Moe Lane

…(“George W. Bush is smarter than you.”) do so.  If only to get an idea about why so many Lefty pundits were in full puppy-kicking mode over the last few days.  It’s not that they secretly suspect that Hennessey may be right; it’s not that the public opinion polls keep on creeping up for GWB, the way that polls tend to do for ex-Presidents not named Richard Nixon; it’s not even that far too many Democrats/liberals/progressives made the fatal flaw of defining themselves as being what George W Bush was not, and thus are now incapable of seeing an attack on their vision of Bush as being an attack upon themselves.

Well, it’s all of those things, but it’s also because some of them are starting to realize Hey, it never got any better than Election Night 2008, huh?  Ah, the hangover of hate*: it’s a killer.  I HOPE THAT WE’RE NOT BEING TOO LOUD, GUYS… (more…)

Hopefully as well as George W Bush does. On his new painting hobby:

“People are surprised,” he said. “Of course, some people are surprised I can even read.”

Of course, generally speaking those people – at least the ones that I’m most aware of – who are genuinely surprised tend also to be extremely dissatisfied with the way that the universe never seems to work out the way that they expected (and demanded) it to. Not that I would suggest that there was any kind of correlation there, of course.

Moe Lane

…while at the same time eviscerating Barack Obama. Below are two video clips, and the relevant transcript.   I created a shorter and a longer version: some people like the thirty second clips, and some people want the full version for full effect.  Also, note that I’ve cut out the bit where Romney hammered Obama for lying about Romney’s contraception position, and the bit where Obama whined about not having yet more time to say nothing in particular: while important in general, neither bit is relevant to this specific discussion.

Enjoy!  I certainly did – and I like George W Bush, mind you.  But the way that Romney pinned Bush’s deficits to Obama’s insanely higher ones was choice.  Bet you Obama never contemplated that he was going to have to defend his predecessor there, afterwards…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

And let me make that clear: that means that George W Bush would have both made sure that it was clear that such assaults wouldn’t be tolerated; and he’d have American counter-intelligence forces preemptively roll up any networks trying to create any kind of cross-national, ‘spontaneous’ mass demonstrations/assaults.  Like the kind that we may be seeing this week.

Also: if you’re wondering why it is there seems to be more of these events lately, well… it’s not just because Barack Obama’s reputation is starting to precede him.  It’s also because we’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of grabbing terrorists and squeezing them dry, and gotten into the habit of killing them via drone strikes.  Which is roughly equivalent to treating a persistent infection with the topical application of disinfectant; it kills the germs on the surface, but if the underlying problem isn’t treated then at best you’re just keeping things from getting worse.

Because there’s a part of me that envies the man for his ability to get away from all of this sh*t.

“I crawled out of the swamp, and I’m not crawling back in,” [George W Bush] said in a rare interview with the Hoover Institution this year.

(H/T: @jimgeraghty) Goodness knows that Bush deserves retirement and all that; and that his job was eight years’ worth of killing stress. Still, it’d be nice not to have to care about what the hell they’re up to, down there in Dizzy City…

The piece itself?  Straightforward.  George W Bush is out of the White House, he’s danged cheerful about that, he’s finding it refreshing to be out of the spotlight, and hey, he’s been doing oil painting lately.  I’m gathering that it’s restful.  In short… George W Bush did what a lot of people on the Left loudly demanded: he went away*.

And they hate him for it. There’s perhaps less vituperative comments on the Boston Herald article than I expected (I’m less surprised at the general lack of asinine comments on [H/T] Ann Althouse’s post), but they lack in quantity they make up for in sheer affronted whining.  How dare Bush be happy!  Doesn’t he understand how important it is that Bush play the role that the Left has always demanded of him?  And how dare he not be there for them to scream about in 2012!  Barack Obama needs him to be there!

…how is barack obama going to win if he doesnt have bush there…

*No, the occasional speech – or article about it – doesn’t count.  The man was President for eight years.  There’s a floor to how far out of the public eye you can get.

George W Bush, on his recent visit/aid work (in this particlar case, in Zambia):

“I hope you don’t see much of it because I don’t want to be in the news.  In other words, I believe that quiet service is the best kind of service,” he said.

We will now pause while somebody bitches and moans about Bush nominating John Roberts as Chief Justice. I figure that I might as well preemptively bring it up, particularly since having to wade through all of said bitching and moaning was probably the triggering mechanism for this mini-vacation in the first place*. Anyway: via Althouse.

Moe Lane

(more…)

…for the official unveiling on May 31st of the Bush’s Presidential/First Lady portraits.  You see, if Obama is smart he’ll avoid giving the rest of the country any further reminder that George W Bush has more class in his pinkie finger than currently exists in the entire Executive Branch of the federal government.  And if Obama is… well, Obama… then he’ll just be a sneak about the whole thing and have one of his creatures try to snipe at his predecessor from the safety of anonymous sourcing.  Either way, there’s no way that Obama has the guts to say anything to Bush’s face.

Not Obama’s style.

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air)

There’s just something pathetic about Amnesty International, these days:

Amnesty International is calling for the arrest of former President George W. Bush while he is traveling overseas in Africa.

[snip]

Bush is traveling overseas in Africa to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, cervical and breast cancer across the continent.

(more…)

Jonathan Chait really, really, really wants liberals to not notice that President Obama is no George W Bush.  How much does he want it?  He wants it badly enough to jettison the entire idea of the Imperial Presidency (don’t worry: Chait and the rest will start grousing about it again on, say, January 20, 2013).  Nope, it’s not Barry Obama’s fault that he couldn’t spin insanely lopsided Congressional majority straw into policy gold, because of… separation of powers:

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster.

[snip]

That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”

First term.

Hee.

Let’s talk about Bush’s second term, instead. Actually, let’s talk about the second half of Bush’s second term. (more…)

This is George W Bush.

And he is off having a good time. Despite your best efforts, which were frankly quite pitiful.

Have a nice day!

…but it looks like only the former knows it.  Compare Bush’s use of the first-person singular in his speech about the capture of Saddam Hussein with Obama’s in his speech about the death of Osama bin Laden; the latter comes across as a bit… defensive, doesn’t he?  It’s almost as if the President’s subconsciously aware of the fact that his supposedly ‘gutsy call‘ was neither gutsy, nor even possible without the patient and largely unheralded work of his despised predecessor… who was, by the way, not a complete narcissist who visibly wilts in the absence of constant praise*.

But surely that can’t be the case.

Moe Lane

*Note that I have not accused anyone of being such a person; merely noting that the 43rd President of the United States was someone who is demonstrably not.