I keep telling myself if we can just make it through one more election cycle it will finally be over. The rush to take down the democracy that so many of us have cherished will finally be safe from those that want to install an American Taliban. Once the rightwingnutjobs are stymied again in their attempt to install an autocracy with Mullahs advising an empty headed narcissist, we can concentrate our efforts on building up, not tearing down. If we can just rally the troops one more time and reject those that want to take away all of those things that make America exceptional, make it through just one more election cycle, it will be behind us. And then I wake up. The Republican National Convention through their spokesperson Skeletor, I mean Rick Scott, has produced the platform for Making America Great Again, Again. I have to clarify here because the Repubs are not exactly endorsing the plan, yet. Unlike 2016 and 2020 when the Republican Party platform was “whatever psycho-babble comes out of the Donald’s mouth”, this time they’re trying a different tack. They are using Rick Scott to trial balloon an actual platform for the 2022 – 2024 elections. It’s Rick Scott’s job to workshop new approaches to ending democracy in the U.S. and help destabilize the world for autocrats everywhere. In the “Endorse This Plan” section, also known as the “ask” the plan outlines how life will end on this planet if the Repubs don’t get their way. Fortunately, we all know how Republicans lie.
For example, take justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Comey. In their Senate confirmations they swore up and down that Roe v. Wade was established law. Kavanaugh assured the Senators that were willing to ask the question that there was no need to worry about him, Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent”. What changed? In a document recently leaked stating the majority opinion that Roe v. Wade was wrongly settled, rwnj Catholic Justice Alito reached back to the 17th century to find a reason to deny women control of their own bodies. Searching for justification from people that burned women as witches is a bit of reach, in my opinion.
There’s also some interesting skullduggery going on about the source of the leak. There are reports that the Wall Street Journal had the draft before anyone else knew about it. Conspiracy minded people speculate that the leak might have traveled home with America’s Number One Tom and spread to the WSJ from Tom’s wife. Repub to Repub, who cares, except the leak cements the court into going forward with the plan to throw out the 9th and 14th amendments. No need to worry about the calamitous effect that will be wreaked on potentially millions of families, let’s concentrate instead on the source of the leak. It’s one thing to draft opinions that mimic the cruelty of pulling the wings off of flies, and another to be publicly exposed as a sadist.
Lying Ted Cruz is quick to get his two cents in. Genetically unable to grow a beard, Lyin’ Ted has taken out his frustrations by declaring that the peaceful protesters outside of Alito’s house are worse than the mobs of Jan. 6th. In a perfect example of how the Left completely controls the media, I can find no pictures or films of the protesters outside of Alito’s house fighting with police, breaking windows, or breaching entry into Alito’s house. Imagine having the power to suppress that kind of news and then being outed by the bastion of truth and compassion, Lyin’ Ted.
I have a post-it that hangs above my desk that declares that Republicans have had the same message since 1932. Number ten on the list is: “Big government bad. Small government good. No government better. Bribable government best of all.” Watching Republicans all over the country at every level of government say the quiet part out loud threatens all of us who love democracy with the numbing effect of their lies. We can’t forget that the Prevaricator in Chief is driving the Republican bus and is scant qualified to drive a bus, even if it is a short one.
Vote at every election at every level like your life depends on it. It does.
We’re watching two trials currently that have the same defendant, racism. I realize that they are in different parts of the country, with people that have much different accents, with different sets of circumstances, but the same cold dark hearts are in evidence. I’ve recounted how I learned racismfrom my Mom. I suspect that the defendants in these trials must have had a similar experience.
There are so many logical inconsistencies in both trials that I started to entitle this piece “Cognitive Dissonance II”. Upon reflection, I decided that more than the disassociation of their thinking playing a part in the commission of their crimes, the inbred dictum of blaming the “other” for all slights, real or imagined, was the key to these crimes. Racism is taught, nurtured and at a certain point for some people becomes the reason for life. “I might be poor, stupid and an all round loser, but at least I ain’t a n—er.” It’s right there in full display in the Arbery trial.
For those unfamiliar, the Ahmaud Arbery trial is about three white men who chased a black man in their pickups who was unfortunate enough to be jogging through their neighborhood. Not to be deterred by the victim continuing to change course to avoid confrontation, the father and son team chased the victim down multiple avenues before finally cutting off the victim. The son jumped out of the pickup, shotgun in hand, and put the shotgun in Arbery’s chest. Arbery responded to the shotgun by grabbing it, a logical mind presumes to move it away from his body.
