George W. Bush Live From Facebook 372
tekgoblin writes "Facebook has just announced that George W. Bush is going to be present November 29th to answer questions about his new book, Decision Points. The discussion will happen on Facebook Live at 2PM PST."
Question #1 (Score:3, Insightful)
After adding over $1T to the federal deficit to fund a sham war in Iraq that has cost over 4400 American lives (http://antiwar.com/casualties/) and over 100,000 civilian casualties (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/) -- how do you sleep at night?
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:4, Insightful)
History is kind to presidents (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Question I'd Put to Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Good question...
But what makes you think you'd get anything other than a carefully sanitized political answer?
I mean... It isn't like you're the first one to come up with this question. I've see in, and variations on it, asked countless times. And the answer has always been some vague form of "no".
Now, I'm not certain that "no" is a lie... It may very well be that he had other motivations. But the vague and political nature of the non-answer always leaves me feeling like there's more to the story.
I'd love to get a straight answer out of him. Hell, I'd love to get a straight answer out of just about any politician. But I don't think this Facebook interview thing is going to suddenly grant my wishes.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I do know I've just paraphrased my sig.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't see this over the Internet, but I assume you've got a teabag tied on your ear and a "LISTEN TO ME" sign in your hand.
Well, I definitely don't; I'm a Buckley conservative. But it's pretty funny to listen to liberals trying to claim the Tea Party is nuts.
The Tea Party was formed out of anger with Bush on a broad but specific issue: excessive government spending, which was then compounded by Obama's actions. And it is far more bipartisan than establishment liberals care to acknowledge.
Bush derangement syndrome [zombietime.com] started when Bush was a candidate; the NAACP ran an ad in 2000 claiming that electing him would be like dragging James Byrd through the streets of Texas. BDS is most prominent among the truther movements, and of course includes execrable characters like Julian Assange.
There's really nothing to defend about BDS because there aren't really any coherent arguments. It's basically all the things the liberals claim the Tea Party is. I'll take the Tea Partiers, who are merely amiably chaotic, over people the left gets to hang out with any day.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore Ronald Reagan, practically a saint among the right, was the one who pushed for the US ratification of the UN convention against torture, saying:
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
Even if we have not the slightest interest in giving the ICC the time of day, we have a legal obligation to prosecute torturers we find on our soil, and in some cases to extradite them to the jurisdictions where their crimes took place, assuming extradition agreements are in place.
We can only assume that Ronald Reagan was actually a soft-on-terror deep-cover liberal...
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:1, Insightful)
Except being waterboarded by friends who won't let you "die" isn't really scary. Try it with a stranger and nobody else around. Then you'll see what it is about. Hell, I'll volunteer... all you have to do is sign this form. :D
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone I've ever talked to who thinks the Tea Partiers are nuts know absolutely nothing about them and are just parroting the MSM and each other.
Are there nuts among the Tea Partiers? There are nuts in every political movement, but I'd like to see a comparison of the fringe content of any Tea Party Rally with any similar liberal protest or gathering. In comparison, they are probably very tame.
BDS is real and amazing exercise in mouth-foaming bigotry and childish petulance coming from people who otherwise claim to be tolerant. There's nothing wrong with disliking President Bush and what he did, even strongly. That's not only your right, but your duty as a concerned citizen if you feel that way.
What amazes me on a daily basis is the sheer level of mindless, childish, unchecked rage expressed at the man. I would imagine the hooded thugs at Klan rallies would just shakes their heads sadly at one of their own acting the way too many people act regarding President Bush (along with Sarah Palin and a few others targeted by the left for derision and scorn.)
As strongly as people feel about President Obama, and there is as much _strong_ feelings against him as there ever were for President Bush, I've never heard anyone wish physical harm on him. I've never heard of people in the media fantasizing on the airwaves about his assassination or any of the many other reprehensible things that were directed towards Bush, and seemingly accepted as perfectly reasonable by people I would think are above all that.
Disagreement, dislike, protest, and harsh criticism are all legitimate and honorable actions to take in politics, but the unbridled hatred I've seen directed against President Bush (or any politician, or any _person_ for that matter) has no place in civilized society.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
But it's pretty funny to listen to liberals trying to claim the Tea Party is nuts.
For those of us outside the US, it's absolutely fucking hilarious to listen to right wingers trying to claim the Tea Party isn't nuts.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry but you are way off. Just look at the candidates of the Tea Party. It is not just a minority in the Tea Party that is nuts. They let people like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell represent the party. You don't let yourself represent by a whacko if you are not totally out there too. You cannot argue that the majority is well informed and reasonable if they allow Sarah Palin to be their spokesperson.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:3, Insightful)
I beg to differ. There were a lot of people on the loony right (and the unloony right) who attacked Bush.
And regarding the current President, I find the scariest things about him are not what the loony right charges, but the things that are unquestionably true but ignored, like his 20 years with a racist "church", his unprecedented efforts to suppress his own paper trail, the associations and politics of many of the "czars" and other advisors he surrounds himself with. The list goes on.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, waterboarding is the only form of "torture" that Marines do to each other on weekends for fun. Not even remotely kidding. I was in the Marines, and I have friends who waterboard each other for fun.
