On April 25 - Thursday evening - American icon and humble hero George W Bush took one small step for man, one slip-and-fall for humanity - as he re-entered a spotlight until-recently blissful to have been abandoned by him, for the dedication of his presidential library. Put aside for the moment that having an actual structure that houses things you read dedicated to him is like honouring Chris Christie with a gluten-free restaurant or naming a Bar Mitzvah after Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Hell, I half expected him to don his trusty flight suit and declare "all major combat operations over in Iraq", you know, just for the memories.

But really, he did not have to do anything of the sort. For it was perfect timing for the My Pet Goat Athenaeum to emerge from the steamy Sun Belt hydrofluorocarbons just as one disaster after another befell the country, a helpful reminder of the eight torturous (in more ways than one) years he and his corrupted West Texas ideology made the rest of the United States resemble, well, West, Texas.

From the explosion at the fertiliser plant due to flagrant flouting of environmental regulations to the attack in Boston, the rejection of common sense gun safety to the square dance around sequestration; this was shaping up to be a Bush Legacy week whether he stayed home to paint nude portraits of Jeb or chose to step out and try to defend a presidency many Americans must be still convinced was just one long phantasm brought on by a bad batch of Peyote.

Michael Lind points out in, Made In Texas, that we have had conservative presidents over the past century and southern presidents. We have not had the combination. And it is an important distinction. As Lind put it in an interview with BuzzFlash (2002), "His [Bush's] political values - ranging from aggressive militarism in foreign policy to small-government ideology and fervent support for laissez-faire economics" have come to define much of our political culture in Washington - hence last week.

First, we had the Festrunk Brothers launch an attack on the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, and just about everything involved had Bush's West Texas political culture written all over it. Because of the NRA, which "worked out of his White House", there is no way to track where gun powder was bought as there is with plastic explosives. Because... freedom! (And defence contractor profits!).

There was the fact that these two clowns apparently committed these atrocities because of anger over Iraq - for which I hope the younger brother (I refuse to give them attention by using their names) spends a nice, long, pain-enveloped life carving rocks into chess pieces at Shawshank. Ahh yes, Iraq. Remember that war? The one that George W Bush lied us into with tales of yellowcake and "curveball", that has now cost up to about $2 trillion?

It is because of this war, unpaid for tax cuts and Big Pharma boondoggles that we apparently have to eliminate Medicare, according to the Pied Piper of granny starving, Congressman and former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. But let us eliminate, post haste, the part of our silly self-created "sequestration" - flight delays! - that causes inconveniences to wealthy members of the Congress on their way to the next Ladybank-single-malt-festooned, campaign contributor bribe-fests.

We were also recently treated to the West Texas answer to allowing weapons of war on our streets to blow apart toddlers in schools. Nothing. Unless you count Congress' finding ways to allow itself to insider trade again. Because... freedom!

Finally, there is the tragedy in West, Texas. A fertiliser-plant explosion near Waco (just like the Crawford pseudo-ranch!) that engulfed the neighbourhood, due to an understaffed and barely functioning Chemical Safety Board (by Congressional design), a lack of common-sense zoning requirements and the no-follow-ups rule we like to impose on the Environmental Protection Agency when they find that a plant like say, this one, had no risk management plan in 2006. But hey, the plant self-reported (is that like self-deporting?) that it posed "no risk" of fire, and why would they lie?

You may remember that a certain convict-Congressman named Tom DeLay - of West Texas - compared the EPA to the "Gestapo" and current lunkhead Texas Governor Rick Perry attacks the very same EPA for its "misguided and job-killing policies", as opposed to his people-killing ones. And then there is, once again, George W Bush. The Decider decided as President that, as dictated by his West Texas ideology, he would assault the EPA by any means necessary, short of naming the former Arabian Horse Association guy to run it (he saved that for FEMA... phew!).

So, in a way, it was fitting to see the George W Bush library opening this past week. It is his West Texas world. We are just stuck living in it.