The illogical mind presumes the shotgun is going to be wrenched from his grip and used to kill him. The racist fires three blasts of the shotgun. In testimony the shooter marvels that the victim was still able to run a few steps away from the scene before dying in the street. He seems to give voice to the superstition of the all powerful negro who must be dealt with using the most extreme measures lest the negro prevail using his super human strength and guile. Nothing to see here but good old southern racism in full bloom.
Meanwhile, in the far reaches of the north, a seventeen year old took it upon himself to join in a vigilante effort to put down the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. All evidence presented points out that the interlopers from neighboring states where not hired or even invited to police the areas they staked out as their strongholds. The fact that the defendant was underage and not able to legally carry a military weapon on the streets of Kenosha was charged and dismissed. Giving military weapons loaded with full metal jacket ammunition was poo-pooed by the 2nd amendment people. After all, doesn’t one’s right to bear arms extend to the cradle?
His association with the proud boys and a video showing him describing how he’d like to shoot some people looting a drug store was deemed inadmissible by the judge. From my observation post, the judge doesn’t want the jury to have too many examples of the killer’s intent to ponder while deliberating his fate. The fate of this teenage shooter who was motivated to travel to another city to render aid and support to his fellow man. The logical mind must assume that all opportunities in his own community for public service had been exhausted. The teenager had to travel to Kenosha to do good.
I’m going to digress a bit here for a moment. The teenager portrayed himself as an EMT in the trial and to protesters who engaged him in videos of the scene. He is not medically trained. Imagine if a teenager showed up on your front lawn dressed in camo slinging an AR15? Would your first thoughts be, “I wonder if he has an Ace bandage in that little fanny pack he’s carrying?” I’m guessing no. Your first and correct assumption would be that the character on your lawn was there for nefarious purposes.
I imagine the tender scene between mother and son as the killer leaves home telling his mom, “Don’t worry about me Mom, I’m just going to render aid. I feel it in my heart, it’s something I have to do.”
The mom replies, “I really wish you wouldn’t go; I really don’t want you to put yourself in a dangerous situation. If you must go, don’t you want to wear a shirt with a red cross on it so people won’t confuse you with troublemakers? Ok then, stay away from people with guns.”
The results point out that my little scenario didn’t take place. Even Johnny Cash’s messagewas wasted on these moms. These mom’s were more concerned with their sons going and helping keep “them” in their place. They must be so proud.
I wonder about the value of scaring folks on TV. The idea came to me while eating lunch and watching the news on CNN. To be truthful, if you want to know what the news is, you have to read the little trailer at the bottom of the screen. The screen area of the TV is taken up by whichever personality is “hosting” that hour, and whatever “experts” CNN can get to come on and expose their ignorance to the world.
Most times I’m able to just lightly engage my brain and marvel at how the news world works in these modern times. It seems, the big network news agencies found out a few years ago that actually having reporters investigate stories was expensive, so they dropped the practice. Barring a news item the size of 9-11, the CNN anchors can just read the news from the various wire services and sleep in their own beds at night. CNN is then able to fill the hours of the day with their “personalities” analyzing the news item forever.
Such is the case with the recent shootings in Memphis, Tennessee. To my knowledge there are no CNN employees on site in Memphis. CNN is relying on local news people and the wires to share their footage with CNN. Then the CNN talking heads fill the hours expounding on their “take” of what the story means to us all. This is what was going on when I sat down to eat my lunch.
The talking head was railing with some poor soul in Memphis trying to get to the essence of the story and the poor soul was at a loss as to to the basic “who, what, when, how” of the situation. When you don’t have your own boots on the ground apparently you’re at the mercy of whatever local yokel is thrown into the fray. Basic questions like “what do we know about the shooter”, “what was his motivation”, “who shot the shooter” are questions that just disappear into the ether.
Well, excuse me for trying to eat lunch while you are trying to figure out if this is the latest in a series of Isis attacks or a jealous husband that followed his wife and her lover into the Kroger. What my brain wants to know is this just a Kroger thing, or a Memphis thing or what? Just tell me the circumstances and I can alter my behavior to avoid being in that situation. Give me the information I need to avoid becoming a statistic. That’s all I ask.
