ADullAche

The political memory is quite the elegant organ and always has been. It’s unlikely there’s been a single politician in history – world history – that hasn’t done something they’d rather forget.

However, the Bush Administration has made not remembering into an art form – or a virulent disease.

The latest  presentation of this Executive epidemic is found below:

AP June 29, 2008 – DUJIANGYAN, China – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised China’s post-quake recovery efforts during a visit to the disaster zone on Sunday, saying that it contrasted with Myanmar’s reluctance to allow in aid after a cyclone devastated the country.

Yes, even classical pianist and third rate Sec of State, Condi Rice, has fallen victim. (Although her behavior over the last seven years shows she waved off every attempt at inoculation.) Here’s a bit more of her praise for China:

“I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive,” Rice told reporters after the tour. “I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone…”I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive,” Rice told reporters after the tour. “I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone.”

Now, the only question I have is, where was she when Katrina devastated New Orleans?

Did I see what I saw?

Did I see North Korea voluntarily destroy one of their nuclear cooling towers?

Did I hear what I heard?

Not one shot fired?

No one invaded any sovereign nations who didn’t invade us?

No bunker busters?

No fortified Humvees?

Not even a single water boarding approved at the highest levels?

What kind of foreign policy is that?

This is the George Bush Administration.

The George W. Bush Administration, not to be confused with that sushi pukin’, “read my lips” talkin’ other George Bush – George H. W. But to his credit, he also invaded Iraq, but wimped out and did nothing when the wall fell and all of eastern Europe was ripe for the taking.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

That’s right, I’m calling you out Dubya – you’re a candy ass.

You used diplomacy. We have warehouses full of nukes and you’re chatting-up other countries.

When did we start making deals with dictators?

What are we, France!?

We didn’t elect you to talk. Hell, after almost eight years, we all know you can’t.

Where’s the man of action, the guy who didn’t think about what he said or did, he just said and did it? Where’s that flight suit? That’s what we want; not some pansy who cuts deals with hard core Commies.

What’s next, have Hezbollah to the White House for lunch?

We’ll become an international laughing stock. We’ll have a president who people think can actually be reasonable. He’s given up golf and now he’s talking to other countries. Is that the image you really want for the leader of the free world?

This just wont do.

So man up, mama’s boy, and take out Iran before you go…at least you’ll save some of your legacy.

Such is the sage wisdom of American icon, Homer Simpson, who said the above words on many an occasion.

Well, I just heard it again as Democrats and Republicans argued about whose fault the current oil crisis is.

The only thing they agreed on is that a large part of the problem can be laid at the feet of  that great improvisational dancer, failed oil man, and current president, George W. Bush.

Everyone agreed his “no energy policy but oil” has lead to America’s particular plight, but there are certainly added pressures with emerging nations like China and India whose oil consumption is likely to go up ten to twenty times in the coming years.

Back at home:

 Dems moan Repubs block ever attempt at passing alternative energy legislation.

Repubs howl Dems don’t want nuclear or to help the oil companies drill our way out of this problem.

This is what I know; current energy policy (which has yet to be revealed to the public), was written by Drillin’ Dick Cheney and a bunch of oil guys.

Dubya and thieving pigf#$%er Ken Lay were close pals.

Jimmy Carter passed a solar energy bill way back in 1979 that would produce 20% of the nations energy by 2000 – Ronald Regan killed it in his first year in office.

I’m not choosing sides here, but facts are facts.

Not that anyone has ever paid attention to the facts.

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” (Mario Savo, December 3 1964.)

Ah, the old days. Mario Savo was speaking to the Free Speech Movement at a sit-in in front of Sproul Hall on the Berkeley campus in 1964. This was one of the flashpoints of the Student Movement that led to all kinds of fear and loathing back in the ‘60’s.

The kind we don’t have anymore.

Now all our fear and loathing is government sponsored, heavily edited, and doled out when politicians need a bump in the polls.

In the unmitigated disaster that is known as the Bush Administration, the one thing they got right was convincing waves of business majors and finance students that speaking out is bad for your resume.

Welcome to the world – you generation of wimps.

