George Bush

First, U.S. Sen. Al Franken wouldn’t stand to meet billionaire T. Boone Pickens. Then he got into it with the latter-day domestic-energy guru — “a lively conversation” were Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh’s words — over Pickens having paid for “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ads against Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. Unseemly [...]

“You really can’t start a transition until you’ve been elected president.” Those words of advice were offered to George W. Bush on TV Nov. 28, 2000, two weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore made Bush president, and seven weeks before Inauguration Day 2001. The advice came from Al Franken — [...]

The Bush “torture memos” that Obama released yesterday owe a heavy literary debt to George Orwell’s novel “1984.” The most blatant rip-off is the government’s now-famous plan to sic insects on captive Abu Zubaydah:

Cities aren’t their base, so Republicans in federal elective office generally don’t talk about urban affairs. In fact, they went so far as to delete the phrase from the name of the House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs (now the Committee on Financial Services) – in a fit of “Republican political correctness,” according to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank [...]

The assessments of last night’s doomed economic pow-wow have not been kind to John McCain. Setting the table is The New York Times with a damning (and dryly amusing) description of McCain’s performance at the economic summit that was called at his behest. An aide to House Minority Leader John Boehner all but acknowledges that [...]

The Washington Post has a couple of extraordinary excerpts from Barton Gellman’s new book about Dick Cheney, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. It’s a captivating read, detailing how the Vice President and his small cadre of allies drove the administration to the brink of a Constitutional crisis — with President Bush almost entirely in the [...]

While some expect U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to embarrass herself, she had some help at the Republican state convention in Rochester this weekend. Former White House adviser Karl Rove headlined the convention, and he recounted a humorous exchange during Bachmann’s 2006 fund-raiser with President Bush.

“Take off those stupid pink gloves,” Rove recalled Bush saying.

Bachmann, of [...]

On the eve of the day of Great Fools, the Bush Administration has given the “Great Depression” its second major media debut. News outlets are bandying about the words this morning after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled what is being called the biggest overhaul of the financial services regulatory system since, well, the Great Depression.

Critics [...]

“Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

I’m not one for conspiracy theories.  I don’t think that there was a cover-up at Roswell; I believe that the Warren report generally tells the truth; I don’t think that 9/11 was the joint product of the US government and terrorists working side-by-side; I’m pretty sure that President Bush doesn’t have Osama Bin Laden in [...]