually stops their pontificating.

[WOSG]

This is so out-of-context ... he gets daily CIA, national security and chief of staff briefings. He doesnt *need* the NYSlimes to figure out what's going on.

in short, this is patronizing BS to infer his not reading the daily rags amounts to being uninformed.

[WOSG]

If you watched the Hume interview or saw the transcript, he pretty *DID* say what you think he should have said. Dont let liar Ted Rall interpret Bush's words for you.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There are more misstatements of fact per paragraph in this "article" than one can count on both hands. Does Ted Rall know how ignorant he is?

[presidio9]

If you think Rall is nutty, try reading this guy:

http://www.barrycrimmins.com/radio.html

Draft of the remarks made by Barry Crimmins on WBAI Radio 9/4/03

W's Proudest Planks

A Foreign Quagmire and a Domestic Tragedy

Before we begin the fall offensive that will kick off the final 16 months of George W. Bush's term of stolen office, let's assess his current political circumstances.


Bush is counting on his assault on Iraq and his continued exploitation of the 9/11 attacks to help him become the first president to serve two full terms of office by winning only one election.


I don't like his chances. But I love ours!


Let's start by considering Iraq, which is more than W, his advisers and the lapdog corporate media did last winter. Bush lied, cajoled, bullied and bribed his way into a conflict that he believed would guarantee his place in history. It has. The court-appointed president will be remembered as an idiot for generations to come.
Leave it to Bush to stage a quagmire in a desert. This effort has required a few Great Lakes' worth of bottled water -- no doubt provided by Halliburton at retail rates marked up so high that they are also billing us for automatic pricing guns.

The billions that soak into that desert come from the same working people whose soldier sons and daughters are learning first-hand why the battle emblem for the occupation of Iraq should be the sitting duck. The funds W's corporate cronies siphon off this endeavor deprive those tens of thousands of soldiers, not to mention millions of Iraqis, of many basic human needs -- needs that any nation truly intent upon restoring human rights would have made A#1 priorities. Unfortunately W's only priority was to start a war.


Jr. actually believed that pulling into a few cities and occupying them meant that victory was his. But wars are never as simple as the morons that start them. The end of the conventional war meant the start of the guerilla struggle. Bush told us he was going to rid the world of terrorists but his Iraq initiative has only united, strengthened and emboldened all things al Qaeda. His military action and occupation have failed so spectacularly that even some of Saddam Hussein's worst enemies pine for him as if he were a lost sweetheart from a gentler age.


Nothing highlights Bush's ethical and political depravity more than his ridiculous flight to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in early May. Puppeteer-in-chief Karl Rove was sure that this multimillion dollar photo-op would provide inordinately valuable propaganda footage for the campaign of '04. It does. We now have explicit video of Bush, a military deserter during Vietnam, in drag as a war hero. Even worse, he stood under a giant banner that announced "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." Despite this triumphant declaration, American losses have continued unabated and US casualties are now more than double what they were the day Bush became a boat act. Some accomplishment!


Anyone possessed of a modicum of political literacy knows that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 assaults. Nevertheless, Bush will go to New York City for the Republican 2004 Convention and offer the thousands of dead, victimized by his mad dash to violence, as proof of retribution for the carnage at the World Trade Center.
The choice of venues for the R's Convention is as ill-advised as W's foray into Iraq. New Yorkers suffered greatly on and since 9/11. They hold the terrorists accountable for what they did. They hold George Bush accountable for what he didn't do and hasn't done (not to mention might have done). And we all remember that Bush was on a month-long vacation as the final planning for the terrorist assaults took place.


We'd have been in better shape had he simply stayed on vacation. His performance on the fatal day was dismal at best. As the Northeast burned, this would-be cowboy tough guy made like Barney Fife and headed for Nebraska-- via Louisiana. The next day, while thousands lay beneath the rubble, his staff's first order of business was to disseminate a whopper about fictional threats made against Bush. These threats supposedly justified his 9/11 Incredible President Limpett act. That was just the first of hundreds of instances in which the Bush regime has used this great tragedy for venal political gain.


