Looking back this week at his budget-busting windfall for the wealthy, George W. Bush lamented, "I wish they weren't called the Bush tax cuts." With good reason. After all, the first modern president to cut taxes during war-time, Bush's gravy train for the gilded-class helped double the national debt and produce record income inequality even […]
Category: Bush Admin.
For years, the Bush torture team and its ardent supporters have depended on what might be called the Seinfeld defense of its regime of detainee interrogation: it's not a lie, if you believe it. But with the release of this week Philip Zelikow's 2006 memo warning the Bush administration about its illegal detainee interrogation techniques, […]
On Monday, President Obama unsurprisingly expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even less remarkable, Obama rightly reminded Americans that "conservative commentators" have for year said "the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would […]
Three top officials of the General Services Administration (GSA) were ousted Monday in advance of an Inspector General's report documenting a lavish spending spree at a 2010 agency conference in Las Vegas. But while White House chief of staff Jacob Lew reported that President Obama was "outraged by the excessive spending, questionable dealings with contractors, […]
Following their mid-term landslide in late 2010, emboldened Senate Republicans led by leaders Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl almost scuttled the START treaty with Russia, a pact which enjoyed overwhelming support from the public and every living Republican secretary of state. So, when President Obama told his outgoing Russian counterpart that he would have more […]
This week, Karl Rove took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal in the feeble attempt to undermine of one of President Obama's signature achievements, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. "Mr. Obama did," Rove sniffed, "what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation." Well, not quite every commander-in-chief. […]
The President was getting hammered on gas prices. Under increasing pressure from the press and the other party, administration officials repeatedly insisted there is no "magic bullet" or "magic wand" to bring prices down at the pump. Making matters worse, the President was embarrassed during a White House press conference during which he shockingly admitted […]
Among the predictable Republican reactions to the President's proposed 2013 budget is the refrain that "Obama has failed to keep a 2009 promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term." Just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a CPAC audience that President Obama "said he'd cut the […]
Remember when conservatives raged after President George W. Bush issued messages marking the celebration of Kwanzaa each and every year he was in the White House? Neither do they. That's why the right-wing blogosphere is apoplectic that Barack Obama followed Bush's lead in recognizing a holiday many African-Americans celebrate each year. As he did in […]
When President Obama on Tuesday declared that decades of Republican trickle-down economics "never worked," conservatives were predictably apoplectic. But for all of their protests of "class warfare", "socialism" and worse, Obama was being kind to the Republican ideologues. After all, as the historical record shows, from economic growth and job creation to stock market performance […]