Only Two Months Left

With only a few weeks remaining until Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, I wanted to provide a snapshot of how Mr. Bush and his cronies have openly ignored the Constitution, abused their power and insulted our intelligence. Therefore, I have included the following timeline, which includes just a small handful of the many blunders in the debacle known as the Bush administration:

2000
December: The conservative United States Supreme Court rules that Mr. Bush has "defeated" Vice President Al Gore in the presidential election. Life as we know it ceases to exist.

2001
January: Soon after Mr. Bush takes office, an overthrow of Saddam Hussein is planned during the very first National Security Council meeting. (Keep in mind that this is eight months before the September 11th attacks.)
February: Mr. Cheney conducts covert meetings with oil executives in order to develop a national energy policy.
March: Mr. Bush repeals a health regulation which would have reduced the levels of arsenic permissible in drinking water.
August: Mr. Bush receives a daily briefing titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US". Despite this obviously important information, the Bush administration essentially does nothing.
September: (1) Nineteen Islamic terrorists attack the U.S. After being informed that a second airplane has been flown into the World Trade Center, Mr. Bush continues reading "The Pet Goat" with Florida schoolchildren for seven more minutes. (2) Following the attacks, the White House Council on Environmental Quality pressures the Environmental Protection Agency to downplay the risks of the breathing air at Ground Zero.
December: As Enron collapses, Mr. Bush distances himself from Kenneth Lay, the former CEO and Chairman of the disgraced company and a frequent contributor to Bush's political campaigns.

2002
January: The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp opens; Mr. Bush states that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections under the Geneva Conventions.
March: While the White House asks the National Security Agency to start the practice of warrantless surveillance, Mr. Bush declares that he is truly "not that concerned" about Osama bin Laden. Apparently he wasn't kidding.
August: A memorandum from the Department of Justice defines torture as only extreme acts which cause pain similar in intensity to the pain resulting from "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death".
November: The New Hampshire Republican Party hires a telemarketing firm to jam telephone banks used by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association during the election for the state's United States Senate seat. Key figures in the scandal have connections with the White House and the Republican National Committee.

2003
January: Citing a knowingly incorrect dossier from the British government, Bush claims in the State of the Union address that Iraq sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. When addressing the enormous fabrication, the White House Director of Communications later states that "The President of the United States is not a fact checker".
February: (1) Secretary of State Colin Powell presents false intelligence on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council. (2) Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert), a "reporter" for Talon News and former gay prostitute, is issued a press pass by the White House.
March: The U.S. invades Iraq. Halliburton, the former employer of Mr. Cheney, is awarded a $7 billion, 5-year no bid contract.
May: Mission accomplished!?!
July: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson blows the whistle on the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. As a result, Valerie Plame Wilson, his wife and an undercover Operations Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is identified publicly by idiotic journalist Robert Novak; Mr. Bush promises to terminate the individual responsible for the leak.

2004
April: (1) Photographs of the atrocities performed at the Abu Ghraib prison are published. Testifying before the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later calls for the changes to ensure the abuse "doesn’t happen again". (2) Pat Tillman, a U.S. Army Ranger and former professional football player, is killed by friendly fire. However, the Pentagon reports that Tillman and his unit were attacked in an ambush in Afghanistan.
May: The Government Accountability Office concludes that the Department of Health & Human Services created fake news reports to promote the Bush administration's new Medicare drug benefit.
October: Numerous media outlets report the sightings of bulges under Mr. Bush's jacket during the presidential debates with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). To view these pictures, go to http://homepage.mac.com/c.shaw/BushBulges/PhotoAlbum15.html. Normally I would avoid posting information on conspiracy theories but, let's face it, he's retarded. Therefore, this isn't much of a stretch.
November: Robert Stein, a comptroller and financial officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, is changed with stealing funds and accepting bribes totaling more than $2 million. Stein was hired despite serving prison time for felony fraud in the 1990s. By the way, $15 billion in U.S. funds have gone missing in Iraq.
December: (1) Mr. Bush nominates Bernard Kerik for the role of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik withdrew his name from consideration a week later due to the fact that he had previously employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny. In a separate matter, Kerik pleaded guilty in June 2006 to two ethics violations and was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines.
In November 2007, Kerik was also indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy, tax and mail fraud and providing false statements to officials from the White House and the Internal Revenue Service. (2) Speaking of inept public servants, Mr. Bush awards Presidential Medals of Freedom to Paul Bremer and George Tenet, who both played large roles in the train wreck better know as the Iraq War.

2005
January: "USA Today" reports that Armstrong Williams, an African-American political commentator, had been paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act on his nationally syndicated television show.
March: (1) Mr. Bush sticks his nose clearly into where it belongs and fights to keep the vegetative Terri Schiavo alive. (2) "The New York Times" reports that at least twenty federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Census Bureau, have produced and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years for broadcast on local stations nationwide.
June: Philip Cooney, the chief of staff to the Council on Environmental Quality, resigns after documents reveal that, regardless of his lack of scientific training, he repeatedly edited government climate reports to cast doubt on the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Less than a week later, ExxonMobil announced that Cooney would be joining the oil company in the fall.
August: Hurricane Katrina slams New Orleans and, due to the pitiful response by the federal government, all hell breaks loose.
September: Mr. Bush falsely claims that no one anticipated the levees in New Orleans to break from the force of Hurricane Katrina. However, videotape from the day before the storm made landfall clearly shows that Mr. Bush was warned about this very issue by Dr. Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center.
October: (1) The Occupational Safety & Health Administration determines that numerous trailers provided to hurricane victims by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contain dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. (2) Harriet Miers withdraws her name from consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court after only twenty-four days. Meetings with senators following her nomination exposed her lack of knowledge of basic constitutional law concepts.
November: Oil executives lie to Congress regarding their secret meetings in 2001 with Mr. Cheney.

