Charlie Jarvis, chairmen of USA NEXT appeared on Inside Politics and tried to spin his way out of that disgusting ad.

Woodruff: ...is USA NEXT going to run this ad some more, and why'd you only have it up for one day?

Jarvis: We were testing to see if the left liberal groups would over react and they did. The hypothesis was that they'd focus on one single, tiny image on one website ..

Woodruff: It worked.

Jarvis: It worked. By the end of yesterday, to show you how crazy the left liberal groups are and that they have a death wish on Social Security. They were literally having people call (pause)television stations all over the country to pull the ad that didn't exist. Remarkable.

His rational that a scathing reaction to a sickening ad is a "death wish" is ludicrous. That death wish will ultimately rest on the head of Jarvis, and USA NEXT.

Michael Tanner, from the Cato Institute was appalled.

TANNER : Well, we're very disappointed in this ad. full transcript ....We don't think that we should be going down the road to in essence a bigoted approach to gay rights or things of that nature in order to sell the very positive approach that we have for individual accounts.

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When you put an ad on a website, it's real.. This kind of sleazy, disgusting display reflects the moral values that your company holds true and ultimately USA NEXT will be thought of not as an alternative to AARP, but as a bigoted, conniving company that will say anything to make a buck. Let's say we believed your bullshit excuse Charlie, that it was a tiny, little ad to trick the left wing groups. (our influence is appreciated) What do you think the reaction of the right wing sites would be to an ad the AARP ran that said this Charlie?

"A starving, elderly couple with graying hair, homeless and in tattered clothes are scavenging through a dumpster looking for food. The Word "Hopeless" is stencilled across the center in red / Flip side: A well dressed Wall Street executive is laughing, smoking a big cigar, drinking some champagne at a casino with a hot chic on his arm while throwing a pair of dice. The word "Jackpot" stenciled across the center in blue. The copy:

George Bush’s Social Security plan will deprive the elderly and the youth of our country the security they might need to live and eat in dignity. While the fat cats at Wall Street will be gambling away the safety net that Social Security provides for their own personal gain. Thanks President Bush. We know who you really care about."

How do you think that one, tiny ad would play out?

Michael Moore describes Bush's seven minute fail pretty accurately in the above video. You've probably heard and seen that Bush didn't show up for the Ground Zero memorial today even after Obama invited him:

The White House says Obama's trip will include a private meeting with family members of 9/11 victims, a meeting with first responders that will be open to some news coverage, and a wreath-laying at the 9/11 memorial. Obama invited former President George W. Bush to accompany him, but Bush declined.

"President Bush will not be in attendance on Thursday," The New York Times quoted his spokesman David Sherzer as saying. "He appreciated the invite, but has chosen in his post-presidency to remain largely out of the spotlight. He continues to celebrate with Americans this important victory in the war on terror."

Bush, whose presidency was defined by the al-Qaida-led Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has largely maintained a low public profile since leaving office.

It's not surprising that Bush wouldn't want to be there since he had a chance to get Bin Laden at Tora Bora, but didn't even though those actions contradicted his bullhorn speech.

Digby writes:

Yes. Actually it's quite easy to picture a petulant and jealous Junior Bush not wanting to be part of a ceremony that highlights his failure to achieve his most cherished desire.
--
Bush froze in the spotlight when told the United States was under attack and that 's the equivalent of deliberate decision making in a military operation. But hey, you can't blame them. When you have to rely on a second grader's interpretation of events you know you're reaching --- that and a bullhorn is all they've got left of their mighty, macho warrior president and it's got to hurt. They really care about that crap.

Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine have gone to great lengths to try and rehabilitate Bush's image after those seven minutes. Now, the wingnuts are pouncing on a news report out by the New York Daily News' Thomas DeFrank: Little Boy George didn't go today because he had a hissy fit.

Little Green Footballs:

This, of course, is delicious red meat for people like Jim “Dim” Hoft (aka “Gateway Pundit”): Bush Wises Up… Won’t Be Prop For Obama’s Victory Lap | The Gateway Pundit

DERPBush wises up.
President Obama was wrong on waterboarding, renditions, the Iraq War, the Surge, Gitmo, military tribunals, and the Patriot Act. Now he wants to take full credit for getting Osama Bin Laden and wants to use George W. Bush as a prop.
Bush ain’t going for it.

