In response to a question today as to why he had not stepped up and encouraged Americans to start conserving fuel, Pres Bush stated that the consumer was smart enough to to see the current price of fossil fuel and figure it out for himself. He said that consumers respond to market forces, and there was no need for a president to tell them what to do. That's why he lowered taxes, so that more money would be in the hands of these wise consumers to use as they see fit.
If that's the case, Mr President, then why are trillions of tax dollars going to be spent to rescue the free market mortgage and banking industries from greed, consumer excesses and flat out stupidity? Is it not incumbent upon a "leader" to offer sage counsel on issues effecting the nation at large? Or would suggestions of reigning in markets run amok be bad for business?
WASF
Al
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Bush's parting quip to the rest of the G8 members a while ago, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter", is so applicable in so many different ways.
http://tinyurl.com/5lnndt
The privileged, in-the-know-and-connected, tax-cutted few have a long history of never having to pay, never accountable, at least in this world.
At least until the revolution comes, anyway.
Folks' finances and property can be retrieved or not as their own actions will determine, but there are things that never will be retrieved.
I saw the news yesterday that 9 of our people were killed in a coordinated attack.
Endless war, endless pain, endless retribution. I'm way past tired of it.
Tired of stories like this.
http://tinyurl.com/5sw944
On a brighter note, I went to my 40th HS reunion, had a blast, visited mom and dad, paid some respects and visited some family I have not seen in 20 or so years! I know it's a selfish thought, but I feel extremely fortunate that those I know and love aren't being blown to pieces by an occupying military.
Absolutely great!
I have a flickr acct., if anyone is interested in random pix from the Middle of NoWhere, USA, I'll post the link.
Peace!
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Perhaps he has the ironic humor to appreciate that for him to assume a posture of cautious rectitude regarding foolish energy consumption and lecture the American public on conservation would be akin to Dennis Rodman lecturing on sexual morality, Charles Keating on government ethics, L. Ron Hubbard on religious tradition or Hannibal Lector on liver and fava beans.
Naaah.
He just such a knee-jerk oilman that he doesn't get it.
But you're right about this:
WASF!
Well, whether Bush is informed or not (Economy basically sound? What? Obviously home team hasn't had to belly up to the pumps or buy his own food yet!) the main issue is that the government has to rescue the housing lenders because if they don't...we're talking a serious problem that will be felt for years to come.
Inflation/recession/depression and no president, no matter how freaking incompetent they are wants that associated with their reign...er, tenure.
Al: "Is it not incumbent upon a "leader" to offer sage counsel on issues effecting the nation at large?"
Yes, but what makes you think that W is a "leader". He has no ability to inspire. He has personally turned the 'bully pulpit' into irrelevance. He still tries to swagger, but it is obvious that he has no confidence in carrying it off.
And besides, why would he encourage us to conserve fuel and bite the hand of his friends in the House of Saud and his buds in the oil biz? They would then stop their monetary support of his presidential library. W still has his eye on rewriting his historical image.
Agree with mike's post.
Bush was never a leader in any sense of the word, rather an "executioner" of a plan not his own. Cheney is where the "Defense Planning Guidance of 1992" (aka the US maintaining its then position on the geo-strategic stage forever) and the interests of big oil came together. What we have now is mass repression and bellicosity abroad while their mercenaries and serfs wearing happy-face masks assemble the apparatus of a police state at home, all in clear daylight.
Bush trusts in the "market" which has always been his real god, is convinced of his own "goodness" (as in Nietzsche's concept of master morality), and is simply bored with the situation. He'd loved to take a wack at Iran, but knows that should he give that order he risks his own military refusing it, exposing him as a "wartime president" joke. Not only that but even Bush must at this point realize what attacking Iran would do to the world economy and who would get the blame.
This last point must make him very angry, although he can't publicly admit it.
"This last point must make him very angry, although he can't publicly admit it."
I get the sense that the difficulty of his position is beginning to penetrate Bush's apparently tiny brain. The few times I've forced myself to watch him he comes across alternatively bellicose and irrationally jocular, a maniac who has missed his lithium.
The bottom line for these people (by whom I mean the original Bush gang who orbited around Cheney) is that they really wanted an American Century, a latter-day British Empire in the sense that we would be the imperial hedgemon, capable of making the wogs (and, in good Imperial fashion, our wogs would begin at Brownsville and Niagra) do what we want or get a good dose of the imperial hickory.
But in order to do this, the thrashing needed to be a solid repetition of the old-school British expeditionary campaign: in, bash the wogs, and out again with the captives, the plunder and the tribute. Getting stuck in Central Asia for the foreseeable future screwed the whole thing five ways, Bush knows it, and regardless of whatever "success" or "victory" he can spin out of Iraq, the mess there spells the death of this beloved project.
