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The Reality-Based Community: Fair is fair

Reposted in its hilarious entirity, “Fair is Fair” by Michael O’Hare at RBC:

The “worst president ever?” meme has floated from bitter-liberal whining lounges to mainstream venues and plutocrats like Donald Trump, who should know which side their bread is buttered on. This piling-on in the face of the clear facts has to stop if Democrats want to keep a shred of intellectual respectability.
History simply will not support this level of condemnation. Never mind presidents from decades back, here are five contemporary presidents who completely refute the idea that
Bush is the worst:
None of the antiwar protesters arrested in Washington Friday night were
beaten in captivity. Not a single fractured skull or broken jaw. Bush is much more protective of civil rights and free speech than Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe.
Bush has never, ever, claimed to have an herbal AIDS cure revealed by ancestors in a dream, nor touted it to replace anti-retroviral drugs. Bush is much less anti-scientific than
Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia.
The number of US dissidents killed overseas by plutonium poisoning is zero, and the number
of US businessmen ruined and imprisoned for opposing the government is also zero. Bush is much more respectful of law and property than Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.
Bush hasn’t tried to fire even one Supreme Court justice, much less a chief justice. He’s much more respectful of separation of powers than Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan.
Bush hasn’t named a single city, river, month, or day of the week after himself, and aggressive research has turned up no gold-plated colossal statues of him, not even silver-plated. Bush is much less egotistical and narcissistic than Sapurmurat Niyazov, the late president of Turkmenistan.
George W. Bush, better than many presidents; let’s give credit where credit is due.

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Victory Is Not an Option – washingtonpost.com

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush’s illusions from the realities of the war.

That first line of Gen. Odom’s Op-Ed in the Washington Post is really all you need to read. The rest is Odom’s methodical delineation of what’s gone wrong and what we can do to make it right and just how we can get our collective nuts out of the roaring fire Bush and company lit in Iraq (and are trying, like demented, defrocked Boy Scouts intent on a pyromania badge, to light in Iran). That we have a president (and for real nuttiness, see Vice President Cheney on any given day; it’s quite an accomplishment to make Bush look like he’s in touch, but Cheney sometimes manages it) who can’t see past his illusions is bad enough; that we have one whose illusions are killing and maiming American soldiers and Marines (who come back to be treated like shit at Walter Reed, apparently) by the truckload is unforgivable. I don’t care that the right wing will whip up its nut cases with a cry of “It’s retaliation for Clinton!”, we’ve got to impeach Bush and Cheney before there’s a mushroom cloud over Tehran. The American soul has been besmirched enough, damn it!