"On the weekends, he favors two-hour bicycle rides at a Secret Service training facility outside Washington, where he sometimes asks companions and agents to ride behind him so that he can have the illusion of riding alone." With all the focus on the upcoming election, what of George W. Bush?
posted by djgh on Aug 31, 2008 - 102 comments

"What kind of lawbreaking has happened on President Bush's watch, among his top and mid-level advisers? What hasn't? Who is implicated and who is not? Despite the lack of oral sex with an intern, the past seven years have yielded an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potentially prosecutable crimes. We have tried to sketch out a map of who did what and when, with links to the evidence that is public and notes about what we may learn from investigations that are still pending." Via Slate
posted by infini on Jul 29, 2008 - 40 comments

A very special 'This American Life' about an administration with the endemic belief that laws only apply to the little people, and a limitless refusal to concede on even petty issues, no matter the costs. The highlight is about immigrant widows of US citizens (30:50). The program also discusses the constitutional beliefs of the presidential candidates. [more inside]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Apr 2, 2008 - 43 comments

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Mar 3, 2008 - 94 comments

Bush Commutes Prison Term of I. Lewis Libby.
posted by four panels on Jul 2, 2007 - 500 comments

"Then my photography started to shift; everything had to be very clean and Republican, straight and perfect... Everything is staged and controlled... It's the complete opposite of war photography."
War photographer Christopher Morris's new exhibit and book: "My America".
posted by matteo on Sep 27, 2006 - 20 comments

Bush and Koizumi: Roadtrip to Graceland - NYT link
posted by lilboo on Jun 29, 2006 - 10 comments

The new lies about women's health (image slightly NSFW) according to Glamour. More on why every egg is sacred to the Bush administration. [via Wired's Sex Drive Daily]
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 3, 2006 - 90 comments

Battle plans for Iran... resonates with the sad ring of real possibility.
posted by Muirwylde on Feb 17, 2006 - 63 comments

Don't Bomb Us. In response to credible reports that Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera's HQ in allied Qatar (discussed here and here on MeFi), Al Jazeera staffers start their own English-language blog. Their site contains remembrances of their fallen colleagues, firsthand accounts of US attacks on their offices, links to relevant reports on the controversy, Flickr photosets of protests calling for an official investigation, and al Jazeera's code of ethics. Also, a quick note to Tony Blair: " P.S. Thanks for talking Mr. Bush out of bombing our offices!" Not surprisingly, their blog is generating some comments.
posted by edverb on Nov 26, 2005 - 117 comments

Faith based prisons... Can Gov. Jeb Bush's new drive to introduce God to the inmates make a difference, or was Jesus 'dying for our sins' not enough already? Is Jesus a solution or an excuse?

"Night has fallen. He has died now. A fly crawls over the still flesh. Of what use is it to me that this man suffered, If I am suffering now?" - Jorge Luis Borges
posted by 0bvious on Nov 25, 2005 - 36 comments

Take this opportunity to get involved. November 2nd - A day of protest With possible indictments of senior Bush aides this week Bush has to be feeling the pressure. Reports point to a down and disillusioned president.
posted by Chris_awesome on Oct 24, 2005 - 73 comments

At this challenging time for President Bush, let us reminisce about the system that elected him. Will the next election be different? Do you want it to be? What are you going to do about it?
posted by Pretty_Generic on Sep 12, 2005 - 61 comments

A distinction between “old” and “new” wars is vital. “Old wars” are wars between states where the aim is the military capture of territory and the decisive encounter is battle between armed forces. “New wars”, in contrast, take place in the context of failing states. They are wars fought by networks of state and non-state actors, where battles are rare and violence is directed mainly against civilians, and which are characterised by a new type of political economy that combines extremist politics and criminality... I argue in this article that the United States viewed its invasion of Iraq as an updated version of “old war” that made use of new technology. The US failure to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous and carries the risk of being self-perpetuating. It does not have to be this way.
Iraq: the wrong war - Mary Kaldor writes of what was happening in pre-invasion Iraq, what happened thereafter and what the alternatives were. Well, there is always Exit strategy: Civil war. And on that, note this: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk--a city from which, I am afraid, we will hear more and more as time goes by.
posted by y2karl on Jun 15, 2005 - 20 comments

"I am an American, so that is why I make films about America. America is sitting on our world, I am making films that have to do with America (because) 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I can't change anything. We are a nation under influence and under a very bad influence… because Mr. Bush is an asshole and doing very idiotic things."
Lars Von Trier introduces his new film at the Cannes Film Festival: «Manderlay» picks up where «Dogville» left off, with the character originated by Nicole Kidman -- now played by Bryce Dallas Howard -- stumbling onto a plantation that time forgot, where slavery still operates in the 1930s. The film (5 MB .pdf file, official pressbook) ends, as Dogville did, with David Bowie’s Young Americans played over a photomontage of images that range from a Ku Klux Klan meeting to the Rodney King beating, George Bush at prayer and Martin Luther King at his final rest, American soldiers in Vietnam and the Gulf, the Twin Towers. More inside.
posted by matteo on May 16, 2005 - 69 comments

