The “Bush Effect” – Hopefully for a Third and LAST Time

As with the lists of the past two Christmases, these items appear in no particular order and undoubtedly is STILL incomplete, despite being compiled over at least three Christmases of thought, the repeated ransacking of my memory, and a fair amount of Googling. Especially since many more of the sins of the Bush administration have yet to surface (or be whistle-blown by a partisan who suddenly grows a conscience or an investigative reporter who inexplicably decides to look into the voluminous Bush/Cheney abominations rather than an all-Blagojevich-all-the-time (Keep looking! It’s a Democrat! GOTTA be another blue dress in there or a way to destroy Obama maybe!) orgy. Feel free to add your own. If nothing else, it’s my attempt to offer a little fairness and balance to the spin-mongers who are desperately trying, nonstop, to recast the Bush legacy as that proverbial pig with lots of nice new lipstick. This list is filled with people, places, things, groups, and concepts well worth remembering. They will NEVER be quite the same again. So here goes…

THINGS BUSH AND THE REPUBLI-CON PARTY HAVE RUINED, INJURED, INSULTED, OR SOMEHOW COMPROMISED, directly OR indirectly:

The truth
America as we knew it

The Constitution of the United States of America The Congressional Page Program The presidency The moral high ground The presidential oath of office An independent press Accountability in government Republican Redistricting in Texas Everyone in Congress who voted for the IWR and the Patriot Act The State of the Union speech The Democratic Party The Republican Party The Bible The Methodist Church The Southern Baptists The evangelical movement The American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Federalist Society, et al The CIA The FBI Executive privilege The Presidential Daily Brief George Herbert Walker Bush The Bush “family franchise” – its “entitlement” to the White House Going to Rehab Tom Delay Bob Ney Mark Foley Tom Reynolds Don Sherwood “Mean” Jean Schmidt Dennis Hastert John Boehner Mitch McConnell Jack Abramoff Roger Ailes Rupert Murdoch Fox News Channel Bill O'Reilly The “War on Christmas”

Randy "Duke" Cunningham
Conrad Burns
Larry Craig
Harold Ford
Bob Corker
Saxby Chambliss
Jim Martin
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Ed Gillespie
Ari Fleischer
Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon
Talon News
Iraq
Afghanistan
“Scooter” Libby
Douglas Feith
Harvey Pitt
Brent Scowcroft
Richard Clarke
The SEC
Christopher Cox
Ben Bernanke
Henry Paulson
Free market economics
“Compassionate Conservatism”
“Trickle-down” tax policy
Government non-interventionism
Arnold Schwarzenegger
GOP internet consultant Michael Connell
Colin Powell
Michael Powell
The city of New Orleans
Michael "Brownie" Brown
Joseph Albaugh
FEMA
The Department of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff
The Houston Astrodome
The World Trade Center
The Pentagon (building)
The federal budget
The dollar
American image abroad
The Dixie Chicks
Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and other celebrity “surrender monkeys”
The “Jersey Girls” - 9/11 widows
Toby Keith
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman’s grieving family
Judy Miller
Matt Cooper
Patrick Fitzgerald
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
The National Review
The Boston Globe
Human Events
The Washington Times
The Weekly Standard
Bob Woodward
John Kerry
John Edwards
Mary Cheney
Disney/ABC TV
ClearChannel Communications
Bernie Kerik
Christie Todd Whitman
Sandra Day O’Connor
John G. Roberts
Samuel Alito
Dan Rather
Mary Mapes
CBS News
”60 Minutes”
The Purple Heart
Cindy Sheehan

More than four-thousand American soldiers and their grieving families (and that’s strictly battlefield death toll – NOT including serious injury, PTSD, and deaths and suicides off the battlefield http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html

Weapons of Mass Destruction
Hans Blix
Mohammed al-Baradei
Scott Ritter
David Kay
Lower Manhattan

