The Election Is Won, Anger Will Come And Stupidity Is ...Deferred

The analysts will be too kind. Sorry.

The re-election of George Bush showed just how stupid our country had gotten. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 showed the world that America had its fill of stupidity. The re-election of Barack Obama has re-affirmed that attitude ...

...but barely.

With George Bush, we had the world's greatest diplomatic dimwit: reading the expression on his face as he descended from Air Force One, you had the distinct impression that he didn't have a clue as to where he was. His presidency was a diplomatic void so vast that everyone and their mother screamed to him in his last year "Legacy, can you spell legacy?"  And after years of blood shed in Iraq, then Afghanistan - blood shed essentially for Bush's ego - other countries were wondering if they would be next, and Bush's last year was a feeble attempt to make him look like a statesman for peace.    

By contrast, Mitt Romney's forays into foreign policy were prize-winning blunders that showcased his ineptitude against the Nobel Prize-winning Obama. And while Romney didn't talk with his mouth full of turkey sandwich to heads of state, he did have his foot in his mouth most of the time. 

Comparisons in stupidity, however, may stop there since Romney and his campaign seemed to have a stupidity uniquely its own.

Worse Than George?

The possibility that Mitt Romney might be a mental lightweight surfaced early on in his campaign: no intelligent official refuses to be transparent when it comes to tax returns, then states that there could not possibly be anything incriminating in them. And the Bain debacle: Dick Cheney may have convinced the public that he had absolutely no ties to Halliburton, but that was before Halliburton got the most lucrative of all Iraq War no-bid contracts - and behind closed doors. Romney's convoluted non-explanations of his exit from Bain did nothing to keep liberals from scratching their heads. Then there followed "I'm not concerned about the poor", "47%", "Eastwooding"*, "Obama screwed up Lybia," "I shop at Costco," "Fire Big Bird," "Binders full of women," and, by extension, the idiocy of Paul Ryan's tax returns (less than 2.4% to the charities he told everyone would "pick up the slack" from his budget hatchet job), gym photos and "cleaning clean pots." 

Image Problem? What Image Problem?

Molly Ivins' uncovering of the Bush Texas Ranger shenanigans did not dent the image of George Bush: he was a spoiled brat-turned-wheeler-dealer, but somehow his innate "good ole boy" oafishness covered him. That image, indeed, served him well afterward when people were disbelieving of the fact that he held 100,000 acres in non-extradictable Paraguay (for a quick and easy get-away should the "war crimes" heat get too much). Romney' attempts at an image change were, by contrast, pathetic and useless (e.g., the best joke to come out of the Hurricane Sandy disaster: "Romney's Hurricane Sandy Tip: 'Upon approach of the hurricane, evacuate to your second or third home.").** He seemed clueless as to how he presented himself to the public, thinking that they would like him no matter what he said - or how he lied. He couldn't put his past governorship of Massachusetts in the light enough to obscure the fact that he was a rich Gordon Gecko playing at being a politician.


The Real Problem

Throughout it all, however, the most glaringly stupid thing about Romney's campaign is that people actually dismissed the idiocies: they dismissed the lies, the foreign policy ineptitude, the image blunders, the feigned concern for all Americans. Almost HALF of America. 

Maybe the same people who voted for Bush twice. They're still with us. 

Scary. 

Deferrment Of Stupidity, But Not Of Anger   

The re-election of Barack Obama may have deferred the onslaught of stupidity in terms of campaigning and policies, but it will not quell the anger of the Right. Consider the other people who won/lost: Akin and Mourdoch lost, while Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren won. 

On all accounts of the Christian Right, demonspawn won. 

There will be hell to pay. 

*Not Romney's gaff, but certainly the RNC's blunder.
** Anne Romney also contributed to the ill image with "you people." Republicans must still be smarting with their attempt to paint Theresa Heinz Kerry - richer than the Romneys - in an unflattering light. But since they could get nothing glaringly hypocritical from the saavy philanthropist, they had to settl on the fact that she (admittedly) had Botox injections.

Could A Treason Trial Be In The Air? Newly Declassified 9/11 Docs Reveal The Real Enemy: George W. Bush

Another Reason For Mitt To Treat Bush Like Poison

Washington, D.C., June 19, 2012 – The National Security Archive today is posting over 100 recently released CIA documents relating to September 11, Osama bin Laden, and U.S. counterterrorism operations. The newly-declassified records, which the Archive obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are referred to in footnotes to the 9/11 Commission Report and present an unprecedented public resource for information about September 11.

Hammering nails into the coffin of the Bush administration's involvement in 9/11 hasn't been easy: Republicans have avoided the topic for a decade. They'll certainly be spinning everything they can with this latest revelation: pointing to Clinton, distancing themselves from Bush, painting the CIA as dunderheads, maybe even saying that Al Queda didn't really exist before 9/11. Whatever the spin, however, the fact remains: Bush knew about eminent attacks from the very beginning of his Presidency and EVEN HAMPERED EFFORTS to catch/kill Bin Laden. 

Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency.

 Documents also show that the CIA gave warnings to the out-going Clinton administration, indicating that Bush knew about them from the very onset of his Presidency. 


Big News?


To many people, the new evidence is not surprising, but what is the most damning of the situation is that the Bush administration defunded the CIA operations as it was getting the info. Even the associated security meetings were downgraded to mere deputy level. Conspiracy theories have always centered around "intentional neglect" of some sort, and now that part of the theories seems more plausible than ever. 


But can Bush be held accountable IN TIME? 


And will Democrats make the revelation a stance against any of Romney's foreign policies? As de-regulator in national economic affairs, Romney has struggled to distance himself from the disastrous effects of the Bush administration while trying to convince the American public that Bush had set the stage for bin Laden's death.

“I think the tools that President Bush put into place — GITMO, rendition, enhanced interrogation, the vast effort to collect and collate this information — obviously served his successor quite well,” Rove said on Fox News.

The revealed docs now catapults statements like this into the highest category of BS in U.S. history. 


Accusations of war crimes have hung over the Bush administration for years with nations such as Malaysia creating tribunals, entities having little effect on the former President's image of himself as defender of democracy. The latest evidence of prior knowledge of imminent attacks, however, may be approached from a different angle: treasonous neglect. Failure to act sufficiently in defense of the country and the act of downgrading and defunding intelligence efforts certainly calls for action of some sort. 


The timing of the declassification of the documents couldn't be more ironic: with President Obama declaring Executive Privilege in the matter of "Fast and Furious" and in defense of Attorney General Holder, Republican congressmen will have a hard time maintaining focus. 


Spin. Cover-ups. Focus.  Distractions. If the CIA docs  have any traction in the coming weeks, our political scene is going to get a lot dirtier ...and definitely more entertaining.