† R-E-S-P-E-C-T: You Get As You Give: New York Daily News columnist Josh Greenman must have been in a coma for eight years because he chides President Barack Obama’s “most vocal critics” for being “tone-deaf” and offers these tips (emphasis in the original):

 

‡ Stop calling Obama a socialist.

‡ Stop calling him an empty suit.

‡ Stop the gotcha games and gimmicks.

‡ Give Obama credit where it's due.

‡ Leave Michelle out of it.

‡ Ditch the crazy conspiracy theories.

 

Now that Greenman is fully conscious again, it falls to The Stiletto to bring him up to speed on what he missed while he was recovering from whatever unfortunate mishap that made him unaware of what George W. Bush’s “most vocal critics” were up to during his two terms in office:

 

‡ Bush was called a fascist on a daily basis.

 

Duane Wells of GayWired.com recently dubbed MSNBC's Keith Olbermann “Hypocrite of the Week” for this:  

 

During the Bush administration, Mr. Olbermann ranted on more than one occasion that the 43^rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, was a 'fascist' and even described certain policies embraced and implemented by the Bush administration as fascism. ... Interestingly however, when former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean appeared on Olbermann's Countdown show this past week and attacked Republicans for calling President Barack Obama a ‘fascist’ while simultaneously observing that a sitting president deserved more respect than that, Mr. Olbermann seemed to have forgotten all the heated commentary he had himself delivered over the years using that exact same description for the previous administration.

 

Ironically, Olbermann has also said about Bush: "If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You're a fascist!" How else to describe Obama's takeover of the auto and financial sectors? So by Olbermann’s definition, Obama is a fascist and not a socialist. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy needs to do a "search and replace" on all of their attack propaganda.

 

‡ Bush was called stupid on a daily basis.

 

This May 2007 article, “The Misunderestimated Man: How Bush Chose Stupidity,” by Jacob Weisberg in Slate is one of too many examples to count:

 

Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.

 

And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.

 

‡ The ultimate gotcha games and gimmicks, threatening to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and insisting that they be tried for war crimes.

 

Here are snippets from a March 2007 article by The Nation’s John Nichols, “Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney”:

 

[T]here were confirmed reports that 36 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.

 

In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous.

 

[T]he town of Hartland, which is home to Congressman Peter Welch, backed impeachment. So, too, did Jericho, the home of Gaye Symington, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives.

 

Organizers of the grassroots drive to get town meetings to back impeachment resolutions hope that the overwhelming support the initiative has received will convince Welch to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. That's something the Democratic congressman is resisting, even though his predecessor, Bernie Sanders, signed on last year to a proposal by Michigan Congressman John Conyers to set up a House committee to look into impeachment.

 

And here are the salient bits from Glenn Greenwald’s December 2008 article in Salon.com, “Demands For War Crimes Prosecutions Are Now Growing In The Mainstream”:

 

[D]emands that Bush officials be held accountable for their war crimes are becoming more common in mainstream political discourse, not less so.  The mountain of conclusive evidence that has recently emerged directly linking top Bush officials to the worst abuses - combined with Dick Cheney's brazen, defiant acknowledgment of his role in these crimes ... is forcing even the reluctant among us to embrace the necessity of such accountability. ...

 

That recognition, finally, seems to be spreading -- beyond the handful of blogs, civil liberties organizations and activists who have long been trumpeting the need for this accountability.  The New York Times Editorial Page today has a lengthy, scathing decree demanding prosecutions:  "It would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened. ... A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse." 

 

‡ No Dems or libs gave Bush credit for keeping us safe.

 

Here’s a portion of a January 2009 blog post on this point by Judith Miller on FOX Forum:

 

The Bush national security legacy, as the outgoing president sees it, can be summed up in four words: “he kept us safe.” There has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. But was that the result of a combination of “no-brainer” and extraordinary (and possibly illegal) responses to September 11? Or to the fact that Al Qaeda was never really capable of mounting a second catastrophic strike on American soil? To luck? Or to all of the above?

 

What must frustrate the outgoing president is the not just the complaints he expressed at his last press conference about allegedly biased press coverage, but the fact that much of his historical legacy is now in the hands of the politician who rose to power by challenging everything he did for eight years to keep the country safe.

 

The legions of Bush critics will never give the president credit for even this achievement, though they should.

 

‡ Laura Bush was regularly attacked by columnists and pundits.

 

Here’s how SF Gate columnist Mark Morford described the first lady in April 2008:

 

Laura Bush, docile doormat; Behold, the ideal Republican wife: Prim, sexless, nearly useless, lets the men do the real thinkin'. Hot! …

 

[D]ocile, prudish, former librarian Laura Bush, she of the nonexistent inspiration and dull-as-dishwater personality? ... There is Laura, looking exactly as she has looked for the past eight insufferable years. Prim, a bit glassy, reserved, her hair some sort of ironclad helmet of awkward architecture, the very epitome of nice, meek, domestic Republican female.

