What, and stop spending the leftover millions his donors gave him for business favors? Dude is on an extended vacation.

Why would anyone, ever, want to go home to the Bush family? Especially when it means a lifetime of being compared to your retarded brother who actually got to be president?

Jeb is the Cooper Manning of the Bush family.

The way I see it, Bush senior had political talent and intellect. One of his sons got all the political talent with none of the intellect, and the other got the intellect without the political talent.

But...there are three Bush sons.

The third got all his criminal intent?

The pinnacle of GHW Bush's political talent was barfing on the Japanese Prime Minister.

like I said, W. got all the political talent.

For you

Have some tasty ghost stars.

hahahaha

If everyone regrets invading Iraq, then why did we recently send troops back (to absolutely zero fanfare)? Why are we seriously considering an election between Hillary, a completely unreformed hawk who was one of the biggest pushers of the Iraq War back when her input actually mattered, and Trump, who didn't start hating on Iraq until hating on it was popular, and now seems to be in the process of retconning his retcon?

I think the lesson to take from these last 16 years is that Americans don't really care about war; they care about what their TVs and Twitter feeds say about war.

The lack of fanfare is exactly what I mean about the regret. The initial invasion was built on fanfare and hype, it wasn't until it started to drag on and on that the regret set in. Now every anniversary, every milestone is met with silence. It's like a quiet regret. There's no rage towards those like Hillary who voted for it, but there's no cheer for them either. There's certainly a numbness to it. People don't seem to care about our return to Iraq, just cause it's the norm to have them there.

Apathy isn't the same as regret. Acceptance isn't the same as regret. Regret implies that you recognize when a past action is wrong, AND want to take it all back, or at least prevent yourself from making the same mistake in the future.

I submit to you that people don't care about our return to Iraq for the same reason they don't care about Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, or our own problems here at home: they don't care because nowadays, it is the White Hats who are sending the troops in, and fanfare (which we have to remember, is a product created for us by the media industry) would not suit the power structure's current narrative.

Consider the WWE. A generation ago, the Faces were fighting the corporation, and the Heels were in league with Vince. Today, our biggest Face - John Cena - is also the company's cleanest, most loyal man! Anti-authoritarians, like CM Punk, are now cast as the Heels. John Cena and Stone Cold are both on the same team - they are both Faces, both White Hats - but the WWE has flipped the script. Fans accept this because they've been trained to suspend their disbelief, invest in kayfabe culture, and receive contradictory narratives in a passive, non-critical manner.

Also, who bought into the fanfare and the hype?! I grew up deep within yippie country, and months before it got started, everyone I knew was utterly convinced that Iraq was a cynical ploy by Bush and the security-industrial complex. Now these same people are cheering for R2P and the further rollback of constitutional liberties (because Terrorists).

You haven't been keeping up with the product. Cena is usually anti-authority, but with him out on shoulder surgery Roman Reigns has been the one fighting them. The Authority hates him and has prevented him from keeping the Title.
What's yippie country. I was in the south during and it was all "Support the troops" and "fuck the Dixie Chicks".
I've posted this video before. This is the best representation of the mindset that took us into Iraq.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2m4f1r_scott-steiner-and-chr is-nowinski-debate-the-war-in-iraq_sport

Here's a tiny URL.
http://tinyurl.com/zxdlvek

Please, Cena's just about as "anti-authority" as Donald Trump. He cuts a good promo on the out-of-touch elites now and then, but at the end of the day, he's just another cheerleader in Big Brother's pocket.

"Yippies" were the political hippies - leftist radicals so extreme that even other hippies hated them (their leader, Abbie Hoffman, had a guitar broken over his head at Woodstock). Up here, it was all "fuck the troops" and "have consensual, non-reproductive sex with the Dixie Chicks". Fun Fact: we were tubthumping for Obama as far back as 2004. The local Howard Dean action committees retooled to Obama outlets mere days after the Dean Scream incident.

I remember that debate! The really funny thing about it? Listen to what Nowinski says at 1:53.



Let that sink in.

I guess you're talking about New England. The right wingers don't even consider you're type to be "Real Americans", which is part of the word games they used to push the war.
I was against the war at the time. I considered myself a Libertarian, and saw the war as wrong. It wasn't until later when we were years into the war that I developed the wishy washy, "Oh we're already in there, we must finish the job of nation building" type of support for the war.
Nowinski is a Harvard grad, he knows his shit. He's like Bernie Sanders back then predicting the outcome of the war.
Steiner like millions of other Americans believed Saddaam was somehow involved in 911. The war was sold on post 911 rage, misinformation, and hype. I loathe the expression "Support the troops" because it's a hollow yet coercive bit of propaganda. You could come up to the anti-war folks and ask if they supported the troops. If they said "no" you attack them as traitors, if they say "yes" then they kinda agreed with the war.
Thinking back to this America pisses me off. There's no cheer for the fiends who caused it, yet no outcry for justice. How's the war make you feel as a soldier? Bush acted all buddy buddy with the troops, but they were just props for his photoshoots. He wasn't on their side, he was on the side of the contractors.
.