A weird twist of the story has been the focus on the fact that the suspect was a third party vendor. Over and over and over and over again the alleged shooter was labeled as “third party vendor”. U.K. Thang was his name. Faint mention of what a “third party vendor” was doing in the Kroger. Do we conclude that being a “third party vendor” to Kroger drove Thang into madness? Do we conclude that all “third party vendors” are potential mass shooters, so you better shop at stores that stock their own shelves?
That’s an investigative story I’d really like to hear. How does focusing on third party vendors have any bearing on the real story, other than Kroger being able to say, “we didn’t hire him”?
I’ve given up on anyone doing an investigation on how unstable people are able to walk into a gun shop and walk out with a gun. Maybe “third party vendor” is this incident’s “squirrel” to the public. You know, when you want your dog to look the other way, you point and say “squirrel”.
I guess CNN and the ilk are using “third party vendor” to “squirrel” us away from “guns”.
I am reminded of the phrase, “I’m not a real doctor, I just play one on TV”. We once had a President like that. The second worst President of all time, George W. Bush, was so poorly equipped to be the leader of the free world that his handlers should all be prosecuted for product fraud.
At least Ronald Reagan’s handlers had gone to the trouble to secure a candidate that could act. Regan’s handlers promoted a candidate that could deliver a line with the appropriate facial expressions and body language to convince the audience that he believed what he was saying. Not so with W. W was at a complete and utter loss as to how to erase the look of confusion on his face when asked a question by the press. That look of confusion was probably the reason that Bush gave the least number of press conferences of any President ever, by far. Out of sight, out of mind, was W’s handlers’ philosophy.
In spite of being kept behind the curtain while in Washington, and on a perpetual vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, W occasionally got trapped by a question that he had not been prepped for. The depth and width of his intellect was revealed when W was confronted with a topic he had not been prepped for. In fact, W gave so many interesting answers, there have been books detailing them. They are called “Bushisms”. There are millions of them, but I’ll just list a few:
“They misunderestimated me.”
“I’m the commander, see. I don’t need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.'”
“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.”
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”
“I’m telling you there’s an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That’s the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.”
“Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy – more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That’s what I mean. There – it’s – you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.”
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”
“See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.”
“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”
“You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”
Like I said, there are millions of them on the internet. I may keep looking harder to find the one where Bush is complimenting an Iraqi war veteran that had had both legs blown off in the war. The veteran had his legs replaced by those prosthetic blades that the South African runner used. Bush was gushing that the amputee should feel lucky for getting the bionic legs. The veteran was confused by his good fortune at the loss of both of his legs. Classic W.
So, if the bar for intellect is set incredibly low for the office of President, is it possible that we could elect another candidate as unprepared, as incapable as W again?
It didn’t take long for the Republicans to give us the new worst president, the Donald.
We’ll use a “subtle shift” as a watchword for our discussion of America’s second worst President, George W. Bush. If it is the purpose of the government to spend the people’s money, and we eliminate the somewhat subjective viewpoint of who the money should come from, we are left with the subjective viewpoint of how the money is spent. When W took office, President Clinton had left a $237 billion dollar surplus in the Treasury. W and his advisors’ felt like the budget surplus was the people’s money and they embarked on a campaign to reform the tax code to make sure that there would never be a surplus again. W went into hard sell mode, even holding town hall meetings, to have Congress sign into law a $1.35 trillion tax cut program. Now, as math challenged as I am, I can see that the program is giving breaks that are five times greater than what was deemed as “surplus” in the Treasury. I wonder why W’s accountants didn’t see the discrepancy?
Perhaps it was because of who would benefit from the bulk of the tax breaks. I’m betting you’re guessing the middle class and the poor, right? I mean who actually needs their money more, a minimum wage worker or a billionaire? Well, at the Bush household, they’re tired of carrying all of those poor folks on their backs. I’m guessing that all of the talk at the country club was about how awful the death tax was and how awful it was to have to pay taxes at the regular rate from money earned from investments. It just doesn’t seem fair to have to pay the same rate of taxes on something you inherited as someone who gets up and goes to work each morning has to pay, does it?
Now, we have previously discussed the widespread belief that W is severely dyslexic. So, he could have read $1.35 trillion as $1.35 billion and felt like he’d still have money in the bank to invade Iraq, Afghanistan, or anyone else he felt like going after. In fact, in W’s mind, he would have plenty in surplus to invest heavily in America’s new cottage industry, surveillance. “The Patriot Act”, which no patriot would have voted for, opened up the Treasury doors to every Tom, Dick and Harry who could pitch W’s administration on a surveillance device. It didn’t hurt if some of the pitchers were insiders, like former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. Chertoff seemed to think that the only way American fliers would be safe is for all of them to be subjected to a full body scan before boarding an airplane. Surprise! Chertoff had an interest in the company that manufactured the scanners. No reason why a little public service shouldn’t bring a little private reward, right?