The following year, when W's pre-9/11 negligence was finally receiving some scrutiny, his minions began flashing a multi-colored strobe light of warnings about new terrorist threats. Most of these fictions suggested that New York was again the prime target. Bush's only regret over re-traumatizing millions of New Yorkers came because he forced the city's already overburdened emergency service workers into putting in extra hours before he could find a way to screw them out of overtime pay.


Recently when NYC was plunged into Baghdadian darkness, whispers suggested terrorism was to blame. They were right. It was the economic terrorists of a deregulated energy racket that caused the August blackout. They were terrorists in lockstep with Bush's plan to bleed this nation so dry that it will never again be able to afford the type of social safety net necessary to make sure vibrant cities like New York aren't just good places to live for penthouse dwellers.


And now we learn that Bush even disregarded the ultrawealthy when his EPA lied to all New Yorkers about the noxious quality of post- 9/11 air.


One year from now the court-appointed prez will be at his Republican Garden party. It will only serve to remind this nation of a day so desperate that most Americans were driven to believe they had no choice but to trust George W. Bush. He has defiled that trust in every conceivable manner.


New Yorkers won't care if Bush shows up to give his acceptance speech at Ground Zero on a hook and ladder, dressed in complete firefighter regalia. They will be out in full force on their streets to let the Republicans know that the city that readily welcomes the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free and clean air, the city that still puts out the welcome mat for wretched refuse; draws the line when it comes to inviting riffraff like George W. Bush to town. Mark my words: before next year's Gluttonous Old Party confab ends, New York will make Republicans wish that they had followed Dubyahoo's 9/11 example and headed for Nebraska, even if it meant laying over in Louisiana.

[NorCoGOP]

The United States enjoyed two centuries of uninterrupted democracy before George W. Bush came along. The Brits burned the White House, civil war slaughtered millions and depressions brought economic chaos, yet presidential elections always took place on schedule and the winners always took office. Bush ended all that, suing to stop a ballot count that subsequent newspaper recounts proved he had lost.

Wow, a revisionist history double-whammy! I guess the two previous elections where the electoral college (you know, that pesky Constitutional thing that libs hate) put a candidate into office with less votes from the citizenry than another candidate...

...and the newspaper recounts: I'm sorry, but could ANYONE give me a link to the newspaper recount story that said Gore won? I didn't think so because one doesn't exist (except only in the reality-challenged minds of liberals).

[Marauder]

They are beneath contempt, and profoundly dangerous.

You said it, friend. They have an agenda for us that is completely at odds with everything this country was founded upon, and will stop at nothing to achieve it.

This is the message that we the people must get out to the "sleeping majority," that we have the democRat outlaws working against us on the one hand, and the Republicans who won't fight back on the other. It's a symphony from hell: While the ACLU and the federal judiciary act in concert to weave a web of illict control, the senate democRats act to block each and every conservative nominee that Bush renders. And while the Republicans in congress won't take action to stop that crap, neither will Bush do what is required and make recess appointments.

Meanwhile, you see people like Dean allow the likes of Al Franken to thoroughly illustrate what the democRats are really all about, and still we see many people continue to embrace the bottom-feeding liberal democRats.

Is this what Revelations talks about, where those of us that want to pray get sued and harassed, while abortionists continue to murder full-term infants with partial-birth abortion?

[kevao]

U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again.

Wow, you'd think that if he really believed this, he'd be way too afraid to publicly criticize the Bush administration like this. But, come to think of it, has anyone even heard from this author since he wrote the article?

[presidio9]

But, come to think of it, has anyone even heard from this author since he wrote the article?

I hope not. Some day this asswipe is going to run into the wrong Navy Seal in the wrong bar and that'll be the end of it.

[Keith]

I have it...tell me how to post it...

[Shethink13]

What they're mad about - and won't admit to - is that the SCOTUS stopped that by making FLorida's vote-mining democRats play by the rules.