Actually, make that 1:42!


"And I ask you, where does it end? Do we invade and overthrow every government that doesn't share the worldview of our country's administration? Do we go invade Syria now?... Or do we only invade countries that have OIL?"

~ Chris Nowinski, 2003



The saddest thing is, none of this stuff is a secret. People have known about Syria for years. Politicians have been waffling on Syrian policy, alternately flexing their muscles and wimping out, for AGES now, but it's always been eighth, ninth page news; you really have to care about geopolitics, or run in the same circles as preppy Harvard-grad Nowinski, to stay abreast with it.

Most people don't stay abreast with it. Most people weren't even aware of the problems in Syria until Syria became Big News, and it didn't *become* Big News until shortly after oil came into the picture! Of course, all the focus was on R2P and what a terrible, WMD-having bastard Assad was - there was little or no mention of the Iran-Syrian pipeline, or why Russia and Turkey might be taking opposite sides in the conflict, or even the so-called lessons about so-called destabilization learned from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the so-called Arab Spring. Everything - including Obama's repeated promises not to bomb Syria - just went right out the window, and it wasn't the Heel Team who dipped into the NWO playbook this time - it was the Faces. It was Obama, Hillary, and the so-called "liberal media" chucking eight Bush-besotten years of pro-liberty, anti-neo-con rhetoric down the memory hole.

You are 100% correct, Cena, about cheap pops and the way the Republican Party works local tribal loyalty. Just don't forget, this stuff is industry-wide - a mark is a mark, whether you're Team CeNation or Team Authority!

You should still be a Libertarian. You can be a left-libertarian too, if you want! The important thing is that you recognize the Machine for what it is, and stand up for what you believe in, not what wealthy collectivists with a vested interest in pushing top-down agendas on society would have you believe.

As for supporting the troops, I'm with you. I totally support the troops, because I know what they're going through and even the biggest shitbags are like my family; however, I don't think it's a good idea to demand that citizens worship the military, especially little kids (that always sets me off). Be respectful, but get informed, and think for yourself. There's no point in us defending the people of America abroad if they're just going to quietly give up at home! Re: the war, I was actually coming at it from a completely different direction! I joined after dropping out of an overpriced college and, as a New Englander, I was in perfect agreement with Nowinski's position. I didn't have any illusions about Bush and Cheney, but I was sick of hearing upper middle-class hippies whine about the war, and I was growing increasingly skeptical about their motives (good call on that one); I figured that helping out from within would be better than listening to another goddamn Chomsky lecture. I also thought that the neo-con's security-industrial complex was temporary, and the Dems and the Dem-friendly Repugnicans (e.g. McCain, Ron Paul) would eventually win America back. I mean, yeah I knew that Lieberman and Gore were bastards, but surely, the Dems were the party of Nader, Feingold, Kucinich, and that upstart young hero, Obama...? I guess I was just the same as you and your conservative friends, only I was watching the match from the other side of the arena.

It's too bad Nowinski didn't stick around. I'd love to see him debate Roman Reigns about ISIS and Assad.

EH: You're forcing the etirety of one's position on foreign policy into a false "hawk/dove" binary that doesn't reflect the complexity of the facts on the ground. You literally tried to shoehorn Libya, ISIS, Syria, and Hillary's entire goddamned campaign into the Iraq paradigm as though all forms of interventionism and non-interventionism are purely interchangeable states.

And who the fuck is still cheerleading Iraq besides imaginary redneck strawmen you debate in your head?

He tried to adopt a brain-dead woman to legally become her guardian and prevent her from being removed from life support per her wishes because a bunch of Republican-voting bible-thumpers wanted her kept alive.

He gutted the state education budget, relying more heavily on proceeds generated from the Florida Lottery to keep the schools afloat and used the tax dollars he saved to give tax breaks to rich assholes.

Jeb Bush is a human-sized turd in an expensive suit.

Don't you ever fucking forget that.

im cribbing from daily show but you guys understand that this whole debacle as engineered to make you feel sorry for jeb and restore some semblance of affection towards the bush name

If my name was "Bush," I would replace it with an exclamation point on all my posters.

The exclamation point stands for shame.

I need to sample the "please clap" line.