#president bush dodging a shoe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thejoerussoexperience-blog · 4 years

Text

The President Who Really Invented Memes

Intro

Log onto Twitter right now, and check out our President’s Twitter page. You’ll notice that many of his Tweets are usually just Mr. President insulting liberal losers, and the “lame-stream media,” rightfully so. However, if you put the politics aside, you’ll notice that the President is a connoisseur of dank memes. Not even videos, but glorious photos too.

Listen, some individuals will argue that Donald J. Trump won an election by posting memes, or even by being so controversial that he generated memes just by talking. What some individuals won’t tell you, is that memes existed way before social media websites became cool. In fact, memes were invented by another President of the 21st century.

George W. Bush Walked So Donald Could Run

Before Twitter, Facebook, and all the other apps that are commonly used today, George W. Bush was the OG creator of memes during his two-term-tenure as a President. Many remember George Bush as the guy who had a sexy Texas twang, and the guy who was president while the economy tanked.

We aren’t here to talk about politics though, we’re here to discuss his legacy as a meme-Jesus. In this blog, we will discuss his most important contributions to the meme world.

#1: If you can dodge impeachment, you can dodge a shoe.

We will now transport ourselves back to 2008, during a time where the Iraq War was just winding down to a standstill. As George Bush shakes hands with the Prime Minister of Iraq, one soleless soulless Iraqi journalist decided that it was the perfect time to strike The Bushman.

Fortunately, Bushboi was a dodgeball champion in his Texas high-school days. Not only does he dodge two leather shoes, but he grins like an idiot the whole entire time! Unfortunately for the journalist, he was severely beaten by the swift memery of George W Bush, and was sentenced to 3 years in a stinky prison.

#2: Terrorists should fear the drive of George Bush.

George Bush actually succeeded in multiple sports, but we will get to that later. In the year 2002, The American government tried to cover this story up, but this Bush started the Golf War. As Bush was desperately pleading to many nations of the world to stop terrorism, he managed to pull off a feat that legends like Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods only managed to do once or twice in their careers.

The terrorists were trembling.

#3: George Bush absolutely sucked at handling Katrina and Kanye West let him know.

You can only say so many good things about George Bush. He was a total jester without really trying, but at times he was an incredibly incompetent leader. Especially in the beginning of his second tenure, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, along with various other Gulf Coast states.

There are countless examples of his incompetence, but perhaps one of the biggest ones is that he failed to waive The Stafford Act, which required local governments of towns and cities to provide 10% of all costs and cleanup projects.

Katrina made landfall in August, and the Stafford Act was not waived until May of the following year. For Hurricane Andrew and 9/11, The Stafford Act was waived in a matter of days. It’s probably why Kanye West dropped this quote on National Television.

The only thing worse than Bush’s Katrina response, was the final film that Mike Myers will ever star in.

The Finale

George Bush is still considered one of the worst Presidents of all time, according to approval ratings. Here are some more honorable mentions of memes, jokes, and moments that cemented George Bush as a meme-making-legend.

He met up with one of the biggest legends in Texas.

Threw a perfect pitch at The Old Yankee Stadium (Duel Athlete)

His Vice President literally shot a man. What a dick!

This whole entire CBS video.

#georgebush

1 note · View note

the-blomster · 5 years

Text

Jello Biafra VS The Forces of Corruption 23

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all relation to real individuals is done purely for parody purposes. I am not associated with any of the people named in this work of fiction and this is not intended to reflect negatively upon anyone.

Chapter 23: Jello Runs for President Part 4

We find Jello facing his oppressor. Formerly a friend, Prince would offer Jello no help in this fight. They were nothing but enemies now. Prince’s eyes glowed a violent red.

“Come on Jello!” Prince shouted, “Attack me already!”

“I will not do that,” Jello explained, “I will only attack if it is in self defense.”

Prince scoffed. “You’re just afraid to attack me aren’t you? You still think of us as friends! How sad, how deplorable!”

“Is there anything so wrong with that? Is it wrong for me to hope that there can be a peaceful solution? To aspire to a future where punk rock can live in harmony with the rest of society?”

“Hope and aspirations are for men who are dead and forgotten! And soon you will be one of those men!”

“That is where you are wrong Prince!” Jello shouted. “You have been accepted by the masses. You have been indoctrinated into consciousness of society, and therefore you will be remembered as nothing but another worn out brick in the wall.”

“Those will be your last words Jello!” Prince shouted back, “And sadly for you, no one will remember them!” Prince placed both of his hands out in front of himself, keeping them close to one another. A blue light began forming on Prince’s palms. Jello stood opposite of Prince, confused but still in a defensive position. The blue light grew to roughly the size of a bowling ball before a beam shot out of Prince’s hands. The laser got within a few inches of Jello, but luckily he managed to leap several dozen feet into the air, leaving only the bottom of his shoes mildly singed. The wall behind Jello; however, did not fare so well. A large hole had been melted into it. The section of the wall had simply dissipated like ice on a hot summer day. What remained of the wall was nothing but steam.

Jello landed on two feet, but was awestruck at what Prince had made of that poor, innocent wall. But Jello’s awe would not last forever, because it was interrupted by the sound of Prince’s footsteps. Prince ran at Jello with lightning fast speed. Prince lifted his fist into, ready to attack, but Jello dodge rolled off the stage and into the awestruck crowd. Prince’s fist collided with the stage, destroying it instantly and leaving a crater with a 40 foot radius in its place. Prince’s attack created a 9.3 magnitude earthquake that knocked Jello and his fans to there feet and causing stage lights to cascade from the ceiling.

With the stage destroyed, the only thing protecting Jello’s fans from Prince’s unfiltered rage was Jello himself. Prince went in for another punch, but this time Jello couldn’t dodge it, otherwise it would hit his fans. As the punch landed, time seemed to stop. Jello’s face could be seen contorting in all sorts of strange ways before time once again returned to normal and Jello flew backwards, knocking his fans down like bowling pins, and sending his crashing face first into the wall.

