The Missing Eight Months...

[kentuck]

Nobody wants to talk about it. It's like the John Prine song about Jesus, The Missing Years. Where was he from the age of twelve to thirty-three? Of course Prine, in his song, suggests that Jesus may have been shacked up in Rome someplace with a lady of ill-repute. Nobody talks about it.

The same goes for the first eight months of the Bush Presidency. He was busy undoing every piece of Clinton legislation of the past eight years. He was going to re-start the Star Wars initiative. After all, his wealthy friends in the defense industry needed some new contracts. He even withdrew from the Kyoto Treaty. He intentionally placed the fight against Osama and terrorism on the back burner. He withdrew the ships from the coast of Pakistan that Clinton was using to track Osama in Afghanistan.

At the same time, in those first eight months, he was busy putting together his taxcuts program. As Sharon of Israel was bulldozing under entire villages in Palestine, Bush simply turned the other way. This was after Clinton had worked right up to his last day in office to bring about peace between them. And he forgot about the Cole bombing. After all, it happened on "Clinton's watch". And thru all this, he managed to vacation more than any other President in history.

[NV Whino]

1. Within the first few months of Bush's occupancy

I was STUNNED with the fact that the neocons were hitting us on every front simultaneously. Education, health, environment, economy--just everything. I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea just how bad... and how fast.

[Felinity]

2. So they are competent!` K & R

As long as the objective is to damage, destroy, waste, and steal public money for the benefit of their cronies.

[NV Whino]

4. They had planned for this coup for at least thirty years

They had every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. What is undoing them is hubris. Not to mention GREED.

[petgoat]

25. There was a joke that on Nat'l Bring Your Daughter to Work

Day the neocons all put their kids to work eviscerating social programs.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. I was telling people at the time

that it was apparent Bush wanted to provoke a terrorist attack. Everything he did was intended to piss people off.

[left is right]

5. My first thought aster the second plane hit

Was "What did Bush do to cause this"

[Straight Shooter]

6. That brings up a question: How many signing statements, and on what?

I bet if you examine his signing statements during the first eight months, there will be evidence of what his real agenda was, and it will have nothing whatsoever to do with the interests of 99.9 percent of Americans.

[barbtries]

7. that'd be a worhy

google...i may do that right now in fact.

[barbtries]

8. link

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/

[Straight Shooter]

16. Thank you for doing my homework for me

:hi:

[Stephanie]

9. He was busy trashing the Hart-Rudmann Report

They tossed years of work in the trash, buried it. Cheney would have his own committee to make his own recoomendations.

They were busy meeting with the SECRET ENERGY PANEL that pored over maps of Iraqi oil fields. Remember the list of "suitors?"

[threadkillaz]

20. Hart-Rudmann Report Link

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hart-Rudman_Task_Force_on_Homeland_Security

Someone had their OWN plan and ignored this task force from what I remember.

[struggle4progress]

10. Bush's month off in August 2001 was the longest Presidental vacation

in thirty years.

Them Bushes is some sorry lazy-ass mofos: by August '03, Bush had taken 250 vacation days, an average of over 8 vacation days/month or nearly 100/year; his Poppy was even lazier, averaging over 11 vacation days/month or over 140/year.

In comparison, Carter averaged about 20 vacation days/year, Reagan about 40/year, and Clinton about 19/year ...


(see http://www.counterbias.com/017.html )
<edit: arithmetic>

<2nd edit:> Here's another nice link on Bush's vacation days:

... Prior to September 11, 2001, George W. Bush was on vacation for 96 days ...
http://www.memoryhole.net/kyle/2004/08/vacation.html

[VOX]

12. Yeah, and at the same time, John Ashcroft refused to fly on airliners...

Get...think they *knew* anything? :crazy: :grr:

[Stephanie]

22. Cheney spent August in Wyoming

they got themselves out of harm's way.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. Answer to "Clinton had 8 YEARS": OK, let's just compare the first 8

months of Dubya to the LAST EIGHT MONTHS of Bill Clinton's term in office:

I don't yet know the details, but there had to be high-level meetings between Richard Clarke and top Clinton officials, reviews of written anti-terror plans, etc.

