BushFilter

December 1, 2008 2:22 PM

A Uniter, Not A Divider - Butterfly Ballot - Recount - Chinese Fighter Pilot - Bushism - New American Century - Neocons - Tax Cuts - Energy Task Force - Looked In His Eyes And Saw His Soul - No Child Left Behind - My Pet Goat - 9/11 - Ground Zero - Undisclosed Location - Osama Bin Laden - Global War On Terror - Anthrax - PATRIOT Act - With Us Or Against Us - Mullah Omar - Smoke 'Em Out - Enron - Pretzel - Guantanamo - Bali - WMD - Chemical Ali - Nucular - Mushroom Cloud - Yellowcake - Curveball - Unknown Unknowns - Cakewalk - Coalition Of The Willing - Freedom Fries - Shock And Awe - Private Jessica Lynch - Mission Accomplished - No-Bid - Insurgents - Bring It On - Blackwater - Fallujah - Shake 'N Bake - Abu Ghraib - IED - Islamofascism - Eurabia - Quagmire - Madrid - Valerie Plame - Turd Blossom - Haditha - SWIFT Boat - Political Capital - Terri Schiavo - London - Jeff Gannon - Wiretapping - Surge - Katrina - An Inconvenient Truth - Stephen Colbert - Subprime - Yes We Can - CDS - South Ossetia - Hockey Mom - Joe the Plumber - Socialist - Credit Crunch - Domestic Terrorist - Bailout
posted by Skeptic (49 comments total)

Couldn't make up your mind, so you posted everything?
posted by pracowity at 2:25 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning.
posted by Phlogiston at 2:28 PM on December 1, 2008 [7 favorites]

Baroque Obama
posted by ORthey at 2:29 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Sorry. Thought this was MetaFilter. I'll show myself out.
posted by theroadahead at 2:29 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Since I'm not going to click 50+ links I'm just going to assume this is at least somewhat about George Bush. And I also think that these links conflict with his self-image, or at least, what he would like people to remember about him:

“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process[...]
I’d like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor.”

I'm not entirely sure that that will be the prevailing image of his presidency.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 2:30 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

It ain't over 'til it's over.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:30 PM on December 1, 2008

OK, we seem to be looking at a list of Bush memes of the month. You've clearly put some thought and effort into this, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Please explain.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:30 PM on December 1, 2008

Psst. He's still your president.
posted by Artw at 2:30 PM on December 1, 2008

THAT is a lot of links. Yep. A lot.
On a complete derail, I was playing that new DC vs. Mortal Kombat game yesterday and I pulled off Baraka's Fatality, and my wife walked in and said 'Baraka Obama?' and I had the GREATEST IDEA FOR A T-SHIRT DESIGN EVER.
More to come.
posted by Bageena at 2:31 PM on December 1, 2008 [2 favorites]

what
posted by ardgedee at 2:32 PM on December 1, 2008

I came in here to say that we didn't start the fire. But I was beat to it. And we did. And we didn't put it out.
posted by allen.spaulding at 2:34 PM on December 1, 2008

At you least you didn't do one of those insufferable one-link-per-letter things.
posted by ninjew at 2:34 PM on December 1, 2008

what
posted by languagehat at 2:35 PM on December 1, 2008

Heckuva job, Skeptie.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 2:38 PM on December 1, 2008 [2 favorites]

Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase

Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm

Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone
posted by Iridic at 2:38 PM on December 1, 2008 [4 favorites]

Big Bang - Galaxy - Sun - Earth - Life - Dinosaurs - Meteor - Homo Sapien - Lucy - Fire - Wheel - Bronze - Art - Mesopotamia - Greeks - Romans - Vikings - Indians - Spice trade - new world - slavery - democracy - republicans - democrats - communism - kennedy - bush - bailout - obama - clinton - burrito for lunch - dow down 600 - posting on metafilter - breathe in - breathe out
posted by pardonyou? at 2:40 PM on December 1, 2008 [7 favorites]

Psst. He's still your president.

Let us enjoy Jon Stewart's snickering Bush impression a bit longer, while we may.
posted by Tehanu at 2:42 PM on December 1, 2008

Chinese Fighter Pilot

Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.
posted by gurple at 2:44 PM on December 1, 2008

Not 'bring it on' but 'bring 'em on'.

I wish I has been keeping a zeitgeist summary of the slings and arrows of these past 8 years. Quite the ride. Thanks, Ralph.
posted by troy at 2:46 PM on December 1, 2008

Yeah, this is a bit premature. He still has almost two months to fuck something else up, and by all accounts, he's going to with those last minute presidential accords.
posted by graventy at 2:48 PM on December 1, 2008

You forgot Chinese Democracy.
posted by baphomet at 2:50 PM on December 1, 2008

Isn't this what the 'Random' link at the top of my screen is for?
posted by gman at 2:51 PM on December 1, 2008

I just watched W the other night. No real surprises, really, if you know George W. Bush's biography. I was ready to hate the movie, actually, because I didn't like the idea of releasing a bio movie on a president still sitting in the White House, that maybe we should wait a few years and look back before trying to capture his life on the big screen.

Well, I have to say I liked it. Bush isn't portrayed as necessarily stupid; just spoiled. Hopping from job to job, shiftless and uncaring of consequences, while at the same time feeling outdone by his brother Jeb and desperately wanting the approval of his father. What was really interesting was the White House staff, portrayed as a more or less cynical clan of rapacious hyenas catering to Bush's ego to satisfy their own ends.