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Bush tax cuts added about $1.6 trillion to the debt between 2001 and 2011. That number doesn’t include the interest. So the gift of tax relief for the wealthy has saddled the middle class and the poor with the largest deficit ever recorded. Is it true, like Cheney said, “that deficit’s don’t matter”? Well, it looks like they matter in the terms of income inequality. Between the years of 1993 and 2011, the top 1 percent’s incomes escalated by 57.5 percent, while incomes of the bottom 99 percent rose by a paltry 5.8 percent. We’ll call it a “subtle shift” of income from the have nots to the haves. Even if we make allowances for the 1% receiving the monthly BushCheney stock pick list; you know, which stock’s to invest in because we’re about to invade another country, or we’re about to pass legislation that will have us spying on every man, woman and child, or countries where foreign trade will be encouraged, the transfer of wealth came largely from the top 1% being relieved of their tax burden.
There is a popular phrase in Texas that simplistically reveals W’s devotion to pandering to the well-heeled. The phrase is, “You got to dance with them what brung you”. W didn’t care what tune, what physical machinations were required, he just wanted to please the ones that brought him to the dance. His shameless loss of any dignity he might have had in being his own man, forging his own path, writing his own legacy, were all thrown out of the window in the interest of carrying the water for “them what brought him”.
George W. Bush took his one talent and parlayed it into something much greater than he deserved. The second worst President ever was able to parlay his reputation for being “someone you’d like to drink a beer with”, into a second term as President. To be fair, he did have that whole “war thing” going for him, and he was a personable rascal.
Now, W was not someone that I would “buy a used car from”, but apparently there were millions of Americans who bought what he was selling. So much so that they gave him a majority in the House and Senate. The Supreme Court was already in the bag, so now you had all branches of government in the hands of the folks who don’t like government. It was the first time since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928 that a Republican president was elected along with Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
Before W could start his work driving the economy into the ground, he was given the opportunity to show the world what a compassionate conservative was really all about. On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast killing at least 1,245 people and creating billions in damage. Thousands were displaced, and the area has still not recovered to this day. Where we had billions to give to private companies like Halliburton and others to support our invasion of Iraq, W had very little will to make the Gulf Coast whole again. Cheney is widely reported as having said, “F*ck them, they don’t vote for us anyway”.
W’s Momma was less explicit, but every bit as damning in her assessment of the situation. “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.” The arena in question being the Superdome, where 30,000 people sheltered with little power and resources and no plumbing. Why, the Superdome must have seemed like the Bush compound at Kennebunkport compared to their normal lives. Or so Barbara Bush in her jaded worldview would have one believe.
If W’s Momma is telling him that the folks in the area are better off than before the hurricane, why would W be inclined to put the full support of the government into helping the people get back on their feet? Besides, W had a war to wage with reduced resources. Since W had given all of his class a tax cut, the Clinton surplus had been completely blown. Now the country was headed back into deficit land at a rate even bigger than the Reagan years. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill had tried to warn Cheney that growing deficits posed a threat to the economy. Cheney is quoted as saying, “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” So, everybody remember, deficits are not bad if a Republican made them.
In W’s second term he spent a lot of capital trying to get Social Security privatized. Social Security is like the Mount Mordor of The Trilogy to Republicans. It exists to be destroyed. W proposed siphoning part of the money in Social Security directly into the stock market and establishing “private accounts” where taxpayers could elect to put their money into the market rather than in the government secured plan. Like any good hustler, W hoped that the promise of “greater riches” would entice the public to part with their secure savings and place them in the hands of the greed heads of Wall Street. What could go wrong?
Did I mention earlier than W had the same conditions as Herbert Hoover had when he was elected? Do we remember that nine months after taking office, Hoover presided over an unprecedented stock market crash that resulted in the Great Depression? W did his best as a shill to get Wall Street all of the money in the Social Security system. It is only the unwillingness of the Democrats to participate in the scam that saved us all. I’m having a hard time juxtaposing the concepts of compassionate conservative over an evil policy that would place hundreds of thousands of our most fragile citizens in the street. But, there it is.
