Bag Man

I decided to listen to Rachel Maddow's series about Agnew's corruption investigation, and in Episode 4, there's a little gem in the infamous Nixon tapes that were being made at the time.

(I also realized I could read the episode transcripts.)

This was the Summer of 1973. The Senate Watergate hearings were on TV every day. The Watergate cover-up was starting to unravel around Richard Nixon. Nixon had just fired his Chief of Staff HR Haldeman, his White House Counsel John Dean, his Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, his top Domestic Aide John Ehrlichman... it was all supposedly to clean house from the Watergate mess.

But right then at the same time, Nixon and Agnew decided to undertake a whole separate effort to interfere with a totally unrelated investigation into Agnew.

[...]

AGNEW: Glenn Beall's the only way to influence this.

NIXON: The senator?

AGNEW: Yes.

[...]

HAIG: So, if Beall can get his brother – who’s the U.S. Attorney, who we appointed, who’s a Republican, but who’s turned this thing over to two fanatical prosecutors-- but if he just sits in on them and supervises this--

[...]

Nixon and [his new Chief of Staff Al] Haig are devising this plan, in secret, to interfere with this ongoing investigation. They then start putting this plan into action.

But the middle man they end up using-- the guy who they drag into this obstruction scheme-- ultimately isn’t Mel Laird [their original choice]. Who they end up using for this obstruction effort is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time. A man by the name of... George Herbert Walker Bush.

[...]

HAIG: He isn’t here, so I did it through George Bush on the first run.

NIXON: That’s good, that’s good.

This didn’t ever stick to George HW Bush... maybe because these audio tapes have just been collecting dust for the last four decades. But George Bush was brought in to a potentially criminal effort organized and directed by the then-President of the United States Richard Nixon to obstruct an ongoing investigation into his Vice President.

And George Bush did it.

[...]

U.S. Attorney George Beall ended up donating his papers to Frostburg State University in Maryland. And if you go to those archives, you can now see an official “memo-to-file” that U.S. Attorney George Beall wrote that Summer of 1973.

[...]

This is what he wrote in the file: “With respect to conversations with my brother Glenn, the discussions were most superficial and very guarded. He occasionally mentioned to me the names of persons who had been to see him or who had called him with respect to [this] investigation. Names of persons that I remember him telling me about included Vice President Agnew ... and George Bush.”

Also, if you check out this series, you'll understand why George Conway is recommending it: there are so many, many parallels between Agnew and Trump, including their demeanor and the manipulation of their true believers, including denegration of the press and the DOJ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Matt Taibbi summarizes the Bush I legacy

It’s become fashionable in some circles this week to denounce the newly buried George. H.W. Bush as a war criminal, but that seems gratuitous. After all, from a technical standpoint, what American president isn’t a war criminal? It’s probably a short list.

Thanks to the invasion(s) of Iraq, the bombing of civilians in places like Cambodia and Laos, Guantanamo Bay/torture, the overthrow of numerous democratically elected foreign regime, and support of repressive states like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, “war criminal” is kind of a weak accusation to throw at a commander-in-chief.

  Matt Taibbi

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE  1/17/19:  Seymour Hersh article about Bush's role in Iran-Contra.

Just as we thought: Grumpy wasn't happy being on the sidelines

President Trump joined all four living former presidents as well as more than 3,000 foreign leaders, lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and other mourners at the service, but given his history of rancor with the Bush family, he had no speaking role. As he took his seat in the front row, Mr. Trump awkwardly shook hands with Barack and Michelle Obama but otherwise did not interact with his presidential peers, recite the Apostles’ Creed or sing the hymns.

There was less of an overt sense of rebuke to Mr. Trump than in September at the funeral for Senator John McCain, to which he was not invited, but the implicit contrasts between the former and current presidents were hard to miss. While speakers talked about Mr. Bush’s civility, his commitment to the institutions of government and his faith in alliances, Mr. Trump was sitting feet away, his arms tightly crossed, as if in defiance.

Without directly saying so, the speakers pushed back against Mr. Trump’s mockery of the former president’s volunteerism slogan “a thousand points of light” during campaign rallies this year.

