Trump is not allowed to be a president
I think it boils down to two issues for the left regarding Trump. The first is that he’s president at all, and does what presidents do with all the attendant powers of a president. The second is that he is not afraid to use those powers in ways that stand to harm the Democrats and their interests.
They find these two things unconscionable. So they redefine whatever Trump does that they don’t like and/or that may harm them politically as unacceptable, unprecedented, offensive, and even at times criminal.
And always, always impeachable.
But of course all presidents continue to do things that are in their political interests. Most of those things have other motivations, as well – most often, that the president believes that such actions will also benefit the country or even the world. It’s really not rocket science. Among those things can be something like “fighting corruption,” including corruption that occurs at the hands of people opposed to that president. To do otherwise – to give corrupt and/or illegal actions a pass because they are done by political opponents – would itself be a terrible thing.
For example, we have this:
President Trump’s critics are now complaining that he asked the Australian prime minister to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe and that Attorney General William Barr has traveled overseas to ask foreign intelligence officials to cooperate with that investigation. The New York Times called it another example of “the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.”…
As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley explains, “It is not uncommon for an attorney general, or even a president, to ask foreign leaders to assist with ongoing investigations. Such calls can shortcut bureaucratic red tape, particularly if the evidence is held, as in this case, by national security or justice officials.”
That sort of cooperation with the DOJ investigation of the machinations that led up to the Mueller report is what Trump asked for in the Zelensky phone call, right after he said “I would like you to do us a favor.” In addition, the US has a treaty with Ukraine concerning mutual assistance with prosecutions.
On the other hand, in that article from the Post that I quoted from at the beginning, author Marc Thiessen calls the Biden probe “opposition research.” I beg to differ. Not all research that involves someone who happens to be a political opponent is primarily “opposition research,” although it is tangentially that. The Biden case has an especially unusual set of circumstances: the fact situation regarding Hunter Biden had already started to be prosecuted by Ukraine long before Trump was president, and had then been dropped by a new prosecutor who replaced the prosecutor that Biden strong-armed Ukraine to fire (with a direct quid pro quo threat from Biden to withhold foreign aid if that prosecutor was not fired). Biden says it was done for other reasons than to stop his son’s investigation, but Biden’s on-record threat has the appearance of tremendous impropriety and corruption. It is perfectly proper to ask for help in investigating that entire fact situation to see what the reality was with Hunter Biden and to also see whether Joe Biden as VP purposely and knowingly stopped a corruption investigation of his own son, using a direct quid pro quo which his position as VP gave him the power to employ, and whether that was the primary reason for the threat.
In the transcript of the Trump/Zelensky phone call there is one single sentence about the Bidens. This is it:
The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that as far as I can see. It is irrelevant that Biden is running for the Democratic nomination. Are all the Democratic candidates immune from any investigation into what they actually may have done, including if it involves that person’s interference in a foreign country’s investigation of their own child, when that person held high public office in the US and threatened to withhold aid to that country if the prosecutor wasn’t fired? And if that action of the candidate is on the record, admitted to (and bragged about) by the candidate him/herself? That would be a ludicrous rule, and certainly one that has never been uttered before or even conceptualized.
Trump did not manufacture evidence or get anyone in any foreign country to manufacture evidence against Biden or Biden’s son. And yet that is exactly what the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign apparently did regarding Trump, with willing cooperation and help from government agencies such as the FBI. No one has ever been prosecuted for it. And the very same people who say Trump can’t say what he said to Zelensky then go and defend what Hillary and the Democrat partisans in government agencies did.
They are using Trump as an excuse to negate one of the three stable legs of government…
ie. the politburo wants the president to serve its needs not the leader like Xi actually leads…
or is it the presidium? Supreme Soviet? (supreme council)
“tell Vladimir I’ll have more flexibility after the election’ Barack Obama.
Just let me lie for a while longer please.
That’s worse than anything Trump has said in this most recent hysteria.