Jello pushed himself up off of the wall, of which he had been embedded several feet into. He stood triumphantly on his two feet. He pointed directly at Prince and said, “Prince, you can hurt me. You can hurt me all you want. You can try to turn me into a slave to society, but don’t you dare hurt my potential voters!” Jello snapped his fingers. A blast of air so powerful was emitted from Jello’s fingers that Prince collided with the wall opposite of Jello. Prince crashed against the wall but bounce off of it, sending him crashing face first into the ground.

Prince, defeated and out of energy looked up to see Jello standing over him. A menacing shadow formed over Jello’s eyes. “Please!” Prince begged. “Don’t kill me!”

Jello scoffed. “Heh, do you think I’d sink that low? Do you think I would sink as low as the likes of you? I would never hit somebody while they’re down. The fact that you think I would even consider it is despicable. I’ll tell you this though, if I ever have the displeasure of seeing you again, I won’t go easy on you.”

Jello returned to his apartment where he closely watched the election results. Jello watched the votes for both George W. Bush and Al Gore slowly count up. Jello wasn’t even close to them. It would take Jello years of training if he wanted to run again in the next election. But Jello wasn’t concerned about that right now. Jello wanted to know, would Bush win, and still be an overall pretty bad president, or would Al Gore win, and allow his wife Tipper Gore and the PMRC to suppress punk rock permanently. The final results were in. Jello earned 2,882,955 votes, Bush earned 50,456,002 votes, and Al Gore earned… 50,999,897 votes. Jello sighed. It seemed as though punk rock was over for good. But then, CNN’s very own Wolf Blitzer came on the TV. “It seems as though George Bush has won.” Jello was so shocked that he grabbed his TV. Then Jello realized, that the people’s vote didn’t actually matter, and that only the votes of the electoral college mattered. Thank god for corrupt political systems and faux democracy! Now the US government would just be incredibly shitty instead of oppressively shitty! And most important of all, punk rock was saved!

And here is were we leave Jello, with a small glimmer of hope for the future! What will Jello do to secure the safety of punk rock in the future? What will Jello do now that he is independent from the NMCDF? Find out in the next chapter of Jello Biafra VS the Forces of Corruption!

#jello biafra #creative writing #writing #short story #punk rock #music #humor #dead kennedys

2 notes · View notes

vagabondretired · 6 years

Photo

*Codpiece sold separately* Sixteen years ago tomorrow, on October 10, 2002, the House took leave of its senses and said "Okely Dokely" by a 296-133 margin to let President Bush go to war against Iraq without actually, y'know, declaring war. I can hit the highlights of the ensuing debacle from memory without going anywhere near the Google. I know you know the words, too, so feel free to sing along: Smoking gun/mushroom cloud, yellowcake from Niger (not!), MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF WMDs!!!, Shock and Awe, Saddam spokesman "Baghdad Bob" declares victory over USA, Saddam statue pulled down and beaten with shoes, war will be over "in weeks," it'll cost only $1.7 billion, looting is OK because "free people are free to do what they want” … Viceroy Bremer disbands Iraqi military, U.N. building blown up, Saddam sons Don Jr. and Eric Uday & Qusay lose gunfight, body and vehicle armor inadequate, disheveled Saddam found in spider hole, Sunni vs. Shia vs. Kurds vs. Christians, WMDs WILL BE FOUND in "Tikrit and Baghdad and areas north, east, west and south somewhat," Saddam snacks on Doritos in captivity, suicide bombs explode morning noon and night, Abu Ghraib, Saddam's hanging caught on phone-cams, WHERE ARE THE WMDs???, al Qaeda recruitment skyrockets, "You go to war with the army you have not the army you wish to have," stunning incompetence among U.S. civilian leadership, insurgency "is in its last throes" (not!), casualty rate among troops and civilians appallingly high, "THOSE WMDS HAVE GOT TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE!", no-bid contracts to Bush-Cheney cronies, spotty electricity and raw sewage, no sweets and flowers, the surge, Blackwater mercenaries commits atrocities, Iraqi parliament models itself on our Congress by not doing anything and spending half its time on vacation, faulty wiring electrocutes troops in showers, 26 additional reasons given by neocons for starting the war when NO WMDs ARE FOUND, Bush barely dodges shoes thrown at his head, Obama supervises orderly pullout as $2.4 trillion+ gets plunked on America's credit card and blows hole in deficit. Tea Party deficit hawks shrug. The biggest cheerleaders of the war that lasted eight effing years still say they'd love to do Iraq all over again if they could. With one small difference. Knowing what a marathon it'd be, next time they'd definitely do more carbo-loading.

11 notes · View notes

thehumorbot · 5 years

Text

10 years ago today, President Bush showed us his impressive shoe dodging skills

10 years ago today, President Bush showed us his impressive shoe dodging skills Source

#gif #webm #funny #lol #meme #pictures #reddit #thehumorbot #humor #amusing #photos #comic #happy

1 note · View note

nutwolf03 · 2 years

Text

Now You possibly can Have The Haynes Manuals Of Your Dreams Cheaper/Sooner Than You Ever Imagined

Brake fluid, brake pads/shoes and brake rotors ought to be fastidiously inspected. The cost of a brake repair can increase dramatically if even minor problems aren't fastened in a well timed manner. As added insurance coverage, they now mandate that BOPs be equipped with more highly effective shears, capable of slicing by means of the outer pipe even when subjected to the best water stress anticipated at that depth. BP says that in the future, it won't take its construction contractors' phrase that its wells are strong enough to withstand the excessive pressures to which they will be subjected. Some specialists suppose BP and different oil drillers ought to go even additional to strengthen wells. So though your emotions are important, you'd be sensible to let your funds dictate what you should do with it. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Company acknowledges that putting more E85 ethanol flex-fuel automobiles on the highway could increase levels of some varieties of dangerous air pollution. In keeping with U.S. more info , fuel financial system suffers by some 20 % operating on E85 ethanol versus standard pump gasoline.