2006
January: Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleads guilty to three felony counts relating to the defrauding of Native American tribes and the corruption of public officials. Despite Abramoff's strong ties with his administration, Mr. Bush states that "I don't know him".
February: (1) Mr. Cheney shoots his friend Harry Whittington in the face while hunting quail (Who in the f--k goes quail hunting?). As to be expected, Whittington apologizes to Cheney: "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week." (2) George Deutsch, a presidential appointee to NASA, resigns after Dr. James Hansen, the director of the organization's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charges that Deutsch attempted to prevent Hansen and his colleagues from openly discussing global warming.
April: Although seven retired generals call for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign, Mr. Bush eloquently utters: "I'm the decider and I decide what's best."
May: As the third highest ranking official in the CIA, Executive Director Kyle Foggo resigns. Foggo was eventually charged with fraud and other offenses in the bribery case of convicted Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-CA). This indictment was superseded and expanded with charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering relating to his interactions with defense contractor Brent Wilkes.
October: Lester Crawford, the former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, pleads guilty to violating conflict of interest laws by falsely reporting information concerning stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical device companies of which he was responsible for regulating. Crawford had resigned from his post in September 2005, only two months after being approved by the U.S. Senate.
November: On November 1st, Mr. Bush declared that Rumsfeld would serve as the Secretary of Defense for the length of his term as President. On November 8th, the day after Election Day, Mr. Bush announced that Rumsfeld would be resigning.
December: Despite positive performance reviews from the Department of Justice, eight U.S. Attorneys are forced to resign.

2007
February: "The Washington Post" publishes a series of articles detailing numerous cases of neglect at Walter Reed Army Medical Center reported by wounded soldiers and their family members.
March: (1) Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Mr. Cheney, is convicted on one count of obstruction of justice, one count of providing false statements to federal investigators and two counts of perjury resulting from the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Contrary to his earlier promises, Mr. Bush commutes Libby's thirty-month prison sentence. (2) Steven Griles, the former Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior, pleads guilty to obstruction of justice in the Senate investigation of the scandal involving Jack Abramoff. (3) Last but not least, multiple cases of tainted food, pharmaceuticals and toys imported from China reveals a lack of regulation by the Bush administration.
April: (1) Testifying before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales uses the phrase "I don't recall" and similar statements a total of sixty-four times. (2) The White House reports that more than five million e-mails have been "lost".
May: Paul Wolfowitz resigns as President of the World Bank amidst an ethics violation investigation concerning his relationship with Shaha Riza, the organization's Senior Communications Officer and acting Manager of External Affairs for the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office.
June: "Time" magazine reports that, since 2003, Mr. Cheney and his staff have refused to file required reports with the National Archives and Records Administration. Mr. Cheney has argued that his office is exempt from the executive order (signed by Mr. Bush himself) requiring such actions because the Vice President's office is part of both the executive and legislative branches.
August: (1) After ignoring the Constitution for the majority of his term as Attorney General,
Alberto Gonzales resigns. (2) The International Committee of the Red Cross reports that the interrogation methods utilized in the CIA's secret prisons are "tantamount to torture" and violate international law.
December: (1) Reports surface that an administration official in the CIA destroyed videotapes of the agency's use of waterboarding techniques on detainees in the aforementioned secret prisons. (2) Howard Krongard, the head of the Office of Inspector General of the Department of State, resigned following accusations of averting investigations into contracting fraud in Iraq and a conflict of interest with Blackwater Worldwide, at which his brother was on the advisory board.

2008
March: During a videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan, Mr. Bush delivers these wonderful sentiments: "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."
April: The Government Accountability Office releases a report on combating terrorism with the title "The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas".
May: (1) Under investigation that he may have deleted files on whistleblowers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the office of Scott Bloch, Special Counsel at the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). The Special Counsel role is the highest ranking position in the OSC, which...yes, you guessed it...defends anti-discrimination laws and whistleblower protection for federal employees. (2) Scott McClellan, the former White House Press Secretary, writes in his new book that Karl Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mr. Bush, "had at best misled" him about his role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak. (3) Finally, in what may be his most pitiful lie during his entire presidency, Mr. Bush claims that he quit golfing in August 2003 after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in order to honor the fallen soldiers in Iraq. "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal." Except for the fact that video evidence exists showing this disgrace of a human being playing golf in October 2003, only 3 months after his heartfelt "pledge".
July: (1) Mr. Bush ends a private meeting at the G8 summit by uttering "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" with an enormous grin and then punching the air. This idiot faced additional criticism after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, is described in the White House press package provided to journalists as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice". Describing the insult as "sloppy work", the Bush administration explained that a White House official had obtained the characterization of Berlusconi from the Internet without proofreading the information. (2) A former official from the Environmental Protection Agency claims that Mr. Cheney's office removed congressional testimony from a report on the public health consequences of climate change; the testimony was provided by Julie Gerberding, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control. (3) Karl Rove ignores a subpoena from the House Committee on the Judiciary to discuss the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal.
August: At his estate in Crawford, TX, Mr. Bush logs his 950th day away from the White House, easily surpassing the vacation record of Ronald Reagan.