George W. Bush

from MSNBC a photo on the 10th Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished"
http://on.msnbc.com/YnqcHeFB

[This is a cross-post by me from bluevirginia.us.]

So much has been said about the national debt in recent years, especially during the current presidential campaign. With persistent misrepresentation, the Romney campaign likes to assign responsibility for the debt to the Obama administration. And most of the broadcast media—the single-most failed institution in America along with its greedy and reckless financial system—says little to clarify matters, help citizens sort out the facts, and hold the Romney campaign to account.

If responsibility is to be assigned for the national debt, there is a dishonest method and an honest method of doing so. This is the message from Barry Ritholtz writing for EconoMonitor--an economics project of Nouriel Roubini (http://www.roubini.com), one of the few economists along with Ritholtz to predict the sub-prime mortgage and derivative investment crises. Ritholtz published in 2009-10 Bailout Nation, which won the First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism, and he authors the highly acclaimed Big Picture—a leading financial weblog.

Just when you thought you had learned everything possible about the breathtaking incompetence of George W. Bush, today we discover that the Bush White House was fully aware of threats from Osama bin Laden ... and chose to do NOTHING about it.

And now Republicans want to elect Bush-Lite as commander in chief? Heaven help us.

From the I-got-irritated-and-did-some-quick-research department:

Politifact, a purportedly "neutral" fact-checking organization, is a bullshit factory.

Here's why:

Politifact was established in August 2007, according to WIkipedia--Politifact's own "About" page tells absolutely nothing of their history.

They have rated a grand total of four statements by George W. Bush, one in each category of "True", "Mostly True", "Half True", and "False". (The remaining categories are "Mostly False" and "Pants on Fire".

By contrast, they have rated 341 statements by Barack Obama. The breakdown is 81 T, 77 MT, 85 HT, 42 MF, 51 F, and 5 POF.

So many times when we get together you have to put up with me complaining about something...and there are lots of other times when it’s me warning about events that are looming in our future.

Even though they’re conversations we need to have, they’re often not very emotionally satisfying.

Today we depart from that pattern, in a very good way.

It’s “follow-up day”; and the conversation takes us to three “happy places”: two “problem” stories that have recent positive progress to report—and, just because I care about you, Gentle Reader, an exclusive preview of the George W. Bush autobiography, obtained with considerable effort from an unnamed and particularly well-placed source.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in and tell you what you need to know.

Are you nourishing yourself with a toxic stew of fear, trepidation and resentment, given Barack Obama's Inauguration? Some are, and they continue to "reach out" to me and Democratic friends with baseless complaints and venom.

I'm not naming names, because I'm not one to gossip. And I'm not referring to the millions of people who didn't vote for Obama; I'm referring to the millions of bitter people who didn't vote for Obama. He spoke of their ilk while on the campaign trail.

Mayhill Fowler, Huffington Post blogger, broke the infamous "bitter" story in April 2008; explaining that

For the love of all that is holy, Mr. Bush!

What the hell is it with your run-away ego and your inability to understand that the people of this country, HELL, the people of this world, do not care about what you feel to be YOUR personal crises’ that you’ve faced while in office.

You do realize that the entire population of your country is currently mired in a devastating recession of your making?

Today the SEC filed insider trading charges against Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban.
No big deal? Think again.Here is the background on why this is happening. Cuban made his money as the founder of HDTV and the HD cable network. In 2003, Bethany MacLean and Peter Elkind of Fortune Magazine had penned a best selling book, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the room, the rise and fall of Enron, and were trying to get the story made into a movie.
Not so surprisingly, there were no studios willing to take a chance on a story that attacks Bush buddies at Enron at the time when Bush was riding a wave of popularity after 9/11,the Iraq War, and the Global War on Terror.
That is when Mark Cuban stepped in and decided to become the executive producer of the project and make the movie in his own HD movie studio.
My guess is that merited this retaliation.
Read on...