Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 11, 2014

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

“I was able to get a sense of his soul.

“He’s a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship,” Mr Bush said.-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1392791.stm

Meanwhile the current Occupant in Office draws another line in the shifting sands.

@rpmurrayIn the summer of 2008, Putin and Bush were in Beijing for the Olympics when Russian troops moved into Georgia in response to what the Kremlin called Georgian aggression against South Ossetia. Peter Baker of The New York Times described the U.S. response:

Bush confronted Mr. Putin to no avail, then ordered American ships to the region and provided a military transport to return home Georgian troops on duty in Iraq. He sent humanitarian aid on a military aircraft, assuming that Russia would be loath to attack the capital of Tbilisi with American military personnel present. Mr. Bush also suspended a pending civilian nuclear agreement, and NATO suspended military contacts.

Baker, an expert on the Bush presidency and Russia, reported that the White House considered more aggressive action, such as bombing tunnels to block Russian troops and arming Georgia with antiaircraft missiles. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bristled at what she called “chest beating,” Baker reported, and Bush’s team voted against military action. Russia stopped short of Tbilisi, but it left troops in areas it promised to evacuate under a cease-fire.

“We did a lot, but in the end there was not that much that you could do,” said James F. Jeffrey, Bush’s deputy national security adviser.-http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/why-putin-plays-our-presidents-for-fools-20140302

@nailer

In June 2001, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin ended their first face-to-face meeting with an outdoor news conference beneath a craggy mountaintop in Slovenia. “Is this a man that Americans can trust?” I asked Bush as Putin glared at me.

“Yes,” Bush replied, before allowing Putin to answer a separate question. A few minutes later, the American president elaborated: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country,” Bush said, adding a few sentence later, “I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.”-http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/why-putin-plays-our-presidents-for-fools-20140302

In commenting on just today’s strip, I find it exceedingly sad this totally incompetent, talentless and ignorant “artist” can get national attention for his “art” while real artists, lightyears ahead of him in talent, craft and vision, are ignored and derided for attempting a career in the visual arts. While I am no fan of Mr. Bush’s politics, his art is just abominable, not even for a “beginner”.

AMEN.

Many if not most of Bush’s paintings are hand copies of photographs found on the Internet.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose (sorry, too tired to look for cedillas and accents)

bingo

I’m trying to identify the different people. I recognized Angela Merkel in panel four, but who’s in panels two and three, and sharing panel four?

How will Obama wash away 3 wars?

It’s a simple matter to type the words sources for bush paintings into a search engine, and the results are illuminating.

I can’t stomach abdominal art…..but on a lighter note…. Over the years I have developed a pretty good means of dealing with art in any form which I find objectionable, abysmal, abominable, boring or just plain stinky… I don’t watch/look/read it.

Genus? Did you mean Genus? or perhaps Phylum? I ‘spect you meant “genius”, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Just like Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush is doing his best work of his life after he was done with presidency.

“Trying to wash away the stain of two wars.”

Remember that next time you see or write some hand-wringing piece about “why doesn’t the U.S. intervene in ….?”

Gotta give Trudeau his liberal credits. If Bush had taken a hard line with Putin, Trudeau and his crowd would have been all over him for not trying to get along. Just another side of the ‘see no evil in Hillary’ coin.

Bush never said he liked what he saw when liking at Putin’s soul…

Who is in the 2nd panel? Is that dole or hair in 4? And who is with Merkel?

I don’t know art, but I know I like this strip!

Darsan wasn’t criticizing GT, only Bush.

Oh, please, Republicans, don’t try to stick up for this person. He was one of the worst ever and there’s no whitewashing that. It only makes you look silly, like when my mom sticks up for Nixon.

@fbjsrTell that to the Georgians.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses was as real as you and I. She lived to be 101 years old. She was a well known folk artist. She was also known as Grandma Moses.

Trueno reason to risk American lives when you have already paid for so many nukes

Just gotta be an @$$, don’cha, Garry? Why don’t you take off Sundays, too?

You said, “You were not alive when Watergate happened.”.Wonder what led to that remark. I was born in 1952, and my first-ever vote in a presidential election was for Nixon. In retrospect, one of my poorer decisions, but it was based on information available at the time.

Yeah, it’s fair to judge them failed or successful in office.Most of us give them a lot of leeway because we know they know things we don’t.Still, “Hoover’s Depression”, “Johnson’s War on Poverty”, “Johnson’s War”, “Nixon’s War”, "Nixon’s War on Drugs, “Bush’s War”, “Bush’s Depression”, “Obama’s Recovery” are all judgments

Actually, that WAS an insult to Walmart and its managers.I doubt most members of Congress and most presidents could successfully manage a Walmart, nor would they try to do so without the bribe opportunities.

Just because some rich kid got elected president does not change the fact that the American people elected him.There are millions of rich folks we did not elect.

Not all for nothing.Those killed and injured in Afghanistan were for revenge against those who killed Americans and those who insisted on harboring them.Those killed and injured in Iraq were for precaution in case Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons capable of killing millions more people. Whenever we tried to send inspectors, he blocked them as if he DID have them to hide.Given his history, waiting until after the fact seemed unwise.Exiting after he was removed from power would have minimized American deaths and most killings were religious in nature — two sects of Islam fighting each other — not our fault because we did not have the power to stop them.

We won both wars.Damage mostly came during our insistence on occupationGet while the getting’s good like GHWB wisely did

It’s unsurprising that Bush would misread and mischaracterize Putin, but Paul McCartney thought he was basically a good guy as well after the two had a one-on-one meeting (We saw this in a TV special from a Moscow concert). You know both of them (among many others) have to be regretting their words now. Especially now in 2022, “stone-cold killer” doesn’t begin to describe him.