There are people who eat broken glass, inject their cocks with cocaine and headbutt iron posts for fun, that doesn't mean it is a legitimate treatment for political prisoners.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, waterboarding is the only form of "torture" that Marines do to each other on weekends for fun. Not even remotely kidding. I was in the Marines, and I have friends who waterboard each other for fun.
I don't know which is more pathetic; your friends' idea of fun, or your complete lack of understanding of what torture really is all about. As others have observed, anything your friends do to you utterly lacks the requisite psychological dynamic that truly qualifies something as torture.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people wouldn't last more than 5 seconds [citation needed] of water boarding, the technique is to trigger the primal fear of drowning without actually killing you. It's very effective at getting a response from an individual.
A "response" yes. People will say anything to make truly effective torture stop. The truth has little to do with it. As such, warterboarding is well established as a way of coercing false confessions and if necessary, ginning up false "intelligence" to support your desired course of action. As a means of reaching "truth", torture is shit.
We're supposed to be better than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't torture when the good guys do it to the bad guys. Then it's simply "aggressive intelligence gathering". Come on, have you learned nothing from Jack Bauer?
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:5, Insightful)
My question (Score:3, Insightful)
In hindsight, failing to prevent 9/11, invading Iraq under false pretenses, and ending with the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, do you think you did a good job as President of the United States?
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's odd how people feel strongly when someone starts a war which hundreds of thousands of people. What's up with that?
I mean, I don't especially appreciate any of your last presidents, Obama included, but G.W.B. was more than simply a bad president.
Re:Question #1 (Score:3, Insightful)
W: Like a baby. Next question?
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
You have violated the rules of Slashthink. The pre-programmed mods will respond in an automatic fashion.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you're not paying attention. Threats on the president's life have skyrocketed since Obama took office. Right wing politicians fantasize about "second amendment remedies." There was a national day of prayer for his death.
You're wilfully remaining ignorant if you truly believe that there was more venom directed agains Bush than against Obama.
I know that Americans tend not to care what the rest of the world thinks about your country, but most of us think your tea partiers are nuts. Here's this wishy-washy, do-little centrist president, and you lot are going on and on about his socialist communist tyranny? And you invite open racists from European nationalist organisations to speak, but then claim the Tea Party isn't racist. Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
And liberals never associate with open racists?
I'd make a list, but it would take hours and surely go beyond the limits of a /. comment length.
Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.
Maybe because they are using those tax dollars to do pointless things that waste the money and fail to do any good. If the U.S. government and the States can't keep things going with close to half the GDP of the richest nation in the world, isn't it time to think the people in charge are incompetent?
Well, I guess not if you're a statist. Blind faith in government is what's nuts.
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point there's a threshold when you start to wonder why the person chooses and/or attracts so many of them.
Re:The Question I'd Put to Him (Score:1, Insightful)
Funny enough, your links don't say what you think they say. For example, the "iraq wtc1993" search's number 2 hit (which was Wikipedia) said "Kenneth Pollack of the State Department stated that there was no CIA information tying Iraq into the 1993 WTC bombing."
Shit, there are hundreds of conspiracy theories. I believe they're still looking for anything more relevant than old-ass mustard gas to "prove" that we were justified in invading Iraq for any reason other than our own selfish interests. That doesn't mean that your wanton desire to link terrorism with the country of Iraq is justified -- you'd have a better time proving a link to Saudi Arabia or Libya.
http://terrorism.about.com/od/wariniraq/a/IraqWarOnTerror.htm [about.com] shows the list of "justifications" we have been going through, in case you're interested in a retrospective.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if Pelosi were a "dingbat", that has nothing to do with how crazy are Palin and O'Donnell. No one can make Palin sound like a Rhodes scholar.
Meanwhile, "dingbat" Pelosi has successfully managed the House Speaker office for 4 years. You say she's a "dingbat" because you disagree with her. But you just demonstrated that your logic and evaluation skills don't qualify you to accuse someone else of being a dingbat.
You're just like the rest of the Teabaggers: you exploit an audience's fairness in letting you speak to say anything, no matter how nonsensical, to attack your enemies. Right down to accusing in one sentence your enemies of precisely what you just did yourself in the sentence before it. Nuts and evil.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
Which GP would that be? The "Buckley conservative" or the one that made comments about "tea bags" and other silly insults.
I think it's reasonable to assume that you don't think I was referring to the "Buckley conservative".
In case you haven't noticed, the Tea Partiers are strongly libertarian, which is one of the reasons the Republicans, who are just another flavor of "big government" types were vert leery of them.
I think it's reasonable to assume the GP _is_ a liberal because he's bashing TP'ers while presenting no argument or facts, which is the usual liberal response.
