In tribute to Bruce Springsteen calling a spade a spade on 60 Minutes tonight, I offer - below the fold - an impressionistic look at the Bush Years...
My father said "Son, we're lucky in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.
That flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't."
Its gonna be a long walk home...
Bruce Springsteen
"Long Wak Home" from the CD Magic
The Torture President
The Torture Presidency
The fruits of indifference a/k/a "Heckuva Job!"
Bush "Brands" Self a Torturer
http://waxworks.blogspot.com/...
The New York Times Nov 8, 1967
Branding Rite Laid to Yale Fraternity
Special to the New York Times
New Haven, Nov. 7 - A Yale fraternity accused by the student newspaper of burning its initiates with a brand will have its fate decided Friday by student fraternity leaders.
The fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, could face the temporary closure of its house and a $1,000 fine resulting from alleged violations of rules previously passed by the Interfraternity Council, which consists of Yale's five fraternity presidents.
The charges against Delta Kappa Epsilon were made last Friday in a Yale Daily News article that accused campus fraternities of carrying on "sadistic and obscene" initiation procedures.
The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied on "hot branding iron" to the small of the back of its 40 new members in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, appeared with the article.
A former president of Delta that [sic] the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is "only a cigarette burn."
Limbaugh: torture is "just blowing off steam"
http://mediamatters.org/...
CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?
Bush mocks an executed woman
http://72.14.253.104/...
In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.
Bush makes a thirteen year old girl cry
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/...
A question for President Bush on immigration rose up like a ghost from the grave this afternoon in Ohio.
Only the questioner was a 13-year old blonde-headed girl, Jessica Hackerd, from Brecksville, Ohio, who immediately broke into tears after making her inquiry.
"Mr. President, I know immigration has been a big problem in the U.S. And what is your next step with the immigration bill?" Jessica asked Mr. Bush, during a question and answer period after a speech Mr. Bush gave to a Cleveland business group.
Mr. Bush's sarcastic reply -- a wry "yeah, thanks" -- drew laughter from the crowd of 400. But the attention caused young Jessica, who characterized herself in an interview afterward as very shy, to immediately tear up.
Cheney and "a dunk in water."
http://72.14.253.104/...
"Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Scott Hennen, of WDAY in Fargo, N.D., asked Cheney on Tuesday. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Cheney responded.
Cheney also said he agreed with Hennen that the debate over interrogation techniques was "a little silly," and he praised the information obtained from U.S. terrorism suspects during questioning.
The Coup de Grace
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Alberto Gonzales, the former US attorney-general, reportedly approved the use of waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques in a memo in 2005 even though the justice department had publicly declared that torture was "abhorrent".
The justice department denounced the use of torture in December 2004, in a move seen as a retreat from the so-called 2002 "torture memo", which appeared to condone the use of torture on terrorism suspects.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that Mr Gonzales authorised use of the techniques, including waterboarding, over the objections of James Comey, then deputy attorney-general, who told justice deparment lawyers they would be "ashamed" when the memo became public.
As White House counsel in 2002, Mr Gonzales also approved the "torture memo," which was drafted by the same justice department officer that wrote the 2005 memo permitting waterboarding, where interrogators pour water over the covered head of a captive to simulate effects of drowning.
Long walk home, indeed...