By Mary Lyon, from the left -- World News Trust
Dec. 18, 2006 -- Since we’re one week away from Christmas, 2006, as of this writing, I decided a look back was in order.
Most people at this time have made a list to leave for whichever Santa they believe in. My list, below, is a little different, but as long as this is list-making season, well, why not? Besides, we’re also well into the season of reassessing, and (for some) obsessing over, the George W. Bush legacy.
It’s quite a compilation of mostly naughty, hardly what you’d consider nice things our friend Dubya has touched, and mishandled -– in some cases comically, other cases tragically, and many irreparably, during the last six years of his life in Washington, DC. It’s by NO means complete (feel free to add your own items), but hey, it’s filled with people, places, things, groups, and concepts well worth remembering, particularly since there may be some call to account for Junior and his pals in the new year. So here goes…THINGS BUSH AND THE REPUBLI-CON PARTY HAVE RUINED, INJURED, INSULTED, OR SOMEHOW COMPROMISED, directly OR indirectly:The truthAmerica 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 Republican Party
The State of the Union speech
The Bible
The Methodist Church
The Southern Baptists
The evangelical movement
The American Enterprise Institute
The CIA
The FBI
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
Bill O'Reilly
Randy "Duke" Cunningham
Conrad Burns
Harold Ford
Ed Gillespie
Ari Fleischer
Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon
Talon News
Iraq
Afghanistan
“Scooter” Libby
Douglas Feith
Harvey Pitt
Brent Scowcroft
Richard Clarke
The SEC
Colin Powell
Michael Powell
The city of New Orleans
Michael "Brownie" Brown
FEMA
The Department of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff
The Houston Astrodome
The World Trade Center
The federal budget
American image abroad
The Dixie Chicks
Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and other celebrity “surrender monkeys”
Toby Keith
Pat Tillman
Judy Miller
Matt Cooper
Patrick Fitzgerald
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
Bob Woodward
John Kerry
John Edwards
Disney/ABC TV
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
At least 29-hundred American soldiers and their grieving families
Lower Manhattan
New York City in general (and its air quality)
Kennebunkport, Maine
The Hotel Del Coronado
Stem cell research
The Bill of Rights
Harvard's MBA program
Yale University
The history major
Workers’ rights
Environmental protections
The elderly
Prescription drugs
Social Security
Valerie Plame
Joseph Wilson
Brewster/Jennings & Associates
Richard Armitage
Helen Thomas
David Gregory
Harry Reid
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
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
Tyco
Global Crossing
Adelphia
Habeas Corpus
Ahmed Chalabi
“Curveball”
The White House Iraq Group
The National Security Administration
Henry Kissinger
Paul Wolfowitz
Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman
Karen Hughes
General Anthony Zinni
General Eric Shinseki
The Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad
John Ashcroft
David Safavian
Susan Ralston
The theory of Evolution
The separation of church and state
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
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
Hamid Karzai
The Framework Agreement with North Korea
Katharine Harris
Rick Santorum
George "Macaca" Allen
AIDS funding for Africa
Robert Novak
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
Donald Rumsfeld
Morale at the Pentagon
The Pentagon building
The PNAC
Richard Perle
Bill Kristol
Dick Cheney
Michael Ledeen, etc.
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
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
Tommy Thompson
Tom Ridge
Curt Weldon
Bandar "Bush"
Enjoyable flying
Jenna and Barbara
Contradicta Rice
Laura Bush
General Peter Pace
General Tommy Franks
General Richard Myers
General John Abizaid
General Ricardo Sanchez
"Freedom fries"
Alberto Gonzales
Dubai Ports World
OUR port security
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (whom he groped)
Howard Dean
Public education in America – and EVERY child “Left Behind”
The poor
The homeless
Christiane Amanpour
Jim Jeffords
Joe Lieberman
Ned Lamont
Jim Talent
Dick DeVos
The outgoing Clinton Administration ("they trashed Air Force One!")
Elizabeth Dole
Michael Steele
Kenneth Blackwell
The city of Crawford, Texas
The Supreme Court
The FDA
The English Language
The Texas Air National Guard
Plastic turkeys
Ted Haggard
Dr. James Dobson
"Focus on the Family"
Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
Alabama Chief Justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore
Marilyn Musgrave
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
The office of Faith-Based Initiatives
Ouday and Qusay
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Fired White House chief chef Walter Scheib III
Argentina (Bush twins trash the place)
"Mission Accomplished"
"The Path to 9/11"
Ron Silver
Pretzels
Mountain biking
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
Alan Keyes
the 2001 anthrax victims
David Kuo ("Tempting Faith")
The yellow ribbon
The Congressional Black Caucus
Al Gore
Warren Christopher
Accountability
Checks and balances
Tony Snow
Stephen Cambone
Stephen Hadley
Keith Ellison, D-Minn (new Muslim congressman lambasted for swearing his oath on the Koran instead of the Bible)
Bankruptcy protections
ClearChannel Communications
Rupert Murdoch
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 “TheGambler” Bennett
The conservative movement
Donna Brazile
Mary Beth Cahill
Michael Medved
NPR’s Bob Edwards
Wolf Blitzer
Tim Russert
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
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
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”
Air America
Patrick Leahy
Jim Webb
Tim Johnson
“Spamalot”
Ferragamos
Oscar de la Renta
Gay couples who’d like to marry
Gays in general
The flight suit
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
Plastic sheeting and duct tape
Barney the dog
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 young George can hope for in the new year, I’d suspect, is that John Conyers or Henry Waxman haven’t been putting together lists of their own.
All the more reason to Visualize IMPEACHMENT!!!
And then go DO something about it.
***
Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM,KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, RKO Radio Networks,and KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us -- from the Left.