Adding images to words makes things easier to remember. The 14 defining characteristics of Fascism as a flash movie. I know, I know, it's been discussed quite a few times at MeFi, but I only post this as Thursday fun. Only. Really. Fun.
posted by acrobat on Apr 7, 2005 - 31 comments

"The Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed" I seriously can't believe it. This is Brechtian. Something has to be missing. This can't be my government.
posted by Smedleyman on Feb 16, 2005 - 60 comments

Thanks for the memories ..."I know it’s a fallacy * That grown men never cry Baby, that’s a lie * We had our bed of roses But forgot that roses die * And thank you so much..."
posted by growabrain on Jan 28, 2005 - 10 comments

Blackout Some sites have gone black today in protest of black box voting and/or four more years of Bush. But, actually, I haven't seen many. Are people tired of fighting or is this just a poorly-organized effort no one knows about?
posted by sparky on Jan 20, 2005 - 64 comments

Kid Rock To Play Bush Inauguration ... The Bush Twins have invited Kid Rock to play their inauguration bash after their father is sworn in to a second term. Rock also played the Republican National Convention. This is a guy who stuck his head through an American flag at the Superbowl and has lyrics that say all women are whores and extol drug and alcohol abuse. (The link has actual lyrics from Rock, so if you are offended by cursing don't follow it.)
posted by nathanrudy on Jan 4, 2005 - 173 comments

AARP Says No To Bush ... The AARP is coming out strong against private Social security investment accounts, saying they "will actually make the problem worse, not better." In January they plan to spend $50 million on an ad campaign opposing privatization. Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly has also been awesome in pointing out that the common wisdom that Social Security is in trouble is just not true.
posted by nathanrudy on Dec 30, 2004 - 116 comments

EVIL/LIVE is a 28 minute edit of the first debate featuring Bush listening to and debating with himself. It may be broadcast, copied, distributed, edited etc. without permission. (170 MB / 635 MB) [via nettime]
posted by boost ventilator on Nov 5, 2004 - 8 comments

Imminent job openings at CNN... Open the link and right click the picture of Bush and wife, click "Save Picture/Image" and look at the filename! In the words of a certain Denis Leary, "He's an asshole, asshole, asshole-e-o-oe-oh". I suggest someone mirrors this ASAP!
posted by metaxa on Nov 4, 2004 - 14 comments

"You're An Asshole." A film strip we can all appreciate in time for tomorrow's big event. Try singing along!
posted by Brilliantcrank on Nov 1, 2004 - 6 comments

Former Bush ghostwriter confirms Bush had plans for Iraq in 1999. Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”
posted by RavinDave on Oct 28, 2004 - 37 comments

University Study - Most Bush Voters Are Extremely Stupid [Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Oct 22, 2004 - 57 comments

American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the nation's largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast.
posted by Mick on Oct 21, 2004 - 49 comments

Iranian regime endorses Bush, saying democrats have historically "harmed Iran." Head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Hassan Rowhani, is very close to the hardline leader, Ali Khamanei. But the truth is Republicans have always helped dictators in Iran,. Biggest example: 1953 coup that toppled Mossadeq, the extremely popular elected official prime minister of Iran and brought back the tyrant Shaah.
posted by hoder on Oct 19, 2004 - 20 comments

They misnamed the war on terror [Windows Media]
Meanwhile, Gary Busey interviews the US President [Flash]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Oct 17, 2004 - 19 comments

Simon Robson is an animator, and his friend Barry McNamara has political views. Simon made an animation to broadcast them. What Barry Says [QuickTime, political, via madamjujujive]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Oct 11, 2004 - 5 comments

More than rhetoric... As the campaign gets more divisive and time grows short incidents of violence are breaking out more and more often. Shots have been fired on more than one occasion, swastikas burned, intimidation and just plain kicking. Hopefully it gets better from here, but somehow I don't think so.
posted by soulhuntre on Oct 7, 2004 - 73 comments

An excellent WashPost primer on the lies each candidate is currently telling about the other, and how they hold up to reality. Also, enjoy the many euphemisms employed to avoid the "L" word: (Misleading. Inaccurate. Oversimplified. Exaggerated. Carefully selected. Unfair. etc etc) Who will be the first mainstream media outlet to state plainly that a politician has told a lie? Login: shutyomouf@hotmail.com - pw:shaftbaby)
posted by luser on Sep 30, 2004 - 6 comments

"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear." He is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect Philip Roth to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. And yet "The Plot Against America" is in the top 3 at amazon.com. It spins a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and defeats F.D.R. "Keep America Out of the Jewish War", reads a button worn by Lindbergh supporters rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does: he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world burns. The Lindbergh administration hatches a nice plan to prod assimilation of the Jews. Innocuously called Just Folks, it's a relocation program for urban Jews, administered by an Office of American Absorption fronted by an obliging and pompous rabbi of radio celebrity. The teenage Roth character is shipped off to a Kentucky tobacco farm, to finally live among Christians. The book is about American Fascism, but while Roth is no fan of President Bush ("a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one"), he points out that he conceived this book (LATimes registration: sparklebottom/sparklebottom) in December 2000, and that it would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to the present moment in America." (more inside)
posted by matteo on Sep 28, 2004 - 10 comments