“Not allowed to be President”
In the Holy Roman Empire (“neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire,” as Voltaire put it), the Emperor was selected by a small group of men…all nobles…who were known as the Electors. I think in America today, we have a set of people…national journalists, “public intellectuals,” Ivy League graduates, and a few other categories…who see themselves as the Electors who should be to choose who can and can not be considered for President.
“Not all research that involves someone who happens to be a political opponent is primarily “opposition research,” although it is tangentially that.” [Neo]
True, that. However conversely, as Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted (H/T Instapundit 10/02 @ 9:14 pm):
This tweet should get much much more exposure!
Trump’s time is being wasted with all of these investigations and he can’t get that time back. Of course, that’s what the Dems want. Imagine how effective a president Trump would be if he could spend all of his time on the job.
This has important national security implications. During the Clinton impeachment the President was distracted and bin Laden got going. We paid a price on 9-11-01.
neo–a paragon of clarity. Thank you, thank you, neo.
Trump may not be allowed but meanwhile he’s just carrying on Presidenting to beat the band.
[Link to classic Harold Hill]
From Daniel Henninger’s column in the WSJ, 10/2/19, “Democrats Lost in Ukrainia”:
“Ukrainia” is not the real county, Ukraine, but a country of the Democrats’ fevered imaginations.
Ira:
You’re welcome!
It’s not just that Trump is not allowed to be President. It’s that people like Hillary Clinton are.
To be as fair as I can, Hillary is not stupid, appears to be a hard worker, and likely has real concerns about the fate of our nation and its people. But I’ve never seen any evidence that Hillary was particularly smart. She has demonstrated atrocious judgment repeatedly throughout her life. She spent most of her adult life riding her husband’s coattails to success and the three biggest times she was ever in charge:
1. She turned health care reform into a massive legislative failure.
2. She lost the Democratic Presidential nomination to a black guy with a Muslim-sounding name.
3. She lost a Presidential election to Donald Freakin’ Trump.
And again, to be fair, George W. Bush was a drunk-off-his-ass screw up until the age of 40 who we were then told at age 54 was qualified to be President.
If these people lived up to the standards by which they disqualify Donald Trump, we’d all be a lot better off.
Mike
Trump is not allow to be a regular citizen let alone president, Schiff can investigate political rival trump utilising foreign channels but somehow it becomes unlawful when trump does it, why does a president have less power than a lowly congressman or even investigative journalists?
Why do the democrats continue to make the claim that trump pressured Ukraine into doing his bidding when The supposed victim president of Ukraine said there was no pressure and the interest in battling corruption is mutual?
And again, to be fair, George W. Bush was a drunk-off-his-ass screw up until the age of 40
He wasn’t any such thing. He just drank excessively, by his own admission. He didn’t have any medical signatures, no history of accidents, no history in rehab programs, no history of being fired from his job, no disciplinary letters when he was in the military. The one thing in that vein other than subjective observation is a traffic citation from January 1976. He was pulled over for driving too slowly.
You’ve forgotten he was managing partner of the Texas Rangers and Governor of Texas. He ran against John McCain (interesting piece of work, but checkered history in the Navy; time in command, but circumscribed executive experience), Alan Keyes (lapsed academic whose executive experience consisted of a couple of years as a 2d echelon official of the State Department), and Albert Gore Jr. (something of a wonk, lapsed newspaper reporter. serial grad school dropout, and no executive experience whatsoever). Gore had bested Bill Bradley (wonk, lapsed professional athlete, no executive experience).
Best explanation yet of the scheme to nullify the election. Bravo Zulu!
Plus GWB flew military jets in his 20s, which impresses me.
From what I read military pilots have IQs in the 120s. Not too shabby. I assume pilots must also be reasonably stable and conscientious — as opposed to being drunk screw-offs.
Huxley…”Plus GWB flew military jets in his 20s, which impresses me”
Plus, he specifically flew the F-102, which has a reputation of not being the easiest-to-fly military jet ever built.
The democrat’s strategy against Trump boils down to the proverbial “throw enough made up shit at the wall in hopes that something will stick”.