Go look at what your contemporaries are doing in England:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/13/activists.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

The short version: they’re environmental extremists who hijacked a coal train in broad daylight and shut down the entire line.

Now that’s putting your “bodies upon the gears.”

Most of you wimps think being radical is having one more shot of Jäger.

I’m not talking about going all Eugene Debs here (go look it up) but, come on, get off your asses and do something. You sat by while the Idiot and Chief rode roughshod over your nation, your rights and, the way things look, your future.

What’s it going to take to get you people into the street…college credit?

James Johnson got the boot yesterday. Obama’s going to need another vetter.

Tom Loeffler got the heave-ho from the McCain campaign about a month ago – he was the finance co-chair.

Both these men – and a bunch more in everyone’s campaign group from Hillary Clinton to probably Ron Paul – had ties to businesses or lobbying groups that in the squeaky clean world of national politics just didn’t present the right image.

Are you people freakin’ crazy?

Is this what you want to spend your time worrying about?

We have criminals in the White House, corrupt cowards (save a few, and McCain ain’t one of them) in Congress, more draconian laws then when the first George was king – not Daddy B, I’m talking about the guy who was boss in 1776 – and we’re still fighting a war that even the blunt-brained base now knows was invented. And the best you can do is nitpick about some volunteers, who, if their candidate wins, has no say in whether we stay in Iraq or continue to torture or allow illegal wiretaps?

You sure that’s the basket you want to put your eggs in?

How about we focus on issues this time around, seeing as how we neglected to do so the last two times…and that worked out real well…

Apparently it isn’t enough to make the worst foreign policy blunder in American history for Democratizin’ Dubya…let me amend that: it is enough, it’s just much bigger than his screwing up our country.

This link will take you to a story in today’s NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/asia/12skorea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

It describes yet another world leader – President Lee Myung-bak – who backed Bush policies and buddied up to the man who wants to do to the world what he let Katrina do to New Orleans. Now President Lee is fighting for his political life – and you can bet Bush and friends are no where to be seen.

Let’s go to the scoreboard and see just how many governments bumblin’ Bush and his Iraq fixation have brought down.

Spain – Bush pal Jose Maria Aznar lost to the Socialists

Great Britain – Bush poodle Tony Blair was forced out due to his unflagging support of you know who, you know where.

Australia – Prime Minister John Howard got the boot for his manlove for Dubya

Now South Korean, an important strategic ally, is shaky.

And let’s not forget how Bush policies have empowered both Hezbollah and Hamas and weakened  Israel.

You’d think with all those folks dumping their wrongheaded rulers we’d have picked up a tip or two…

George W. Bush, the man who couldn’t be king, keeps insisting he’s relevant…unfortunately, the world just doesn’t seem to agree.

Every week ol’ Dubya does something that he’s sure will give him the legacy he so richly deserves (not to worry, he’ll get it) and every week the event du jour blows up in his face. (Proving not only does he not know general history, but even the specific history of his own administration has escaped him. Everything this guy has done has been an unmitigated disaster.)

A bunch of bad Bush-stuff happened last week. (Let me qualify that; bad Bush stuff happens every week, but it usually happens to us – for a change it happened to him.)

The loss of the Mississippi special election after a big push by the White House. Our president’s ignorant and embarrassing remarks on the floor of the Knesset. And my favorite, old oilman George W’s attempt to get Saudi Arabia to slip us a little cheap gas.

What’s most amusing about this last one are the putative ties between the Bush family and the Saudi Royals. I don’t wanna say they’re close, but there are pictures of Dubya and Crown Prince Abdullah holding hands and playing kissy face, and I heard they went to the Prom together. They visit each other’s countries, and ranches – word is the Crown Prince’s stables are nicer than the entire Crawford compound – and have a long term, intimate relationship.

So when the leader of the most powerful nation on earth went Saudi Arabia last week for a little help with our ballooning oil prices, you knew he’d be greeted with open arms…instead he got the finger.

Politics is one thing, economics another, and Saudi Arabia has no intention of helping American and their buddy Bush out of this particular jam. It’s all supply and demand for them, and gas is too expensive for us to demand more, so they’re not going to pump anymore. They increased production a whopping 3% (mostly for China); they have the capacity to increase it over 20%.