New York City in general (and its air quality) Kennebunkport, Maine Crawford, Texas The Hotel Del Coronado Stem cell research The Bill of Rights Harvard's MBA program Yale University The history major Cheerleading Misty May-Treanor The Segway Workers’ rights (especially during the last month or so) Environmental protections (especially during the last month or so) The right to medical care and prescriptions without pharmacists’ personal agendas (especially during the last month or so) “Healthy” Forests “Clear” Skies “No Child Left Behind”

The polar bear
The elderly
Prescription drugs
Social Security
The “ownership” society
“Personal responsibity”
Valerie Plame
Joseph Wilson
Brewster/Jennings & Associates
The CIA
Richard Armitage
Helen Thomas
David Gregory
Nancy Pelosi
The Texas Air National Guard
The Presidential Medal of Freedom
George Tenet
Paul Bremer
Jay Garner
John Poindexter
John Negroponte
John Bolton
The United Nations
The U.N. Security Council
The 9/11 Commission - and its report
The Iraq Study Group - and its report
The swift boat
Legitimate elections
Phil Donahue
The White House Press Corpse

The White House Correspondents Association Dinner Stephen Colbert Rich Little Tom Daschle Harriet Miers Terri Schiavo Michael Schiavo Arthur Anderson Accounting Firm Enron – and its thousands of screwed-over employees and stock holders Kenny-boy Jeff Skilling Andy Fastow WorldCom WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers and CFO Scott Sullivan Tyco International Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, CFO Mark Swartz and ex-general counsel Mark Belnick Global Crossing Ltd.

Global Crossing chief Gary Winnick
Adelphia Communications Corp.
Adelphia Chief John Rigas and sons
The Federal Reserve
Lehman Brothers
Bear Stearns
Merrill Lynch
A.I.G.
Morgan Stanley
Washington Mutual
Goldman Sachs
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Treasury Department
The US taxpayer
Corporate salaries and bonuses
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
The “Big Three” US automakers
Outsourcing
Offshore tax shelters
Habeas Corpus
Ahmed Chalabi
“Curveball”
The White House Iraq Group
The National Security Administration
Henry Kissinger
Richard Perle
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman
Karen Hughes
General Anthony Zinni
General Eric Shinseki
The Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad
The World Bank
Shaha Ali Riza – Wolfowitz’s girlfriend
John Ashcroft
James Comey
David Safavian
Susan Ralston
The theory of Evolution
The separation of church and state
The separation of powers
Max Cleland
John McCain
John McCain’s wife and adopted daughter
The Kyoto Accords
The Geneva Conventions
Sibel Edmonds
Private Jessica Lynch

Lynndie England and her boyfriend Charles Graner AND their baby General Janis Karpinski British Prime Minister Tony Blair Retired General Ricardo Sanchez Vladimir Putin Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard Former French President Jacques Chirac Hamid Karzai The resurgent Taliban Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf Osama bin Laden (STILL at large) Waterboarding and other tortures Retired Major General Antonio Taguba (and the Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib) Retired CIA agent John Kiriakou Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah Al Qaeda suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri Khalid Sheik Mohammed CIA Director Michael Hayden Hugo Chavez Fidel Castro Mahmoud Ahmedinejad The Sunnis The Shiites The Kurds The Framework Agreement with North Korea Katharine Harris Rick Santorum George "Macaca" Allen Gordon Smith Ted Stevens Wayne Allard Michelle Bachmann Lincoln Chafee Chuck Hagel John Warner John Sununu (the younger) Pete Domenici Heather Wilson Elizabeth Dole Norm Coleman Jim Gilmore Fred Thompson Tommy Thompson Rudy Giuliani Tom Tancredo Mike Huckabee Duncan Hunter Ron Paul Sam Brownback Alan Keyes Mitt Romney Sarah Palin Marilyn Musgrave Dusty Foggo Rick Renzi Harry Reid Kenneth Blackwell AIDS funding for Africa Robert Novak E. D. Hill Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and more “Fox & Friends”