E85 ethanol produces fewer harmful exhaust emissions than standard gasoline. The chemical reactions inside of batteries take place extra slowly when the battery is cold, so the battery produces fewer electrons. One of many causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster was the failure of cement sealing, which lined the outlet bored within the Gulf floor and held the pipe that goes down via the rig in place. Federal investigators discovered that the catastrophe was the results of a number of mistakes made by oil company BP, together with an improperly cemented seal on the nicely that allowed oil to leak, and the corporate's failure to carry out up-to-par maintenance and security exams and to adequately practice the rig's crew, in keeping with Time. As oil business officials later admitted during Congressional hearings, they had been unprepared to deal with a catastrophe a mile underwater, and so the emergency group was pressured to use ways improvised on the fly, from making an attempt to use robots to power the BOP's shear rams closed, to decreasing a 100-ton containment dome over the leaking nicely. Within the aftermath of the incident, critics warned that drilling for oil more than a mile under water is inherently risky, since equipment should withstand intense stress, and the strategies used to cap leaks at lesser depths may not work.

Critics deride the hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax subsidies supplied ethanol producers, labeling them government handouts that go primarily to large agricultural pursuits and large-company refineries. Already having constructed a number of million E85 ethanol flex-gas vehicles over the past decade, GM, Ford, and the Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep group say they plan to place a combined complete of 2 million more on the street each year, starting in 2007. Their prime executives have lobbied for increased government support of ethanol production. That is up from 20 for the 2006 model year, and more than triple the quantity obtainable in 2000. Regardless of make, model, or engine all these autos can run on standard gasoline or the E85-ethanol mix with no modification and no difference in efficiency. Miles per gallon endure once you run on E85 ethanol because it would not include as a lot power as regular-grade gasoline. As we'll see in subsequent sections of this report, the benefits of utilizing E85 ethanol are balanced by reduced gas economy, scarcity of E85 ethanol fueling stations, and a flex-gas automobile fleet made up mostly of full-dimension trucks and SUVs.E85 is shorthand for a mix of combustible motor-vehicle gas that's eighty five p.c ethanol and 15 % typical unleaded gasoline.

President Bush and Detroit's automakers say that utilizing E85 ethanol gasoline puts America on the road to energy independence. Additionally, engineers had to figure out the best way to utilize underwater robots to perform advanced development duties, and needed to grow to be adept at utilizing remote sensing expertise to monitor conditions thousands of ft below on the Gulf ground. In deepwater oil drilling, robots are the roughnecks who get essentially the most tough jobs completed. Some attempted to close the BOP's shear rams, while others hooked up hoses and plumbing, installed oil recovery gadgets and constructed the relief properly to stop the gusher. ScienceEnergy ProductionHow Oil Refining WorksScienceEnergy ProductionOil Area PicturesScienceEnergy ProductionWhat is enhanced oil restoration? ScienceEnergy ProductionHow was oil trapped beneath the Earth's floor? ScienceEnergy ProductionAre we drilling for oil within the U.S.? ScienceEnergy ProductionEverglades Oil: What's to drill? Now that we have scoped out the challenges of password management, let's look at the fundamental options of different types of password administration software program. Bromwich, Michael R. “Decision Memorandum for the Secretary.” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

#auto repair books #bentley manuals #chilton manuals #haynes manuals #diy repair manuals #pdf repair manuals #online service manuals #auto repair #car service #truck service #bike repair

0 notes

swan2swan · 7 years

Link

Well, there’s no surprise.

The Washington Post notes that the Guaybano [sic] mayor led Trump on a walking tour of a neighborhood in which the greatest damage involved blown-out second-story windows and knocked-down trees. Residents stood outside to greet the president, snapping photos on their cell phones.

Keep in mind, as well, that this is what Trump does: he goes to areas like Guaynabo, where he is favored, and laps up the praise. It’s why he has held his rallies in Louisiana, Phoenix, Ohio, and now North Carolina. You won’t see him rallying in Central Park, or Heinz Field, or anywhere in California, save for the most remote areas.

This is how he projects his own image back upon himself--because if he found himself in front of a hostile crowd even once, the recorded evidence could be devastating. Remember how iconic the sight of George W. Bush dodging shoes became; if a clear piece of video appears where someone disrespects Trump to his face (as we saw three times during the debates, to what should have been devastating effect), it could last for ages.

But he’s smart enough to avoid these areas, and too fragile to take a chance. Again, remember what happened when he melted down in front of the press at Trump Tower--there’s a reason why he doesn’t take questions. He’s a coward and a bully. So he heads to areas where he can shine the biggest light of propaganda down: a wealthy neighborhood that suffered minimal damage, a place where he can say “See? The damage isn’t that bad!”

And to him, it isn’t. Because President Trump doesn’t care about people who rely upon tablets to purify their water, and he has nothing but admiration when a police officer decides to be judge, jury, and executioner: only the people who support him deserve to exist in his world. Anyone else can die, or suffer until they bend the knee.

Remember this.

#we have three more years of this horror #president trump #donald trump #puerto rico #guaynabo

41 notes · View notes

adambstingus · 5 years

Text

‘The stakes are astronomical’: Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing will be a battle royale

Democrats know Trumps greatest legacy may be the ascent of a second conservative supreme court justice. Their fight to stop it starts now

Is he the unassuming family man who talks baseball over a beer, champions working women and directs traffic at the Fourth of July parade? Or the extreme ideologue whose ascent will strike a hammer blow to women, tilt America to the right for a generation and shore up the re-election of Donald Trump?