The only exceptions to this portrayal were Colin Powell, who spends the movie muttering warnings against going to war and giving Dick Cheney the stink eye, and Condoleezza Rice, whose portrayal I did not understand at all. Rice graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Denver, then later obtained a master's in political science from Notre Dame, and then a PhD in political science from the Graduate School of International Studies at Denver. She was an assistant professor, is an accomplished pianist, and speaks four languages. Yet in the movie, she is portrayed as somewhere between a dim-witted chicken and a stroke victim. WTF Oliver Stone.

I didn't come away from the movie with more sympathy for George W. Bush. He remains, to me, a selfish overgrown frat boy used by neo-conservative vultures as a tool to meet their own ends. That said, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Tennet, Rove - they'll all be fine. They'll move on to other carreers, and continue to be powerful and influential. George W. Bush is ruined. He has zero credibility left. I don't think history is going to judge him as a 21st century Truman, and I highly doubt it's going to judge him as "right all along". At best, I think history will judge George W. Bush piteously, a not-very-bright pawn used by powers greater than him who used his position to meet their own ends, and in the process believe his own hype.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:52 PM on December 1, 2008 [6 favorites]

Too soon.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:52 PM on December 1, 2008

In the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield, the war's over, get new parts for your head.
posted by jonmc at 2:52 PM on December 1, 2008

Together we score one hundred and forty-four. The number of links were chosen to fit this remarkable total: One Gross, if I may use the expression. No cheers. This was ridiculous. Many of the guests, and especially the Sackville Baginses, were insulted, feeling sure they had been asked to follow the required number of links, like goods in a package.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 2:53 PM on December 1, 2008

Judging by the link titles, I can say that I remember most of these episodes vividly already, but thanks all the same.

It was nice to see the nickname "Turd Blossom" on my screen again.
posted by longsleeves at 2:58 PM on December 1, 2008

I really just don't like any of Billy Joel's songs. It's one thing to rip-off other artists' hooks and musical devisings--that's really not a crime. No, Joel's crime is that he apes the actual vocal inflections of Lennon, Elton John, and others. When you're aping inflection like that, it's a sign that there is no real musical soul there, only technical skill.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:00 PM on December 1, 2008

what what what
posted by loquacious at 3:02 PM on December 1, 2008

Wow, there's some weapons-grade snark out there. To those who ask what my point is, well, my first aim was an abbreviated account of the last 8 years, in that most Bushian form of expression, the soundbite. And secondly, to link to the "Best of the Web" related to each one of those subjects. IMHO, those links are pretty good (and there are a couple of surprises in there).
posted by Skeptic at 3:03 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Today I was pondering the inevitable video compilations of Bush's verbal gaffes that will cloud the airwaves on January 19th and it occured to me that Bush wasn't the only one that could mangle a phrase. Witness the deft phrasework of Defense Poet Laureate Donald Rumsfeld.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:05 PM on December 1, 2008

You forgot "Bush or Chimp?".
posted by Burhanistan at 3:05 PM on December 1, 2008

Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random linkRandom link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link Random link
posted by swift at 3:06 PM on December 1, 2008

I can't be the only person who gets Rummy's "known unknowns" thing. Makes perfect sense to me.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:06 PM on December 1, 2008 [3 favorites]

Oh hai. You linked that already.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:06 PM on December 1, 2008

Or, BushFilter.

Fun!
posted by swift at 3:10 PM on December 1, 2008

I can't be the only person who gets Rummy's "known unknowns" thing. Makes perfect sense to me.

You are not. It makes perfect sense to me too. In fact, I use it all the time just to see what kind of reaction I'll get. There are plenty of things in life that you know you don't know.
posted by spicynuts at 3:13 PM on December 1, 2008

(and there are a couple of surprises in there).

I'm guessing no one will ever find them.
posted by jack_mo at 3:15 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was wondering how the fuck you constructed this post.
posted by gman at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2008

WTF?
posted by Class Goat at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2008

I agree Burhanistan. I thought it was a bit of a clumsy way of phrasing things that made that particular bit seem more ridiculous than it was, and given the context of when he said it, probably just exacerbated the situation. But those "unknown unknowns" and whatnot always made sense to me.
posted by Phire at 3:18 PM on December 1, 2008

The real question is: which TV comedian will make his career on the back of his Obama impersonation?
posted by GuyZero at 3:18 PM on December 1, 2008

It's the end of the BushPresidency as we know it
And I feel fine
posted by hangashore at 3:18 PM on December 1, 2008

Rummy's "known unknowns" thing is a known known to me, but it's also a no-no. And a noun.
posted by pracowity at 3:20 PM on December 1, 2008

This is the first time in my life that I've hoped to see the topic of conversation return to Billy Joel.
posted by box at 3:20 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yeah but "we didn't start the fire", in the context of the song, is like finding someone with a fire in their hearth, and burning their home to the ground.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:23 PM on December 1, 2008

No matter how much of an "if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for Metafilter" post I concoct next time, all I gotta do is put so much god damn effort in, the mods simply can't delete it.
posted by gman at 3:24 PM on December 1, 2008

We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning.


Apart from that being one of the worse songs in recorded music history, from one of the most unoriginal (ahem)artistes, there are plenty of fucking fires started by the "we".

The fires that were burning - well "we" have been happily pouring lots and lots of gasoline onto them.
posted by mattoxic at 3:29 PM on December 1, 2008

No matter how much of an "if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for Metafilter" post I concoct next time, all I gotta do is put so much god damn effort in, the mods simply can't delete it.

I wouldn't count on that.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:30 PM on December 1, 2008