In war, there’s a truism that “quantity has a quality all its own”. In Korea, MacArthur faced a comparably poorly armed enemy, yet wanted to nuke the ChiComs because he was fighting so vast an army that sheer numbers were driving him back.
So too with the dems, overwhelm the public with accusations in hopes that enough of the public will figure that with that much smoke there has to be fire.
To defeat that, it’s not enough for Trump to deny and ridicule the dems, he has to make them pay, there must be legal consequence.
“He wasn’t any such thing.”
By his own admission, George W. Bush stopped drinking in 1986 at age 40. The only distinguishing things he’d done to that point was start a not-terribly successful energy company and lose a race for the U.S. House. Pretty much everything that came to him after that point in his life came to him NOT because he was George W. Bush but because he was the son of George H.W. Bush. His greatest accomplishment was being a successful governor of Texas, where everyone knows the governor of Texas has much less power over state affairs than other governors.
“Drunk-off-his-ass screw up” is probably a little harsh but compare George W. Bush at 40 to Donald Trump, who was making multi-million dollar real estate deals at the same age. Granted, both benefited greatly from being the sons of rich and powerful men but nobody still thought of Donald Trump at 40 as “Fred Trump’s son.”
The point I was trying to make is that both Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush were presented to the public as though they were “qualified” to be President of the United States while neither were particularly impressive in either personal qualities or professional achievements. They were more qualified than ME to be President but that’s about it.
It’s important to remember that while the Democrats may be the ones behaving badly at this point, we didn’t get here just because THEY suck.
Mike
From what I read military pilots have IQs in the 120s.
Steve Sailer contends that the scores on military psychometric tests taken by John Kerry and George W. Bush ca. 1967 put them around the 88th percentile of the population.
Personally, I doubt HRC or BO or GWB or DJT suffer intellectual deficits which impair their performance, because general intelligence is useful, but not the same thing as leadership or administrative talent. If I’m not mistaken, Richard Nixon scored at the 99th percentile of such tests when he was in the Navy. Didn’t save him from being a lousy manager with a deficit of people skills to boot. BO suffers from his conceits and his chronic boredom and his vanity. HRC suffers from her megalomania; when Carly Fiorina said that ‘activity is not accomplishment’, she didn’t point out explicitly that HRC has no goals other than the aggrandizement of HRC, so the absence of what an ordinary person would see as an accomplishment doesn’t interest her.
If swing voters see unreasonableness, unfairness, and double standards, combined with the lack of a clear vision of what Democrats stand for anymore; game over for 2020 Dems. This may partly explain why Trump trolls and taunts his hyperexcitable opposition.
It is ironic. Trump is a dealmaker. If only Democrats had given him the traditional 100 day honeymoon to start, there was significant bipartisan progress to be made. But the Trump era Democrat brand was established from day one.
What do Democrats stand for today? A long, drawn out impeachment tantrum.
By his own admission, George W. Bush stopped drinking in 1986 at age 40. The only distinguishing things he’d done to that point was start a not-terribly successful energy company and lose a race for the U.S. House.
The only things most people have done at age 40 is start a family and earn a living. If you fancy that makes them ‘drunk off his ass’ screw ups, double-dog-dare-ya to go tell them.
Pretty much everything that came to him after that point in his life came to him NOT because he was George W. Bush but because he was the son of George H.W. Bush.
No, it pleases you to fancy that for your own reasons. Here’s a suggestion: review the careers of the three Roosevelt brothers, John Eisenhower, John Kennedy Jr, the Ford brothers, the Carter brothers, the Reagan brothers, and the Bush brothers. Their activities and personal trajectories have been all over the map. (As far as I’m aware, Jack Ford and Neil Bush are the only two among them who founded a business that proved more-or-less viable).
His greatest accomplishment was being a successful governor of Texas, where everyone knows the governor of Texas has much less power over state affairs than other governors.
Every Bush detractor ‘knows’ that. What they don’t say is what they fancy that means in regard to the Governor’s day-to-day decision-making load.