The opposing portraits of Brett Kavanaugh the man and Brett Kavanaugh the jurist will collide on Tuesday when the Senate considers him for the supreme court. The confirmation hearing, a critical test of temperament, may illuminate whether he is ultimately driven by the law or by ideology.

Either way, the seat is Kavanaugh’s to lose. Liberal activists have found it hard to sustain the fury that followed his nomination by Trump after swing vote Anthony Kennedy’s retirement in June. The hearing on Capitol Hill represents Democrats’ last best chance to thwart him.

“The only hope the country has is that Democrats will treat Kavanaugh like a hostile witness on the witness stand under cross-examination, throw him off script and break him down,” said Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois.

“You do not need a gentleman or gentlewoman to deal with Kavanaugh. You need a district attorney. Some Democrats are going to have to go for the jugular.”

But Kavanaugh, 53, is no Daniel in the lions’ den. He is the ultimate Washington insider, steeped in the city’s political and legal establishments. His father spent more than two decades in the city as a lobbyist for the cosmetics industry. His mother was a high school teacher and a Maryland judge.

An only child, Kavanaugh went to all-male Catholic schools, studied at Yale University and Yale Law School, clerked for Kennedy in 1993-94 and was an associate counsel for independent counsel Kenneth Starr. In 1998, two days before President Bill Clinton testified to a grand jury from the White House, Kavanaugh posed 10 suggested questions about the affair with Monica Lewinsky, many of them sexually explicit.

He was a member of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney during the 2000 election and took part in the Florida recount that gave George W Bush victory over Al Gore. Kavanaugh served as a White House counsel to Bush and then staff secretary until 2006, when – his nomination having been held up by Democrats for three years – he was appointed to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. Once he became a judge, he decided to stop voting.

He offered an insight into his judicial philosophy during a speech at Catholic University’s law school in 2015. He likened being a judge to being a good umpire, able to walk in others’ shoes and understand them while keeping emotions in check.

“On the bench, to put it in the vernacular, don’t be a jerk,” he said, also advising: “Check those political allegiances at the door when you become a judge.”

Kavanaugh’s supporters have been quick to point out that he hired more female than male clerks. Sarah Pitlyk, who became a mother shortly before clerking for Kavanaugh in 2010-11, recently told an audience at the Heritage Foundation how he called her before the job started.

“He just put it out there and said, ‘You’re a mom coming to clerk, I haven’t done this before, you haven’t done this before, let’s figure out what we need to do to make the clerkship just as rewarding for you as it would be otherwise but also to make it possible for you to be a mother while you’re doing it.’”

She added: “He asked for my ideas about how do to that. He didn’t tell me what would work for me, he didn’t prescribe the best solution based on his infinite wisdom or what he’d seen in other contexts … We made the accommodations that I needed to see my son every day and also be clerk for Judge Kavanaugh.”

The judge lives with his wife of 14 years, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, and daughters Margaret and Elizabeth in a $1.2m home in Chevy Chase, an affluent, predominantly white town north of Washington. (According to the New York Times, he makes $220,600 as a federal judge while she earns about $60,000 as town manager).

Kavanaugh is seen out walking his dog, Murphy, or shovelling snow. He has coached girls basketball teams and serves as a lector and usher at Blessed Sacrament Church. Greg Chernack, a Democrat, lawyer and chairman of the town council, said: “He is very unassuming. He’s very down to earth and easy to talk to. He’s just another one of the neighbours. He usually plays traffic cop on 4 July when we have a parade.”

Kavanaugh is a fan of Bruce Springsteen and the Washington Nationals baseball team, Chernack added. “I sense he’s a big reader and right upfront in knowing legal literature. There are many things I disagree with him on but he’s an extremely impressive jurist and the type of judge you want a Republican president to nominate.”

Kavanaugh with his law clerks in 2014–15, in Washington, the first all-women law clerk class in the history of the DC circuit. Photograph: Department of Justice/AP

Others who have met him also sing his praises. Curt Levey, president of the conservative activist group the Committee for Justice, said: “He’s intellectually curious. He loves to get into the details of the law and that’s why he loves being a judge. He’s the perfect person for it.”

There has also been support from unexpected quarters. Lisa Blatt, a self-declared liberal Democrat and feminist who has argued 35 cases before the supreme court, more than any other woman, wrote in Politico earlier this month: “Sometimes a superstar is just a superstar. That is the case with Judge Brett Kavanaugh … he will do the job with dignity, intelligence, empathy and integrity.”

Kavanaugh seems likely to have the full support of the Senate’s Republican majority including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, having apparently assuaged their concerns over the landmark abortion rights ruling Roe v Wade. Levey said: “It’s one thing to say it was wrongly decided. It’s another to say, after nearly 50 years, ‘I’m going to go out there and overturn it.’

“I never got the sense it’s at the top of his list of the most important issues in the world. The reason there’s no real doubt Collins and Murkowski are going to vote for him is they know that. He might be conservative but he’s not on an ideological mission to ban all abortions.”

Progressive activists, however, remain convinced that is precisely his mission. A multi-million dollar advertising and lobbying campaign is in full swing. The groups Women’s March and Center for Popular Democracy Action are planning a day of action in Washington on Tuesday.

Boyle, an international law expert who serves as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the provisional government of the Palestinian Authority, shares these concerns.

“I think Kavanaugh was put on there to ensure Roe is overturned,” he said. “He has used the Roberts dodge of saying it is settled law. So what? The supreme court can unsettle it tomorrow. He did not say it was decided correctly.”

Critics note that Trump has relied heavily on the rightwing Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society to develop his shortlist for supreme court nominations. Boyle said: “Kavanaugh is an extreme ideologue and a legal hatchet man for the Federalist Society. He was their spear carrier for years. He is being put on there by Trump to do their business and make the court as far right as he can under the circumstances. It’s going to be bad for a lot of people: for gays, for African Americans, for labour, for women.”