Today we’ll continue the story of the second worst President of the United States, George W. Bush.
When we left off our story, the neocons had decided that they should invade Iraq as retribution for Iraq’s lack of involvement in the World Trade Center. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing one of the “chicken hawks” blasting the airwaves with their justifications for attacking Iraq. Before long we had toppled Baghdad, hunted down Saddam’s sons and killed them, and brought Saddam to trial. He got the death penalty, by the way, which was carried out swiftly and without appeal. This, too, was televised. I guess these events needed to be televised as a warning to other dictators who had once been our friends. Do not make death threats against W’s poppy.
Unfortunately for the neocons, the TV didn’t just cover what the administration wanted us to see. American viewers were treated to the horrors of the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco. American military personnel took complete leave of their senses and violated several treaties and the Geneva Convention to act out on Iraqi prisoners. To this day we don’t know if all of the tortured were even combatants. All we know is that the tortured were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and were in the custody of a group of borderline psychotics. Before you condemn my characterization of the U.S. military involved, let me point out that the Military Code of Justice allows our military the right to refuse an order that violates their conscious. If the personnel at Abu Ghraib were given the orders to do what they did, they had the responsibility to refuse. If they acted on their own, they are even more clearly defined as psychotics. Either way, the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco could do nothing other than fuel the fire of Islamic fundamentalists.
As distasteful as the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco was, the Bush administration was also having to defend the concept of torture as an interrogation technique. Even the real hawk, John McCain, had to disagree with the U.S.’s unprecedented wholesale use of torture to try to gain information. Was the extraordinary violation of human rights being weighed against the desperate need to find Bin Laden? Previous to this war, torture, and specifically waterboarding, was wrong, evil, and against everything America stood for. W’s administration changed all of the rules. W needed to feel “justified”.
What’s odd is that W didn’t seem to care where Bin Laden was hiding, or feel that big of an imperative to hunt him down. W is quoted on March 13, 2002 as saying, ‘I truly am not that concerned about him’. True to his word, W did not find the alleged perpetrator of the 9-11 attacks. W left the job for President Obama to clean up. Finding Bin Laden was just one of a long laundry list of things W left for President Obama to clean up, but we’ll get more to that later. First, we need to talk a little bit more about how the war was being waged now that it had become a private industry. What was once an exercise conducted by U.S. military personnel handling all phases of an operation, from washing dishes to security for VIP’s, the neocons had morphed war into a hybrid of private businesses and traditional military.
Cheney’s Halliburton received no bid contracts for supplying all of the support services to the military from housing to meals. Blackwater Security was a para-military grouped operating under contract to provide “security” in a country filled with 150,000 American soldiers. I guess because there just weren’t enough Marines on the ground. Blackwater is involved in one of the other tragedies of Iraq, the battle of Fallujah. Another black eye for the Americans in the court of world opinion.
Having private contractors without the oversight of the American Congress, and therefore, the American people, is a diagram of a disaster. As a practical matter, all of the privateers could not operate without blanket immunity for the war crimes they were inevitably going to perpetuate. W’s administration was happy to prop up, or actually provide, the Iraqi officials who would give that immunity. W’s administration was ready to provide whatever was needed to setup Halliburton, Dresser and Kellog Brown Root in the heart of Iraq’s oil fields. After all, it’s just business.
When we left the story of the second worst President in history, George W. Bush, he and a group of Reagan-Bush retreads had regained control of the political process in America. Can anyone say they earned the right to govern fairly and squarely? I think not. But, there we are, it’s the process in America. The real people who are controlling the people we see, were holding the reins again. W was happy to jog, bike, play video games, and just generally stay out of the way. Cheney was pushing forward the advances that the oligarchy wanted, and Rove shaped public opinion.
It was hard for Rove to spin the fact that W was more known for going on vacations to his ranch in Texas than actually getting any work done. It was harder still to mask the reality that the most important leader in the world, had never been outside of the United States prior to becoming President. When W did go international, he visited Mexico first, as opposed to the traditional trip to Canada. In his defense, W did speak a pidgin Spanish. I’m guessing he didn’t want to get embarrassed by not being able to speak Canadian. W’s intellectual curiosity has long been suspect, many speculate a severe form of dyslexia. Whatever the cause, W seemed to gravitate to the simple answer to even the most complex problems. It was his comfort zone. And then it got complicated.