“Drunk-off-his-ass screw up” is probably a little harsh
Actually, it’s a complete mischaracterization.
but compare George W. Bush at 40 to Donald Trump, who was making multi-million dollar real estate deals at the same age. Granted, both benefited greatly from being the sons of rich and powerful men but nobody still thought of Donald Trump at 40 as “Fred Trump’s son.”
Again, so what? That’s a cherry-picked example. You didn’t build Trump tower, ergo you’re a screw up? Cycle back 60 years, the consequential presidential candidates who’ve had a history in the business world (antedating their time in public office) have been Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, Bob Kerrey, Paul Simon, papa George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Barry Goldwater, Stuart Symington; to that you can add Lloyd Bentsen and Sergeant Shriver. Ted Cruz had a lucrative law partnership (without being a skeevy character like HRC and John Edwards) and Joseph Lieberman a satisfactory one. Ron Paul and Howard Dean each had a medical practice. Wesley Clark had a handsome military career. For each of these chaps, you find three or four others whose life before politics was meh (or, in the case of Edwards and HRC, shameful). Very few politicians at this level are as accomplished as Trump or Perot or Romney; there are dozens of others worth a critique before you land on Bush.
The point I was trying to make is that both Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush were presented to the public as though they were “qualified” to be President of the United States while neither were particularly impressive in either personal qualities or professional achievements.
Yeah, but people who are do those things. They seldom enter public life. Dwight Eisenhower was a huge exception. (And, I should note, having run a state government is a fairly unusual credential in the labor market).
It’s important to remember that while the Democrats may be the ones behaving badly at this point, we didn’t get here just because THEY suck.
Again, you’re sticking it to Bush. That’s the wrong target. Next to Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Dennis Hastert, and Trent Lott, Bush is Marcus Aurelius.
If swing voters see unreasonableness, unfairness, and double standards, combined with the lack of a clear vision of what Democrats stand for anymore; game over for 2020 Dems. This may partly explain why Trump trolls and taunts his hyperexcitable opposition.
See James Neuchterlein on this point: swing voters are LIVs whose reactions to events are odd and idiosyncratic. No telling what they tune out and what they don’t. The behavior of the Democratic caucus a year ago in re Judge Kavanaugh was egregious. Observable influence on swing voters was bupkis.
The qualifications to be President are specified in the US Constitution as follows:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
That is all.
MBunge: Your personal opinions about who is “qualified” to be President don’t count for much.
As far as I’m concerned — my opinion — every candidate in my living memory who made it to the November election has been smart, disciplined and effective. Some more than others of course, but it’s hard to run a campaign and the objections that so-and-so wasn’t qualified are just partisan hoo-hah.
I’ll say that for Kerry, Obama and Hillary, as well as GWB and Trump.
Yeah, I don’t really want to waste my time with someone who feels compelled to defend George W. Bush in 2019, but just for the other folks who might be reading this.
It is not unfair to say George W. Bush’s Presidency is defined by three things.
1. He failed to protect this country from the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.
2. He launched and oversaw one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, one which continues to plague America to this day and might continue to do so long after we are all dead and gone.
3. He concluded by leading the United States into the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression.
Why you feel compelled to defend one of the most catastrophic Presidents we’ve ever seen is something you might want to ponder.
As for you bringing up a whole bunch of other people as more deserving of contempt or criticism than George W. Bush…so what? The qualities or failings of others have nothing to do with the qualities and failings of George W. Bush. This isn’t relative. He doesn’t become any better in comparison.
But if you want a comparison, try this:
Every other person who has ever sat in the Oval Office, and probably almost any other person who has ever served in any elected office, would have stopped reading “The Pet Goat” to school children when they were told someone just flew a plane into a New York City skyscraper. They would have gotten up to see what had happened and what they could do about it, if only to serve their own egos.
George W. Bush just sat there. Either because he couldn’t think beyond the room he was in and the children in front of him or because he thought, at some level, somebody else would take care of it. That’s the person you’re defending.