Re:My question (Score:3, Insightful)
Republican fool:
Clinton's administration warned Bush/Cheney that the Qaeda were going to attack soon, because Clinton's administration was actively tracking and working against the Qaeda (despite a Republican Congress waving a blue dress to interfere with bombing Qaeda camps). But Bush/Cheney dismissed those warnings, and stopped protecting us from the Qaeda. Even during 2001 Clinton holdovers and the continuing intel showed a specific attack was about to be made, and Bush/Cheney ignored it. After the attack, Bush/Cheney were interested only in how it could be used to attack Iraq. Bush/Cheney counterattacked the Qaeda only enough to mobilize the military in Iraq. Bush/Cheney let Binladen escape, even when he was within reach. So there is some blame for Clinton's failure to destroy the Qaeda. But the amount of blame for Bush/Cheney is vastly larger, especially since during Clinton's efforts the Qaeda managed to attack only one warship and two embassies. Bush/Cheney's watch saw devastating attacks in the US, and even more devastating bad responses to them.
Clinton continuously bombed Iraq during his term, which is why Iraq did not have WMD when Bush/Cheney attacked them under those lies in 2001. UN inspectors reported correctly that there were no WMD. This is your biggest fool lie.
The beginnings of the bank deregulation were made law in 1998 by the Republican Congress, led by Phil Gramm (R-TX) who in 2008 was McCain's unrepentant economic advisor, while that Congress was pressuring the president with (baseless) impeachment. Clinton deserves some blame for signing that law anyway, but under his watch the deregulation did what was promised: grew the actual wealth of the economy across most economic bands. When Bush/Cheney started managing it, and advancing it, it went totally out of control. For 8 long years they could have changed the regulations or just managed it better, but instead they sent it even more crazy. So again, Clinton deserves some blame, but vastly more blame for Bush/Cheney.
You are the fool who has simplified it more than possible to say "both parties were equal", when Bush/Cheney were vastly more to blame, and entirely to blame for actually letting it happen.
You Republicans are so crazy, evil and stupid that you'll tell these impossible lies over and over, and continue believing them yourselves.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
They let people like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell represent the party.
I'm not taking sides in this debate, but I am curious as to exactly how a loosely organized group like the Tea Party would go about not letting individuals "represent" them. It's not like either person that you named was elected to speak on behalf of the party. Right?
Oh wait, I am talking to A/C, which is a lot like talking to myself. Anyone have a helpful reply?
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:1, Insightful)
Please, then, introduce me to some Tea Partiers that aren't nuts. Every gathering I've witnessed, every piece of tea party media, every tea party leader, the origins of the party itself all point to the same thing. The tea party ideal is entirely a handful of conservative flavored truisms layered with a lot of yelling and draped in an American flag.
A group of people that have realized that, in America, complete dissolution from reality works as a party platform. That, and, they're eager to submit their wills to powerful people and seem glad to receive their opinions from a director rather than be burdened with critical thinking. Funny, though, that the Tea party is not an actual political party. Where does it's money come from? Are their fund raisers? Is the tea party a way to funnel vast amounts of private funds in to public elections while sidestepping election law?
This isn't 'Parroting MSM' (Don't even know what the fuck MSM is) or whatever convenient rationalization you'd love to package up. This is rational, independent, observation from objective sources. If you wonder why people keep telling you the same thing.. Sometimes a duck is a duck.
Now you'll reply. "The tea party is just X people that believe that Y. What's wrong with that?"
No. It isn't. We've heard that line. Crazy is crazy, buddy.
Re:Question #1 (Score:1, Insightful)
"I sleep very well each and every night because I know I was chosen by God(tm) to do what I did."
- George "Dubya" Bush
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope it's moderated (Score:3, Insightful)
To imply that the US won't/doesn't try its soldiers is simply absurd.
There are ample cases in US history - from current all the way back the Revolutionary War - of the US gov't trying US soldiers for all sorts of crimes.
Now, you might contend that the US is RELUCTANT to try its soldiers, and have a point.
Even there, I'd argue that where the blame is clear, no, the US military has actually been fairly swift to try some soldiers.
Where the evidence is sketchy or brought forward by people whose personal agenda is clearly anti-US or anti-military, then I believe that they do investigate/explain/exonerate to a point that might be overcorrecting.
Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't various tea party rallies around the country actively try to recruit Sarah Palin to give speeches?
Likewise, the primary wins of O'Donnell and Joe Miller, due to people who admit to supporting the tea party, clearly shows that these are in fact the desired representatives of many in the tea party (for those states).
Is this a 'real' tea party organization? http://teapartypatriots.org
If so, they seem to think that the recent election was a "win" for them. If so, the new freshman republicans do represent their views. Now, have you seen those views? Look up some of the things that people like Allen West are saying. Or anti-evolution reps like Sandy Adams from Florida.
None of them believe that global warning is an issue (for various reasons), most are extremely close to fundamentalist christians, etc..
I know you aren't taking sides, but I thought I'd point out that yes, Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell do represent, by request of the tea party, the tea party.
And to various posters above claiming that the tea party, overall, isn't nuts, I'd say this: The stated general principles, smaller government, more freedom, free-markets, etc.. are all sane ideas worth talking about. The problem is that those sane ideas normally come along with a host of idiotic, ignorant, and sometimes scary ideas.
There don't seem to be very many true conservatives in existence (at least in the public spotlight) anymore. The republicans were so effective at pushing the country to the right, that I believe they have permanently injured their party's ability to govern. Take the START treaty for example.