‘He’s been battle-tested’

Trump’s nominations of solid conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the supreme court are the glue holding his Republican coalition together, delighting evangelicals and persuading at least some moderates to overlook the president’s multiple shortcomings.

Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill – with the supreme court in the background – in July. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Come Tuesday, Democrats are like to press Kavanaugh on Roe v Wade and LGBT rights, his scepticism about affirmative action, whether he misled senators at his 2006 confirmation hearings about national security issues in the Bush White House, and his attitude to whether a sitting president should be protected from litigation and criminal investigations. The decision by the Trump administration to withhold 100,000 documents relating to Kavanaugh’s White House service will also hang over the hearing.

Senators with courtroom backgrounds such as Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Kamala Harris of California are likely to probe hard. But John Malcolm, vice-president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation, said: “Judge Kavanaugh has been through two confirmation hearings and he’s been battle tested. If he can serve in the positions he’s served in in the Bush White House, my guess is he’ll have no trouble at his confirmation hearing.”

Neal Katyal, an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, predicted that the spotlight will be more on the nominee’s conservatism than his character.

“Judge Kavanaugh is one of the most respected judges currently serving,” he said. “At the same time, he’s also conservative, and quite a bit more conservative than the justice he has been nominated to replace.”

Kavanaugh’s significance is likely to endure long after the latest outlandish speech or tweet from the president has been forgotten. Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, added: “The stakes are astronomical – this nomination, if successful, will dramatically alter the composition of the US supreme court, and very well may be President Trump’s most lasting legacy.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-stakes-are-astronomical-brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing-will-be-a-battle-royale/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184220423477

0 notes

opedguy · 5 years

Text

Democrats Lash Out at Howard Schultz

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Jan. 30, 2019.--Announcing Jan. 27 he’s considering an independent run for president, 65-year-old billionaire founder of Starbucks Howard Schultz received no welcome mat from the Democrat Party. Worried he’d steal votes from any Democrat candidate, Schultz go nothing but vitriol from Democrats claiming he’d guarantee 72-year-old President Donald Trump’s reelection. But running as an independent, whether he wins or not, is the right of any U.S. citizen believing they can make a difference in today’s partisan gridlock, the reason Schultz believes there should be an alternative to the two-party system. No, Democrats are only concerned about taking votes away from their future nominee, not whether or not they compromise Schultz’s Constitutional rights. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was the first to announce for president, said billionaires like Schultz should be allowed to buy elections.

Schultz said he respects Warren but politely disagrees with her socialist agenda, promising Medicare-for-all, free college tuition at state universities and colleges and higher taxes on the rich. Schultz noted that Warren seems to blame him for being successful, lifting himself out of Brooklyn housing projects to run one of America’s most successful corporations. In case Warren missed it, Schutlz, as CEO of Starbucks, instituted a generous college tuition plan for full-time employees, subsidizing tuition and paying for generous health care benefits. Schultz told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he’s “no longer” a Democrat, since the party lurched toward the left, now embracing former Democrat candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leftist agenda, starting with Medicare-for-all health care and free college tuition. Schultz believes Warren or Sanders’ plans would bankrupt the country.

Promoting his new book, “From the Ground Up: A Journey to Re-imagine the Promise of America,” Schultz told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzeziniski that “I’ve been a Democrat but no longer.” “I don’t affiliate myself with the Democratic Party, who’s so far left, who basically wants the government to take over health care, which we cannot afford, the government to give free college to everybody, and the government to give everyone a job . . .We can’t afford it,” Schultz explained. “What’s ‘ridiculous’ is billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else,” Warren tweeted Jan. 29. When you consider Starbucks under Schultz has done more to give opportunities to rank-and-file employees to earn college degrees and get excellent health care, Warren’s criticism rings hollow, actually outrageous.

Schultz’s Starbucks set a national trend for providing its employees opportunities to advance from within the company, promoting individuals from starting jobs as baristas, to supervisors, assistant managers, managers, district managers, area mangers to corporate positions. No one, certainly not Warren, can accuse Schultz of creating anything but a model company, giving its employees the best chance of advancement. Warren’s the last person to accuse someone like Schultz of robbing employees of opportunities when all he’s done at Starbucks in create them. Warren’s real beef with Schultz is that he has widespread appeal to the vast majority of moderate and independent voters, something she doesn’t have. Warren appeals only to the radical fringe of Democrat voters looking to the government to solve problems on health care, education and employment. Schultz sees that approach as disastrous.

Adding Schultz to the political mix is precisely what Democrats need to pull the party back from the socialist abyss. “Well, I must be doing something right to create so much interests and backlash from the Democratic Party,” Schultz told Mika and Joe. “I mean, some of it is a surprise, but I think we expected to see some of the level of vitriol, but not to the extent it’s been,” suggesting, at the very least, Schultz’s independent candidacy could resonate with large numbers of voters. Schultz is no Texas oil billionaire like H. Ross Perot, whose eccentricities were seen by all. Schultz’s narrative fits right into the American Dream, growing up poor, having vision, working hard and making it to the top. Unlike Perot who sank President George W. Bush’s bid for a second term in 1992, handing the presidency to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, Schultz appeals to mainstream voters.

