What historical form of corruption and crime does this administration seem to resemble?

[bobthedrummer]

Here's a few choices, or add your own. It's bad you know.

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. I'd say Caligula

Grant's administration was corrupt but Grant himself wasn't, The Republicans used that administration as a play thing. One could say Harding's Harding was a cad and his people corrupt but then again they weren't trying invade the war and blowing out the treasury. Hell maybe the Bush Administration has created their own standard, future presidents will have to work twice as hard to be corrupt as this one.

[baldguy]

2. Stalin

[Doc_Technical]

3. Boss Tweed, 19th Century New York City.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall

[illinoisprogressive]

4. gilded age was late 1800s. 20s was the jazz age.

[Bitwit1234]

5. Atilla the Hun's reign and conquest

think of all the people he killed. Think of what he did to the world at that time. It reminds you of bush.

[SaveElmer]

6. Grant is not an apt choice...

Grant himself was scrupulously honest...

[BlueIris]

12. I sometimes think of Bush as the "anti-Grant."

But even I've mused on the parallels between the financial and social crises that roiled during Grant's administration and the ones we've suffered with during Bush I & 2.

[SaveElmer]

13. You need to take a look at motivation as well

Grant was simply naive in the choice of his underlings, and to be fair the corruption did not last his entire term in office...

Grant himself made valiant efforts to help blacks in the South during his term...and though there was an economic crisis some argue that his timely intervention prevented an all out economic catastrophe...

I've always thought Grant was one of the most underrated figures in American history

[BlueIris]

16. What else do I need to do? Get a new haircut? A different political philosophy?

[Amonester]

7. Mussolini - Hitler

=

[rurallib]

8. 1890s robber baron days

government for the corporation led by filthy rich individuals with union busting, poor wages and a made up war (Spanish American). The fact that Rove fancies himself a modern day Mark Hannah just adds to the mix.

[Bucky]

19. That's the right answer. We're living in a new Gilded Age

growing economic divides, union busting policies, new technologies leading to new human rights abuses...

[saltpoint]

9. How did Grant get to be antebellum? Didn't he come along post-Civil War?

My own thought is that the Bush administration is most akin to those cartoon fungus dudes that get under your toenails.

There's no historical scaffolding to my suggestion, I realize.

Yet the similarity between BushCo and those cartoon fungus dudes stays with me.

[bobthedrummer]

17. It was my typo-I meant to go all the way from antebellum through the civil war and then Grant

edit time had lapsed, should have used "through". The fungus is among us.

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[saltpoint]

20. You rock, bob. And that's the blue truth. More power to ya, and

let's kick us some red fanny in 08 at all levels of the ballot.

[pscot]

10. I think you have to look at Hitler, Lenin, Napoleon

This administration isn't merely corrupt. They're trying to effect a paradigm shift. They want fundamental, extraconstitutional changes in the way the country operates. They have a comprehensive plan to redistribute wealth upwards, to shift power from the people to the corporations, to privatize government services while funding with tax dollars. They are systematic and relentless. They have made changes in every department, every agency of government. No issue is too small, nothing escapes their notice. In the interest of one party rule they have subverted the justice system, packed the courts with Republican aparatchiks, claimed unlimited executive power and repudiated the role of the legislature. The congress is a mere shell of what the founders intended, with no more relevance or effectiveness than the Russian Duma. The country is like an apple with a worm inside it. The outside still looks OK, but the inside is black with rot.

[kineneb]

11. Rome: think "I, Claudius"

massive corruption, military overreach, disfunctional ruling family, ineffective "representative" body, weird sexual habits, political assassinations...

nothing new under the sun.

[JNelson6563]

14. Indeed.

Same shit, different day.

Julie

[harun]

15. Other: 1984 (n/t)

[Bucky]

18. Of course Rome lasted over 300 years past Caligula's reign

So I see a lot of DUers are optimistic about America

[bobthedrummer]

21. .

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[midlife_mo_Jo]

22. Definitely Mussolini nt

nt

[KittyWampus]

23. Soviets. The corrupt cronyism, the incompetence, the disasters.