Dec. 31, 2008 (World News Trust) -- Third time’s a charm, maybe?
I’ve compiled three of these lists now. In 2006, I issued the first one, looking back on everything George W. Bush has adversely affected since he first arrived in the Oval Office. Just a damage assessment, really. At the time, I thought it would be instructive to look back, at year’s end, over what many Bush critics have come to refer to as his “Reverse Midas Touch” -- everything he touches turns to something far more foul, germ-laden, and smelly than gold. It ran at least nine pages. Last time I looked, the page count had expanded to 17.
I say “Third and Hopefully LAST Time” for a reason, at this writing. I’m hoping against hope that we can be done with this list, as we are technically done with George W. Bush, once he FINALLY leaves the White House -- the house The People awarded to Barack Obama -- Jan. 20, 2009. Unfortunately, I know I’m just dreaming, really, because the effect of George W. Bush’s “leadership” over his party and our country for the past eight long, grueling and shameful years will prove to be the “gift” that keeps on giving. It’s probably going to take more than simply an additional eight years to undo all the damage this individual has heaped upon our country, our reputation, our democratic system, our Constitution, our cities, our states, our environment, and our people. The problems are so deep, widespread, systemic, and many-headed by now that it may indeed take decades to solve and reverse them all. And thanks to Bush’s surprisingly vocal and willfully ignorant apologists, some issues may never be properly corrected, or even addressed.
As with the lists of the past two Christmases, these items appear in no particular order and undoubtedly is STILL incomplete, despite being compiled over at least three Christmases of thought, the repeated ransacking of my memory, and a fair amount of Googling. Especially since many more of the sins of the Bush administration have yet to surface (or be whistle-blown by a partisan who suddenly grows a conscience or an investigative reporter who inexplicably decides to look into the voluminous Bush/Cheney abominations rather than an all-Blagojevich-all-the-time (Keep looking! It’s a Democrat! GOTTA be another blue dress in there or a way to destroy Obama maybe!) orgy. Feel free to add your own. If nothing else, it’s my attempt to offer a little fairness and balance to the spin-mongers who are desperately trying, nonstop, to recast the Bush legacy as that proverbial pig with lots of nice new lipstick. This list is filled with people, places, things, groups, and concepts well worth remembering. They will NEVER be quite the same again. So here goes…
THINGS BUSH AND THE REPUBLI-CON PARTY HAVE RUINED, INJURED, INSULTED, OR SOMEHOW COMPROMISED, directly OR indirectly:
The truth
America as we knew it
The Constitution of the United States of America
The Congressional Page Program
The presidency
The moral high ground
The presidential oath of office
An independent press
Accountability in government
Republican Redistricting in Texas
Everyone in Congress who voted for the IWR and the Patriot Act
The State of the Union speech
The Democratic Party
The Republican Party
The Bible
The Methodist Church
The Southern Baptists
The evangelical movement
The American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Federalist Society, et al
The CIA
The FBI
Executive privilege
The Presidential Daily Brief
George Herbert Walker Bush
The Bush “family franchise” – its “entitlement” to the White House
Going to Rehab
Tom Delay
Bob Ney
Mark Foley
Tom Reynolds
Don Sherwood
“Mean” Jean Schmidt
Dennis Hastert
John Boehner
Mitch McConnell
Jack Abramoff
Roger Ailes
Rupert Murdoch
Fox News Channel
Bill O'Reilly
The “War on Christmas”
Randy "Duke" Cunningham
Conrad Burns
Larry Craig
Harold Ford
Bob Corker
Saxby Chambliss
Jim Martin
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Ed Gillespie
Ari Fleischer
Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon
Talon News
Iraq
Afghanistan
“Scooter” Libby
Douglas Feith
Harvey Pitt
Brent Scowcroft
Richard Clarke
The SEC
Christopher Cox
Ben Bernanke
Henry Paulson
Free market economics
“Compassionate Conservatism”
“Trickle-down” tax policy
Government non-interventionism
Arnold Schwarzenegger
GOP internet consultant Michael Connell
Colin Powell
Michael Powell
The city of New Orleans
Michael "Brownie" Brown
Joseph Albaugh
FEMA
The Department of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff
The Houston Astrodome
The World Trade Center
The Pentagon (building)
The federal budget
The dollar
American image abroad
The Dixie Chicks
Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and other celebrity “surrender monkeys”
The “Jersey Girls” - 9/11 widows
Toby Keith
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman’s grieving family
Judy Miller
Matt Cooper
Patrick Fitzgerald
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
The National Review
The Boston Globe
Human Events
The Washington Times
The Weekly Standard
Bob Woodward
John Kerry
John Edwards
Mary Cheney
Disney/ABC TV