Bush policies kept America safe and led us to Osama Bin Laden. (History.com)

The former president feels Obama is ignoring the Bush Administration’s role in the strike on the Osama Bin Laden compound. He won’t be a prop for Obama at Ground Zero today.

There’s just one teensy problem with this idiots’ narrative.

It’s completely false: Wife: Bush skips 9/11 NY event to keep low profile.

Laura Bush told The Associated Press on Thursday that she and her husband were out to dinner Sunday night when they received word that Obama wanted to speak with him. The former president went home to take the call informing him that U.S. military forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid of his compound in Pakistan, Laura Bush said.

The former first lady told the AP that her husband declined an invitation to attend Thursday’s event in New York because “that’s for President Obama to do at this point.”

She said she and her husband both felt great pride for military and intelligence personnel after hearing the news.

“It was risky and it was dangerous for our members of the military,” Laura Bush said at a Dallas elementary school where she announced grants from her foundation for school libraries.

I guess they don't believe the former First Lady.

As we are witnessing, the Beltway media are pushing the theme of that we need to cut, cut, cut, so that our national debt can be lowered. They call this "shared sacrifice" -- though it's clear that they won't be sharing in the sacrifice. The rest of us will.

This is a common assumption that news pundits are weaving into their narratives every day. The Democrats and President Obama have also embraced this idea and shifted the goal posts to the right of center. Austerity rules, even though it's proved to be anything but effective. If we look at what's happening in the UK now, and remember what happened under FDR when the deficit hawks stepped in to curtail the federal government, it's clear that this nonsensical approach to budget writing just makes economic recovery regress.

To many of us watching the wealthy thrive in this economy while the working class struggles is very frustrating. I'm starting to finally hear some pundits question the wisdom of why Republicans refuse tax increases and instead push for more tax breaks for the rich at this time when they are already wealthy. Bob Schieffer asked Paul Ryan that yesterday on FTN.

There is one thing certain, though: The Bush budgets, and especially the tax cuts that accompanied them, caused catastrophic harm to our country and to the world. Paul Ryan wants to continue the work that Bush, Cheney and Rove started. Well, here's a flashback to what George Bush told America in 2001.

Via Think Progress:

Indeed, the nation’s $14 trillion debt is largely a result of “the cost of two wars, a runaway defense budget, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, taxes on the richest Americans being the lowest in a generation, and a recession caused by the lack of regulation of Wall Street.” The Bush administration followed wars with huge regressive tax cuts and an unpaid for prescription drug benefit.

But in his first major address to Congress, President George W. Bush promised that his “responsible” budget would pay off the national debt in ten years:

My budget has funded a responsible increase in our ongoing operations. It has funded our Nation’s important priorities. It has protected Social Security and Medicare. And our surpluses are big enough that there is still money left over.

Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.

Of course, the opposite occurred, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. In fact, conservatives argued in 2001 that the very existence of a budget surplus was a valid reason to enact large, regressive tax cuts. But this is precisely what happens when you have an administration that believes “deficits don’t matter.”

So here we are. Nothing that Bush said came true in 2001 -- except the opposite. Bush's name is never mentioned by the MSM because the Beltway thinks it's not cool to blame him any longer. When you destroy a house and start from scratch you have to know why your house was destroyed in the first place and take precautions to never so it doesn't happen again. Apparently reminding the American people that conservative policies led us into ruin is not newsworthy anymore.

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George Bush has infuriated the Tea Party faction of the GOP when he spoke out January 24 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas against what he perceives is a historic shift back to the olden days of isolationism, protectionism and its demon-seed hellspawn, Nativism.

Laura Ingraham filled in for O'Reilly and was furious at the president she once held so dear to her heart.

Ingraham: Last November President Bush remarked that the Tea Party is good for the country. But why did he attack a key priority for many Tea Partiers, namely, getting our borders under control and preventing mass amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Bush: What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up -- pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was -- there was an American first policy that said who cares what happens in Europe?...And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and Nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period."

Ingraham: Now as someone who was at the forefront in opposing the 2006 Bush immigration reform effort, I was saddened, but not all that surprised by the President's insulting characterization.... To say that it's all about hostility to foreigners is ludicrous.

To back up her position she uses a Dallas Tea Party poll which showed over 95% in favor of Arizona's hateful SB1070 law. I guess that's irrefutable proof that Conservative opposition towards immigration reform is anything but Nativism, right? Ingraham uses the phony Conservative claim that this is all about "the rule of law" as a crutch to back up her Nativist position on immigration. Jeb Bush also got under her skin when he spoke out against Republicans and called their opposition "wrong and stupid." Laura wasn't happy being tag teamed by the Bush Brothers.