All of that stopped when Dubya took over. It was like a new tenant's removing the alarms, window bars, and double-locks the previous tenant left behind. It took eight months for the ineviatble consequences to ensue.

[struggle4progress]

13. Bush probably took more vacation time in his first eight months than ..

.. Clinton did in his whole second term ...

[ProgressiveEconomist]

14. I wonder whether that's because *'s handlers only allow him alcohol

when he's in Crawford. When he sneaks a drink in the White House, there must be many dozens more people around who might catch him in the act, smelll it on his breath, etc.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. A google search of Clinton's White House archive gets 60 hits for '"bin

Laden" clinton' . Click thru to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=clinton+%22bin+Laden%22+site%3Anara.gov&btnG=Google+Search .

There are hits in the last 8 months of the Clinton Presidency even on the first page!

A similar search on whitehouse.gov would get NOTHING for Dubya's first eight months. IIRC, the Center for American Progress once ran a contest on this. Anyone who could find a GWBush speech that mentioned OBL before 9/11/01 would have won a prize.

[tridim]

17. We might as well make 9/11/2001 day zero on the calendar

I always thought using the birth of a hippy liberal philanthropist as day zero was kind of arbitrary.

Seriously, it is odd how even Freepers don't talk about (or even remember) anything post 2000 and pre 9/11. It's the freaking twilight zone.

[tblue]

18. hippy liberal philanthropist

That's funny! What I wouldn't give for that HLP to show up today. What would He say about the USA?

[Seabiscuit]

19. Ah, yes... the 32 "Lost Weekends"

[underpants]

21. *ahem* that is 233 days to you pal

didn't you get the focus group approved memo?

Other things that were reversed ASAP
-the logging restrictions on fed lands (not that Clinton had a GREAT record on that) which were the result of years and MILLIONS of responses/opinions in town hall meetings, emails, virtual town hall meetings and the like. A DU'er posted here several years ago a story that I had read in some off the mainstream websites--the Georgia-Pacific logging types were showing up to these town hall meetings (held IN the local areas affected) in suits with flashy presentations and so forth and they were routinely shouting out by what I call the "bubbas to birkenstocks" crowd who wanted to keep their access to THEIR LAND as it was. The GP reps pulled back and ignored the whole thing. Once Clinton announced the findings and the new policy (as per the original timeline) out them came onto the airways crying foul going on about how Clinton did this on his way out the door with no chance for them to be heard- juxtapose that with Cheney's aides giving all the enviros and consumer groups 5 minutes each to respond to his energy policy which had not been published yet.

-the ergonomic study commissioned during Poppa's administration and Libby Dole's time at HHS.

All in all they were busy reversing overturning or ignoring anything Clinton and that included counter terrorism. They thought Clinton was obsessed with OBL. Notice also that you didn't see Orrin "phoney threats" Hatch on TV for a good 6 months after 9/11.

[underpants]

23. BTW-How long was W missing in Alabama?

this has happened before.

[Captain Hilts]

24. They were in the White House gym working out. nt

[kentuck]

26. Kick one last time because...

this is the truth of the day. Bush did nothing in the first eight months, just as KO and General Clark have stated and just as Condi Rice lied about this morning.

[Q]

27. Does anyone remember...

...just HOW the Bushies were able to accomplish so much (for themselves) in such a short time? Does anyone remember that 'certain' Democrats ignored or joined in the efforts to destroy every social/environmental program they could get their hands on? Do you remember those (d)emocrats who said that a stolen election wasn't important and that we should just 'move on'?

Bush & Gang could never have wrought so much destruction without the direct or indirect help of the 'new' Democrats. The NeoDems thought they were getting something in return...but they were just being used by the most corrupt politicians this government has ever seen.

Rank and file Dems have wanted to release the attack dogs since 2000. But the 'moderate' leadership wouldn't have it. They wanted to 'get along' and cooperate with the Bush regime...and for the benefit of the international corporations that owned them.

Will it help to speak out now? Sure. But we must all be on the same page. We must denounce any and all Dems who insist on working with these crooks.

[kentuck]

28. true

and unfortunately, it is many of those "moderates" that prevented the Party from being united against the lies and deceit of this Administration and the war on terror. When you hide the truth away in a box, do not expect anything good to happen.