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In Huntsville, Al. there was a racist float against President Obama and BillO downplays it saying that it's nothing and Obama should ignore it. Now if it was a float during a George Bush event that had hateful taunts directed at him then O'Reilly would be livid and led off this segment labeling this as the loons of the left who hate America. But instead, he shrugs it off:

O'Reilly: It's a dopey float…I look at it, I'm not angry, I'm not upset, I don't make a phone call…

BillO would have a guest on saying how offended they are over a float against Bush…

He gets into why people get so upset at politicians and calls it a mental disorder. Yes, he's right, but it was started by the right against Clinton and continues to this day. There's no reason to hate Obama as much as they do except that they hate a black man in the White House. Bush was handed the presidency by the Supreme Court and that made the left very angry, but it was his Iraq war that really upset people across this country.

Colmes: …but there's certain hatred for this president because he's black.

O'Reilly: Awww…baloney the black business.

You can't discount that there in some quarters...

O'Reilly: OK, so they hated Bush because he was white then.,...Bush is white, they hated him

Is BIllO saying that blacks hated Bush because he's white? It's hard to tell. I guess he's trying to say that white Democrats hated Bush because he's white...It makes no sense, but this is the stuff that turns righties into mental defectives...

Bill O'Reilly has been trying to construct an alternative reality of how the country's financial sector collapsed and apparently in his construct, if you believe that Bush played any part in it, you're a "moron."

Rough transcript:

O'REILLY: Now Leslie, do you feel that America is in decline Leslie? Do you feel we're on the downside here?

MARSHALL: I actually have to say to be 100% honest, Bill, yes, some of America is on the decline, but I don't blame the president or any one party for that... No I blame the politicizing on both sides and more so on the Republican side as the polls show the most of the majority of Americans agree with me on. And if we don't have (crosstalk)

O'REILLY: Wait a minute. What poll agrees with you that the Republican Party is responsible for the decline of America? What poll is that?

MARSHALL: The Republicans in the House... (crosstalk)

O'REILLY: The Al Franken poll? What poll was that? The Michael Moore poll?

MARSHALL: No, no...no. (crosstalk)

O'REILLY: You're pulling stuff out of your hat and you know you can't back it up.

MARSHALL: No I'm not...

O'REILLY: The majority of Americans are not...

MARSHALL: There's low approval ratings for the Republicans in Congress...

O'REILLY: That's low approval ratings different than blaming Republicans in the House for the decline of America. Leslie, under the Democratic House, okay, they ran up more than a $5 trillion debt in four years, okay? And it didn't work. The economy is worse. So what moron would blame Republicans for the current epidemic, for the current problems we have in the economic region?

Dick Cheney is once again telling everyone how much he loves waterboarding and torture. NBC is teasing an in-depth interview about Cheney's new book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which is being released at the end of August. Other bits and pieces are coming out to help promote the sales of the book like this article in the NY Times today: Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07

During George Bush's entire presidency the question of how much influence and authority VP Dick Cheney was given was always been part of the discussion. Cheney openly disdained rules, conventions and laws, pushing the concept of the Unitary Executive further than Nixon ever dreamed. Was Cheney making all the important policy decisions? Cheney once believed he was highly qualified to be president and threw out a trial balloon in 1996.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Monday he would consider a presidential run in 1996, adding that he worried about U.S. military cuts planned by President-elect Clinton in the face of instability in Russia.

The Red Scare, how predictable. However, he decided not to run after all.

Fast forward to 2000, Cheney conveniently picked himself for the office after he was named to head the search team to find a Vice President for Bush's ticket. And there was a lot of controversy about how that all went down. (h/t ThinkProgress)

The news in my book about this process is that Cheney never filled out his own questionnaire; that the heart surgeon who vouched for his health never met him or looked at his records; and that Bush and Cheney never interviewed anyone for the job until Cheney already had it nailed.

But what I find most fascinating in the NY Times article is that Cheney actually reveals personal conversations he had with his president as well as many other top Bush aides and advisers. Plus he's taking full credit for running the government response to the 9/11 attacks, which makes Bush look weaker than his My Pet Goat seven-minute stare. Cheney was asked by Jamie Gangel of ABC News if Bush would be upset by these reveals, but replied with a nonchalant "no". But just think about what he is admitting to: as the 9/11 attacks were happening, Cheney has no problem revealing in his book that he was running the government response, completely against protocol.

The book opens with an account of Mr. Cheney’s experiences during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he essentially commanded the government’s response from a bunker beneath the White House while Mr. Bush — who was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns — played a peripheral role. But Mr. Cheney wrote that he did not want to make any formal statement to the nation that day.

