Bush II's Popularity is soaring

[Borachio]

Hitler's paintings I quite like. He was a reasonably skillful draftsman, imo.

But there's no depth of feeling to them, I fancy he merely copied picture postcards, and maybe I even detect a little bit of anti-semitism. Especially in the bottom left hand corners of his pictures. You can try squinting if you like.

I do know, though, that he was furious when the Academy rejected him.

And then he went on to invade Poland.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hitler's paintings I quite like. He was a reasonably skillful draftsman, imo.

But there's no depth of feeling to them, I fancy he merely copied picture postcards, and maybe I even detect a little bit of anti-semitism. Especially in the bottom left hand corners of his pictures. You can try squinting if you like.

I do know, though, that he was furious when the Academy rejected him.

And then he went on to invade Poland.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I wrote a very ironic short story once. The main character was an elderly Viennese painter who by all measures was clearly a failure. His friends and family were so disappointed, because he was a brilliant orator and they constantly excoriated him for having not "lived up to his potential."

 

[FriendlyFire]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/politics/george-w-bush-favorable-poll/index.html

Looks like Trump has lowered Republican's expectations of what a president should be so much that George W. Bush looks like an angel sent from God now. Still below Barack Obama rating though(because Obama is obviously an Archangel). How low can our expectations go?

Well Trump has said there were a lot of good Nazis and FDR was equally responsible for ww2

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Hitler's paintings I quite like. He was a reasonably skillful draftsman, imo.

This is the kind of answer I was expecting. I much prefer Bush's paintings for a multitude of reasons. But just take this as an example:

The lighting is off. As a result, some of the shadows (esp in the foreground) don't fall correctly or simply aren't there at all.

Still, painting buildings and landscapes was his strongest point.

He definitely wasn't outright horrible (there are worse paintings of his out there, I haven seen them before but could not find them now). The biggest criticism of his works is that they're mind numbingly boring, exactly like the art he later championed as opposed to the "degenerate art" he condemned because of their "jewish subversiveness": Picasso, Klimt, Van Gogh, Matisse, Kirchner and Chagall.

 

[onejayhawk]

How on earth was bush the best?

Least awful is hard to say.

J

 

[stinkubus]

I would love to hear what Obama did that was worse than Bush's war crimes.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Imagine you are a good friend of Bush and any time he visits you have put that picture on the wall he gave you as a gift....

 

[caketastydelish]

Least awful is hard to say.

J

He wasn’t the least awful.

 

[Evie]

I have not once said that speeches matter more than war crimes. I have said that ignoring what the president say to focus exclusively on what the president does is stupid, and that yes, his twitter and what he says on it *does* matter. The intellectual elitism that says it doesn't is, for American democracy, the kind of Darwin-award-level negligence that lost the Democrats the 2016 election.

As for war crimes : the reason I don't put much weight on "Bush did war crimes" is because, having studied international criminal law? I don't think you're getting much of anything to stick to bush in an actual (state-backed, but fair) war crime trial. Not because "Oh war crimes are for losers", either - because the law, as written, don't support the accusation). And most of what you're sticking to him...it's not the kind of imagination-inflaming war crime. We're not talking about massacres and reprisal killing of civilians and mass murders and what not (I'm not saying these things didn't happen in Iraq : I'm saying there's no way to stick those to Bush). We're maybe - maybe, I could see him getting out of that one too - getting the waterboarding order, and the unlawful enemy combatant decision, on him. Waging a war of aggression is a fun one to lob around, but there's a reason it hasn't been used since Nuremberg and Tokyo (and for all that the Nazis et al richly deserved everything they got, those were largely Kangaroo courts making up laws as they went along, not an ideal to aspire to or a basis for a system of justice), and a reason we've only had a stable definition for the crime of war of aggression since 2010. It's an notoriously *hard* one.

 

[onejayhawk]

I would love to hear what Obama did that was worse than Bush's war crimes.

I would say you can start with the lack of war crimes, but Evie covered it in more detail.

He wasn’t the least awful.

Who then? Trump? It's a low bar, but is it that low?

J

 

[stinkubus]

Even if we can ignore the fact that the Iraq war was launched under false pretenses the Bush administration ordered the torture of captives taken.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would love to hear what Obama did that was worse than Bush's war crimes.

He is a Democrat. In J's reality that is sufficient and needs no further analysis.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Who then? Trump? It's a low bar, but is it that low?J

Depends how much damage he can do to the economy and the rest of the world. Right now Trump is mired in endless scandals
I'd imagine that, with Trump it will get worse as things play out.

You already know what is going to happen with all these tax cuts and deregulations.

 

[Evie]

Tortune is the one charge you *might* manage to stick on him. I think it has good odds ; I'd want him to be found guilty, but I'm not convinced he'd be.

Add in the fact that there seems to be a general notion that chiefs of state have to go very far for their actions to be held against them (all recent cases I can think of where a chief of state was charged with war crimes involved the war crimes charges being paired with crimes against humanity ones)....

War crimes are a messy, gray area of international law. Not a clear-cut white and black area.

 

[Archbob]

Actually he just singed a new Tax Increase for Solar Panels. He only believes in tax cuts for some things.

 

[Commodore]

your next president is going to be Kevin Spacey

He'd run as a Democrat though.

 

[FriendlyFire]

He'd run as a Democrat though.

Wasnt House of cards based on the Clintons ?

 

[onejayhawk]

Depends how much damage he can do to the economy and the rest of the world. Right now Trump is mired in endless scandals. I'd imagine that, with Trump it will get worse as things play out. You already know what is going to happen with all these tax cuts and deregulations.

I don't see any damage in the near term. Sometime in the next decade there will be a S&L/FNMA-type disaster. Between now and then, 3%-4% growth most years. Massive run up in the markets. Increased Federal tax revenue. Same old, same old, happens every time.

Wasnt House of cards based on the Clintons ?

It could have been.

J

 

[Commodore]

Wasnt House of cards based on the Clintons ?

Don't know, I never watched the show. I was just going off the fact that Kevin Spacey has always been politically aligned with Democrats.

Another thought I had regarding this matter: Has Trump pretty much ruined presidential campaigns for future "political outsiders"? I ask because even though he's not an outsider*, Trump has styled himself as such and the fact that he's doing such a terrible job might put a negative stigma in voters' minds about electing another anti-establishment candidate. That means true anti-establishment candidates in the future who might actually have some good ideas and real leadership skills might get passed over by voters in favor of career politicians because of what Trump has done. You know, people might start to think "outsiders" simply can't get the job done or are too extreme in their views to be effective leaders.

*Even though this is the first elected office Trump has held, he is no stranger to Washington politics. He has been a prominent figure in the fundraising campaigns of several career politicians, most of whom still hold office to this day.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Wasnt House of cards based on the Clintons ?

They are not really supposed to depict one actual person, rather they have traits of many past presidents (and first ladies). When Trump picked up steam the show was making fun of Trump, for example. It is a lot like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove where a lot of the characters were based on different politicians molded into a single person.

But yeah, the Clintons are a pretty obvious inspiration.