“To us,” the younger Mr. Bush said, “his was the brightest of a thousand points of light.”

[...]

“I believe it will be said that no occupant of the Oval Office was more courageous, more principled and more honorable than George Herbert Walker Bush,” said former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, a friend who was asked to deliver a tribute.

Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Mr. Bush’s biographer, called him “America’s last great soldier-statesman, a 20th-century founding father.”

He also essentially explained Mr. Bush’s thousand-lights phrase to Mr. Trump. “Abraham Lincoln’s ‘better angels of our nature’ and George H. W. Bush’s ‘thousand points of light’ are companion verses in America’s national hymn,” Mr. Meacham said. “For Lincoln and Bush both called on us to choose the right over the convenient, to hope rather than to fear and to heed not our worst impulses but our best instincts.

For Mr. Trump, it was a chilly encounter with his fellow presidents, the first since his inauguration. As he shook hands with the Obamas, they forced polite but palpably strained smiles. Mr. Trump did not reach past them to shake hands with Bill Clinton, who appeared open to it, much less with Hillary Clinton, who avoided looking at him. Sitting on the other side of the Clintons were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

By contrast, when George W. Bush arrived, he shook hands with all of the presidents and first ladies. [...] In his eulogy, he did not mention Mr. Trump by name, instead greeting “our presidents and first ladies.”

[...]

Mr. Trump has been snappish with aides most of the week, according to administration officials, miffed in part by so many ceremonial events not related to him. He was impatient for the memorials to end but expressed pride in himself for remaining publicly civil.

  NYT

I missed that. But I'm not at all surprised.

One side note:

Also on hand were leaders like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and titans of the Bush era like James A. Baker III, Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell and Dan Quayle.

Dan Quayle was a titan of the Bush era?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Body language

What must the Bush eulogizer be saying?



I suppose it could have been anything in praise of Bush, because His Lardship was having to sit by and witness something that wasn't praising himself, but any of these comments may well have produced the pictured moment...

Canada can expect some nasty tweeting tomorrow.  If not sooner.

UPDATE 12/6:

Haha.  It's true he was unhappy not being the subject of all the adoration and publicity.

Huh?

Check under that flag at the front of the room, Ari.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

George HW Bush

If, during this time of flowery praise of George HW Bush, you're having a hard time remembering who he really was, listen to Jeremy Scahill's Intercepted podcast today.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Just walked by a TV with the funeral on - pretty sure it wasn't Fox - and one of the narrators said of the congregated presidents on the front row: This is what makes this country so unique.  No other country has all their heads of state gather together in moments like this.

What a stupid thing to say.  Just because their state funerals and events aren't televised on our TVs doesn't mean they don't do it.  The hagiography and American exceptionalism is laughable these days.

"I am Tariff Man"

There will be cartoons.









A few days ago, he was telling us specific concessions he got from China as though it were all a done deal.

And he still hasn't been told that we aren't "taking in" money from other countries by levying tariffs, or maybe it's like the climate change report: he's been told, but he just doesn't believe it.

And, by the way, "I put on the best funerals."

In a series of tweets over the weekend, the president celebrated the modest compromise on trade he reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires on Saturday in which Trump agreed to temporarily hold off on increasing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods in exchange for China purchasing a still-to-be-defined amount of American-made products.

Trump declared that China had agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the US, and he wrote that China intends to “start purchasing agricultural product immediately” from the US.

“Relations with China have taken a BIG leap forward!” he tweeted.

[...]

White House aides and China have told different stories than the one Trump is offering on what exactly was agreed to, and what’s going to happen and when.

“It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality,” one JPMorgan analyst wrote in a note to clients reported by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla.

[...]

[National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow] was pressed on the matter [...] with one reporter noting that Beijing’s tariff rate for car imports from the rest of the world is 15 percent.

“We don’t yet have a specific agreement on that, but I will just tell you, as an involved participant, we expect those tariffs to go to zero,” he said.

In an appearance on Fox & Friends on Tuesday, Kudlow again was hesitant to back up Trump’s tweet, telling interviewers “it’s coming” — he thinks.

“It hasn’t been signed and sealed and delivered yet,” he said.