This syndicated column first appeared at Al Jazeera English

Follow me on Twitter: @CliffSchecter

**The subject of this video is the kind of thing DC bipartisanship gets you

There is no word in the English language that allows the sun to poke through the clouds, inspires cherubic song and makes lobbyists high five while lording over a beer-joint urinal on in official Washington than "bipartisan". Bipartisan is just so darn cool. It's hip! It's now! It's Rand Paul's talking filibuster and Charlie Krauthammer's sardonic wit and Justice John Robert's dreamy blue eyes all rolled up into one big pig in a blanket!

Or, and I'm just thinking aloud here, perhaps when that word is uttered in Washington there is only once choice to be made: Run.

Because you see, there is actually bipartisanship that makes sense. It is all over the US. It will tell you that over 90 percent of the American public thinks there should be a 3-minute background checks before you purchase a combat weapon that can dismember kindergarten-aged kids, that the minimum wage should surpass that of Heilongjiang Province and that marriage equality is a concept long overdue.

But that is not the bipartisanship that exists in Washington. This brand of bipartisanship is based on Beltway "wisdom" and the status of who happens to be presenting the case. It's the variety that just gave us the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy in Iraq and rewarded Condoleezza Rice of the "smoking gun", "mushroom cloud" and "what does 'Bin Laden determined to attack in US' mean" with a new role as a political analyst on CBS - as if she can figure out day in and day out how to tie her shoes.

That's bipartisanship DC style. It ignored Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Trayvon Martin and finally got around to thinking we have a gun problem after grotesque inaction reached its logical conclusion, with 20 six and seven year olds mowed down like cattle in their classroom. Even so, while there is much support for gun safety measures, there is still some "bipartisan" opposition.

This kind of Washington bipartisanship looks at this war-of-choice that's now estimated to have cost in the trillions (yes, that's with a T), out-of-control health care costs via a crony-capitalism protection racket and a Pentagon so bloated with fat it's a surprise Rush Limbaugh doesn't eat it with a side of his happy pills for dinner, and concludes (behind the leadership of our very own ostensibly Democratic President) "let's rob the old moochers of their earned benefits!"

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On "This Week," Greta Van Susteren failed miserably in her attempt to explain Republicans' ideological refusal to raise taxes.

VAN SUSTEREN: The reason we have paralysis is because we don't have the money. And I think people want to take care of people. I don't think people want to take the safety net away from people who really need it. Because Americans are really good, decent people.

If we didn't have a revenue fight in terms of how much money we have, the condition of the economy, the condition of the national debt, we wouldn't be having half of these fights. And the two parties might be able to come together a little bit better if we fundamentally got this economy up and roaring, we'd be fighting a little bit --

Where does one even begin to unpack this mess?

Let's start with her claim that "people" don't want to "take the safety net away" with the fact that Republicans have signed on to a budget which slashes the safety net to give tax cuts to rich people, authored by an Ayn Rand disciple who once complained that the nation's "takers" outnumbered our "makers" and famously derided Social Security as a "hammock."

Oh, and by the way, the new chairman of the Heritage Foundation just went on Van Susteren's network and basically called 70 million Americans welfare queens.

So to argue Republicans don't want to get rid of the safety net is to literally argue that up is down.

But the oddest thing about Van Susteren's Palin-esque word salad is the first sentence:

The reason we have paralysis is because we don't have the money.

The government's "money" (or revenue) comes from taxes, which are currently at historic lows and which the GOP absolutely refuses to raise.

So Van Susteren is saying, in effect: Republicans are refusing to raise taxes because tax revenue is so low.

What?

To be fair, shilling for an unpopular party that wants to slash benefits for poor people to give billionaires lower taxes is never easy these days. But Van Susteren really made a mess of it this morning.

The sheer volume of recent wing nut quotes has forced most thinking Americans to adjust their Sanity-Preserve-O-Meter's from "Keep Calm" to "Stun". And they probably didn't even see what we saw. Absurdity Today, Julianna Forlano's satiric news parody, serves up what you missed, with a side of sense:

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I'm guessing that Paul Ryan thinks those manly biceps are just going to dazzle the media so much that they'll just glide right over the most truthful Freudian slip to ever cross those PX90-lovin' lips:

"This is something we will not give up on because we are not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people."

