"The problem is that memories begin to fade. Yet I refuse to let myself forget the evil that is George Bush (Iraq, Afghanistan, mushroom clouds and lies, lies, lies !!!!!)" ---
'Lies and Lies and Lies and Lies'
In February 2002, a month after he joined Kennedy on a fly-around tour to mark the signing of No Child Left Behind, Bush released a budget without as much money for the program as Kennedy expected.
Kennedy was shocked when an aide came with the news. With Miller, he marched to the press gallery to vent his outrage. Miller recalled it as a seminal moment. "That just really poisoned the well," he said.
The flush of the grand bipartisan compact quickly faded for other reasons, too. Early implementation proved chaotic. The Education Department was slow to issue regulations explaining how to comply, and aggravation in local communities grew. Lawmakers found their town hall meetings jammed with angry teachers and parents.
While schools struggled to make sense of the law, Washington turned to war. After Bush sent U.S. troops into Iraq, Kennedy denounced the "lies and lies and lies and lies," and threw himself into the drive to oust Bush in the 2004 election, campaigning vigorously for fellow Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry. "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush," Kennedy thundered at the Democratic convention.
[ that from page 2 continues on 3 ]
His anger over the war persisted after the election. But both Bush and Kennedy tried to preserve their alliance on education. Kennedy pressed so much on funding that Bush playfully preempted him when they got together. "I see my friend Ted's joined us," Bush would say. "We're going to talk about increased funding today?"
But the president and his aides dismissed Kennedy's arguments, pointing out that they had increased annual spending on programs that make up No Child Left Behind from $17.4 billion in the 2001 fiscal year to a proposed $24.5 billion in 2008, up 41 percent. "That's a big increase," said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joel D. Kaplan. Kennedy maintains Bush should have put another $56 billion into the program over six years, based on spending authorization ceilings.
Either way, Bush realized that implementation of the law had not gone smoothly. In 2005, he replaced Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige with Spellings, a close confidant. A tough-talking Texan who boasted of being the first mother of school-age children to serve as education chief, she quickly moved to resolve problems and impressed lawmakers with a pragmatic, blunt style flavored with phrases such as "Hell, yes," and "We damn sure did."
Yet by the time Spellings took the helm, the law had made plenty of enemies with a litany of complaints: It had turned schools into test-taking factories, diverted attention from subjects other than reading and math, promoted dumbed-down standards, crowded some schools at the expense of others and imposed more bureaucracy.
if the NCLB had been introduced with proper training and funding from the start, and if Bush had not continued to screw Kennedy's vision and hope, could NCLB have had a much better legacy .. maybe, yes ..
Methinks there are a few other things he should be painting. If he's not forced to paint the victims of his reckless foreign policy in real life, at least I can make him do it in my cartoons. Please, Dubya, visit a disabled veteran's house and ask him to sit for a portrait. Oh wait, I forgot, your portraits only come from the top searches [ http://time.com/55491/george-w-bush-paintings-google-images/ ] of Google.
Alas, one can only hope. If only Bush really wanted to capture the pain, loss and suffering of his ridiculous war escapade. He'd have to make so many visits to Iraq, a full C-130 full of art supplies would be required at regular intervals. Enjoy the cartoon and pass it along to your favorite ex-president hobbyist painter.
Transcript:
[George W. Bush]
Howdy! And welcome to my George W. Bush Presidential Liberry Art Show, heh-heh!
Show's called, "The Art of Legacy: Paintin' My Presidency."
I'm a painter, too! Heh-heh!
Now let's start off with this one. It's kinda' a conceptual, abstract thingie I painted in the bathroom, heh.
See, I squinted real hard so's I could see a mushroom cloud. . . and when I covered my left eye and blinked real fast with my right, I could see Al Qaeda-- so I painted them right there, all mean like.
Aaand, then . . . invaded Iraq.
Y'know, sometimes you just wing it when you're paintin'.
Like all this chaos and civil war killin' popped up, turned out kinda' ugly.
So I painted myself as an Angel of Democracy descendin' on the desert!
An' that's what people will see in this paintin' forever and ever. Democracy, right? Heh-heh, right?
An these ones-- I found all these pitchers on the internet a' these young fellas without legs er sometimes arms and stuff.
And I thought, wull, that's not right (and looks kinda' strange), so's I fixed em right up here!
Painted 'em up real nice with some limbs. You're welcome, fellas!
See, that's why I like retirement.
I can take images like this, where folks are sad and have some kinda' traumatic brain injury after multiple redeployments er some such . . .
. . . and make 'em happy! At least in my liberry.
You'll see I've done a lotta' desert-paintin', but I really liked paintin' island scenes, too.
Why, if you mix a little Sunshine Yellow with some darker Enhanced Interrogation, you'll get actionable intelligence!
(At least if you're carrying my artistic license, heh-heh.)
And finally, it's not just been islands and deserts-- I love paintin' mountains, too! Afghanis and what not.
I kinda' got side-tracked on this one . . . kinda' a work in progress I guess.
Heh, that's just a slice a my paintin' and re-paintin'.
I'm a busy retiree, ya' know?
So, enjoy the Liberry and Art Show . . . and be sure to keep enjoyin' my legacy! Heh-heh!
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