Whether or not Schultz actually runs for president as an independent is anyone’s guess. As of right now, he’s a mortal threat to the Democrat Party, that so far has lurched so much to the left, it’s leaving behind most independent and moderate voters. Unlike other out-of-touch billionaires, Schultz is exactly the opposite, someone who started from scratch and made it big. “I have walked in their shoes. I’m on both sides of the equation. I’m somebody who has been—who’s successful, I’m somebody who came from the projects, and I understand American people,” Schultz told “Morning Joe.” Lashing out at Schultz is lashing out at the American Dream, someone who embodies the values of entrepreneurship, hard work and success. When Schultz said the two-party system is broken, he resonates with the silent majority, sick and tired of business-as-usual in Washington.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

0 notes

pcluv · 5 years

Text

10 years ago today, President Bush showed us his impressive shoe dodging skills

10 years ago today, President Bush showed us his impressive shoe dodging skills Source

0 notes

yahoonews7 · 4 years

Link

(Bloomberg) -- A few months after his astonishing rise to power, Vladimir Putin, then 47, was eager to please at his first Kremlin summit with an American counterpart: Bill Clinton. The retired KGB colonel’s charm offensive started with an elaborate dinner of wild boar and goose, followed by a tour of his private quarters and a jazz concert that entertained his saxophone-playing guest until midnight. At some point, Putin would later say, he dropped a bombshell by asking if Russia could someday join NATO, the Western military alliance created to counter Moscow’s global machinations after World War II.“I have no objection,” Clinton replied, according to Putin. It was June 2000. Two decades of animosity later, including almost six years of increasingly onerous sanctions that started over the war in Ukraine, Russia’s relations with the U.S. and its allies have rarely been more fraught. But Putin, who’d already outlasted 29 Group of Seven leaders by the time he won the final six-year term allowed by the constitution in 2018, appears to be turning the tables despite what he calls hysterical Russophobia in the West.At a summit on Ukraine in Paris this month, Putin dominated a room that included Angela Merkel of Germany and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Merkel, Europe’s most powerful politician for most of the past 15 years, is on her way out. Macron, facing crippling strikes and protests at home, is urging NATO to stop viewing Russia as an enemy. (Another NATO founder, Britain, plans to finally quit the EU next month, creating new fissures on the continent.)Then on Tuesday, Putin declared a victory of sorts in Russia’s unspoken arms race with the U.S. by announcing the world’s first deployment of hypersonic weapons, which he said can hit targets across continents.“The Soviet Union played catch up,” Putin told top military brass at a meeting in Moscow. “Today, we have a situation that is unique in modern history: they’re trying to catch up to us.” Under Putin, Russia has restored some of the geopolitical might wielded by the Soviet Union, irking most of NATO’s 29 nations in the process. He’s deepened ties with China, annexed Crimea from Ukraine, turned the tide of the war in Syria, sold advanced air-defense systems to NATO-member Turkey and reached major arms and oil deals with a key U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, as well as Venezuela—all while allegedly meddling in votes in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere.Russia is once again a major power in the Middle East and it’s expanding in Africa for the first time in a generation. The Kremlin has rekindled military ties to regional power Egypt and battle-ravaged Libya, where a strongman supported by Russian mercenaries is vying for power with a UN-backed government in Tripoli.But for all his success abroad, Putin is facing growing economic and political risks from the rigid, top-down system of governance he’s installed in a country that sprawls through 11 time zones. The dilemma for the Kremlin now is how to perpetuate Putinism, or “managed democracy” in its own parlance, after Putin’s term ends in 2024.“If you compare Russia today with 2000, when Putin came to power, it’s in a much better position,” said Thomas Graham, a senior Russia policy official in George W. Bush’s two administrations. “But if you look at it over the next 10 years, the question is how is it going to maintain this?”Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about Putin’s ability to continue extending Russia’s global reach is that he’s doing it on a shoe-string budget. The anemic and extraction-reliant economy he’s built is less than 8% the size of the U.S., which spends more than double on defense alone than Russia spends on everything, including education, health care and policing. At the same meeting Putin bragged about gaining the upper hand in new weaponry, his defense minister complained about falling behind in terms of military spending, which is projected to drop to ninth in the world next year from seventh last year. Putin’s fiscal prudence, particularly since the Ukraine conflict erupted, has made the government’s balance sheet one of the healthiest in the world, earning praise from rating agencies and the International Monetary Fund.Russia is running a budget surplus, has relatively little debt and holds one of the largest reserves of foreign currency and gold. But Putin’s reluctance to try to jumpstart the economy through a major stimulus package reflects the constrictions and inefficiencies bred into his state-dominated economy. Russia even decided to raise the retirement age last year to save money on pensions, sparking major protests. Growth this year is expected to be just above 1%, and most economists see future expansion capped at about 2% for reasons that have to do with the structure of Putin’s system, which prizes stability above all. With the world as a whole growing at about 3.5%, the IMF expects Russia’s share of global output to almost halve to 1.7% in 2024 from 3% in 2013.“Nobody would bet money on Russia growing faster than the global economy,” said Sergei Guriev, a former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Russian government adviser who’s criticized the Kremlin from France since 2013. “This is a direct result of the political leadership’s choice to continue along the path of stagnation.”Putin has repeatedly vowed to achieve a “major economic breakthrough” for the population, but real incomes continue to fall, dropping 10% over the last five years. With career prospects shrinking, more than half of Russians aged 18 to 24 want to emigrate, according to a November poll by the independent Levada Center.“If any Western country experienced this kind of reality, the government would probably be replaced in an election,” Guriev said by phone from Paris. “But in Russia, somehow they manage to get away with it.”Against a backdrop of growing dissatisfaction, Putin’s approval rating, which hit almost 90% amid the patriotic fervor that erupted after the annexation of Crimea, has slid back to 68%, according to Levada. And that number is distorted by the lack of political competition and voter reluctance to voice criticism of Putin in a phone survey. (All mobile calls in Russia are now recorded and stored for a time in special collection centers under a new law designed to fight terrorism.)Putin has been deft at using the repressive powers of the state, both subtly and demonstrably, to prevent the rise of a challenger or a mass-market opposition media outlet. The leading critic in his first two terms, former billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was imprisoned for what ended up to be a decade. His most outspoken opponent now, Alexei Navalny, has faced virtually non-stop jailings over unsanctioned rallies.Still, most older Russians who lived through the lost decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, triggering an economic slump deeper than America’s Great Depression, consider Putin a savior for reversing the collapse and restoring law and order. On Dec. 30, 1999, Putin, then just the latest in a string of prime ministers, stated frankly that it would take the former superpower 15 years of 8% growth just to match the per capita GDP of then-present day Portugal, which isn’t even “among the world industrial leaders.”A day later, on New Year’s Eve, an ailing President Boris Yeltsin stepped down, telling Putin to “take care of Russia.” With new leadership—and surging oil prices—Russia grew about 7 percent on average over the next eight years and in 2012 almost caught Portugal by that measure, before falling back again. Nominal GDP would peak at No. 8 in that year before dipping to 11th in 2018, roughly on par with South Korea, which has just 35% of Russia’s population.Putin, with help from China and other countries, has been building barricades to guard Russia’s economy from the vagaries of the U.S. dollar-dominated financial system and the impact of any additional sanctions. This, coupled with Putin’s tactical abilities in global affairs, allows Russia to keep punching above its weight, according to Dmitri Trenin, head of the Moscow Carnegie Center.“GDP is not the absolute measure of all things economic,” Trenin said. “Far more important are the basic resilience of the economy; its capacity to absorb powerful shocks; Moscow’s sound finances; its low foreign debt; the Kremlin’s capacity to mobilize in the face of external threats; and the relative abundance of resources Moscow needs to support its foreign policy.”Meanwhile, Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is starting to grapple with the question of 2024, people close to the Kremlin say. While Putin has repeatedly ruled out amending the constitution to allow another term, most recently during his annual press conference, no other option for staying in power, if that’s what he choose to do, looks like a safe bet. The stage is being set for what may turn out to be his riskiest gambit of all. \--With assistance from Samuel Dodge, Ilya Arkhipov and Anna Andrianova.To contact the author of this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Gregory White at [email protected] more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2QE0KLN