James Carville
Tucker Carlson
Charles Krauthammer
Peggy Noonan
Joe Scarborough
Rita Cosby
Joie Chen
Dick Morris
Ralph Reed
Paul O'Neill
John O'Neill - the FBI terrorism expert who died in the WTC, NOT the John Kerry-hater Morale at the Pentagon Morale in the military The PNAC – a complete list of signatories

Bill Kristol
Dick Cheney
David Addington
Michael Ledeen, etc.
Norm Podhoretz
Karl Rove

Austin attorney Harry “Cheney shot me in the face” Whittington The Republican Majority in the House The Republican Majority in the Senate Saddam Hussein Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki The Morning-After pill The right to choose The right to privacy NPR Bill Frist Trent Lott Strom Thurmond Ray Nagin Mississippi governor Haley Barbour Former Lousiana governor Kathleen Blanco Brazil ("I didn't know you had black people in Brazil") Jeb Bush Paraguay Pox "News" Channel Rush Limbaugh Oxycontin James Baker III Lee Hamilton Former Gov Thomas Keane Ken Mehlman Tom Ridge Curt Weldon Bandar "Bush"
Enjoyable flying

Condoleezza Rice (or is that “Contradicta”?) The State Department The Defense Department The Justice Department The Labor Department The Transportation Department The Commerce Department The Energy Department The Department of Veterans Affairs The Interior Department – and every other thoroughly-compromised Cabinet department Mark McKinnon, “Maverick Media”, “Public Strategies Inc.”
Peter Wehner – White House Office of Strategic Initiatives Laura Bush Jenna and Barbara (once renowned as “Drunk and Disorderly”) General Peter Pace General Tommy Franks General Richard Myers General John Abizaid "Freedom fries"

Dubai Ports World
OUR port security

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (groped in public by Bush) Howard Dean Public education in America The poor The homeless Christiane Amanpour Jim Jeffords Joe Lieberman Ned Lamont Jim Talent Dick DeVos Dino Rossi The outgoing Clinton Administration ("they trashed Air Force One!") Michael Steele The Supreme Court The FDA The English Language The Texas Air National Guard Thanksgiving dinner with the troops Ted Haggard Dr. James Dobson "Focus on the Family"

Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson

Alabama Chief Justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore David Vitter David Vitter’s wife, Wendy The “D.C. Madam” – Pamela Martin & Associates The Republicans' Congressional Bible Study room The space shuttle Columbia The NASA budget (and its integrity) Millions of children in Africa Chicken-fried steak "Fool me once..."
OB-GYNS who are out there sharing “their love” with their patients “Bring ‘em on”

“You’re either with us or you’re against us”

Old Europe
Poland
Ouday and Qusay
“Baghdad Bob”
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Fired White House chief chef Walter Scheib III Argentina (Bush twins trashed the place) "Mission Accomplished"
"The Path to 9/11"
Ron Silver
Pretzels
Mountain biking
Lance Armstrong
Paul Wellstone
Richard Gephardt
Paul Hackett
Reliable vote counts
Diebold
Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold
Chris Wallace
Michael Moore
The health of the planet
Michael J. Fox
The 2001 anthrax victims
David Kuo ("Tempting Faith")
The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives
The yellow ribbon
The Congressional Black Caucus
Al Gore
Warren Christopher
Accountability
Checks and balances
Tony Snow
Dana Perino
Stephen Cambone
Stephen Hadley

Keith Ellison, D-Minn (new Muslim congressman lambasted for swearing his oath on the Koran instead of the Bible) Government regulations Bankruptcy protections Foreclosure protections Paul Weyrich Ann Coulter Kate O’Bierne Mona Charen Michelle Malkin Michael Savage Weiner Glenn Beck Michael Reagan Roger Hedgecock Cal Thomas George Will Mary Matalin William F. Buckley, Jr.