ClearChannel Communications
Bernie Kerik
Christie Todd Whitman
Sandra Day O’Connor
John G. Roberts
Samuel Alito
Dan Rather
Mary Mapes
CBS News
”60 Minutes”
The Purple Heart
Cindy Sheehan
More than four-thousand American soldiers and their grieving families (and that’s strictly battlefield death toll – NOT including serious injury, PTSD, and deaths and suicides off the battlefield http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Hans Blix
Mohammed al-Baradei
Scott Ritter
David Kay
Lower Manhattan
New York City in general (and its air quality)
Kennebunkport, Maine
Crawford, Texas
The Hotel Del Coronado
Stem cell research
The Bill of Rights
Harvard's MBA program
Yale University
The history major
Cheerleading
Misty May-Treanor
The Segway
Workers’ rights (especially during the last month or so)
Environmental protections (especially during the last month or so)
The right to medical care and prescriptions without pharmacists’ personal agendas (especially during the last month or so)
“Healthy” Forests
“Clear” Skies
“No Child Left Behind”
The polar bear
The elderly
Prescription drugs
Social Security
The “ownership” society
“Personal responsibity”
Valerie Plame
Joseph Wilson
Brewster/Jennings & Associates
The CIA
Richard Armitage
Helen Thomas
David Gregory
Nancy Pelosi
The Texas Air National Guard
The Presidential Medal of Freedom
George Tenet
Paul Bremer
Jay Garner
John Poindexter
John Negroponte
John Bolton
The United Nations
The U.N. Security Council
The 9/11 Commission - and its report
The Iraq Study Group - and its report
The swift boat
Legitimate elections
Phil Donahue
The White House Press Corpse
The White House Correspondents Association Dinner
Stephen Colbert
Rich Little
Tom Daschle
Harriet Miers
Terri Schiavo
Michael Schiavo
Arthur Anderson Accounting Firm
Enron – and its thousands of screwed-over employees and stock holders
Kenny-boy
Jeff Skilling
Andy Fastow
WorldCom
WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers and CFO Scott Sullivan
Tyco International
Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, CFO Mark Swartz and ex-general counsel Mark Belnick
Global Crossing Ltd.
Global Crossing chief Gary Winnick
Adelphia Communications Corp.
Adelphia Chief John Rigas and sons
The Federal Reserve
Lehman Brothers
Bear Stearns
Merrill Lynch
A.I.G.
Morgan Stanley
Washington Mutual
Goldman Sachs
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Treasury Department
The US taxpayer
Corporate salaries and bonuses
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
The “Big Three” US automakers
Outsourcing
Offshore tax shelters
Habeas Corpus
Ahmed Chalabi
“Curveball”
The White House Iraq Group
The National Security Administration
Henry Kissinger
Richard Perle
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman
Karen Hughes
General Anthony Zinni
General Eric Shinseki
The Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad
The World Bank
Shaha Ali Riza – Wolfowitz’s girlfriend
John Ashcroft
James Comey
David Safavian
Susan Ralston
The theory of Evolution
The separation of church and state
The separation of powers
Max Cleland
John McCain
John McCain’s wife and adopted daughter
The Kyoto Accords
The Geneva Conventions
Sibel Edmonds
Private Jessica Lynch
Lynndie England and her boyfriend Charles Graner AND their baby
General Janis Karpinski
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Retired General Ricardo Sanchez
Vladimir Putin
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard
Former French President Jacques Chirac
Hamid Karzai
The resurgent Taliban
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf
Osama bin Laden (STILL at large)
Waterboarding and other tortures
Retired Major General Antonio Taguba (and the Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib)
Retired CIA agent John Kiriakou
Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah
Al Qaeda suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
Khalid Sheik Mohammed
CIA Director Michael Hayden
Hugo Chavez
Fidel Castro
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad
The Sunnis
The Shiites
The Kurds
The Framework Agreement with North Korea
Katharine Harris
Rick Santorum
George "Macaca" Allen
Gordon Smith
Ted Stevens
Wayne Allard
Michelle Bachmann
Lincoln Chafee
Chuck Hagel
John Warner
John Sununu (the younger)
Pete Domenici
Heather Wilson
Elizabeth Dole
Norm Coleman
Jim Gilmore
Fred Thompson
Tommy Thompson
Rudy Giuliani
Tom Tancredo
Mike Huckabee
Duncan Hunter
Ron Paul
Sam Brownback
Alan Keyes
Mitt Romney
Sarah Palin
Marilyn Musgrave
Dusty Foggo
Rick Renzi
Harry Reid
Kenneth Blackwell
AIDS funding for Africa
Robert Novak
E. D. Hill
Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and more “Fox & Friends”
James Carville
Tucker Carlson
Charles Krauthammer
Peggy Noonan
Joe Scarborough
Rita Cosby
Joie Chen
Dick Morris
Ralph Reed
Paul O'Neill
John O'Neill - the FBI terrorism expert who died in the WTC, NOT the John Kerry-hater
Morale at the Pentagon
Morale in the military
The PNAC
– a complete list of signatories:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.php
Bill Kristol
Dick Cheney
David Addington
Michael Ledeen, etc.