As the Los Angeles Times points out, Chinese officials haven’t confirmed any car tariff agreement, either.

[...]

US farmers have already experienced a lot of collateral damage from Trump’s China trade war, and part of his post-agreement boasts have entailed promises of reprieve. But again, the details of exactly what China plans to buy and when are unclear.

On Monday, Kudlow said he couldn’t “specifically” answer a question from a reporter about how China’s agricultural product purchases would work but said that his “expectation” is that China will roll back tariffs on goods “quickly.”

  Vox

The check is in the mail.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  And so it begins:





UPDATE:

Weak

The family of former president George H.W. Bush has planned a state funeral that will steer clear of the kind of anti-Trump sentiment evident at the recent funeral of Sen. John McCain, according to people familiar with the funeral planning.

The Bush family contacted the White House this past summer to say that President Trump would be welcome at the funeral, scheduled Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral, and to assure him that the focus would be on Bush’s life rather than their disagreements, according to one former administration official.

  WaPo

Now we know why Trump has uncharacteristically been praising HW.

One person close to the funeral planning said the Bush family’s overtures to Trump were at least partly pragmatic. Trump has the final say over important funeral details, this person said, including providing Air Force One to carry the former president’s remains from Texas to Washington on Monday for the funeral and back to Texas on Thursday for another service and burial.

While Trump will not deliver a eulogy, he will be seated in the front row alongside former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Looking forward to the funeral

Trump has no sense of what's appropriate or not.  But I'm sure he truly is looking forward to it, as he has not been favored in the Bush family circle, and it wasn't altogether certain he'd be welcome.  Being told to stay away would be even worse than being uninvited to John McCain's funeral.

Come to think of it, Poppy had very little sense of what was appropriate, too.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Say what?

On the speaker phone?  Dubya wasn't even there in person?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Our dear dad has died"

Poppy Bush is dead, finally leaving us a "kinder, gentler nation."

"Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro and I are saddened to announce that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died," his son, former president George W Bush, said in a statement.

"George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for."

  alJazeera

So much for the good die young. Read my lips:  George H.W. Bush was an evil bastard, and a handsy one, too, mentored by the truly evil Richard Nixon, and once head of the very evil CIA. But the fawning praise and lies will be showering from 1,000 points of lightweight politicos and journalists today.

Jim McGrath, spokesman for the former president, said the elder Bush died at 10:10pm Central Time (04:10 GMT), adding that funeral arrangements had yet to be scheduled.

Do you think Trump will attend?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/2:











Which may be why Trump has been strangely solicitous of the Bush family since Poppy's death.

The Middle East is as it is today because of the Bushes. The first Iraq invasion has been enshrined as a model of foreign policy — but only because the second one was so much worse. In fact, doubts attended 41’s invasion, too.

[...]

Only the wellborn or well connected can truly say they bypassed the lucrative private life, which they can still have whenever they wish. To the rest of us, choosing to run for high office might seem the pathway to power, no less a lure than easeful riches. But to the patrician, it means sullying oneself. That is why they keep around thugs and heavies — Lee Atwater, Karl Rove — to do the nasty political work.

  NY Magazine

With his Gulf War and his illegal attack on Panama which killed an estimated 300 to 2,000 innocents, Bush I made war cool again for a nation that, for a minute after Vietnam, started to think that maybe the answer to international conflict might not lie in killing on an industrial scale.

[...]

88,500 tons of bombs were dropped in Bush I’s brief war on Iraq — and 70% missed their targets. But even of the 30% that struck true, contrary to popular perception at the time the targets were not exclusively military but included civilian electrical and transportation infrastructure, destroyed to make Iraq more amenable to US demands.

Destroying the electrical infrastructure shut down water and sewage systems, and wrecking roads and rail meant food could not be transported. Tens of thousands of civilians died of starvation and epidemics of cholera and typhoid.

[...]

As CIA head, Bush resumed the covert intelligence community’s tradition of aiding right-wing dictators, covering up a terrorist attack by Pinochet’s secret police.

[...]