There you go, people. When a politician tells you what he is, believe him.

Every Monday morning, C&L's Nicole Belle joins Nicole Sandler on her Radio or Not show to recap the Sunday talk shows.

This week, the conversation began with a discussion of the myriad of stories that should have been discussed, but weren't....

From Nicole Belle:

There are many, many issues this country is facing that merit a serious discussion on the Sunday shows. For example:

• Rand Paul’s filibuster of the Brennan nomination could have led to a much needed discussion on the use of drones and the oversight executed thereof.
• We could talk about the revelation that banks illegally foreclosed on military members who were fully paid up on their mortgages and how the deregulation of the banking industry made it impossible for people to know who actually owned the note on their mortgage.
• We could talk about how Newt Gingrich’s personal sugar daddy likely broke federal laws against bribing foreign officials and how all that money he spent on GOP politics was likely an investment against an indictment.
• We could talk about how conservatives think it’s an appropriate response to post racist , violent comments to a rape survivor when she dares to suggest that rather than telling women to arm themselves to prevent rape, we should tell men not to rape.
• We could even have a discussion about how racism is still so prevalent in our “post-racial” society.

But no, that wouldn’t happen on the Sunday shows, because those are issues that Americans are actually grappling with. Instead, guess who all five of the major Sunday news shows booked?

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(h/t ThinkProgress)

Seriously, I don't understand this. Why don't Republicans understand the concept of videotape? This is not hard: We have records of what they've said in the past. We know when they've flip-flopped or are being hypocritical by showing them their own words.

Now granted, it's rare that you see a tradmed outlet confronting a Republican politician for his doublespeak, but that's exactly what Jonathan Karl did to Rep. Paul Ryan on his blasting President Obama for the looming sequester cuts. H/T to ThinkProgress for the video and transcripts:

As Karl pointed out, when Congress was debating the Budget Control Act in August of 2011, Ryan supported the framework and urged his fellow Republicans to vote for the sequester:

KARL: Congressman, I’ve heard you Republicans for a long time. This was the president’s idea on and on and on but let’s look at your own words. What you said right after the law putting this in place was passed in August of 2011. These are your words. You said “what conservatives like me have been fighting for for years are statutory caps on spending, literally legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money and if they breach that amount across the board sequester comes in to cut that spending. You can’t turn it out without a supermajority. We got that into law.” Now, it sounds to me there like if you weren’t taking credit for the idea of the sequester, you were certainly suggesting it was a good idea.

RYAN: So those are the budget caps on discretionary spending. Those occurred. We want those. Everybody wants budget caps. The sequester that we’re talking about now is backing up the super committee. Remember the Super Committee in addition to those caps was supposed to come up with 1.2 trillion in savings. The Republicans on the super committee offered even higher revenues in exchange for spending cuts as part of that. It was rejected by the president and the Democrats. So no resolution occurred and therefore the sequester is occurring.

So Ryan can make his bones in Republican leadership and position himself as a Very. Serious. Budget. Pointman. by pushing for these automatic sequester cuts...until it gets to the point where Congress is too inept to come together to present President Obama a budget that is acceptable enough to pass to the majority of the members of Congress. Then it's all Obama's fault.

I've been thoroughly enjoying all of the GOP hand-wringing over the reelection of Kenyan Marxist Barry Hussein X -- and their third drubbing in the past four national elections. Republicans have convinced themselves that their problems are mostly tone and tactics. But Bobby Jindal thinks the GOP's problem is they're not wingnutty enough.

Watch out, Washington: Bobby Jindal called Thursday on Republicans to take an ax to the federal government.

The Louisiana governor suggested “rethinking nearly every social program in Washington” in a speech to members of the Republican National Committee gathered here.

“If any rational human being were to create our government anew, today, from a blank piece of paper — we would have about one-fourth of the buildings we have in Washington and about half of the government workers,” he said, according to a copy of the speech obtained in advance by POLITICO. “We would replace most of its bureaucracy with a handful of good websites.”

