Respect
The best person to do George W. Bush really would have been Rodney Dangerfield, who said many times, “I don't get no respect.”
“I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington,” Mr. Bush said last Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, “and frankly didn’t do a very good job of it. You know, war brings out a lot of heated rhetoric and a lot of emotion. I fully understand that.”
Does he. But what war? Is Iraq really a war, or is it just a brazen invasion of another country that had not attacked us but happens to have a lot of oil. Just last week, an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at the president’s face on international television.
What did W. think he was doing all this time, uttering clichés about freedom and democracy and terror while the military industrial complex went on a Reaganomic bender and now is seeking rehab big time? Aside from some churlish obsession with his father's old nemesis, he seems to think this is all just a game and it’s all about his pitching. While admitting he doesn’t like introspection very much, he does not seem to have a clue about the real issues of our very existence that are swirling around him. Or, perhaps he does, but he doesn’t really care as long as he can clear his own brush down in Crawford. Let them eat cake.
“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country,” he had said back in 2002. “And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.”
But then, on September 18 this year, when Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson gave him the bad news about the economy, he asked them, “How did we get here?”
As The New York Times pointed out Sunday, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and their war, cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. “The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college.”
But it all turned out to be a bubble, and the president was the ultimate bubble boy. If he is not clueless, because he's so dumb, or could care less, since it's all just a game to him anyway,
then possibly he is in denial now.
“Just some thoughts on this,” he said also at the American Enterprise Institute. “The markets sometimes create excesses. We’re living through the consequences of the excess. I quipped in Texas that Wall Street got drunk, and we got a hangover.”
Ho, ho, ho. What, me worry?
Seriously, though, now that Obama is about to announce hi ho Silver, we may need some closure on the past eight years that have left most of us pretty much bushed. When Bush came into office, the federal budget was balanced. That’s a key word here, if not the crux of the matter, as he might say himself, because he is leaving us now totally off balance and in a financial shambles, more in debt than ever, with the economy on the ropes and everything that should have been done neglected.
Basically, he never completed a thing, really, and never started what he should have. And, as he retires to his three-million-dollar hideaway in Dallas, he is leaving his mess for us to clean up. He’s like that spoiled little boy you wouldn’t want to leave home alone, because you know he'd trash the whole house by the time you got back, especially if he got Cheney to come over, too. Even by Bush family values, insulated as they may be, he is not what you would call balanced — incorrigible, perhaps, but not balanced.
In addition to what it all might matter to him anyway, another good question is how can he walk around as though he's actually got a handle on things, as our gun-slinging decider? In other words, does he actually think he has done a good job? He may feel he's pulled it off, so to speak, but will he be able to rest on his laurels?
Or, is he simply oblivious? Even that could be just some sort of an act, a cavalier charade to cover his collusion with the oligarchs to hide their weenies from the rest of us, especially during Festivus. Either way, he may be destined for oblivion.
“I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington,” Mr. Bush said last Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, “and frankly didn’t do a very good job of it. You know, war brings out a lot of heated rhetoric and a lot of emotion. I fully understand that.”
Does he. But what war? Is Iraq really a war, or is it just a brazen invasion of another country that had not attacked us but happens to have a lot of oil. Just last week, an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at the president’s face on international television.
What did W. think he was doing all this time, uttering clichés about freedom and democracy and terror while the military industrial complex went on a Reaganomic bender and now is seeking rehab big time? Aside from some churlish obsession with his father's old nemesis, he seems to think this is all just a game and it’s all about his pitching. While admitting he doesn’t like introspection very much, he does not seem to have a clue about the real issues of our very existence that are swirling around him. Or, perhaps he does, but he doesn’t really care as long as he can clear his own brush down in Crawford. Let them eat cake.
“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country,” he had said back in 2002. “And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.”
But then, on September 18 this year, when Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson gave him the bad news about the economy, he asked them, “How did we get here?”
As The New York Times pointed out Sunday, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and their war, cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. “The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college.”
But it all turned out to be a bubble, and the president was the ultimate bubble boy. If he is not clueless, because he's so dumb, or could care less, since it's all just a game to him anyway,
then possibly he is in denial now.
“Just some thoughts on this,” he said also at the American Enterprise Institute. “The markets sometimes create excesses. We’re living through the consequences of the excess. I quipped in Texas that Wall Street got drunk, and we got a hangover.”
Ho, ho, ho. What, me worry?
Seriously, though, now that Obama is about to announce hi ho Silver, we may need some closure on the past eight years that have left most of us pretty much bushed. When Bush came into office, the federal budget was balanced. That’s a key word here, if not the crux of the matter, as he might say himself, because he is leaving us now totally off balance and in a financial shambles, more in debt than ever, with the economy on the ropes and everything that should have been done neglected.
Basically, he never completed a thing, really, and never started what he should have. And, as he retires to his three-million-dollar hideaway in Dallas, he is leaving his mess for us to clean up. He’s like that spoiled little boy you wouldn’t want to leave home alone, because you know he'd trash the whole house by the time you got back, especially if he got Cheney to come over, too. Even by Bush family values, insulated as they may be, he is not what you would call balanced — incorrigible, perhaps, but not balanced.
In addition to what it all might matter to him anyway, another good question is how can he walk around as though he's actually got a handle on things, as our gun-slinging decider? In other words, does he actually think he has done a good job? He may feel he's pulled it off, so to speak, but will he be able to rest on his laurels?
Or, is he simply oblivious? Even that could be just some sort of an act, a cavalier charade to cover his collusion with the oligarchs to hide their weenies from the rest of us, especially during Festivus. Either way, he may be destined for oblivion.
posted by Pneumaticus at 2:17 AM
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