Here’s another comparison: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both governors of big states who were derided as idiots. The difference between them is that there were times in Ronald Reagan’s life, like when his acting career was winding down, when he was left sitting at his kitchen table in the middle of the night worrying about what would happen to him and his family. George W. Bush has never had to worry about that for a second and, I think, has pretty clearly never understood how different that is than most people.
By the way, here’s the address to Dennis Hastert’s wiki-page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert
Compare his life and experiences to George W. Bush’s and tell me who you think comes out on top.
Mike
Why you feel compelled to defend one of the most catastrophic Presidents we’ve ever seen is something you might want to ponder.
MBunge: Well, I imagine neo and some others would defend GWB as well — not every jot and tittle of course. You might want to consider your inability to respect opinions different from yours.
Otherwise, be clear — I have no interest in your opinions about me or what I should do.
“As far as I’m concerned — my opinion — every candidate in my living memory who made it to the November election has been smart, disciplined and effective.”
And you would be wrong. For example, Hillary Clinton spent her entire adult life in politics. She then went on to lose the 2008 Democratic nomination because she didn’t understand how caucuses worked and lost the 2016 Presidential election because she didn’t understand how the Electoral College worked. Smart? Effective?
Bob Dole is a much greater man than I will ever be. He was also a TERRIBLE Presidential candidate whose best moment was reading someone else’s words off a teleprompter at his nominating convention.
John McCain responded to the 2008 economic crisis by suspending his campaign and let people talk him into picking a virtual unknown for his VP when that person had been the mayor of a town with a population of less than 8,000 people just six years before.
These candidates are not all created equal.
Mike
MBunge: My problem with your points 1,2, and 3 is they are debatable opinions stated as absolute, black-and-white facts. I’m reminded of almost every argument I had with Democrats during the Iraq War.
And you would be wrong.
MBunge: Again, more opinions stated as facts.
I said, “Smart, disciplined and effective.” I didn’t say infallible or unquestionably destined for victory.
Trump won 2016 by 70,000 votes in a few states. He could easily have lost. Would that make Trump a stupid loser?
I’ll say that for Kerry, Obama and Hillary, as well as GWB and Trump.
Our political system is, as academic mavens say ‘institutionalised’ and can survive for a time stresses produced by incompetent or malevolent people. See BO, whose modus operandi was to review canned options produced by his staff and add inane marginalia. That’s what he brought to the table. What he also brought to the table was the culture of the Democratic Party (of which he was an exemplar). Most acute manifestation: Andrew Weismann.
If you want to get something done, you need experienced and capable executives and you need people who can negotiate with our ghastly national legislature. BO failed on both counts. Got great PR, though, so people hardly noticed.
George Bush the Elder had close to an optimal background. Trouble was, he was largely vacuous on policy matters. Getting someone who knows what they think and is a natural in the realm of public administration is that for which you should aim.
Personally, I’d like the formal requirements for running for public office amended, and those for the presidency be an elaboration on that baseline. As long as someone has been for the majority of their natural life (1) palpably present in the United States (or in uniform posted abroad when not palpably present) and (2) present in the country lawfully at that same time, and (3) at liberty at that same time (i.e. not incarcerated, on probation, on parole, carrying undischarged fines or labor services, or under an order of civil commitment or guardianship) I’m not seeing a problem with having naturalized citizens in public office (so long as they sign a sworn attestation renouncing any claim they might have on the citizenship of a foreign country and send a copy to that country’s consulate). I do think we should raise the age at which people can run for presumptively f/t offices to 39 and introduce mandatory retirement, prohibiting people from running past the age of 72. In re the Presidency, make the minimum age about 60.
John McCain responded to the 2008 economic crisis by suspending his campaign and let people talk him into picking a virtual unknown for his VP when that person had been the mayor of a town with a population of less than 8,000 people just six years before.
She actually had more experience as a public executive than (1) McCain, (2) Biden, (3) Obama, (4) John Edwards, (5) John Kerry, (6) Dan Quayle, (7) Geraldine Ferraro, (8) Bob Dole, (9) Richard Nixon, (10) George McGovern.