#World news

0 notes

vampyre-lesbian · 5 years

Note

I am in fact too young to understand the bush thing, please explain

ahh, the infamous “bush shoeing incident”! allow me to set the stage:

iraq. 2008. the u.s. president at the time and all-around bad guy, george bush, was holding a press conference at the iraqui prime minister's palace in baghdad. iraqi journalist and all-time HERO, muntadhar al-zaidi attended the conference, and, furious at the u.s.’s treatement of his country, he threw two shoes at bush, “for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.” tragically, bush managed to dodge both shoes, but fortunately, the glorious moment was caught and immortalized on tape.

undefined

youtube

even though the attack had little effect on bush himself, al-zaidi was embraced around the arab world (and in the u.s,. too) for his historic actions. and the story has become pretty much infamous in the activism community!

the end.

0 notes

vagabondretired · 7 years

Photo

Fifteen years ago, on October 10, 2002, the House took leave of its senses and said "Okely Dokely" by a 296-133 margin to let President Bush go to war against Iraq without actually, y'know, declaring war. I can hit the highlights of the ensuing debacle from memory without going anywhere near the Google. I know you know the words, too, so feel free to sing along Smoking gun/mushroom cloud, yellowcake from Niger (not!), MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF WMDs!!!, Shock and Awe, Saddam spokesman "Baghdad Bob" declares victory over USA, Saddam statue pulled down and beaten with shoes, war will be over "in weeks," it'll cost only $1.7 billion, looting is OK because "free people are free to do what they want” Viceroy Bremer disbands Iraqi military, U.N. building blown up, Saddam sons Uday & Qusay lose gunfight, body and vehicle armor inadequate, disheveled Saddam found in spider hole, Sunni vs. Shia vs. Kurds vs. Christians, WMDs WILL BE FOUND in "Tikrit and Baghdad and areas north, east, west and south somewhat," Saddam snacks on Doritos in captivity, suicide bombs explode morning noon and night, Abu Ghraib, Saddam's hanging caught on phone-cams, WHERE ARE THE WMDs???, al Qaeda recruitment skyrockets, "You go to war with the army you have not the army you wish to have," stunning incompetence among U.S. civilian leadership, insurgency "is in its last throes" (not!), casualty rate among troops and civilians appallingly high, "THOSE WMDS HAVE GOT TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE!", no-bid contracts to Bush-Cheney cronies, spotty electricity and raw sewage, no sweets and flowers, the surge, Iraqi parliament models itself on our Congress by not doing anything and spending half its time on vacation, faulty wiring electrocutes troops in showers, 26 additional reasons given by neocons for starting the war when NO WMDs ARE FOUND, Bush barely dodges shoes thrown at his head, Obama supervises orderly pullout as $2.4 trillion+ gets plunked on America's credit card and blows hole in deficit. Tea Party deficit hawks shrug. The biggest cheerleaders of the eight-year(!!!!!) war still say they'd love to do Iraq all over again if they could. With one small difference. They'd replace the Q with an N.

2 notes · View notes

criticalotterstudies · 5 years

Text

Mr. Lévy is France’s favorite punching bag. Legendary for wearing a black Christian Dior suit over an unbuttoned white shirt, the man who has had the ear of presidents since Francois Mitterand, no matter their political affiliations, was born into wealth and attended the best schools in Paris, getting his agrégation in philosophy. His counter-intuitive lightning rod 1977 book Barbarism With A Human Face was published at a time when the communist party was not only France’s main political opposition to the Gaullist right, that had been in power since World War II, but the main referent among intellectuals. In the eighties there was not one TV talk show producer who didn’t want to book the former Maoist and a few other of his friends, called the New Philosophers, such as Andre Glucksman and Pascal Bruckner. The new prime-time stars were eager to explain their sudden disdain of Marxism and full embrace of the crypto-fascist anti-USSR Tsarist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Mr. Lévy’s father, who had made his fortune with Becop, a corporation importing rare wood treated in exploitative plants from the Ivory Coast and Gabon, where subpar wages and mass deforestation were the norm, financed his short-lived daily L’Imprévu while he was dating models. As with many neocons in America who had a leftist past, this newfound anti-Marxist discourse, which occurred while the USSR was invading Afghanistan, resonated throughout Europe like a Tickle Me Elmo fire sale in a Columbus, Ohio suburb.