Norm Podhoretz
Karl Rove
Austin attorney Harry “Cheney shot me in the face” Whittington
The Republican Majority in the House
The Republican Majority in the Senate
Saddam Hussein
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
The Morning-After pill
The right to choose
The right to privacy
NPR
Bill Frist
Trent Lott
Strom Thurmond
Ray Nagin
Mississippi governor Haley Barbour
Former Lousiana governor Kathleen Blanco
Brazil ("I didn't know you had black people in Brazil")
Jeb Bush
Paraguay
Pox "News" Channel
Rush Limbaugh
Oxycontin
James Baker III
Lee Hamilton
Former Gov Thomas Keane
Ken Mehlman
Tom Ridge
Curt Weldon
Bandar "Bush"
Enjoyable flying
Condoleezza Rice (or is that “Contradicta”?)
The State Department
The Defense Department
The Justice Department
The Labor Department
The Transportation Department
The Commerce Department
The Energy Department
The Department of Veterans Affairs
The Interior Department – and every other thoroughly-compromised Cabinet department
Mark McKinnon, “Maverick Media”, “Public Strategies Inc.”
Peter Wehner – White House Office of Strategic Initiatives
Laura Bush
Jenna and Barbara (once renowned as “Drunk and Disorderly”)
General Peter Pace
General Tommy Franks
General Richard Myers
General John Abizaid
"Freedom fries"
Dubai Ports World
OUR port security
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (groped in public by Bush)
Howard Dean
Public education in America
The poor
The homeless
Christiane Amanpour
Jim Jeffords
Joe Lieberman
Ned Lamont
Jim Talent
Dick DeVos
Dino Rossi
The outgoing Clinton Administration ("they trashed Air Force One!")
Michael Steele
The Supreme Court
The FDA
The English Language
The Texas Air National Guard
Thanksgiving dinner with the troops
Ted Haggard
Dr. James Dobson
"Focus on the Family"
Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
Alabama Chief Justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore
David Vitter
David Vitter’s wife, Wendy
The “D.C. Madam” – Pamela Martin & Associates
The Republicans' Congressional Bible Study room
The space shuttle Columbia
The NASA budget (and its integrity)
Millions of children in Africa
Chicken-fried steak
"Fool me once..."