Mr. Bush and His 10 Ever-Changing Different Positions on Iraq: "A flip and a flop and now just a flop." Delightful Moore (to those who like what he does), and a few links to backup his reasoning for those who don't.
posted by acrobat on Sep 28, 2004 - 52 comments

Sure, it's just more Bush-bashing, but it's gussied up durn pretty. Philip Gourevitch on Bushspeak.

He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.

posted by grrarrgh00 on Sep 10, 2004 - 87 comments

"Any day in which Bush's Nat'l Guard service is the dominant news story is a lost day for the Kerry campaign." As another round of media yadayada (see below) is about to emerge over President Bush's National Guard service or lack thereof, Noam Scheiber explains why this is probably very bad news for ... Kerry. We know who Bush is. The election is about the future, not the past. Scheiber's point may have been made in the MeFi thread referenced above, but I'm afraid I lost consciousness after a screen or so.
posted by mojohand on Sep 8, 2004 - 87 comments

Bush and Kerry Hit Road, Trade Blows on Jobs I can only guess that someone at Reuters has a sense of humor.
posted by BlueScreen on Sep 3, 2004 - 21 comments

Bush's latest accomplishment may not be one that he's willing to brag about. The Census Bureau is reporting that an additional 1.3 million Americans are now living in poverty. They also offer a number of pretty graphs (all in pdf).
posted by bshort on Aug 26, 2004 - 113 comments

In His Own Words -- just in time for FlashQuicktime Friday, Bush's own words, from 2003's State of the Union matched with more appropriate and now-historic imagery than a man standing behind a teleprompter and podium. (Warning: some graphic stuff inside.) Realplayer version available here. and perhaps because not everything deserves the lighthearted jibjab treatment.
posted by amberglow on Jul 29, 2004 - 46 comments

Tax Man Bush says tax cuts stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, he's fallen more than 2.2 million jobs short of the projection made by his own economists.
posted by Postroad on Jul 28, 2004 - 6 comments

Clinton’s Former Aide Drops Windfall in the Lap of Bush Campaign "...Presidential challenger Kerry will have to think twice before attacking Bush on national security issues lest he lay himself open to reminders that a former Clinton aide and his own adviser was caught red-handed misappropriating classified materials that revealed how a Democratic president mishandled the threat of terror...."
posted by Postroad on Jul 20, 2004 - 46 comments

This Land is Your Land (with apologies to Woody Guthrie). Belated non-partisan Friday Flash Fun. (Saturday Sarcastic Silliness?)
posted by Turtles all the way down on Jul 17, 2004 - 3 comments

Yet another political flash cartoon! Anyone else getting tired of hearing the same bland crap about the upcoming election? This flash cartoon somehow manages to be funny anyway, even though its subject has been done to death. It's brilliant, and definitely worth a look.
posted by Veritron on Jul 12, 2004 - 27 comments

The dog ate my service records. The Pentagon has announced that the payroll records for National Guard service for three months between 1972 and 1973 have been accidentally destroyed. These three months coincidentally cover the disputed period of George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. (Similar Google link here, via dKos)
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Jul 9, 2004 - 71 comments

Anti-Bush Online Adventure [4.7 MB Flash; parts NSFW] The Bush Administration discovers "the ultimate method of bringing about global domination for corporate America." [via What Do I Know]
posted by kirkaracha on May 26, 2004 - 17 comments

The Most Important Press Conference of This (US) Election Cycle! (It's not quite Friday, but it's Flash. Really flash)
posted by bonehead on May 6, 2004 - 18 comments

Remixing Bush's tasteless joke. Has some graphic images.
posted by skallas on Apr 11, 2004 - 19 comments

Frustrated Republicans: President on vacation while Iraq burns got you down? Feeling loyal to the party, ideas, or repulsed by the Dems? Agonizing over voting Bush to stay true? Sign the petition, Maybe you won't have to. And Dems, if you can promise to be open minded in November you can sign as well. via Blogging of the President
posted by daver on Apr 10, 2004 - 16 comments

How the left's fear of a right-wing Christian conspiracy gets George W. Bush -- and today's evangelical Christians -- all wrong. Alan Jacobs (more from him here and here) suggests that the idea that President Bush's evangelical Christianity has an impact on his politics is really a misunderstanding of Bush, fundamentalists, and evangelicals.
posted by marcusb on Apr 10, 2004 - 20 comments

Thou shalt not make scientific progress. "Medical research is poised to make a quantum leap that will benefit sufferers from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and other diseases. But George W. Bush's religious convictions stand in its way."
posted by homunculus on Mar 24, 2004 - 45 comments