1. He failed to protect this country from the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.
2. He launched and oversaw one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, one which continues to plague America to this day and might continue to do so long after we are all dead and gone.
3. He concluded by leading the United States into the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression.
1. So would have anyone else who was sitting in that chair on 11 Sept. 2001.
2. It’s not plaguing us at all; we haven’t had combat troops there (bar some advisers) for nearly 8 years. Iraq’s in a disagreeable state, but one disagreeable state or another has been the norm in Iraq for sixty years, the modest period running from the end of 1963 to the middle of 1968 the exception. Even in Iraq, the quantum of violence is less than 1/10 th of what it was in 2006 and 2007, and there is more of an independent public life than there has been in 50 years. As a disaster, it’s pretty pale next to the Viet Nam War, much less the sequelae of the 1st World War.
3. Really? You fancy Bush Jedi-mind tricked executives at Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Citigroup into ruining the balance sheets of their institutions? Or bullied the Democratic Party insider claque at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into slashing underwriting standards on the promissory notes they bought? Or blocked the efforts of his own subordinates to push legislation improving accounting standards at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (in a double-act with Barney Frank)? Or cycled back in time and persuaded Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Arthur Leavitt Jr. to sabotage Brooksley Born’s efforts to flush out the dark market in derivatives?
It is true that regulators were behind the curve in regard to derivatives trading and that Bush put a political hack in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission (it’s also true that the SEC’s professional staff is chock-a-block with lawyers who didn’t know enough mathematics and statistics to smoke out Bernie Madoff’s scams, a problem Bush did not generate). Where was Congress?
Why you feel compelled to defend one of the most catastrophic Presidents we’ve ever seen is something you might want to ponder.
Because you keep making false statements about him. Make true statements and we’ll stop contending with you.
The qualities or failings of others have nothing to do with the qualities and failings of George W. Bush. This isn’t relative. He doesn’t become any better in comparison.
I’m pointing out to you something you persistently refuse to see: Bush was cream. He wasn’t running against your fantasy candidate, but against real flesh and blood politicians who were less prepared than was he. Bob Kerrey was a better businessman (and a combat veteran) with a history as a state governor. Bush didn’t run against him. He ran against John Kerry, a meh lawyer from Boston whose time in Congress had been spent running oversight hearings.
Compare his life and experiences to George W. Bush’s and tell me who you think comes out on top.
He was a high school teacher for 16 years, most notably as an athletic coach. No objection, but it is less demanding than building a professional practice, much less building a business or being promoted within the ranks of the military. And Hastert never held an executive position and has no history of military service (He also had occult sexual disorders which came back to humiliate him later).
George W. Bush just sat there. Either because he couldn’t think beyond the room he was in and the children in front of him or because he thought, at some level, somebody else would take care of it. That’s the person you’re defending.
You’ve now dredged up what might be the silliest talking point of the last 20 years. Congratulations.
@Art Deco – Please note my phrasing If swing voters see unreasonableness,etc…
As you say, many swing voters are LIVs. The balance of what they end up ‘seeing’ will be a combination of perceptions, including slanted news coverage (so blatant that many will see through it), over-the-top anti-Trump attack ads (ditto), a little of the debates, and Trump ads. The latter will feature both his accomplishments and his team’s oppo ads, the most effective of which can simply replay the nutty words and behavior of the other side.
Due to her relative reasonableness, Tulsi Gabbard would be the most challenging adversary. Precisely for that reason, she stands little chance of capturing the nomination. The other Dems (and much of their base) are nuts, nuts, nuts. Letting them be themselves and goading them to be even more so should work to Trump’s advantage.
Trump is not just facing the Democrats. He is facing an alliance between the Democrats and and even more formidable enemy, the Federal Government Bureaucracy (call it the Deep State, if you wish.)
Remember that one of Reagan’s first acts as President was to fire the air traffic controllers. That act placed him “in charge”. Trump needs to start cleaning house. He should have done it right from the beginning.