OB-GYNS who are out there sharing “their love” with their patients
“Bring ‘em on”
“You’re either with us or you’re against us”
Old Europe
Poland
Ouday and Qusay
“Baghdad Bob”
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Fired White House chief chef Walter Scheib III
Argentina (Bush twins trashed the place)
"Mission Accomplished"
"The Path to 9/11"
Ron Silver
Pretzels
Mountain biking
Lance Armstrong
Paul Wellstone
Richard Gephardt
Paul Hackett
Reliable vote counts
Diebold
Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold
Chris Wallace
Michael Moore
The health of the planet
Michael J. Fox
The 2001 anthrax victims
David Kuo ("Tempting Faith")
The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives
The yellow ribbon
The Congressional Black Caucus
Al Gore
Warren Christopher
Accountability
Checks and balances
Tony Snow
Dana Perino
Stephen Cambone
Stephen Hadley
Keith Ellison, D-Minn (new Muslim congressman lambasted for swearing his oath on the Koran instead of the Bible)
Government regulations
Bankruptcy protections
Foreclosure protections
Paul Weyrich
Ann Coulter
Kate O’Bierne
Mona Charen
Michelle Malkin
Michael Savage Weiner
Glenn Beck
Michael Reagan
Roger Hedgecock
Cal Thomas
George Will
Mary Matalin
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Kelly Wallace
Carol Lin
Maureen Dowd
Thomas L. Friedman
Sean Hannity
Alan Colmes
Bill “The Gambler” Bennett
The conservative movement
Free-market conservatives
Alan Greenspan
Flag pins
Going shopping
Christopher Buckley
Donna Brazile
Mary Beth Cahill
Steve Schmidt
Rick Davis
Michael Medved
NPR’s Bob Edwards
NPR’s Gwen Ifill
Wolf Blitzer
Tim Russert
Andrea Mitchell
Paula Zahn
Larry King
Chris Matthews
Norah O’Donnell
Fred Barnes
Morton Kondracke
Pat Buchanan
Bill Schneider
Howard Kurtz
Dana Milbank
ABC newsman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt
ABC newswoman Elizabeth Vargas
Aaron Brown
Katie Couric
Charles Gibson
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan
NBC reporter David Bloom
List of all journalists (AND OTHERS) killed in Iraq: http://www.rehumanize.us/journalists.html
Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis also killed (and not counted)
Nick Berg – and family
Hanging chads
The “Help America Vote” Act
F.I.S.A.
Ralph Nader
Scott Reid, senior strategist to then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin – “you got a pretty face”
al-Maliki's short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari
Jason Leopold and Truthout.org
James Hatfield (author of controversial Bush bio “Fortunate Son”)
Air America
Patrick Leahy
Jim Webb
Tim Johnson
“Spamalot”
Ferragamos
Kanye West
The proper pronunciation of “nuclear”
Elizabeth Hasselbeck
Chuck Norris
Jon Voight
Jay Leno
David Letterman
Jon Stewart
Conan O’Brien
Craig Ferguson
Saturday Night Live
“The View”
Oscar de la Renta
Laura Bush’s social secretary (should have made sure all those other women didn’t turn up in the same designer duds Milady was wearing)
Gay couples who’d like to marry
Gays in general
The flight suit
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
“The Pet Goat”
Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida – where Bush sat with “The Pet Goat” and the kiddies on the morning of 9/11/01
Plastic sheeting and duct tape
David Paulison (the government’s Fire Administrator who advised the public on the plastic-sheeting-and-duct-tape anti-terrorism strategy)
Queen Elizabeth II
Buckingham Palace gardens
Rachel Paulose, US attorney for Minnesota
Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker
Nancy Nord - acting chair, Consumer Product Safety Commission
The Consumer Product Safety Commission
The Food & Drug Administration
Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot who collided with a A US EP-3 Aries II spy plane on March 31st, 2001
Judith Nathan Giuliani
New York City’s Police Department
The Mormon Church
"Pat" Philbin - Phony FEMA news conference guy
Mark Smith
Steve Scully
Ann Compton
MSNBC
Keith Olbermann
Rachel Maddow
Pat Peale – lovely Texas GOP 2004 convention delegate who modeled the purple heart bandaid to mock John Kerry’s Vietnam service
S. R. Sidarth (George Allen’s “macaca” victim)
The Knight-Ridder news service
John Dilulio and the “Mayberry Machiavellis”
Mark Zachares
The Hatch Act
MZM
Mitchell Wade
Bobby Eberle
John Aravosis
Markos Moulitsas
Arianna Huffington
Bill Moyers
Attorney General Michael Mukasey
Alberto Gonzales
John Yoo – wrote the legal briefs for the White House that helped justify torture
Gonzales's attorney, George J. Terwilliger III of White & Case in Washington
David G. Leitch, a Gonzales friend and general counsel at the Ford Motor Co.
Richard Stickler - Mine Safety and Health Administration
J. Steven Griles - ex #2 at Interior Department (imprisoned for 10 months for lying to Congress in Abramoff scandal)
Daniel Levin - former acting assistant AG (who volunteered for waterboarding to find out whether it was really torture)
Senator Chuck Schumer
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Lt. General Douglas Lute (Pentagon's "war czar")
State Dept. Inspector General Howard J. "Buzzy" Krongard and his brother Alvin
Eric Prince
Blackwater USA
Halliburton
Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc.