So, in 2005, George W. Bush tries to privatize Social Security -- and the GOP gets thumped in '06 and '08. Then Mitt "47%" Romney and Paul "Social Security is Collectivism" Ryan run for the White House promising to repeal Obamacare, on a budget which eliminates Medicaid -- and were arguably the most anti-New Deal and anti-Great Society ticket, ever -- and Obama wins 332 electoral votes.

And Bobby Jindal's conclusion?

Republicans keep losing elections because they're not trying to hard enough to gut even more of the safety net.

Jindal 2016!

Paul Ryan haz a sad after President Obama smacked him around in his inaugural speech, saying those programs "do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

Rep. Ryan didn't care for the attention, it seems. According to Politico, Ryan denies ever, ever, ever referring to people on Medicare and Social Security as "takers."

Is that a great example of denial in action, or what? Ryan suddenly forgot that he rolled out a plan for Medicare that ends it and substitutes private insurance for the lucky few who could afford it. Speaking to Laura Ingraham, he said he had been "misunderstood"! It wasn't about senior citizens, he claims; it was about some mysterious, undocumented overall slide toward a "dependency society."

Oh, Paul. Let us help you.

Paul Ryan at a 2005 fundraiser, selling the end of Medicare and Social Security:

"In case that wasn't clear enough, Ryan added: "I think if we win a few of these right now -- moving health care to a consumer-based, individualist system, moving Social Security to an individually pre-owned, pre-funded retirement system -- just those two right there will do so much to change the dynamics in this society."

Here's another quote from that same speech:

In almost every fight we are involved in here, on Capitol Hill...it is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict: individualism vs. collectivism...That is why there is no more fight that is more obvious between the differences of these two conflicts than Social Security. Social Security right now is a collectivist system, it’s a welfare transfer system…..

He also mentioned Medicare in that same context.

Paul Ryan, June, 2012:

Do you want the American idea of an opportunity society with a safety net where you can take a risk, start a business, make a difference, succeed and be honored for being successful?," Ryan said at a June 15, 2012 fundraiser. "Or do we go down the path the president is proposing -- a social welfare state, a cradle-to-the-grave society where we have more takers than makers."

Paul Ryan's October, 2012 fundraising remarks:

“With a few exceptions, government’s approach has been to spend lots of money on centralized, bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs,” Ryan said. “ … The problem is, starting in the 1960s, this top-down approach created and perpetuated a debilitating culture of dependency, wrecking families and communities. This was so obvious to everyone by the 1990s that, when a major welfare program was finally reformed, the law was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president.”

Here are more examples, mashed up in one compact video here.

Paul Ryan believes 60 percent of the people in this country are takers. He's said that many, many times. And that category includes Medicare and Social Security recipients, no matter how much lipstickhe puts on that pig.

Always remember, this is a moral issue for Ryan. He can deny it all he wants, but this maker/taker belief rests at the core of his very being.

The only difference between Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney is a number: 13 percent. Romney said 47 percent were takers; Ryan says 60 percent are takers.

Otherwise, there's no daylight between them.

President Obama's second Inaugural was the spirited, full-throated defense of the role that government plays in making our society more just that liberals have been waiting to hear for years. While most pundits focused on what the speech said about Obama, I think it's more significant in what it says about the Republican Party, especially in this key passage:

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

There has always been an element on the far right that opposed the programs of the New Deal and Great Society. But no Republican presidents -- from Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush -- made a serious efforts to overturn them. Why? Because, as President Eisenhower once wrote, it would be terrible politics.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

But what used to be a "splinter" fringe in the GOP somewhere along the line became the GOP. When George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security after mentioning it in his 2nd Inaugural, his effort was soundly rejected by the electorate, and the GOP was routed in 2006 and 2008 at the polls. And what did Republicans do in response? Nominate for the Vice Presidency an Ayn Rand devotee who wants to end Social Security, whose budget (which they passed) ended Medicare as we know it, and who once called the majority of Americans "takers." Mitt Romney was at the top of the ticket, but make no mistake: this is Paul Ryan's party.

That Obama had to defend the New Deal and Great Society in his inaugural -- programs that stretch back 80 years -- says a lot more about the radicalization of the GOP than it does him.