3. He concluded by leading the United States into the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression.
Except that most of the factors that induced that economic crisis (subprime lending, second- and third-degree derivatives, CDOs, Glass-Steagall repeal) were all of Clinton-era vintage.
I’m just saying.
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Roger Kimball, American Greatness: Anti-Trump Fraternity and NeverTrump Sorority Collude in Impeachment Scam
Key phrase: “But she didn’t . . .”
Avg IQ at bronx science is about 145
a 120 would struggle..
i was in a year early.. so.. not any wonder i am not well understood…
@Art Deco – 1+0.5 +0.5, @MBunge – 0+0.5+0.5;
Once Clinton accepted the intelligence wall to NOT allow connecting the dots, Bush is not very responsible for 9/11; actually Clinton & Dems & anti-police / anti-intel folks are more responsible. (Art +1)
There were 16 UN Sec. Council resolutions against Saddam. Once Bush 41 & Powell decide to leave Saddam in power after his invasion of Kuwait and the fast Desert Storm, Iraq was going to be a mess. Plus Carter’s acceptance of ousting of the Shah of Iran by: humanitarian democrats, socialists, communists, and Islamists, which then allowed the most ruthless of these, the Islamists to take over in ’79. (I still recall anti-Shah protests, and my thinking: and what comes after??)
Bush failed to follow Gen. Jay Garner’s plan – go in, take out Saddam, then leave. Instead, he tried to “nation build”, getting “voting democracy” before establishing market capitalism. This is a small fail that Obama avoided when taking out Gaddafi. Nation building was noble/ naïve failure. There were no “good” choices.
(Art +0.5, M +0.5)
The post-Lehmann Brothers fiasco was to protect the rich banksters from losing money after betting so much, included lots of borrowed cash, that house prices would always go up. Bush didn’t stop the boom, but neither did the Dems; in fact, the Dems wanted more gov’t support for even more non-creditworthy folk to buy houses. Dem’s (& Obama!) court victory in 1995 under Clinton, to stop bank lenders from being careful in lending helped set of the house construction boom & the liar’s loans & the excessive increase in house prices and loans on those houses. Bush and especially his ex-Goldman Sachs Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson were accepting millions of over-leveraged homebuyers losing vast portions of their small wealth, but unwilling to accept the millionaire rocket scientist bank investors losing their shirts by the big banks going bankrupt.
Remember, if all the top 25 banks and financial institutions (like AIG) had had their equity investors lose their money, there would have been other banks, with other leaders, ready to lend money. Most economists still support the bailout. I don’t, and only did for about a week. For 100 billion $$, up to 10 million people could have gotten up to $10,000 loans from the gov’t, to keep their property. No big recession, maybe. Saving the people and starving the Too Big banks would have been better than saving the banks and letting the people lose their homes.
The lousy recession after Obama was elected was more his fault, and high taxes and high regulations of the Dems, rather than Bush.
(Art +0.5, M +0.5 )
Total: Art 2, Mike 1
My expert opinion freely offered here is worth at least twice what you paid!
Thanks to Neo for a fine note about Trump not being allowed to be President.
We need good critiques of all Presidents, based more on facts, and consistent criteria. Rule of law, when applied to opinion, means same criteria for judging all.
Bush failed to follow Gen. Jay Garner’s plan – go in, take out Saddam, then leave. Instead, he tried to “nation build”, getting “voting democracy” before establishing market capitalism. This is a small fail that Obama avoided when taking out Gaddafi. Nation building was noble/ naïve failure. There were no “good” choices.
Garner had a brief turn as director of the Provisional Authority, supposedly to address a humanitarian crisis. When did he ever have some ‘plan’ that wasn’t implemented?
I have no clue whence comes the retrospective enthusiasm for leaving Iraq as a failed state a la Somalia, or what definition you all are using when you say ‘failure’. South Vietnam was a failure. Iraq today is well short of that.
The post-Lehmann Brothers fiasco was to protect the rich banksters from losing money after betting so much, included lots of borrowed cash, that house prices would always go up.