 

‡ Throughout his presidency, Dems and libs clung to the myth that Bush stole the election - in 2000 and 2004.

 

Here’s what Vincent Bugliosi wrote in The Nation about the 2000 election:

 

"In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law. ... The bottom line is that nothing is more important in a democracy than the right to vote. Without it there cannot be a democracy. And implicit in the right to vote, obviously, is that the vote be counted. Yet with the election hanging in the balance, the highest court in the land ordered that the valid votes of thousands of Americans not be counted. That decision gave the election to Bush. ... That an election for an American President can be stolen by the highest court in the land under the deliberate pretext of an inapplicable constitutional provision has got to be one of the most frightening and dangerous events ever to have occurred in this country.

 

Here’s what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in Rolling Stone about the 2004 election:

 

"After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election." 

 

Greenman is now all caught up with the events of the recent past. The Stiletto hopes that in his next column he repudiates the behavior of the Bush-haters.

 

 

† April Fools Jokes: AK Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich called on Sen. Mark Begich (D) to step down from the U.S. Senate, because “voters would have re-elected former Sen. Ted Stevens had they known the U.S Department of Justice would abandon its prosecution of him,” reports the Anchorage Daily News:  

 

The party said that the only reason Begich won his race was because "a few thousand Alaskans thought that Senator Stevens was guilty of seven felonies."

 

He added that he thought Begich should step down "so Alaskans may have the chance to vote for a senator without the improper influence of the corrupt Department of Justice."

 

Gov. Sarah Palin concurs with Ruedrich and believes a special election is appropriate, said a spokeswoman for Palin's political action committee, Meg Stapleton. …

 

Begich fired back Thursday, saying that although he believed it was clear there was misconduct during the senator's trial, he stepped into the race "long before Senator Stevens' legal troubles began, because Alaskans were looking for a change and a senator as independent as Alaska."

 

The New York Times reports that “[o]utrage among Republicans is building in Alaska over the Justice Department’s apparent mishandling of its prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens”:

 

“There’s a groundswell all over the state for a special election,” said Wev Shea, a former United States attorney for the Alaska district who is now in private practice in Anchorage.

 

“Alaskans are appalled,” said Mr. Shea, a Republican. “They were robbed of 40 years of seniority in the U.S. Senate, and he was dragged through the mud by the power of the Department of Justice and its F.B.I.” …

 

Mr. Begich’s election helped enlarge the Democrats’ majority in the Senate. At the moment, with the Senate race in Minnesota still undecided, the Democrats have 58 votes, which includes two independents who usually vote with them. That means Democrats are two votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.  

 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe): When the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, refugees, border security and international law and the subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties convened a joint hearing yesterday to look into allegations of racial profiling by AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio, they didn’t even bother to invite him to testify or defend his controversial – and effective - immigration enforcement tactics, reports FOX News.com:

 

"He was not asked or invited to come to this hearing, but he wasn't the direct focus of it," [said] a source within the Judiciary Committee, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

"It's a political witch hunt to use me to stop local law enforcement from enforcing federal laws," Arpaio told FOXNews.com on Thursday, noting that activists who regularly protest his policing hold up signs calling him "Hitler" and "Nazi."

 

Arpaio echoed these sentiments in an interview with Arizona Republic columnist E. J. Montini:

 

"It's all a publicity stunt. I'm the poster guy, now. It's a witch hunt."

 

Arpaio told me that he had invited congressional critics to visit his operation in Arizona, even to ride along with his deputies. He said that he got no response. …

 

"They don't want to hear me," he said. "They only invite the people who are against me. I'm glad I'm not going. It saves the taxpayers the price of a plane ticket." …

 

Noting that it took the Obama administration only “60 days to go after the sheriff,” Arpaio adds: “I wish they would solve the border problem in 60 days. Or all these other problems in 60 days."

 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too): A judge moved the Agriprocessors trial on 9,000 state child labor charges from April 20^th to August 4^th and granted a change of venue from Allamakee County to Black Hawk County, which is about 70 miles away, reports The Associated Press. The judge will issue a separate ruling on motions to dismiss charges against the kosher slaughterhouse, located in Postville, IA.

 

On a related issue (third item), Marcy Forman, director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's investigations office told a House panel that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano does not want to delay work-site immigration raids is not a delay of the enforcement action, only to review them to determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute employers – and that unauthorized workers will be "appropriately dealt with," reports The Associated Press.