Pretty soon Mr. Lévy was in Sarajevo dodging snipers’ bullets and having tea with Ahmad Shah Massoud in the Panjshir Valley. When he got stuck in Bosnia under Serbian shells, unable to fly to Saint-Paul-de-Vence to marry Eric Rohmer’s égérie Arielle Dombasle, he had President Mitterand send an air force jet to bring him to Provence on time.

“Don’t you think that’s why people hate you?” I asked him. “What was I supposed to do? Not get married?” he answered. “Mitterand owed me, I helped him save face in Bosnia. I did so much for the French government, in the name of the French government, that it was really the least they could do to help me fly there.”

Indeed, it was his idea to have the French president land unannounced at the Sarajevo airport in a show of force meant to calm the carnage taking place in the former Yugoslavia. Alas nothing came out of it, so grateful Mitterand was to the Serbs for their stance against Hitler during World War II and so helpless Europe thankfully is without an army. The slaughter kept on going in Europe’s backyard until President Clinton belatedly intervened and bombed Serbia.

Part prime-time buffoonery, part tourism diplomacy, Mr. Lévy was at least trying to end Sarajevo’s siege and help Massoud get international recognition and weapons. Never mind that people close to Massoud never heard of a meeting with Lévy and that a Bosniac TV crew staged an interview with the philosopher, replete with sniper soundtracks and faux dodgings.

“Democracies are not run by the truth,” Mr. Lévy told me.

...

No wonder that Mr. Lévy, a son of the Enlightenment, sees Voltaire as the light at the end of the tunnel. “My relationship to powers has always been the same,” he said, “I act as a real citizen, a citizen is somebody who considers that the power is at his service. They are here to serve us. We are users of the powers, they belong to us. We elect them we have the right to use them and when they act bad we have the right and the duty to disdain them.”

“That’s naïve what you just said,” I told him. Naïve but remarkably efficient. In 2011 Mr. Lévy went to Benghazi, camera in tow, when Gaddafi was about to squash a growing rebellion with mass killing at a time when Libya was already parceled out to tribes and warlords out of Tripoli’s grip. He sat down the first loudmouth he crossed paths with at the newly established Transitional Counsel, a guy named Mansour Saif al-Nasr, stood close to him to be on frame on camera and dialed president Nicolas Sarkozy, famous for wearing compensated shoes. A week later this traveling circus was at the Elysée Palace on Mr. Lévy’s own dime and in a month, after Sarkozy had convinced David Cameron and Barack Obama to join forces, French jets were pounding Gaddafi’s troops. Three months later Gaddafi was dead.

Today Libya is the most dangerous place on earth, a failed state, with ISIS free to set up shop in the north. The chaos is such that women and children from all over Africa jump by the hundreds on derelict boats and go drown in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Eldorado Europe. “You knew that there were people in the Transitional Counsel that were former Gaddafi henchmen like Mustapha Abdeljalil who was his butcher in chief as minister of justice.” I told him, “It didn’t make you pause? Wasn’t the writing on the wall?”

“That’s not how power works. You don’t go around telling people the truth. People don’t vote for just the truth. If only it were that simple…You would tell them the truth and everything would get figured out. That’s not how people vote. They usually vote for the lies. They vote for economical reasons as Marx said, for very personal reasons as Freud said or because it suits their view of the world as Nietzsche said. I see these leaders I deal with and ask to intervene in some situations, all of them, as cards in my hand. With power things happen surgically, by piecemeal, one-time deals as Michel Foucault said. I was against the war in Iraq because no Iraqi asked Bush for help, to come in and topple Saddam. In Libya a vast part of the population was begging for our help. The chaos is a necessary step unfortunately in the birth of democracy. In the great scheme of things, 40 years is nothing for people to build a democratic constitution. We are not slaves to power, we can vote, we can take it.”

...

Many French people think Mr. Sarkozy used Mr. Lévy as a smoke screen and the decision to destroy Mr. Gaddafi’s power as a preemptive strike because the Guide was about to make public the tens of millions of dollars he had given to Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign for the presidency in 2007. Others point to the fact that his foreign minister at the time, and probable next French president, Alain Juppe, had already sent emissaries to Benghazi to reach out to the Transitional Counsel. Meanwhile as a result of the West’s intervention in Libya, mercenaries and weapons looted from Gaddafi’s military bases poured into the Islamist tribes’ hands in neighboring northern Mali and they all started marching on the capital Bamako in the south. President Hollande, who defeated Mr. Sarkozy in the meantime, sent troops to Mali to protect the Christian south and while he was at it to CAR, all of it according to The New York Times to get access to primary resources.

“The New York Times was wrong,” Mr. Lévy said. “There is nothing to grab in these countries and if this were the goal we would do what the Chinese are doing… come in slow and steady with a lot of cash and no weapons.” But the Chinese are sitting on half of the world’s currency debt and France is broke as Job. All of a sudden, while there is growing talk of a European military force, France is back all over northern and Sub-Saharan Africa with boots on the ground battling the same foe it tamed during its colonial past: Islam. Simultaneously, fascist parties are on the rise in every country across Europe and in some places like France and England they arrived first in the recent European elections. Colonial powers never run on liberal fuel. But what is the exact meaning of an expansionistic Europe in the age of verticality and globalization? England, one of the rare European countries growing out of recession, pulled back its troops from Afghanistan and refused to help France pay for its African folly. “Hollande was right to intervene in Mali and CAR,” Mr. Lévy said, “he had to fight terrorism there.” Wasn’t this one of Bush’s rationales to enter Baghdad? Wasn’t another one democracy export?

https://observer.com/2015/05/why-does-everyone-hate-bernard-henri-levy/amp/

1 note · View note