Ingraham: Now that's an interesting way to court future GOP voters given their overwhelming opposition to amnesty, Gov. Bush. maybe President Bush was right. We are suffering from an outbreak of ism's. Elitism comes to mind.

Calling George and Jeb Bush 'elitists' are fightin' words, young lady, since that's the exact opposite of how she viewed them when they were in office. Oh, how times have changed -- because here I am, writing about something that I agree with George Bush on, and here Laura Ingraham is, attacking the president she once defended to the hilt. That's how far right the GOP has moved.

Paul Krugman has been on fire and he's not only taking names, but he's beating back the myths.

First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally...read on

He's beating back the people whose policies helped destroy the world's economy when George W. Bush was President. In another column called When Zombies Win, he then highlights the fact that all the people responsible for the meltdown in the first place haven't been shunned, but instead are leading the charge to only make things worse. Simply f*&king amazing.

There was a reason the GOP kept Bush off the airwaves until after the midterm elections: the man was so reviled. I wouldn't doubt that Roger Ailes had something to do with it, but that's just a theory. Anyway, the one and only panel I did with Andrew Breitbart was revolting for many reasons, but one of the biggest lies he told and is one often repeated by the zombies of the Tea Party (which took off after Rick Santelli gave them permission to do so on CNBC) -- namely, that the greedy poor people created the mortgage meltdown because they had the audacity to become homeowners. Krugman explains away that nonsense and Digby reminded me again of Bush's 2004 acceptance speech, where he bragged about his economic handiwork, and begged to turn America into the ultimate "homeowner society."

I've got yer history for yah right here. Here's one of those bleeding heart liberals at the 2004 Republican Convention:

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security and dignity and independence.
...

Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high.

(APPLAUSE)

Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordable homes in the next 10 years, so more American families will be able to open the door and say, "Welcome to my home."

(Bush starts his "Welcome to my home" rant at the 3:36 mark of the above video)

Now Americans are either packing their bags and fleeing from their homes without trying to pay their mortgages, or they're trying to get HAMP assistance. Some are still being kicked out even when they follow the rules, or are not eligible for HAMP; others are just are foreclosed on anyway because they can't afford to pay anymore.

Way to go, Mr. Bush.

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Credit: AP

The Bush fanboys are back, led by Breitbart's Dana Loesch, the Queen of double-talk nonsense. She wrote a post glorifying Bush, who is out on his image-makeover/revisionist-history tour.

I love how his face seemingly peeks out from the black-and-white news columns of the day to defiantly whisper: “PSSST. HEY. Still heeeeere.” His existence may have been obscured by the hubris surrounding the current administration, an increase in terrorist attacks, a movement born partly because of several Bush policies, and an election; the sudden appearance of Bush across all the networks and on the front and cover pages reminds us that even though he isn’t the sort of GOPer grassroots adore, he was infinitely better than the man currently in the White House, a man who bows to anything with a pulse.

The excerpts from his book give insight into the process leading up to the decisions what the rest of the world would see and whether you agreed with him or not (I’ve long been on record abhorring NCLB; also the prescription drug act was neither “compassionate” or “conservative,” and neither was TARP) the man would make a decision and stick with it. Mainly though, I love how fist-in-the-air defiant he is in the book.
---
Defiance on steroids. Balls!

(h/t Digby)

Have you noticed all these conservatives who now say that Bush wasn't a beloved figure? Where were they when Bush was attacking countries that didn't attack us, and torturing terrorism suspects, for starters? Of course, he increased the debt as much as he could while giving all our surpluses to the richest of the rich. Now that he's back and trying to spin his way out of being the worst President in the history of America, the wingnuts are making it up as they go along.

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George Bush's Makeover Tour is currently making the rounds of ConservaTalk, and yesterday morning he stopped by to chat with his successor as the leader of the GOP: Rush Limbaugh.

One of our great C&L readers, King Crimson, sent in some audio from today's gag-fest and wrote a post to accompany it. You may remember his last post, which exposed the false and racist attacks against the impoverished people in Detroit made by wingnut Ken Rugulski:

Rush Limbaugh Uses Innocent Detroiters As Show Pinata

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After the Great Depression, programs like Freddy May and Fanny Mac were set up to insure corporations against catastrophic risk to help make sure such a disaster could never occur again no matter how out of whack things got.