“My past government experience,” he wrote, “had prepared me to manage the crisis during those first few hours on 9/11, but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press, it would undermine the president, and that would be bad for him and for the country.

“We were at war. Our commander in chief needed to be seen as in charge, strong, and resolute — as George W. Bush was.”

Bush should have been in control that tragic day, not Cheney, since he was the elected president and was not incapacitated from doing his duties.

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Remember the above video segment? Scarborough: "Is Bush An 'Idiot'?" It brought back memories of Paul O'Neil's feeling about the Bush Tax Cuts: Paul O'Neill on the Bush tax cut: 'I would not have done it'

A new WSJ/NBC poll was just released and to my surprise six out of ten people still blame Bush for the hole this country is in.

A third reason is that the American public isn’t blaming Obama for the current economy, with more than six in 10 respondents still saying he inherited the country’s economic problems from his Oval Office predecessor.

Also, while a combined 47 percent believe George W. Bush and his administration are “solely responsible” or “mainly responsible” for the current economy, just 34 percent in the poll say the same of Obama and his administration.

But that doesn’t mean the public is satisfied with the president’s economic performance. Just 41 percent approve of his handling of the economy, versus 50 percent who approve of his handling of foreign policy and 54 percent who approve of his handling of the war in Afghanistan.

I have been very critical of the way the Obama administration has discussed the economic problems brought upon us by Conservative ideology and power so it's nice to see that many Americans haven't forgotten the Bush years, no matter how long he stays tucked away in the basement. Obama is still very vulnerable on this issue big time if things don't improve and since the stimulus was not as progressive as it should have been, many Americans don't believe they've seen tangible results from it.

And only 34 percent think the economic stimulus that Obama signed into law in 2009 has helped improve the economy or will improve it in the future.

High unemployment does that to people.

From March 2009, Laura Flanders interviews Juan Cole, who is about as supportive of Pres. Obama's foreign policy as he was of Pres. Bush. Hope the CIA is not still on the case.

Some times it's not paranoia...they are genuinely after you:

C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

I don't think this surprises anyone if they remember a systematic campaign of attack the Bush administration applied to anyone who criticized them: Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Don Siegelman, the list is long and distinguished. Though to use the CIA in this kind of personal, petty vendetta is a new twist and shows that there is no law, no ethic, no constitutional limitation of power they weren't willing to violate to pursue their agenda.

Considering the amount of air time that Fox News Channel gives to such A-list talent like Ted Nugent to wax political, you'd think they wouldn't necessarily be surprised to find out that performers, like many Americans, have opinions and occasionally like to express them.

Buffett, a well-known Gulf resident, held a benefit concert in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and in an interview with the AP, didn't hold back his anger:

Buffett told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that it's perfectly normal for people to be mad when they see oil washing up on beaches and marshes.

"If you're born and raised on the Gulf Coast and it's kind of in you, and you don't feel anger and rage initially over what's going on down there, I think you're a hypocrite," he said in a telephone interview from New York.

Buffett's anger and rage has focused on the crony capitalism and de-regulation so rampant and institutionalized during the Bush administration:

Buffett, a supporter of President Barack Obama, said the roots of the spill lie with the administration of former President George Bush, which was often criticized for being too cozy with the petroleum industry.

"To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases," he said. "I think that has more to do with it than how the president reacted to it."

That, of course, is a simply OUTRAGEOUS statement to the brain-trust that is Fox & Friends. I mean, c'mon already, people are just looking for a little entertainment. Can't Buffett just keep his opinions to himself? And as Steve Doocy notes, Buffett is a supporter of Obama (something that AP felt obligated to note as well), so obviously "Margaritaville" has turned into Kool-Aid Land.

Um yeah. Let's remember who is sipping the Kool-Aid then next time Chuck Norris has some valuable political punditry to provide.

I saw this on CNN last night and cheered. I've been wanting the Dems to bring back Bush because he's responsible for the mess our country has been left with after he split the scene, man. The GOP knows it and that's why he's been off the national stage for so long. He didn't look too happy going out there in front of the cameras to help during the Haitian earthquake.

Americans are strange people when it comes to politics, and as we've seen with the polling of the mythical independent voters, the numbers go up and down all the time. The determining factor seems to me to be who is in power at the time when your life sucks. So this country is about to reelect the people who created our misery.

For many liberals President Obama hasn't handled these problems as the progressive we want him to be, but in his defense, he didn't initiate two wars in the Middle East after we were hit with a terrorist attack, and he didn't allow the global financial meltdown to happen right before his eyes. So if some people want to bring back BUSH for us, I'm all in.