And he was fully involved in the crimes of the Iran-Contra affair, including chairing a “Special Situation Group” which recommended covert operations including the mining of Nicaraguan waterways.

[...]

As President, Bush pardoned several of his Iran-Contra co-conspirators.

[...]

Bush became president by stoking the fires of racism with the famous Wille Horton ads. And once he got in he revived Nixon’s racist War on Drugs.

[...]

The federal prison population went up 39% in just four years under Bush, with 16,946 news prisoners — more new prisoners in four years than under eight years of Reagan. Bush was truly a pioneer of the carceral state.

[...]

In 1987, Bush told atheist journalist Robert Sherman “I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

Because the remark was made directly to Sherman and not recorded, and because Americans distrust atheists, many pundits have doubted whether Bush actually said that. But in a 2004 interview with Don Imus, Bush was publicly documented expressing much the same sentiment, saying “Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that….One Nation Under God.”

[...]

It’s time to stop hagiographying evil.

  Patheos

Indeed. And Charlie Pierce has an article that does just that. Here's an excerpt:

[ I]t sums up a great deal of George H.W. Bush’s political career—the pragmatic insincerity, the subcontracting of the hatchet job to a hired hand, the willingness to play a role, no matter how clumsily, in order to keep and maintain power. Oh, and as it happens, while he was play-acting the bad-ass, Bush also was lying his hindquarters off about Iran-Contra.

  Charles P Pierce

Read the entire article here.

Aaaaaand, another Poppy groping story

Former President George H.W. Bush is facing new allegations from a Michigan woman who said he touched her inappropriately while he was in office at an event in April 1992.

The woman, now 55, spoke exclusively with CNN and said she was attending a fundraiser for Bush's re-election campaign in Dearborn, Michigan, with her father when the president grabbed her rear end during a photo-op.

[...]

In the moment, the woman said, she just smiled for the camera.

[...]

"All the focus has been on 'He's old.' OK, but he wasn't old when it happened to me," she told CNN. "I've been debating what to do about it."

Her story [...] is the first time a woman has come forward to accuse Bush of unwanted touching while he was in office.

  CNN

You know there were others. Likely, many others.

What a strange fetish. Grabbing women's asses during photo shoots.  I bet he didn't dare grab Babs' ass.  Creepy asshole.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The next drip in the story of groping grandpa George HW Bush

But you already knew he disgusting behavior wasn't due to senility and confinement in a wheelchair.

Roslyn Corrigan was sixteen years old when she got a chance to meet George H.W. Bush, excited to be introduced to a former president having grown up dreaming of going into politics.

But Corrigan was crushed by her encounter: Bush, then 79 years old, groped her buttocks at a November 2003 event in The Woodlands, Texas, office of the Central Intelligence Agency where Corrigan’s father gathered with fellow intelligence officers and family members to meet Bush, Corrigan said. Corrigan is the sixth woman since Oct. 24 to accuse Bush publicly of grabbing her buttocks without consent.

[...]

Corrigan said the incident happened while she was being photographed standing next to Bush. Five other women have made similar claims against Bush in recent weeks. Seven people, including family members and friends, confirmed to TIME that they had been told about alleged groping by Bush of Corrigan prior to the other recent allegations.

“George Bush simply does not have it in his heart to knowingly cause anyone harm or distress, and he again apologizes to anyone he may have offended during a photo op,” Bush spokesperson Jim McGrath said in a statement to TIME.

  

George Bush was head of the CIA. He practiced harming and distressing on a daily basis.

“I don’t know, maybe it never really hit people that I was a child at the time and that goes beyond a guy being inappropriate in the workplace to a peer or somebody in his age range,” she said. “I was a child.”

There's more to the story of Bush's behavior, just waiting for it to surface - or perhaps resurface.  I still don't know what to make of those stories, even after having read several and watched a couple of films.  But I find it impossible to dismiss them all as invented.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Harmless" dirty old men

No!  Just, no.  You don't get to grope women just because you've passed a magic age barrier. Or been a military "hero".  Or any other reason.

Okay.  That's a good argument if true.  But it's not an excuse. He's not alone with these women when he's doing it.  If this is the case, he needs a minder.  Not an excuse.