When George W. Bush was in office, he created what he called the "Ownership Society" initiative that abused those institutions in order to create an illusion that republican control was affording everyone, even those who couldn't afford it a new home or ridiculous cash advances on the mortgages they already held.

That was the mechanism that triggered the Great Recession of 2008. Republican policies, coupled with the complete lack of any kind of regulation over huge corporations and lending institutions playing fast and loose with mortgages and refi paper. Why not? If anything ever failed, the government would pay the losses! What's not to love? Except that the damages were so colossal that not even Freddy Mac and Fannie May could afford the tab they rang up. Hence the "Troubled Asset Relief Program" or T.A.R.P. It was the biggest government loan in history to try and contain the damage that Bush's regulation free ... free for all ... had exacted on our economy.

Today, former president George W. Bush so much as admits that it was precisely what occurred as he appeared on the Rush Limbaugh program to sell his book. "(There are some) enterprises that have got implicit government guarantee, and they're taking risky stances!" he recalls telling congress. I lived through the Bush administration, watching CSpan and following the news, every scintilla of it ... and I can say there never was a time in 2003 when George W. Bush made overtures to Congress about fears of corporations playing outside the rules...ever. But he insists to Rush that he did. Nonetheless, he admitted that it was indeed Wall Street that caused the recession.

But listen. A short time later, Rush gives Bush succor with a narrative that it wasn't Wall Street, it wasn't deregulation, it wasn't a republican controlled congress sitting on its hands in 2003 letting corporations do what they want because conservatives believe companies being free to do whatever they wish is the best thing for the economy. None of those things caused the Great Recession of 2008. No ... it was the Democrats, and Freddy Mac, and Fannie Mae that caused it. The political party that fought for the last 4 decades to rein in out of control Corporate greed, and creating programs to protect the country from financial shenanigans ... THEY were the ones who caused it.

Despite the fact that Rush's theme was exactly 180 degrees away from what the former president had just gotten through admitting not 45 seconds before, the Decider in Chief blurts, "That's right."

Bush doesn't even have to lie about the damage he did to this country and to our
economy anymore. He just stands there until someone does it for him, and then agrees.

George Bush is on a new "mission" now since he's out of office and is trying to restore his name after he did so much to destroy it. Watching him last night instead was a vivid reminder of how awful a President he was. So much for the image makeover.

I cringed when I heard his tale about the "fetus jar." I wonder if he read most of what was in his own book? In his NBC special called 'Decision Points" he tried to explain away why America tortured people. (Oh, have you wondered why FOX didn't get the first exclusive? Maybe the answer comes from the publishers, but you know Dick Cheney would never have agreed to that.)

Anyway, Cheney knew that if he stacked the OLC with his sycophants like David Addington then he'd get the rulings he needed to do whatever the executive branch wanted, which has been well documented. Jack Goldsmith blew the whistlel on them many times. Matt Lauer asked him about the legality of waterboarding and he replied that he's no lawyer after all. Heck, I'm only a Texan. Hee haw!

There's plenty about Bush's tenure to discuss, but for now let's just stick to the most heinous topic: Torture.

NBC transcripts::

LAUER: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

BUSH: Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer., but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do.

LAUER: You say it's legal. "And the lawyers told me."

BUSH: Yeah.

LAUER: Critics say that you got the Justice Department to give you the legal guidance and the legal memos that you wanted.

BUSH: Well—

LAUER: Tom Kean, who a former Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people.

BUSH: He obviously doesn't know. I hope Mr. Kean reads the book. That's why I've written the book. He can, they can draw whatever conclusion they want. But I will tell you this. Using those techniques saved lives. My job is to protect America and I did.

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On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, George Bush, famously or infamously, had to be instructed on the existence of and differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. He had no idea--despite centuries of warfare between the two sects--that there was a difference.

Sadly, that cultural ignorance of most Americans is still being played and preyed upon when fostering fear of Islam here, especially in regards to the Cordoba House. As has been previously reported, the Cordoba House is being built by Sufi Muslims, a mystical sub-sect of the Shia Muslims and considered apostates of Wahabbist Sunni sub-sect of al Qaeda.