The U.S. International Contract Bridge Team - the Venice Cup Bridge Team - USBF - Jan Martell United States Bridge Federation spokesman
Bob Burkett
Barack Obama
Ed Rogers
Ann Richards
Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt
Molly Ivins
David Broder
Dan Bartlett
Andrew Card
Marine Cpl. Matt “gay porn star” Sanchez
Spc. Bryan O'Neal – who was ordered to lie to the Tillman family
O’Neal’s battalion commander, then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey – who told him to lie
Thomas F. Gimble, the Defense Department's acting inspector general
Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich (to the grieving Tillman family: “they’ll never be happy because they’re not Christian.”)
Matt Drudge
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
“Buckhead” and other online Dan Rather haters
Onetime Bush family friend Jimmy Allison
Ben Barnes
C. Murphy Archibald
Kevin Ring
Robert E. Coughlin II
Randall L. Tobias
Fred Fielding
“Fair and Balanced”
The term “Christian”
The term “right”
Judith Regan
Brent Bozell
Tony “Focus on the Family” Perkins
General David Petraeus
MoveOn.org
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman
Leura and Bill Canary
Dana Jill Simpson
Alice Martin
Mark McKinnon, “Maverick Media”, “Public Strategies Inc.” – GOP dirty trickster
Peter Wehner – White House Office of Strategic Initiatives
NAACP
Barbara “Beautiful Mind” Bush (senior)
David C. Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico;
Kevin V. Ryan as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California;
John L. McKay as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington;
Paul K. Charlton as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona;
Carol C. Lam as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California;
Daniel G. Bogden as U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada;
Margaret M. Chiara as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan;
Todd Graves as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri;
Harry E. "Bud" Cummins, III as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas;
Thomas M. DiBiagio as U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, and;
Kasey Warner as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia.
J. Timothy Griffin, interim US attorney, Little Rock – Rove assistant
Monica Goodling
Sara Taylor
Lurita Doan, GSA Administrator
L. Scott Jennings, Acting GSA chief
Liberty University and its law school
Regent University and its law school
James Inhofe
Scott Bloch, who "runs" the Office of Special Counsel
Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ chief of staff
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Walter Reed Army Medical Center Building 18
C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla, and Tom Davis, R-Va, who admitted they hadn’t investigated the Walter Reed scandal to avoid embarrassing the Army
Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, ex-commander of Walter Reed
Francis J. Harvey, Secretary of the Army, resigned
Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, Army Surgeon General and ex-commander of Walter Reed
Britney Spears
Paris Hilton
The Minneapolis Airport men’s room
The 2008 Republican National Convention
Isaac Toussie – the little pardon that wasn’t
Lt. Ehren Watada - http://www.thankyoult.org/
Jose Padilla
Code Pink
Former General Counsel of the Navy, Alberto Mora
Iraqi journalist and shoe-thrower Muntadhar al-Zeidi
Barney the dog
Reuters reporter Jonathan Decker (the reporter Barney bit)
The cowboy hat
“Cowboy Diplomacy”
The letter “W”
I know it’s completely arbitrary, but I’m ending the list here because if I don’t, I’ll probably be collecting list items for the rest of my life. The best Dubya can hope for in his new life as Private Citizen Bush, I suspect, is that the lack of backbone in Congress and/or the new administration remains the status quo. He’s counting on it. I, on the other hand, am praying that SOME Democrat (hey, I’ll take ANY Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, or even Republican at this point) hasn’t been putting together lists of his/her own. With the attempts to rewrite Bushian history running on overdrive in Junior’s last days in the White House, it behooves every one of us American citizens to compile a list like this – for the sake of keeping the record straight. The Bush crowd will continue trying to twist the facts – to their last breath. But we’ll always know the truth.
***
Mary Lyon is a veteran broadcaster and five-time Golden Mike Award winner, who has anchored, reported, and written for the Associated Press Radio Network, NBC Radio "The Source," and many Los Angeles-area stations including KRTH-FM/AM, KLOS-FM, KFWB-AM, and KTLA-TV, and occasional media analyst for ABC Radio News. She began her career as a liberal activist with the Student Coalition for Humphrey/Muskie in 1968, and helped spearhead a regional campaign, The Power 18," to win the right to vote for 18-year-olds. She remains an advocate for liberal causes, responsibility and accountability in media, environmental education and support of the arts for children, and green living. In addition to World News Trust, Mary writes for Huffington Post, OpEdNews, Democrats.us, WeDemocrats.org's "We! The People" webzine. Mary is also a parenting expert, having written and llustrated the book "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood.