There's No Such Thing as 'Good-Nature' Groping

True.  Not if it were a man. I sometimes wonder, however, if men don't see groping as a problem, because they would actually enjoy having the tables turned - if it were a woman groping their crotch.  Hey! What red-blooded male wouldn't like that?!  But not if she were doing it aggressively, of course.  That's a power problem.

This attempt at an apology (naturally addressed "to anyone he has offended") first emphasizes Bush's age and sickliness, which does provide context, but doesn't absolve him for his bad behavior. Nor does the explanation that, emphasis mine, "To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke." That presumably refers to the alleged "David Cop-a-Feel" bit. But McGrath's use of "people" instead of "women" is curious because it's doubtful he's using the same material on the men he poses for photos with.

  Vice

Highly doubtful.  In fact, almost certain. And if he's still mentally capable enough to know the difference between a man and a woman, he's with it enough to understand, "Stop it, you old fuck."

With the flood of sexual harassment and assault allegations the Harvey Weinstein bombshell has wrought, it has become increasingly clear that one of the reasons men have gotten away with sexual abuse for actual millennia is because they don't understand that women's bodies are not theirs for the taking. They often don't consider that what to them is a harmless joke is actually a gross violation that makes women feel powerless.

To the contrary - that's what gives them the green light - men have power over women. Of course they know that.  They count on it. 

Yep, they just keep coming

You didn't think there were only three did you?

When you're famous, they let you do anything.

The former Republican state Senate candidate, Amanda Staples, said she was 29 in 2006 when she visited Bush. He allegedly groped her behind—while standing beside her—and said “‘Oh, I’m not THAT President.’”

  The Daily Beast

Best-selling author Christina Baker Kline on Thursday night posted on Slate an account of being groped by Bush in 2014, and an actress who witnessed Bush groping her roommate during a photo shoot at the Ogunquit Playhouse in 2016 said the former president had earned a reputation among staff and recurring crew for grabbing women’s rears during his visits to the theater.

[...]

“A lot of backstage people – stage hands and wardrobe people – warned us that last time he’d come in he was a little creepy,” Emma Sohlberg, part of the cast of last summer’s production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” told the Portland Press Herald in an interview. “I got the impression that every time he sees a show, the same thing happens.”

[...]

A fifth woman, former Erie Times-News editorial page editor Liz Allen, posted on Facebook on Thursday that Bush had touched her behind inappropriately during a local business association event he spoke at in June 2004, that paper reported. “It was cool to be in a photo with a former president,” wrote Allen, who is now the Democratic nominee for an Erie city council seat. “But I remember feeling uncomfortable with that pat or touch on my behind.”

She also pointed out that Bush was not in a wheelchair at that time.

  Press Herald

Another one for Poppy

Christina Baker Kline In April of 2014, I was invited to Houston as a guest author for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy fundraiser, along with two well-known male authors and a male journalist who’d written a book about a Navy SEAL.

[...]

After the luncheon, it was time to take group photos. Barbara Bush and I stood and chatted for a few minutes while the photographer readied his camera. President George H.W. Bush, whom I had not yet met, sat in his wheelchair in the center of the room, while others were arranged around him for photos in various groupings. When it came time for my husband and me to be photographed with him, President Bush beckoned me close.

[...]

He cocked his head at me for a moment, then said, “You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re a writer.”

“You wanna know my favorite book?” he whispered. I had to lean close to hear him.

“Yes, what is it?” [...]

“David Cop-a-feel,” he said, and squeezed my butt, hard, just as the photographer snapped the photo.

  Christina Baker Kline @ Slate

Looks like another apology is in order.

President Bush might not have been as mentally acute, but over the course of the weekend I saw him actively engaged in conversation and to all appearances controlling his impulses. He made a choice to do what he did to me.

This is what’s most galling: I was at that event as a guest author, alongside three male authors. I was groped. As far as I know, they were not.

[...]

After the photo op, my husband and I were whisked out the door. At the curb, a woman who introduced herself as a friend of the Bush family was waiting to drive us back to the hotel. Once we were on our way, I told David what had happened. I was still so surprised that it didn’t occur to me to keep it secret. His mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Our driver, who was stopped at a light, sat there for a moment, then leaned back and looked at us. “I do trust you will be … discreet,” she said.