Fareed Zakaria highlights further proof of the al Qaeda hatred of the Sufis with the July attack on a Lahore, Pakistan Sufi shrine during prayers, which killed 41 and injured 175 more. What gets lost in the amped-up "fear of the Other" rhetoric of Gingrich and Palin and driven by media like Fox News, is that this is not a battle of Islam vs. the US.

Why would al Qaeda attack a holy place at a time of prayer? Because it is a Sufi shrine, part of a sect that al Qaeda despises and regards as a deadly foe in the real battle it is fighting, the battle within Islam.

The Sufis are a sector of Islam originating in South Asia. They're all about mysticism, love, brotherhood and devotion, with very little attention to dogma. They believe in saints, shrines, music, dance, and follow a very liberal interpretation of the Koran.

Sufi poets routinely extol the virtues of wine and song, both forbidden in the purer versions of Islam. Sufism has always believed in tolerance towards other people and religion, and in peace. You can see why al Qaeda views it as its mortal enemy. The more Muslims accept some version of Sufi Islam, the more dangerous for al Qaeda and its extreme jihadist philosophy.

It can't be said enough, with all the misinformation out there: Islam doesn't hate us. This is a battle between al Qaeda and everyone else that doesn't follow their own narrow vision of Islam, which includes other Muslims. The opposition to the Cordoba House is exactly what al Qaeda wants to see.

And how sad is it that George W. Bush eventually came around to understanding this divide and was more moderate in his statements about the Muslim world than the current crop of Republican leaders?

I had a good time in Vegas, so I didn't spend a huge amount of time at NN, but I did spend enough time to take in the mood, and it was schizophrenic. About half the people there are some combination of angry, disappointed and bitter with Democrats in general and Obama in particular.

This group sees him as not a heck of a lot better than George Bush, and in fact the Democrat who extended some of Bush's worst policies, especially in civil liberties. This includes a lot of feminists (angry at what they see as betrayals on abortion), many Hispanics angry at the continued harsh enforcement of immigration laws, gays who feel Obama has betrayed clear promises on gay rights, anti-war activists saddened by escalation in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and a mishmash of folks who think health care reform was a dog's breakfast and that the general way the economy and financial reform has been handled is a disgrace.

Then there are the folks who would characterize themselves, in general, as hard-nosed pragmatists and "realists". These range from the "Obama is the greatest liberal president since FDR" types, who think that the Obama is just wonderful and those progressives and liberals who don't agree are simply delusional to those who feel that a lot of what he's done has been watered down pap in general but that it's certainly better than nothing and that those who are disappointed are unrealistic idealists who simply don't understand the constraints Obama and Congressional Democrats are working under.

As regular readers know, I tend to the first camp, but I'm not going to go into why, I simply want to note that this divide is very real. It's occasioning a lot of anger on both sides. The first sees the second as tribalistic sellouts, willing to excuse horrible things they would never excuse in Republicans so long as they are committed by Democrats and lacking an understanding of just how bad Democratic policy has been. These are folks who tend to sneer at the "wins" as either illusory or so underwhelming as to be a parody of the "lesser evil" argument. (Reminding one inevitably of the T-shirts which say "Why Vote for the lesser evil. Cthulhu 2008.") To many of these folks the other side are, crudely put, sell-outs.

The second side is angry at what they see as fairy-tale thinking and deeply unrealistic. "Obama couldn't fix everything immediately, but he's better than the Republicans will be if they get back in power" is their mantra, ranging from "really, he's wonderful and you're insane for thinking otherwise" to "well, yes he sucks but he sucks less than what the Republicans will do when they get in power." Either way, they see the attacks from what they consider the "purists" as deeply damaging. Democrats may or may not be a ton better than Republicans, but either way, they are better, and there is a moral case to be made for sucking it up one more time and working hard to elect, as the old progressive battle cry runs, "better Democrats". This is a two-party state, with those parties having an unbreakable oligopoly on power. Dissing Democrats just helps the even worse party win, at which point they will do even worse things. So get over your problems, whether they are with economic policy or Obama's continued shredding of fundamental civil liberties like Habeas Corpus, jump back into the trenches with your bowie knife or bayonet and fight for Democrats, not against them because by constantly bad mouthing Dems all you do is make it more likely that Republicans will win, and if they win, well, that will be baaaaddddd. Very, very baaaaaddddd.

To put it crudely and unfairly to both sides, it's the sell-outs without principles against the purists without realism.

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