Actually, the banks received bridge loans, which they paid back in full within a few years. Not all of them required these funds to stay afloat (JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo were still sound and both Goldman and Morgan Stanley could still raise capital from private parties).
Remember, if all the top 25 banks and financial institutions (like AIG) had had their equity investors lose their money, there would have been other banks, with other leaders, ready to lend money. Most economists still support the bailout. I don’t, and only did for about a week. For 100 billion $$, up to 10 million people could have gotten up to $10,000 loans from the gov’t, to keep their property. No big recession, maybe. Saving the people and starving the Too Big banks would have been better than saving the banks and letting the people lose their homes
Again, the equity investors of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual, Bear / Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG did lose their investments. Lehman’s creditors also took large haircuts.
For all the chuffering about a ‘bailout’, the only institutions which actually were bailed out were Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and the auto industry components. Neither the Federal Reserve nor the Treasury lost money on their other transactions. (AIG was the only one on this list which wasn’t a Democratic Party client, BTW).
I have no clue how you got the idea in your head that a severe recession was avoidable through allowing a wave of bankruptcies.
MBunge — If you want to blame someone for the failure to detect and stop the 9/11 attack, you should be blaming Bill Clinton, not George Bush. There were several opportunities for CIA operatives to kill Osama Bin Laden. The White House repeatedly refused permission.
A memo written by Attorney General Janet Reno gave rise to the “wall” which separated FBI criminal and counterintelligence activities.
Even more than that was the enmity between the CIA and the FBI over counterterrorist activities, primarily on the part of the CIA, which failed to notify the FBI that known Al Qaeda terrorists had entered the U.S. I suggest you read Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower for more details.
As for President Bush’s failure to jump up from his reading to second graders and run screaming from the room, that is just silly. What did you want him to do, duck into a telephone booth, change into his Superman suit and leap into the sky?
To reiterate: Key phrase: “But she didn’t . . .”
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness: The Madness of Progressive Projection
MBunge: Well, I imagine neo and some others would defend GWB as well
There are many good things about Bush II, although not the usual surface ones.
The Deep State also used him to shield against 9/11 collusion accusations. Some people actually think Bush Ii did a false flag on 9/11.
But they don’t know as much as I do about the Deep State back then and the connections to 9/11.
They would have gotten up to see what had happened and what they could do about it, if only to serve their own egos.
Bush II’s ego is in a very strange place, given his father’s connections to Skull and Bones as well as the other factions in the Deep State. Having a President as a father can do a number of things on you. Look at Hunter biden and Chelsea. Bush II came out pretty good in comparison.
It’s important to remember that while the Democrats may be the ones behaving badly at this point, we didn’t get here just because THEY suck.
Americans got here because they are slaves.
Period.
It’s not because of “we can blame politicians”. Politicians mostly obey the Deep State factions. They aren’t as powerful as the media led you to believe.
Having a President as a father can do a number of things on you. Look at Hunter biden and Chelsea. Bush II came out pretty good in comparison.
1. Hunter Biden’s father was never the President and his misbehavior was manifest nearly 20 years ago, when his father was just a member of Congress (and well known clown).
2. George W. Bush was 42 years old when his father was elected President. Not precisely a finished product, but of an age where your established virtues and vices tend to abide. Much the same was true nine years earlier, when his father was merely a retired businessman who had served some time in Congress and in the Nixon-Ford Administration.
3. There have been rumors in the media that Chelsea is unpleasant in office situations. Thus far, her most notable feature has been dilettentishness. She has lots of assets, but has never built a career doing any one thing and has landed at age 39 in the regrettable position of superintending her parents’ main grift. (In a previous era, she’d have been expected to look after her family and sit on the board of this and that).
Politicians mostly obey the Deep State factions.
No. They do favors for other politicians, do favors for their constituents, and do favors for donors. They are serial toadies. Who they emphasize on that list depends on the dimensions of their constituency, the properties of their constituency, and their degree of exposure.