100 Things I Hate About You

or, Monumental Fail
by va

History will judge George Bush (if it has the stomach), but it's not like he won't offer his own assistance, and his press-minions will apparently assist his assist--and then some! To that end, the White House brings us "100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record" [warning: not a PDF, but the PDF version will gob-smack you in color, with pictures]. This is an actual document actually existing on the White House website which was not invented by Jon Stewart; that is the only thing about this document that will surprise you.

 

Most of the items (which as Jon Stewart pointed out, are not numbered) are in fact things we all know the Bush administration would like us to know. But as we should expect, "100" and "things" and "know" are used in the special Bush administration ways; the list is full of redundancies and innuendo and general nonsense intended to instantly render the engaged reader too weary to even begin to argue with it. To wit:

• Protected the right to vote for generations to come by reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act and advancing civil rights
• Led the response to the 2008 financial crisis
• Transformed the State Department and our approach to diplomacy to help spread democracy worldwide and combat the conditions that breed terrorism

Plus four points under the heading PROVIDED UNPRECEDENTED RESOURCES FOR VETERANS.

And then there are the out-and-out failures that are being touted as accomplishments:

• Laid the foundation for a future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and a democratic Palestinian state by launching direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) at the Annapolis Conference and working with the PA to build accountable institutions
• Proposed initiatives to fix Social Security
• Laid out a comprehensive plan to fix and reform our broken immigration system
• Warned of the risk that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posed to America's financial security beginning in 2001

Fail, fail, fail, and fail. And finally there are the items that the administration would like to just slip under the door and run away. For example,

• Bolstered civil society activists in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela

When of course the activists the administration sponsored in Venezuala were not interested in being "civil" so much as staging a coup. Which failed. And then there's this:

• Bolstered funding for medical research, which contributed to medical breakthroughs and new discoveries, including the HPV cancer vaccine

Aside from the fact that HPV is not cancer, the administration was apparently so excited about the HPV vaccine that they foisted it on immigrants, both creating an expensive barrier to entrance into the US and instantly producing a guinea pig population (while social conservatives argued against the vaccine's widespread use). I checked the White House website for any talk at all about the HPV vaccine and public policy, and there is no such thing; there was mention, though, of a visit Bush made to the NIH to talk about cancer research, where he said, and I quote, "I really want to make it clear to the Congress that I hope they pass legislation that makes genetic discrimination illegal. In other words, if a person is willing to share his or her genetic information, it is important that that information not be exploited in improper ways." And yet I see "beginning today, the U.S. government will collect DNA samplesfrom people arrested and detained for suspected immigration violations, the Los Angeles Times reports."

If the question is "stupid or lying," the answer is lying, and if it's "stupid or evil," the answer is evil. Which makes me wonder about this item:

• Led the most comprehensive and forward-leaning effort in modern history to facilitate a smooth and effective transition.

Maybe by now the administration has learned its lesson that whatever it touches turns to shit, and so on that theory they are putting forth a valiant effort to help Obama succeed.

UPDATE: See also. For the love of God, see also.