Yeah, it’s good to be the king.

What do you expect – Dubya was a bust in the oil business too.

While Hillary’s Pyrrhic victory in West Virginia may, for the moment, reinvigorate the delusion she’s been suffering since February that she will somehow be the Democratic nominee, things out on the trail had become a rather tedious. (Even the Rev. Wright hullabaloo was wearing thin; and the tenacity with which the media clung to this non-starter was evidence of just how desperate everyone was for something to talk about.)

Fear not, America, a new looney has entered the race: Bob Barr, former Georgia congressman is seeking the Libertarian nomination for President of the United States. Here’s one site’s description of the man who be a hands-off king when he was in congress:

“Bob Barr has commonly been seen as a gun-toting, NRA champion, anti-gay bigot. Barr is definitely all of these, and more. While pretending to be a champion of “traditional” marriage, Barr has remarried three times and also licked whipped cream off of a beauty pageant’s breasts. Hardly a man of “traditional” marriage standards. In addition, during the Judiciary Committee hearings (which he serves on) it was revealed that Barr has given speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist organization.” http://www.dynionmwyn.net/enemies/Barr/barr1.html

It’s obvious this particular site has an ax to grind with Mr. Barr, but so what; with that kind of vitriol circling around, you gotta love this guy. Besides, that semi-skin head and J. Goebbles wannbe, Glenn Beck, is delighted with Barr’s entrance into the race as a “true conservative.”

Barr isn’t a shoe-in though. He still has to wrest the nomination from the likes of Nevada bookie Wayne Allyn Root, physics prof. George Phillies, and my favorite funnyman and former Democratic Presidential contender, Mike Gravel.

But double B’s has the inside track. He’s an old school hatemonger that will appeal to the base which dissipated after the putrid mucilage known as Karl Rove jumped ship. He’s the man who can rally at least half of what’s left of the Republican Party and get it not to vote for John McCain. Granted that’s 15% of the electorate at best, but you have to appreciate the irony of a right-wing Nader in the mix.

And just the other day I was saying how boring this election had become…

My friend lost his bid for city council last night. It was his first run for office, and everyone gets roughed up the first time. But he stood up and chose to be counted.

A choice he made because he believes in democracy.

While the media and a good chunk of the public – me included – have become rather cynical about the process of choosing those who run things (we choose badly, they perform badly), people like my friend, bereft of cynicism and, frankly, rather hopeful, jump into the fray. It takes time, it takes money, it takes no small amount of courage, and like Coriolanus, you have to stand in the city square and let the people stare at your scars. It’s not a pleasant process. It’s not the grand theatre of democracy we read about. There doesn’t seem to be much noble about politics any more.

And yet there is; because people like my friend offer themselves for positions in small towns because they want the world to be better than it is…and who among us doesn’t.

So, three cheers,”…two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism” (EM Forster), and one for Chris, who believes in it.

“I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me right,” September 1993, then Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush after voting against realignment and a new wild-card system during a Major League Baseball owners meeting in. Bush was the lone dissenter in a 27-1 vote.

“You didn’t have to stay up late Monday night to watch Colorado’s 9-8 victory over San Diego for confirmation that baseball’s wild-card system makes for compelling entertainment. It’s apparent from the euphoria in Denver, an NFL hotbed where baseball suddenly is monopolizing the front of the sports pages.
“You can see it in Major League Baseball’s record 79.5 million attendance this season. That includes a combined increase of about 1.25 million fans in Philadelphia, Denver, San Diego and Milwaukee, cities where teams were playing meaningful games right down to the jubilant and/or bitter end.
“And you can tell by baseball’s spiraling revenue, which has increased from $1.2 billion to $5.8 billion since owners had the temerity to mess with tradition and introduce realignment, followed by revenue sharing and a luxury tax on big spenders.” October 4, 2007, Jerry Crasnick, ESPN.com.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana

You think someone might have gotten the message before letting this putz get into office. Now, he roams the White House with a surety bordering on madness that, once again, history will prove him right. Unfortunately, this time it ain’t baseball, but the future of the nation, and in what is more and more becoming a sad reality, the future of the world.

George W. Bush, 0 for 1 against history – anyone think he’s going to better next time…