Bush's Ignorance

A recently released study found that ideology affected hiring practices at the Justice Department from 2001 -2007. In particular, the study found that a man named Bradley Schlozman, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, altered the hiring process to weed out candidates with perceived ties to liberal organizations.

I’d be shocked if this came as a big surprise to anyone. The Justice Department’s hiring process caused a scandal a few years ago and led to the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It was only a matter of time before investigations “proved” what everyone already knew.

If we take away any lessons from the past eight years, it should be that insulating oneself from dissenting opinions is an easy way to screw everything up. Bush, Cheney, and their cronies systematically eliminated dissenting opinions at all levels of government. Their willful ignorance led directly to the disaster in Iraq; to torture; to the failures during Hurricane Katrina, and maybe even to our current economic problems.

The Bush administration is so insulated from dissenting opinion that, even in his last press conference, Bush himself refused to admit that America’s standing in the world had suffered. He’s either lying or completely, blissfully ignorant. I’m not sure which is worse. But I am sure that the way the Bush administration went about governance was disastrous for America and harmful to the world. I hope Obama, and all of our future presidents, can learn from the terrible mistakes.

Goodbye to (hopefully) the last Bush

President Bush held his last press conference yesterday. When asked what he'd be doing in the future, he only said: “When I get out of here, I’m getting off the stage, I’ve had my time in the klieg lights.”

All I can say is thank goodness.

"Virginity Pledges" Don't Work...

So says the Washington Post, via MSNBC:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

Abstinence-only sex education was a hallmark of the Bush Years, and yet another demonstration of the Christian Right's refusal to connect with reality.

Out With the Old...

How sad and frightening is it that the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, is totally ignored by the other Most Powerful People in the World. Bush was so incompetant, so bullish, so wrong about everything, that the elected leaders of the world can't even bring themselves to shake his hand.

It makes me doubly glad that we elected Obama. I'm sure that, at the very least, he'll be shaking everyone's hand.