Bob Collins says that nobody knows who actually bought the billboard that says" Miss Me Yet?"

Digby calls it Presidential Rehab, but I think this would be a blessing if he's trotted out there again. We can promote the theme of "Don't Get Fooled Again." We had eight long years that proved to all of America that Conservatism was and is a failure.

Jonathan Martin reports in The Politico that the Bush-bashing policy has not worked for the Democrats so they are abandoning it.

After three consecutive losses in statewide races, some top Democrats are questioning a tactic aimed at boosting the party’s candidates in each of those contests: Bush-bashing.

Running as much against the Bush White House as he was running against Sen. John McCain, Barack Obama easily carried Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts in 2008.

Bashing Bush in local races will not help if it doesn't emanate from the White House. Axelrod never made it a priority to attack conservatism and George Bush or Ronald Reagan and the country was primed for it. They did mention that Obama inherited this mess from Bush, but they missed a monumental chance to shake conservative principles for years to come, had Barack Obama actually attacked not just Bush but conservatism and called it (rightly so) a complete failure, beginning from the day he decided to run for president.

And then he could have pilloried them the entire time, both in the campaign and even after he took office. Reagan blamed liberals and big government constantly for his early failures, and it worked for him. Bush followed suit and bashed Clinton, but for some reason they didn't find it appealing.

The country witnessed a complete meltdown under George Bush except for the very wealthy, but if you never make the case on a national level, Americans will soon forget about him and blame the person that is in charge because their lives are no better. In reality, it takes years to dig out of the kind of economic collapse we just witnessed, if at all.

Democrats said that invoking Bush’s name doesn’t have the same impact now, in part for a fairly obvious reason: He’s not in charge anymore.

And the anger toward the political establishment that helped lift Obama and so many Democratic candidates in 2008 has now been transferred to the party in power.

If President Obama and his staff had made Bush bashing -- and calling out conservatism -- a priority, it would have been a potent weapon, because they had the truth on their side. Instead, it was another lost opportunity and now it falls to bloggers to make the case that conservatism is an ideology that doesn't succeed. It's never worked, and it never will work. Conservatives like to forget that Ronald Reagan raised taxes because he had to. If he didn't he would have been a single-term president.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were guests on "Meet the Press" today to talk about Haiti relief, and I was struck once again by the contrast between the two. As always, Clinton has a grasp of all the logistical and political factors in play, and Bush speaks in emotional but general terms. I can't imagine the basis for this friendship:

DAVID GREGORY: Let me start by asking you both, President Bush, what's your biggest concern right now?

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: My biggest concern is the-- the Haitian people have security, water, and food.

DAVID GREGORY: And those are big ifs right now.

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Well they are. But-- the President briefed us-- about-- military efforts to get-- food and water to the people. And surging a lot of material. And it's gonna take a little bit of time to get it there. But-- I came away from the briefing confident it's gonna happen.

DAVID GREGORY: President Clinton, the basics are so important right now.

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: This is about water, food, medical supplies and care, and-- and shelter, secure shelter. We-- I have some protection concerns. But-- we were just told in the briefing that 40 percent of the Haitian police forces signed back in, volunteered for duty. A lot of them don't have uniforms or weapons or anything anymore. But-- the American military's working closely with the U.N. troops that are there. And-- they'll get this organized. They're doing a good job. We just need more help. We literally don't have enough food to feed them now. We don't have-- and-- and there are two issues. One is buying it. And the second is getting it in and distributing it. But that's what everybody's working on now.

There have been a number of right wing protesters showing up at Democratic town hall meetings with guns over the past couple of weeks, even at events held by President Obama. Many have made note that countless people were shoved into cages called "free speech zones," or arrested at events held by former president George Bush for merely wearing anti-Bush t-shirts, yet people have been allowed to openly carry loaded weapons while protesting against Obama, for the most part without incident. How many of you have either posted or said aloud something along the lines of the following statement:

Can you imagine what would would have happened if a protester had brought a loaded gun to a Bush event?

Of course, that protester would have been tased, beaten, arrested and labeled a terrorist -- but times have changed:

Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," he said. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Not everyone agrees:

"What Gibbs said is wrong," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Individuals carrying loaded weapons at these events require constant attention from police and Secret Service officers. It's crazy to bring a gun to these events. It endangers everybody." Read on...

Personally, I believe it's just a matter of time before one of these gun-toting, Fox News-inspired whackjobs take a shot at the president or a Democratic member of Congress.