Bush's Plane Ride Home

[toasty]

Mark McKinnon reports on Bush's final flight back to Texas. Not sure why, but I found this kinda interesting, probably because it sheds some light on what happens with these transitions of power.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-20/aboard-the-bush-plane

This picture really struck me:



You'd never guess from this photo that 2 hours earlier, that guy was the most powerful person in the free world. Just looks like a dad hanging out with his family, without a care in the world.

[Shiva]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

They should have sent him back home on foot instead of spoiling the presidential plane's fuel on someone like this!

[Kamal]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

no kidding, worthless git

[Garrick]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

give me a big break guys. he did a lot for this country whether you give him any credit or not. i appreciate the fact that he still has a great sense of humor even though he's been treated with no respect.

lol at the dude on the left. he looks like last season's 24 president!

[Kamal]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

i appreciate the fact that he still has a great sense of humor even though he's been treated with no respect.

thats probably the only thing he truly has garrick. you cant be serious about him having "done" things for this country. I am pretty lousy with history but I would really want to give him the benefit of the doubt as pretty much everything from what I remember, that he did from his first day in the oval office, has been a result of stubbornness.

[Garrick]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

i agree he hasn't been the ideal president. but he has done plenty good that goes overlooked. how many terrorist plans have been foiled here and internationally because of the homeland security he set up and the awareness he brought to the world about extemists? what attacks have happened on US soil since he has been president? how much has he raised taxes since he's been in office?

[MJDub]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

i agree he hasn't been the ideal president. but he has done plenty good that goes overlooked. how many plans have been foiled because of the homeland security he set up? what attacks have happened on US soil since he has been president? how much has he raised taxes since he's been in office?

lol

The original 10 major plots that they boasted about foiling has been whittled down to 6 because even they acknowledged they were bullshitting people (a rarity). People really easily forget that 9/11 happened on his watch, too. Also, cutting taxes during 2 wars has done wonders for lowering our debt. Don't even get me started on the whole erosion of our constitution thing, because Obama is going to restore it.

The 8 year veil of darkness has finally lifted, and not a moment too soon.

[Garrick]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

- 6 major plots is better than ZERO. 10 or 6, they may have saved your life or someone you know.

- we didn't have the infrastructure to detect terrorist acts before 9/11. now we do and look how many attacks happened after 9/11.

- when obama raises your taxes to an ungodly high, come talk to me. bush AND obama are overlooking one great solution to our tax problem: fair tax. it works.

- how is obama going to restore the constitution when he is such big government and that is EXACTLY what the constitution does not stand for? i hope he proves me wrong by not leaning on government as a solution and instead lets the people solve their problems.

[Kamal]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

i agree he hasn't been the ideal president. but he has done plenty good that goes overlooked. how many terrorist plans have been foiled here and internationally because of the homeland security he set up and the awareness he brought to the world about extemists? what attacks have happened on US soil since he has been president? how much has he raised taxes since he's been in office?

mate can you imagine what would have happened if he didn't foil terrorist attacks AFTER 9/11 happened on this continent. There would have been riots in the streets for a new president. And what good did cutting taxes do to us? Yea we got $1800 tax refund but we let the economy walk away with our houses. Still trying to see what good was done here.

[Garrick]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

you can blame the congress and unresponsible lenders and buyers for the mortgage crisis. that was not bush's fault.

and as far as if he didn't foil terrorist attacks? he did, so he did his job as president to protect us. moot point.

all i'm saying is a lot of the things he gets blamed for are not his fault. he wasn't a good president, but he did some important things that made me feel safer. and i'm not a home owner, thank god.


that's it. i'm done talkin. i didn't want to turn this into a debate.

[BSully828]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

I'm with Garrick on this one. Granted, Bush won't be getting any streets named after him anywhere in the near future - but to completely write off his last 8 years as a total, abject failure is a bit shortsighted IMO.

No President has commited more effort and funding towards the African AIDS epidemic, it's not even close. His No Child Left Behind plan will be looked on in the years to come as the first steps towards revamping our sickly education system. And he is also the first President in recent memory to even attempt to address the Social Security fiasco. This has always been the "3rd Rail" and something past presidents (both D and R) have avoided like the plague. Now you may not agree with the plan but it has at least started a dialogue - and that is always the first step towards meaningful change.

People really easily forget that 9/11 happened on his watch, too.

People also easily forget that Bush was in office for a total of 233 days when the towers fell. Even if those scumbags began planning the attack while W was taking the oath, there is no way - no possible way in the deepest pits of hell - that they could pull off such a coordinated, precise act of terrorism in 233 days. Something that huge takes months, if not years of planning, preparation, practice. They had to case the terminals, take dry runs on those flights - hell even the records of their pilot training classes in FL were done before Bush was even elected.

Sure it took place on Bush's watch, but this was something in the works for a long, long time. And i'm not saying it's Clinton's fault for not taking out Osama when he had the chance, 9/11 was a complete and total failure on all levels. To pin the blame on one person is just straight up naive.

