This one takes a look at a specific set of cuts that were ideological vs. actually positively affecting the bill. I’m still very concerned about this bill, and I’m particularly concerned about the tax cuts. When I finished my taxes this weekend, I got the remaining Bush stimulus tax credit from 2008. I was angry when I got this, because the aggregate checks coming to households like mine (double-income households earning over $100K) probably could pay for a few construction projects or backstopping state unemployment funds.

This is wrong.

We’re going to put this refund in our bank account. It’s going to sit there. It’s not stimulus. It’s a bullshit pander.

Oy, it gets even better. Passing this on to complete the story.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the new levels of incompetence that keep cropping up about the Bush administration. Something tells me that these sorts of revelations will become a recurring story over the next few months.

There are days I wish that my criticism of the Bush administration was purely ideological. At least then, our country would’ve been better run. Alas, you’re all not that lucky, and I’m not that ideologically driven.

Incompetence has been the biggest problem. I don’t envy the task the Obama administration has in front of them. It’s going to be hard work fixing all the things Bush broke. Read the linked post to see yet another example.

Unsurprising. This is wrong…

Some images of protestors in Iraq demanding freedom for the shoe thrower.

Mostly a reminder to me to read this later. I’m not one for hyperbole (no, really!), but you gotta wonder why no one in the White House is going to jail for some of this stuff. The last 8 years have been marked by the most blatantly incompetent government ever.

I’m glad he wasn’t hurt, but the photo is pretty amusing.

Here’s one I almost completely agree with. Competence, not ideology, please.

What Monica Goodling did to the DOJ, along with her other staffers, is pretty much the opposite of what America is about. Un-American is often thrown around by partisans to demagogue, but in this case the word seems to be the only appropriate choice. We are supposed to get beyond politics when doing the actual work of governing. These agencies, especially, need to be beyond politics.

Another reason, btw, why George W. Bush is the worst President in American history.

Whoever becomes President next will have to deal with all of this. How do you get the experienced folks to come back to agencies like the CDC that have been driven away over the last 7+ years? It should be more reassuring that the Rove folks who helped put these sycophants into the agencies are now running McCain’s campaign…

This is going to be the long-terms damage that this administration has inflicted on the nation. The cronyism reached to the lowest ranks of the bureaucracy, something that seems very different than the sorts of cronyism one expects at the top of the tree. (via Atrios)

61% of historians surveyed agree with my contention the the Bush presidency has been the worst in U.S. history.

Update: Worth pointing out that this isn’t a statistically meaningful survey (self-selecting respondents, etc.) so it’s more a conversation starter than an actual conclusion.

Go Nancy! Love the answer to, “Is the President lying?”

The average effective income tax rate for the top 400 earners in the U.S. (as reported on their taxes) was about 18%. It was about 30% during the Clinton years. According to Wikipedia, a person earning about $50,000, no itemized deductions, has an effective tax rate of 18%. This is supposed to be a progressive taxation system (and this doesn’t even consider the payroll tax effect, which raises effective tax rates for lower incomes). I’d have to guess that a lot of this is dividend tax related, since most of us have little in terms of dividend income.

Tell me again which party is the “law and order” party? Because it sure isn’t the Republican party, and certainly not this administration.

The moral high ground has been abandoned by the Bush administration and everyone has noticed. It’s pretty sad what 8 years with him as President has done to our country.

C&L has the video. Pretty much covers how I feel about this one.

When you sit around imagining the good that America could do in Afghanistan (and I had high hopes in 2002 that we could’ve brought Afghanistan forward a few decades), these are the kind of programs you imagine. Sadly, the Bush administration is cutting back on these programs and spending a ton of resources next door in Iraq. We could get a nice 2-for-1 return on the failed state lottery…

Wheeee, liberal media…?

I honestly forgot about the campaign promise Bush made. Not surprising… he’s nothing if not dishonest.

Heh…

I cannot wait for this administration to leave. They are literally destroying the fabric of our country.

Yay! Media fails to do basic truth reporting again!

Folks were claiming that the whole UN Resolution process was a sham, that we were going to war regardless of what Bush was saying publicly, because they had already decided. This has been reported in several papers, in Woodward’s Plan of Attack, and in Clarke’s Against All Enemies among many other sources. Has Bush ever been called on this? No. Republicans are to blame, along with insiders who thought that oath to the Constitution they took was an oath to George W. Bush.