Nasty old geezer.

You know it wasn't just three women.  There are more. 

I wasn’t traumatized. I’m not angry. But it shouldn’t have happened. I hope all these stories that women are finally sharing about their experiences will begin to effect change.

I hope so, too. I think it's a long shot.

Here it comes

George HW Bush has issued a second apology after an actor accused him of sexual assault, in which a spokesman admitted the former president had “patted women’s rears”.

Bush issued an initial apology on Tuesday after Heather Lind, who starred in the AMC cable television network’s historical drama Turn: Washington’s Spies, accused the former US president of groping her as they posed for photos together with his wife and others during a promotional event for the show in 2014.

  Guardian

How long before these women get shut down? Because they will.

A spokesman for Bush, who is 93, said then: “President Bush would never – under any circumstance – intentionally cause anyone distress, and he most sincerely apologizes if his attempt at humour offended Ms Lind.”

George HW Bush was CIA director under Ronald Reagan. They caused a lot of people distress.

Confined to a wheelchair, as Bush has been for about the past five years, “his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he take pictures”, McGrath said.

“To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke – and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate,” McGrath wrote. “To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.”

That may be true. But then maybe he needs a minder. Because, apparently, this is the "joke".

Meanwhile a second woman, actor Jordana Grolnick, told Deadspin a similar story.

[...]

“We all circled around him and [former first lady] Barbara for a photo, and I was right next to him,” she told the website. “He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo he asked the group, ‘Do you want to know who my favorite magician is?’ As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, ‘David Cop-a-Feel!’”

Grolnick said others in the room “laughed politely and out of discomfort,” while Barbara Bush “said something along the lines of, ‘He’s going to get himself put into jail!’ to which we laughed harder”.

Ha. Ha.

Trying to put people at ease.

Lind’s allegation first appeared in an Instagram post .

[...]

The Instagram post, since deleted, carried the #MeToo social media hashtag spawned by the recent outpouring of sexual assault and sexual harassment accusations leveled against former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Gee, I wonder what made her delete it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10/26:  Yep, another one.

Fake News

Yeah, his health is improving now that the inauguration is over. Old (ex-CIA Director) George and Babs both went to the hospital as a way to get out of going to inaugurate Trump.  I'm not buying that sudden and convenient illness.

She REALLY doesn't trust him, does she?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Christmas Past

Less than two hours before announcing his resignation as president of the Soviet Union on Dec. 25, 1991, Mikhail S. Gorbachev placed a telephone call to President George H. W. Bush, who was celebrating Christmas with his grandchildren at Camp David.

[...]

What follows is the last conversation between the two men as the leaders of the two superpowers — now partners rather than Cold War rivals. The warmth and appreciation they have for each other is evident, as is their pride in having accomplished so much together. Continue reading the main story

Mr. Gorbachev sounds high-minded and statesmanlike as he discusses the future, asking Mr. Bush to support Mr. Yeltsin and Russia’s reforms, and to help the former Soviet republics achieve separation without disintegrating further. Mr. Gorbachev expresses his own determination to support Mr. Yeltsin despite the latter’s instrumental role in breaking up the Soviet Union, and to remain active in political life. He also tells Mr. Bush how much he values “our cooperation together, our partnership and friendship.” Mr. Bush responds with praise and affection. The American president would come to miss this unprecedented partnership, which helped transform the world.

  NYT

Whoever imagined we'd miss George H.W. Bush?

Read more.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Very Rich Coming from the Destroyer of Worlds

Former President George W. Bush in April privately revealed his concerns that Donald Trump could permanently bring down the Republican Party, according to a new report.

“I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president,” Bush said at a reunion for his administration in Dallas, Politico Magazine reported Tuesday morning.

  The Hill

Says the man who may have single-handedly driven that party over the edge.

In addition to the Bushes, 2008 nominee John McCain and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney are both staying home.

[...]

Bob Dole is the only living former GOP presidential nominee to attend this week's convention.

Bob Dole is still alive?!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.