While reading “The Pet Goat” to some school children, W was notified of the attacks on the World Trade Center. To satisfy his intellectual curiosity, W kept reading for the next seven minutes. I think he just wanted to know how the book turned out. It does seem like W was less concerned with how the attacks on America were fairing, than the outcome of the book.
In a tape released prior to the 2004 election, Osama Bin Laden said, “But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers, we were given three times the period required to execute the operations – all praise is due to Allah.” With friends like that, it’s a wonder that the Bush administration let Bin Laden survive. W had no trouble extracting vengeance on others who had crossed him. W had no problem wiping out the bloodline of Saddam Hussein. After all, Saddam had tried to kill “poppy” and more importantly, dead men tell no tales. The fact that the Bushes were personal friends of the Bin Ladens might have also played a part. I suspect that Cheney saw that Osama was worth more to Halliburton alive than dead. But we’re jumping ahead a little.
After a series of lies, subterfuges and just downright stupid conclusions, the U.S. invaded Iraq. Now at the time, the whole world was blaming Iran for fostering terrorism. W and company ignored Iran, and, also ignored the fact that the overwhelming majority of suspected 9-11 terrorists were Saudi Arabian. W had unfinished business in Iraq apparently, or his dyslexia led him away from Iran to Iraq. Cheney was happy to go anywhere. Maybe the previous Iraq excursion pointed out how weak Iraq was as an opponent, and Iran was an unknown. Who knows. In any event, Cheney was able to attend cocktail parties with Halliburton investors again, with his head held high. Cheney was in the process of delivering a 39 billion dollar golden egg to Halliburton from the golden goose disguised as the American taxpayer. The golden egg described as the Iraqi war would cost the American taxpayer over 1.7 trillion dollars, and it’s still ongoing.
Measuring wars primarily in financial terms is wrong. But we do it. Sometimes it’s the only way to point out the folly of war to people who are ok with killing other people. That sounds horrific, I know, but the reports of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq were pooh poohed. Only until some of the folks in Congress started screaming that the U.S. was taking on a huge debt to finance W’s retribution, and Cheney’s payback to Halliburton, did the public start to question how long we wanted to be in Iraq.
Now, lest you consider me superficial in my analysis, I don’t want to leave Karl Rove out of the equation. He is certainly a founding member of the unholy trinity. History tells us that no sitting President has ever not been re-elected in time of war. I’m pretty sure Karl Rove knew this historical truism. “Mission Accomplished”, Karl. Despite all that is right and holy, W was re-elected in 2004.
Somebody that knows everything there is to know about misdirection is Karl Rove. Karl, who, you ask? Karl Rove was affectionately referred to as “Bush’s Brain” by the press, and as “Turd Blossom” by Bush. I’m guessing Bush knew him better, so maybe his nickname was more appropriate. Karl Rove was responsible for directing all of Bush’s political campaigns, and as a result, put spin on who the public saw as a candidate. Rove was a modern day Machiavelli, if you will. Like Machiavelli, Rove had little use for morality or ethics, it was all about winning.
Rove’s ethics seem to only appear when confronted by legal action. Rove represented the tobacco industry at the same time as he was advising then Texas governor, George Bush. Rove testified in court that he quit his consulting with the tobacco people because he felt awkward “about balancing that responsibility with his role as Bush’s top political advisor”. You see, the state of Texas was suing the tobacco industry at the time. Turns out, Rove was right to ditch big tobacco. Rove knew where the ultimate big money was. I suggest reading Rove’s wiki for a look at a lifetime of despicable campaigns run by a despicable man.
Another despicable “Bushie” who knew where the big money was Dick Cheney. Cheney had served as “poppy’s” Secretary of Defense and was part of the inner circle of ultra conservative Republicans fomenting “Pax Americana”. When the Clinton administration came in and swept out the Republican riff raff, Cheney became the Chairman and CEO of the Halliburton Company. Now, the Halliburton Company has its fingers in a lot of pies, maybe all of the pies. One pie that had eluded Halliburton’s grasp was the oil field giant, Dresser Industries.
In 1998, Dresser chose to merge with its main rival Halliburton, and became known thereafter as Halliburton Company. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton at the time, and he negotiated the purchase of Dresser. Rumor has it that Cheney had been convinced that Dresser’s asbestos liability suits were going to go away. In 2001, Halliburton was enjoined to settle the asbestos lawsuits against Dresser. The legal liability caused Halliburton’s stock price to free fall by eighty percent in a little over a year. It must have been very awkward for Cheney at cocktail parties filled with his investor friends. What’s an unscrupulous lifetime politician to do? Why nominate himself to be the vice presidential candidate, of course.