EXACTLY!!! Thank you.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Fool.

The shame is that too many in his administration read the (liberal's) blather in those very "papers" you want him to read.

He (Bush) went on to add that he is BRIEFED daily by the people who the "papers" are misquoting and lying about .....

So why should he read the "papers" written by liars lying about what he has already been officially briefed about?

[Marauder]

Thanks. I wouldn't mind posting that on DU, but it wouldn't stay long if I did.

Besides, they're probably lurking, hissing and spitting on their screen when they read what we post here. That is, when they crawl out of their coffins at twilight.

[cwb]

"What about this?"

What about what? I'm sorry but counting lawfully excluded ballots doesn't give Gore a win. The so-called "Palm Beach Standard" was the most liberal, illegal counting method employed...which is exactly why this is where he recieved the most illegal votes. It is not the job of the counters to divine the intent of the voter...just as over-votes and under-votes don't count. You can't change election law after an election just becasue you don't like the outcome.

If you want to talk about lost votes, just take a look at the predominatly Republican populated Pan-handle where thousands of votes were lost because the media falsey reported that the polls had closed an hour before they actually had. Or how about the military ballots that were intentionally disenfranchised by Mark Herron, who led the effort for the Democrats to throw out as many votes as possible?

The fact is, with everything going the way Gore demanded...including multiple recounts in Democratic controlled counties, he still lost. And the truth is, there shouldn't have even been a "hand" recount as the Democratic judge N. Sander Sauls ruled, because Gore couldn't prove any fraud, deception or negligence.

While people talk about the 5-4 decision that supposedly gave Bush the election, the truth is he lost 7-2 in the USSC as they found the FSC had erred...twice. The 5-4 dispute was over the resolution. It wasn't the USSC that was out of line here as just about every other lower-court, liberal judge in Florida ruled against Gore only to be overturned by the partisan FSC...and even there, the Chief Justice rebuked his colleagues over their final decision. This should've been resolved when the lower court (Terry Lewis) ruled that Kathryn Harris could legally certify the election. But instead the FSC not only extended the deadline once, they extended it twice, going against their own previous rulings.

Frankly, the courts shouldn't be involved in any electoral decisions period...unless some sort blatant fraud occurred (which even they could't find). The FSC usurped the state constitution, legislated local/state election laws, their own lower courts, the elected Secretary of State...and even ignored the USSC. There was only one rogue outfit in this process and it was obvious who it was.

[Marauder]

LBJ won that election by something like 500 votes.

Yes, and every damned one of them was from Box 13 in Alice, which the bank (First State? I forget) had for ages in its vault, steadfastly refusing to release it for any validation and is allegedly nothing but graveyard votes.

I worked for the guy who was mayor of Alice at the time, and while I never met George Parr, I met his brother. I even met the guy that shot the Floyd kid, because he came to work at the same place after he got out of prison.

I was just a high school kid at the time, and I'd heard of the vote scam ten years before but had no idea that the people I was hanging with were so up to their necks in it. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have been scared to death.

[MEGoody]

"Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy"

Bush has reason to be smug as compared to the libs, but effeminate? ROFL Apparently, Mr. Rall doesn't know anything about what it takes to be a real man.

"Bush ended all that, suing to stop a ballot count that subsequent newspaper recounts proved he had lost."

LOL Talk about a blatant lie! That sad thing is, people will read this clap trap and believe it.

[Marauder]

There was only one rogue outfit in this process and it was obvious who it was.

You got that right. democRats are out of control, and they act as though no one will even figure out what they're doing, much less call them on it.

Their arrogance makes them think no one is as smart as they are. And the reason they're acting so crazy right now is that even they are beginning to realize that the rest of the population is getting wise to them.

Anyone remember the slogan of HL Hunt food products? "Tell or ask two people each day about HL Hunt products." This is what we need to do about democRats; every damned day, discuss the wacky antics as well as the dark, ulterior motives of liberal democRats, with at least two people. Get 'em worked up and angry, hardly able to wait for the next election.