No wonder he's so furious.
I don't get the furious part, Chief. The few times I've seen him recently he seems to alternate between relieved and tired. I believe that he will gladly walk out of the White House (as opposed to Clinton who did everything to stay but barricade himself in and take hostages) and never, ever look back.
He'll go back to Texas, where people don't speak with a funny accent, have somebody ghost-write a book to get the last dime from the 26 percenters, and have a lot of fun at parties with his old frat house buddies recalling the good days while the country sinks beneath the waves.
Yeah, he'd love to nuke Iran but Cheney tells him that it isn't such a good idea so that's the end of that.
Jimmy Carter once commented that the job of President is so big and so hard that it redefines you as a human being. Reagan, the first Bush (George the Good?), and Clinton have all solemnly agreed with that comment.
Bush would just look surprised and say, "huh?" We're not dealing with a stupid man here, just one so incurious and so determined to see things his way that he literally can't see the other 99% of the real world.
In all seriousness regarding mr. george w. bush is that he has had an eye on history, and what history will say about him.
In some respects, I think he saw himself as the second coming of Reagan, and wanted the same legacy as Reagan did in his double dare on the soviet union.
However, I think he's coming to the realization that history will remember him as the president who had dreams of empire, but was judgementally incapble of achieving that goal.
I think what we're seeing now is that george w. bush, for the first time in his sad and pathetic life, has come to realize the full scope of his incompetency.
He has bankrupted the nation, he has allowed the greatest, wealthiest nation on the earth to crash into mediocrity and destitution, and has taken the greatest military this planet has ever seen and ground it to a nub in a fruitless war in Iraq.
The only thing left for him is to retire quietly, ponder a memoir, let that memoir quietly die with his fast eroding mind, and silently slip into that long goodnight.
Missed by only his immediate family, and his patrons, both foreign and domestic, who remember fondly, at gatherings of the wealthiest, how their sweet, little Republican tool fattened their wallets at the expense of the United States of America.
Sheer-
Elegantly stated
Al
"The only thing left for him is to retire quietly, ponder a memoir, let that memoir quietly die with his fast eroding mind, and silently slip into that long goodnight."
You'd think so, wouldn't you? You'd have to bet that having made such a world-class mess out of his country and the world that the last time any of us would see W is in the back of the family limo being hauled away to seclusion in one of the more isolated family homes for the rest of his natural life like Cousin Algy, the odd one who used to fondle little girls.
But then you look over there and there's the smirking nut-grubbing-chipmunk face of Newt Fucking Gingrich, who in any selfrespecting democracy would have been offered the opportunity to become a low-hanging fruit from the sturdiest branch of the Tree of Liberty instead of earning his lucre bloviating on CNN and Fox.
No, I'm afraid that Bush and Bushism will survive this debacle with a grin and a whistle.
Sad for our republic to say...
"No, I'm afraid that Bush and Bushism will survive this debacle with a grin and a whistle."
I think that there are a few who have ambitions of this, but for all intents and purposes none of them are george w. bush's. The bushisms we've come to know and loathe do not find their source in the boy king, but rather his patrons, excuted with precision by their enforcer, dick "shotgun" cheney.
bush is little more than a mouthpiece, a pawn, a walter mitty, allowed by the puppetmaster to dream grandiose visions of his own mastery because the reality of his political castration are far to real to deal with.
But yes, there will be the republican patrons who will seek to keep their current wallets fattened with the blood of Americans and anyone else whom these felons feel they can bleed for a dollar.
I think Obama will have to make peace with their aims, and try to make the best of a bad situation, but I fear that these self-acclaimed power-mongers will remove anyone who seeks to usurp their business.
I think you're on the right track, S.
http://tinyurl.com/6gso3t
http://tinyurl.com/6nnsec
I just watched Jane Mayer and Steve Clemons on C-SPAN discussing her new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals".
http://tinyurl.com/5kluwu
I didn't catch it all, just the last half hour, but Clemons one section of the book in particular, something he called the "Big Bang". Some insiders inside the CIA? and State Department met in secret and used laptops to discuss a plan to close down Gitmo and the Black Ops rendition/foreign prisons program?
Sorry that I don't have it quite clear, but Clemons did say he would write more about it soon.
Here's the link to the c-span video, real player or its equivalent needed.
http://tinyurl.com/5kawu9
Sec. Rice, Mayer claimed, was in favor of their ideas, but Cheney's office squelched it.
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