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Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…

Go Ahead & Try    

The Washington Post provides a delightful example of one of the myriad ways the Bush Administration will exit as it governed, with comically opaque statements, inept execution of its legal responsibilities, and the providential retirement for health reasons of an official who facilitated its crimes by his own idleness.

The jerry-rigged pile which is the Bush White House email system is supposed to disgorge its treasures onto the National Archives when the president leaves office in a month.

But there’s never a lack of drama with these guys.

The endless litigation trying to force Bush not to destroy presidential records through sloth, indifference and malice has taught us that some five million emails may be missing from the White House system, as well as tens of thousands written on Republican National Committee email accounts in order to evade records keeping law.

National Archives’ General Counsel Garry Stern is praying for a Christmas Miracle:

“we hope and expect they all will exist on the system or be recoverable…We can’t say for sure.”

But Santa may not exist, or have treats for all the good boys and girls:

  “White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel said last week that “we are making significant progress in accounting for the e-mail records stored on our computer network.” But he declined to say how many e-mails remain missing or to predict how long the recovery will take because the issue is the subject of ongoing litigation. “

“Stanzel said the White House is also still “working to acquire” e-mails involving official government business that were transmitted by presidential aides through accounts operated by the Republican National Committee, a problem also first publicized almost three years ago. “We continue to be in communication with RNC officials about recovering official records,” he said without offering details. Such records are subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires their transfer to the Archives at noon on Jan. 20. “

Outgoing Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein has long urged faith-based archiving.  Visiting the future

       George W. Bush Library home at SMU he painted the vision of a happy future , where the cares and controversies of the present fall away, and a disturbing category he invented called “Presidential Families” decide it’ll be good for grandpa’s image to let loose the papers.

The ongoing scandal that ex Presidents, and thanks to Bush, their heirs for untold generations, have any say in shaping the public record and image of past administrations went unmentioned.

But it’s not Weinstein’s problem anymore.

He’s resigning before the end of term smashup for health reasons, offering a glowing self-assessment has he scurries away from the looming train-wreck.

“we at the National Archives have worked diligently and successfully on our primary mission of maximizing public access to the records of all three branches of government while protecting at all costs this agency’s rock-solid nonpartisan integrity“

The Post’s story ends on a reassuring note.  There’s no word on Saddam’s pistol, but…

“The bullhorn used by Bush at the World Trade Center site in New York is among the objects set to go to Texas. “

In The Field  

Back ‘N Flat!     

Long hinted, now we know: it’s back to Dallas for the George W. Bushs! The featureless plains of Texas and it’s sprawl will be graced by both home, ranch and Presidential Library after Bush’s retirement.

Never Call Retreat  

The then former President will join two other Sons of Texas who returned after troubled Washington tenures.

  One shipped back to Texas was Education Secretary Rod Paige, who faced allegations of faking Houston graduation rates before going to Washington, and who spent Department funds on illegal propaganda for “No Child Left Behind.”

  And proud Dallasian Alphonso Jackson served as Housing & Urban Development Secretary until his favoritism and pay for play faux pas brought him low.

Fireside Crap   

George W. Bush’s rush to the exits is throwing up all sorts of amusing history-ish oddities, and now we know:

it’s another fall rollout!

Bush boy apologist Steven Hayes says its only just begun.

” We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this and there’s an ongoing Bush legacy project that’s been meeting in the White House, really, with senior advisers, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes has been involved, current senior Bush administration advisers and they are looking at how to sort of roll out the President’s legacy.”

Hayes may be an unreliable narrator,   as the single most prominent conduit for al Qaeda/Saddam Hussein conspiracy theories, but Dick Cheney called him”effective,” so it must be gold.

The rollout began with the President’s trademark cackling over the sweet release of death:

“I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it — (laughter)“

…but then Bush’s exit interview with Charlie Gibson  took a new tack on explaining away the war.

Did you know that his biggest disappointment was the failure to find Iraqi WMD?

Gosh that peeved him, and he expressed sorrow for all the foreign governments and Senators who fell for the pipe dream as well.  Left out was just where all this “bad intelligence” came from, or how in the course of confecting it his people ignored and suppressed evidence to the contrary.

As Talking Points Memo pointed out, for media reports to present this as Bush giving ground is to help him in his new lie.

“For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened “

Also disapointing was Charlie Gibson, who failed to follow up on his groundbreaking Sarah Palin interivew  and ask Bush himself what the hell the Bush Doctrine was. 

The free floating weirdness of the final days is popping up all over. A DC screening of Frost/Nixon featured renowned Republican suck-up Chris Wallace    taking umbrage at breezy comparisons of Richard Nixon’s criminality with George Bush fightin’ terror.

“I think to compare what Nixon did, and the abuses of power for pure political self-preservation, to George W. Bush trying to protect this country — even if you disagree with rendition or waterboarding — it seems to me is both a gross misreading of history both then and now,” Mr. Wallace said.

Nobody dast blame this man, for he tortured flesh and reality for us!