Kelly Wallace
Carol Lin
Maureen Dowd
Thomas L. Friedman
Sean Hannity
Alan Colmes
Bill “The Gambler” Bennett
The conservative movement
Free-market conservatives
Alan Greenspan
Flag pins
Going shopping
Christopher Buckley
Donna Brazile
Mary Beth Cahill
Steve Schmidt
Rick Davis
Michael Medved
NPR’s Bob Edwards
NPR’s Gwen Ifill
Wolf Blitzer
Tim Russert
Andrea Mitchell
Paula Zahn
Larry King
Chris Matthews
Norah O’Donnell
Fred Barnes
Morton Kondracke
Pat Buchanan
Bill Schneider
Howard Kurtz
Dana Milbank

ABC newsman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt ABC newswoman Elizabeth Vargas Aaron Brown Katie Couric Charles Gibson Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan NBC reporter David Bloom List of all journalists (AND OTHERS) killed in Iraq: http://www.rehumanize.us/journalists.html

Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis also killed (and not counted) Nick Berg – and family Hanging chads The “Help America Vote” Act F.I.S.A.
Ralph Nader

Scott Reid, senior strategist to then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin – “you got a pretty face”
al-Maliki's short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari Jason Leopold and Truthout.org James Hatfield (author of controversial Bush bio “Fortunate Son”) Air America Patrick Leahy Jim Webb Tim Johnson “Spamalot”
Ferragamos
Kanye West
The proper pronunciation of “nuclear”
Elizabeth Hasselbeck
Chuck Norris
Jon Voight
Jay Leno
David Letterman
Jon Stewart
Conan O’Brien
Craig Ferguson
Saturday Night Live
“The View”
Oscar de la Renta

Laura Bush’s social secretary (should have made sure all those other women didn’t turn up in the same designer duds Milady was wearing) Gay couples who’d like to marry Gays in general The flight suit The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln “The Pet Goat”

Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida – where Bush sat with “The Pet Goat” and the kiddies on the morning of 9/11/01 Plastic sheeting and duct tape David Paulison (the government’s Fire Administrator who advised the public on the plastic-sheeting-and-duct-tape anti-terrorism strategy) Queen Elizabeth II Buckingham Palace gardens Rachel Paulose, US attorney for Minnesota Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker Nancy Nord - acting chair, Consumer Product Safety Commission The Consumer Product Safety Commission The Food & Drug Administration Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot who collided with a A US EP-3 Aries II spy plane on March 31st, 2001 Judith Nathan Giuliani New York City’s Police Department The Mormon Church "Pat" Philbin - Phony FEMA news conference guy Mark Smith Steve Scully Ann Compton MSNBC Keith Olbermann Rachel Maddow Pat Peale – lovely Texas GOP 2004 convention delegate who modeled the purple heart bandaid to mock John Kerry’s Vietnam service S. R. Sidarth (George Allen’s “macaca” victim) The Knight-Ridder news service John Dilulio and the “Mayberry Machiavellis”

Mark Zachares
The Hatch Act
MZM
Mitchell Wade
Bobby Eberle
John Aravosis
Markos Moulitsas
Arianna Huffington
Bill Moyers
Attorney General Michael Mukasey
Alberto Gonzales

John Yoo – wrote the legal briefs for the White House that helped justify torture Gonzales's attorney, George J. Terwilliger III of White & Case in Washington David G. Leitch, a Gonzales friend and general counsel at the Ford Motor Co.

Richard Stickler - Mine Safety and Health Administration J. Steven Griles - ex #2 at Interior Department (imprisoned for 10 months for lying to Congress in Abramoff scandal) Daniel Levin - former acting assistant AG (who volunteered for waterboarding to find out whether it was really torture) Senator Chuck Schumer Senator Dianne Feinstein Lt. General Douglas Lute (Pentagon's "war czar") State Dept. Inspector General Howard J. "Buzzy" Krongard and his brother Alvin Eric Prince Blackwater USA Halliburton Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc.