As bizarre as it sounds, an old friend of the Bush family, Dick Cheney, was charged with finding the perfect vice-presidential candidate to complement W’s run for the White House. After an exhaustive search of thousands of qualified candidates, Cheney spun the bottle and it pointed directly at him. Information is not available as to how many times the bottle was spun. After a contentious campaign that led to the party that received the least votes being given the election by the Supreme Court, Bush and Cheney were anointed as the leaders of the free world. Now Cheney was only a heartbeat away from the most powerful job on earth. More importantly, Cheney was given a key to the treasury.
First thing Cheney did was build a bunker for himself that was twice as secure as the White House. His movements were like something out of “24”. He traveled in motorcades of a dozen cars, he slept in multiple locations, and kept his movements separate from the President as much as he could. I question who he feared the most, Presidential assassins, or Halliburton stockholders. Wherever the paranoia was based, it was clear that the man with a mechanical heart, planned on keeping that heart beating for as long as he could. It’s also clear that Cheney was not stepping in front of the President to stop a bullet. Loyalty has its limits.
Ok, I’ve spent today’s missive describing two of W’s influences, and not W. In my defense, I will say that I think that the man that shaped W’s public persona, and the man who shaped W’s political persona, are equally as important as describing W. We’ll dig deeper into W tomorrow.
From a rock flipped over somewhere in Texas, George W. Bush has slithered out to state his opinions on the current state of affairs and to stump for the daughter of his former VP. Liz Cheney needs help from the old guard to maintain her seat in Congress. George W is there to lend whatever energy he can to her campaign and to continue the Vader line in politics.
If we’re being truthful, W’s skin color does not look as hardy and robust as it did when he was in the White House. It looks like “pursuing his muse” has not exposed W to as much sun as he received while holding down the job of, “most important man in the world”.
Now that W is a common citizen, his handlers are not guiding him to outdoor activities as they did while he was President. I suspected all along that someone was keeping W busy during the day while they did the real work behind the scenes. While President, Bush would come home from a hundred mile bike ride feeling tired, and think that he’d put in a hard day at the office. I’m sure it was much easier for Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to run the country by insisting that W keep up with his fitness.
When talking about W, there are so many periods of his life that you could start with, to point out the true nature of his character. The “Texan” was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the home of Yale University. He would later attend Yale. One suspects the fact that his daddy was a legacy played an important part in W’s admission. Although W attended public schools in Texas as a youth, which typically rank in the bottom third nationally, he was able to secure an opening to the exclusive Phillips Academy. It seems there was some “prep” work needed before his matriculation at Yale. While at Yale, W was president of his fraternity, and a member of “Skull and Bones”. It kind of puts me in mind of Otter from Animal House being a CIA agent. Maybe it’s more like Jethro from the “Beverly Hillbillies” being a “double naught” spy.
W’s fine education didn’t seem to prepare him for real life, unless you consider what “real life” was for W. There was always big money available to bail him out of his assorted business failures. Even money to buy into the Texas Rangers baseball team. Money to merge his failed oil company to a bigger player, who then made W chairman of the board. An oil company who would later get almost exclusive offshore drilling rights in Behrain, although W’s company had never done any offshore drilling. The year was 1990, and one George Herbert Walker Bush was President. Coincidence? Please, there are no coincidences.
There are however, people like W, who have had the road paved with gold for them since birth. As Ann Richards once said, “Poor George Bush, he was born on third base, and thinks he hit a triple”. In what appears to be the only “real” job that Bush has had, Air Force pilot, he repeatedly chose to follow his own path, rather than the prescribed military procedures. It is hard to over look the fact that there were a few hundred thousand American GI’s during this period, who would have traded their souls for W’s “gift” military assignment. These GI’s would have given anything to swap their place in the jungles of South East Asia for a cushy Air National Guard job protecting the U.S. from invasion from Mexico.
As good as W had it, he was oblivious to his good fortune. In 1972, W was suspended from flying for failing to take a required physical exam. There is talk that W’s blood work would not have been favorable to a combat pilot, much less to the son of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and a former congressman. W was honorably discharged from the Air Force Reserve in 1974, in spite of his spotty record for attendance. Apparently honorable discharges are easy to get if your daddy and granddaddy know the right people.