]Don't even get me started on the whole erosion of our constitution thing

This is another one I have trouble agreeing with. I’m not trying to sound like a dick so please don’t take it that way but how have you – you personally – felt your rights eroded? What have you suffered as a result? How has your day-to-day, honest law-abiding citizen life been affected? If you say that you feel the hit we’ve taken on the international stage is a result of that, I’ll grant you that one, but if you think your life has been affected by something like the whole “illegal wiretapping” thing, I just don’t buy it. There was a thread a while back where I put my two cents in, so I’ll just cut and paste rather than rehash:

The wiretapping issue just seems so overblown to me. I know we like to think that we're important and that our lives are worth all that trouble, but in the grand scheme of things 99.9% of us just aren't worth that much attention from Uncle Sam. If your concern is based on the idea that some suit in the pentagon is tapping your phone, take a second to think of the logistics of it:

Forget emails, let's just look at phone calls. How many do you make and receive on an average day - 10? 11? Maybe if you're the popular sort it could be close to 20. How about if your work has you on the phone all day, maybe its even as high as 40 - but let's lowball it for the sake of discussion that the average person makes and receives 5 calls a day.

What's the population at now 300 mil? Let's cut that in half to exclude kids and old folks - so 150,000,000 average Americans on the phone an average of 5 times a day. That is 3/4's of a BILLION individual phone calls in a single day. A DAY!

Now its no secret that there are programs designed to pick out key words in a conversation, "bomb", "assassinate", "mutha fukkin jihad" ect.. ect.. I don't know about you but I don't use those words very often and I'd bet that average Joe American doesn't either. So let's say, just for the sake of argument, that 1% of those daily calls include one of those key words. That is over 7 MILLION private calls each and every single day that only hint at a possible threat - and those calls would require a second look by real live people locked up in the dungeons of the Pentagon, evil Rumsfield wannabe's patrolling the aisles whips in hand.

Now, you live your day to day life like you always do. As far as I can tell, no one here is a terrorist, no one is involved in plotting the destruction of the West, we all just go about our normal, not-posing-any-threat-to-America way of life. When they have numbers like that to contend with, what interest do you really think we offer to the government? Do you really think they are that intrusive that they would track our phone calls? Read our emails? Unless they're dying to know what the current feeling is on the state of post-progressive house music in America and Europe, why would they ever bother looking at this website? I'm sorry to say folks, but we just aren't that interesting as average, law abiding citizens.

I understand why this issue still circulates though. It paints the government in Orwellian terms, offers a juicy espionage-laced story for mainstream media to run with, and gives Bush bashers a new tune to beat their drum to. But when one looks at it in an objective manner, its clear that the chance that one of our phone calls or emails ends up on the desk of some seedy government worker is just far too remote.

But the results of these wiretaps and message tracking are evident - attacks have been stopped, plots have been foiled. And you have to believe that some of those plots were never made public for intelligence reasons. Where is the intrusion? Where are the trampled rights? We are not the target of these taps, hell we aren't even on the map.

But perhaps these acts will lead us down a *ahem* "slippery slope", that the groundwork is being laid for a more penetrating means. Do you really think that would ever get through even the most closed-door government meeting? Imagine all the hands that would be involved in such an act, do you really think no one would stand up and say, "Is this necessary?". Capitol Hill has more leaks than a public toilet - do you really think that would go unnoticed?

Like I said, its nice to think that our lives are meaningful outside of our little sphere of influence, that somehow we are on the radar of a high-tek tracking board - but when looked at from high above we are but a sea of faceless figures, one completely indistinguishable from the next. And if you truly believe that our government is more concerned with the comings and goings of each and every single American than they are with stopping another 9/11 - well brother, I think you need to loosen up that tinfoil hat of yours

Again, Bush has done less than admirable job as Commander and Chief and I think everyone in the US, hell everyone in the WORLD, felt a weight lifted off their shoulders watching Obama stand before that crowd on Tuesday, but to say Bush is the worst president in the history of the universe is a bit of a stretch.

[Kamal]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

I didnt read the whole thing but I can tell you now the "No child left behind" program could probably be in the top of the WORST things Bush enacted. My wife went through her master's in education and was sent out as an intern to local schools for teaching for nearly a year. The local schools and school system just absolutely HATE this concept. Its even more psychologically damaging to move a child to the next grade when they are just not ready (psychologically) to make that jump. It's done more harm than good for special-ed children.

[BSully828]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

Hence the phrase "first steps". These things aren't intended to be a quick fix - there will be major hurdles along the way - but to just ignore the problem and pass it on to the next administration is a fool's enterprise. Nothing changes if there is no attempt towards change.

This will be manipulated and modified as the years go on, processes added, steps deleted, but as this system gets refined in the years to come I feel we will see the benefits.

[Kamal]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

dude are you kidding me? every wrong move could be made right with a modification to "fix" it and eventually changed so much, it's not even near the original. What's the good in that. Might as well wait, evaluate and then implement before being knee-jerkish in some extremely critical decisions

You wouldn't call it ok for a doctor to go "whoops" in an operation but it's ok for the president of the most powerful nation in the world to have done it? Seriously?

I know the argument could be you're dealing with someone's life when I refer to a doctor vs. the role of a president but how different would be in this case until the case if "fixed" for partially disabled students who really have a chance in real life to survive but are now, increasingly psychologically damaged by being thrust into an environment they cannot cope with.

[Garrick]

Re: Bush's Plane Ride Home

relating this to the company i work for because i see this time and time again since my company is HUGE and has tons of different departments that get involved in new processes and programs... huge projects are often ill-equipped for release when they actually 'go live', but if we try to resolve everything before releasing it, it would never get released. sometimes the best path forward is to "do" and then "fix." the key is realizing when it is working or when it is a failure and walking away from it. maybe that is the best policy for the "no kid left behind" program... i haven't paid much attention to that one.