The U.S. International Contract Bridge Team - the Venice Cup Bridge Team - USBF - Jan Martell United States Bridge Federation spokesman Bob Burkett Barack Obama Ed Rogers Ann Richards Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt Molly Ivins David Broder Dan Bartlett Andrew Card Marine Cpl. Matt “gay porn star” Sanchez Spc. Bryan O'Neal – who was ordered to lie to the Tillman family O’Neal’s battalion commander, then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey – who told him to lie Thomas F. Gimble, the Defense Department's acting inspector general Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich (to the grieving Tillman family: “they’ll never be happy because they’re not Christian.”) Matt Drudge Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “Buckhead” and other online Dan Rather haters Onetime Bush family friend Jimmy Allison Ben Barnes C. Murphy Archibald Kevin Ring Robert E. Coughlin II Randall L. Tobias Fred Fielding “Fair and Balanced”

The term “Christian”
The term “right”
Judith Regan
Brent Bozell
Tony “Focus on the Family” Perkins
General David Petraeus
MoveOn.org
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman
Leura and Bill Canary
Dana Jill Simpson
Alice Martin

Mark McKinnon, “Maverick Media”, “Public Strategies Inc.” – GOP dirty trickster Peter Wehner – White House Office of Strategic Initiatives NAACP Barbara “Beautiful Mind” Bush (senior) David C. Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico; Kevin V. Ryan as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California; John L. McKay as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington; Paul K. Charlton as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona; Carol C. Lam as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California; Daniel G. Bogden as U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada; Margaret M. Chiara as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan; Todd Graves as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri; Harry E. "Bud" Cummins, III as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas; Thomas M. DiBiagio as U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, and; Kasey Warner as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia.

J. Timothy Griffin, interim US attorney, Little Rock – Rove assistant Monica Goodling Sara Taylor Lurita Doan, GSA Administrator L. Scott Jennings, Acting GSA chief Liberty University and its law school Regent University and its law school James Inhofe Scott Bloch, who "runs" the Office of Special Counsel Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ chief of staff Walter Reed Army Medical Center Walter Reed Army Medical Center Building 18 C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla, and Tom Davis, R-Va, who admitted they hadn’t investigated the Walter Reed scandal to avoid embarrassing the Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, ex-commander of Walter Reed Francis J. Harvey, Secretary of the Army, resigned Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, Army Surgeon General and ex-commander of Walter Reed Britney Spears Paris Hilton The Minneapolis Airport men’s room The 2008 Republican National Convention Isaac Toussie – the little pardon that wasn’t Lt. Ehren Watada - http://www.thankyoult.org/ Jose Padilla Code Pink Former General Counsel of the Navy, Alberto Mora Iraqi journalist and shoe-thrower Muntadhar al-Zeidi Barney the dog Reuters reporter Jonathan Decker (the reporter Barney bit) The cowboy hat “Cowboy Diplomacy”

The letter “W”

I know it’s completely arbitrary, but I’m ending the list here because if I don’t, I’ll probably be collecting list items for the rest of my life. The best Dubya can hope for in his new life as Private Citizen Bush, I’d suspect, is that the lack of backbone in Congress and/or the new administration remains the status quo. He’s counting on it. I, on the other hand, am praying that SOME Democrat (hey, I’ll take ANY Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, or even Republican at this point) hasn’t been putting together lists of his/her own. With the attempts to rewrite Bushian history running on overdrive in Junior’s last days in the White House, it behooves every one of us American citizens to compile a list like this – for the sake of keeping the record straight. The Bush crowd will continue trying to twist the facts – to their last breath. But we’ll always know the truth.

Mary Lyon is a veteran broadcaster ad five-time Golden Mike Award winner, who has anchored, reported, and written for the Associated Press Radio Network, NBC Radio "The Source," and many Los Angeles-area stations including KRTH-FM/AM, KLOS-FM, KFWB-AM, and KTLA-TV, and occasional media analyst for ABC Radio News. She began her career as a liberal activist with the Student Coalition for Humphrey/Muskie in 1968, and helped spearhead a regional campaign, "The Power 18," to win the right to vote for 18-year-olds. She remains an advocate for liberal causes, responsibility and accountability in media, environmental education and support of the arts for children, and green living. In addition to OpEdNews, Mary writes for Democrats.us, World News Trust, and WeDemocrats.org's "We! The People" webzine. Mary is also a parenting expert, having written and illustrated the book "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood."