Like Harry Potter's heinously spoiled cousin Dudley, who throws a hissy fit when he doesn't get all the birthday presents he wants, Bush, ever petulant child, vetoes every bill the Democrats pass that does not have exactly what he wants in an attempt to force a legacy while the prospect of completing his term in utter irrelevance looms large on the horizon.
By voting to sustain President Bush's veto of SCHIP, House Republicans have guaranteed that another generation of Americans will grow up disadvantaged and disproportionately at risk for adult onset illness and chronic disease. Under the hypocritical guise of fiscal responsibility, President Bush succeeded in proving that compassionate conservatism was nothing more than a campaign slogan.
In addition, he has underscored what many of us have known for a long time: While Democratic presidents declare war on poverty, and Republican presidents declare war on the poor.
Come out, come out, wherever you are
and meet the young lady who fell from a star.
She fell from the sky; she fell very far;
and Kansas she says is the name of her star.
She brings you good news, or haven't you heard?
When she fell from the sky a miracle occurred.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN A FRIEND OF DOROTHY!
I'm just a friend of Toto. "Not gay" airport men's room trawler Senator Larry Craig continued to deny being gay even as he resigned from the Senate today. One down...
One to go?
How long can it be until the dandy senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, is escorted out of the closet? For all you naysayers, just remember that Mike Rogers of blogactive.com reported on Craig last year, just like he reported on Mark Foley -- and time and public events vindicated his reporting.
Rumors are swirling around the blogosphere and Kentucky that minority leader Mitch McConnell will be the next Republican closet-case to be forced out of the closet. McConnell as much as confirmed it himself by referring to his previously good friend's behavior as "unforgivable."
Remember, when Hamlet said, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," he was referring to a queen.
Twenty-four percent of Mormon marriages end in divorce.
Statistically, atheists and Catholics are more likely to stay married than
Mormons.
One of Mitt Romney's selling points to the Republican evangelical base is that
he and his wife, Anne, have been married for 39 years. Considering the marriage
records of the rest of the Republican field -- Giuliani married three times,
McCain married twice -- Romney has something to brag about.
I would say that I won't venture to guess why the Romneys' marriage has been
so successful, but I can't. Because I am going to venture a guess right now:
they are both pathological liars who have the same commitment to selective
memory, deception, prevarication, flip-flopping, political expediency,
disingenuousness, self-interest, self-importance and self-aggrandizement.
Not only is daddy Mitt a truth-masturbating liar when it comes to abortion, claiming he really wasn't pro-choice before he was (is) unequivocally pro-life, his wife’s own hypocritical past is coming back to bite her in her big, fat Stepford Wife ass.
On Fox News Sunday (h/t Crooks and Liars), Chris Wallace (bless his little fascist-kissing ass) confronted Anne about a $100.00 donation she made to Planned Parenthood in 1993. Of course, Annie (get your varmint-shooting gun) was appalled that anyone would strain to associate a contribution to Planned Parenthood with being pro-choice. And who wouldn’t agree after hearing how rational and logic-inspiring her argument was:
You
know, a check for $100, written in 1993, I believe is when the check was… I
don’t even remember writing the check. I know today, I wouldn’t write the
check. I mean, how do you remember all the checks you’ve written, you know, how
many years ago was that? (view here)
So, in typical Republican style, you can’t be held responsible for political donations you make if you don’t remember writing the check – something akin to Fred (aka Uncle Milty) Thompson’s claim that he didn’t really lobby on behalf of abortion rights because he doesn't remember doing it. (He probably doesn't remember any of the times he let a little too much beer convince him it was okay to go fishing on the other side of the pond either.)
If a Republican tells a lie in the forest and no one hears it, is it really a lie?
Anne, babe, whether it was $1.00, $100.00 or $1 million, you made a donation that carries with it an implicit (tacit) endorsement of the donee's agenda.
Hopefully, someone will have the balls to ask her how many baby fetuses her $100.00 helped destroy. But, alas! Democrats have too much compassion (and class), and Republicans (even so-called Christians) are loath to expose the hypocrisy of their own.
PS: Did I mention that she spawned five, FIVE, pantywaist sons who think that driving around Iowa in a Winnebago campaigning for their used-car-salesman-of-a father is as patriotic as serving in the Military?!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, driving around in a multi-thousand dollar air-conditioned Winnebago with beds, bathroom, microwave and television around the backroads of Iowa is just the same as driving a reconstituted Humvee without air-conditioning in 130° heat in full combat gear through the IED-ridden streets of Baghdad or Fallujah -- if it means getting their daddy elected so he can continue to make other parents' children fight big oil's war.
I haven't posted in awhile. The semester was hectic, and the time I could have spent writing was spent grading countless essays. I have three weeks before summer school begins, and I hope to be able to post more frequently. Let's face it, there are lots of things that deserve comment.
Mitt Romney
I just watched the 60 Minutes interview with Mitt Romney. Mike Wallace (and every other reporter who has interviewed him) referred to him as presidential. Really? I think he looks like a television evangelist. He sounds like a television evangelist. He may be polished. He may wear French cuffs. He is even handsome. (He was hot as a young man.) 
But there is something smarmy and unsettling about him. He's plasticene When he talks about wanting to be president, I see a slick television evangelist asking the elderly to send in a contribution they can't afford. And he's all too happy to accept it -- even though he's already a multi-millionaire.
He boasts about his Mormon faith, but no one else dare bring it up. He says that polygamy is "awful," though his great-grandfather was a polygamist. I'd really like to know if Mitt descends from his great-grandfather's first wife or one of his polygamist wives. He disingenously referred to polygamy having been abolished in the "1800's." 1890, to be specific. In fact, the final manifesto against polygamy, which threatened excommunication, didn't come until 1904.
If I could ask Mitt a question, it would be, "How do you reconcile your Church's decision to abolish what was a defining tenet of its faith?" Or, "Do you believe that a Church should disavow a defining tenet of its faith for political expediency (Utah becoming a state)?" Or, maybe, "What if the Church's current prophet (Mormonism has living prophets) said that he had had a revelation about re-instating plural marriage, would it still be 'awful'?"
Then there are his sons: five, 25-37, married, copious children, and not a one would consider serving in the military -- even though their father supports Bush's current policy in Iraq. Doesn't that say it all?
Rudy Giuliani
What a chump! He's married to Eva Duarte (Peron) and doesn't even know it. Is the US really ready for a former mistress to become first lady? And this bitch isn't even discrete. Talk about a gold-digger. The first divorce from number 1 was only five days old before she married number 2.
Each time she has traded up, and test-drove the new model before she dumped the old one. She stalked Giuliano at a Manhattan cigar bar he was known to frequent. They insist the meeting was kismet. Sources say it was part of her masterplan. Drove a wedge between him and his children. Insisted on being married in the mayoral mansion in a tiara. His daughter has taken her mother's name rather than be associated with her stepmom. His son refuses to speak to his stepmother. But Rudy is the happiest he has ever been.
According to a recent profile in New York Magazine, between husband number 2 and Rudy, she shacked up with a Manhattan psychologist. To say she likes to be taken care of is an understatement. None of her husbands or lovers has ever been poor. The fact that each one is richer than the last speaks volumes. A kindergartner could see the pattern if you wrote it in a word problem.
Referring to Giuliani's battle with prostate cancer, an associate told New York Magazine's Lloyd Grove, “Part of the reason Rudy loves her so much is that she loved him, and batted her eyes at him, even when his very virility was questioned, when his sexual vitality was knocked out."
Wake up, Rudy! She didn't care if you were impotent because you don't need an erection to be elected president.
John McCain
See a therapist already.
Sam Brownback
Probably the most truly religious Republican candidate, but the Evangelical hierarchy (Dobson, Robertson, Perkins, et al) don't think he can win. It doesn't matter if the man they support is really religious, as long as he promises to hate homosexuals. Evangelicals believe Mormons are non-Christians, but they will vote for him if their potentates tell them too. Romney's anti-gay bonafides have already been established. It doesn't matter if they think he's going to hell -- as long as he promises to publicly condemn homosexuality.
More later...
People are desperately trying to make sense out of the horrific events of Viriginia Tech on April 16. The media, as they are wont to do, turned the massacre into a sideshow.
NBC was the worst; pimping the homemade video of the murderer on air under the guise of journalistic imperative. At best, it was tabloid journalism at its worst. What can we expect from infotainment disguised as news?
While the infantilistic Bush, mourner in chief, reduced the tragedy to "being in the wrong place at the wrong time." What a pig! But not before reaffirming his belief in the right of citizens to buy as many semi-automatic weapons as they can afford. Capitalism at its best (worst)!
So 32 innocent peoples' lives have been reduced to the inevitable price of living in a democracy. I'm not sure how many weeping mothers are comforted by the fact that their children took their Second Amendment rights to the grave.
It will be impossible to make sense of April 16 as long as the nation fails to have a mature conversation about guns. Americans, unfortunately, are incapable of self-analysis or self-criticism.
Whenever thoughtful people attempt to have genuine dialogue, the conversation is hijacked by jingoistic politicians and self-promoters, who turn it into a tent revival and/or pep rally.
It's amazing how easily Americans can be whipped into a patriotic frenzy over anything: "Isn't it great to live in the country with the highest rate of gun violence in the world!"
I'll leave you with the first canto of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land. It was written in the aftermath of World War I. Eliot was trying to make sense out of the "modern world," whose "modernity" seemed irrational and meaningless.
The first two lines are a reference to Walt Whitman's elegy When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard
Bloom’d
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding |
|
| Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing | |
| Memory and desire, stirring | |
| Dull roots with spring rain. | |
| Winter kept us warm, covering | 5 |
| Earth in forgetful snow, feeding | |
| A little life with dried tubers. | |
| Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee | |
| With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, | |
| And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, | 10 |
| And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. | |
| Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. | |
| And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, | |
| My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, | |
| And I was frightened. He said, Marie, | 15 |
| Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. | |
| In the mountains, there you feel free. | |
| I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. | |
| What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow | |
| Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, | 20 |
| You cannot say, or guess, for you know only | |
| A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, | |
| And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, | |
| And the dry stone no sound of water. Only | |
| There is shadow under this red rock, | 25 |
| (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), | |
| And I will show you something different from either | |
| Your shadow at morning striding behind you | |
| Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; | |
| I will show you fear in a handful of dust. | 30 |
| Frisch weht der Wind | |
| Der Heimat zu. | |
| Mein Irisch Kind, | |
| Wo weilest du? | |
| 'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; | 35 |
| 'They called me the hyacinth girl.' | |
| —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, | |
| Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not | |
| Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither | |
| Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, | 40 |
| Looking into the heart of light, the silence. | |
| Od' und leer das Meer. | |
| Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, | |
| Had a bad cold, nevertheless | |
| Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, | 45 |
| With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, | |
| Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, | |
| (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) | |
| Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, | |
| The lady of situations. | 50 |
| Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, | |
| And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, | |
| Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, | |
| Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find | |
| The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. | 55 |
| I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. | |
| Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, | |
| Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: | |
| One must be so careful these days. | |
| Unreal City, | 60 |
| Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, | |
| A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, | |
| I had not thought death had undone so many. | |
| Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, | |
| And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. | 65 |
| Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, | |
| To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours | |
| With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. | |
| There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson! | |
| 'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! | 70 |
| 'That corpse you planted last year in your garden, | |
| 'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? | |
| 'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? | |
| 'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, | |
| 'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again! | 75 |
| 'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!' |
There is a seriously humorous – humorously serious –
back-and-forth going on via email among SMU faculty regarding the Bush
Institute.
The majority of faculty members, if not all, have finally accepted
the Library as a fait accompli. Indeed,
for the majority of faculty, the Library is no longer the primary concern. To paraphrase James Carville, it’s the
Institute, stupid.
Not so much the Institute as the structure of the Institute.
As it stands, SMU will have zero control over the eponymously oxymoronic Bush think tank.
Concerns ranging from the Institute’s policy focus
(preemptive war, denying global warming, expansion of executive powers,
creation of an imperial presidency, privation of civil liberties, torture) to
who will hold fellowships have many faculty rightfully concerned.
More important, the prospect that departments will be
required to accept co-appointments of Institute fellows who, by virtue of their
appointment to the Institute, will be exempt from the normal departmental
hiring practices.
In short, many faculty members are seeking assurances. So
far, the Administration is saying, “Trust us.” For some faculty, those two words are enough.
For others, they have given them their just consideration – just about
worthless.
The bottom line is the Institute, too, is a fait accompli. The trustees want it. Bush wants it. If Bush
has been successful in communicating anything in the last six years, it’s that
he’s the “decider.” The faculty has absolutely
no bargaining power. Some have accepted that and acquiesced; others haven’t.
SMU isn't the University of Florida; and the Bush Institute isn't an honorary degree. The faculty can't vote to deny W his Institute the way the University of Florida Faculty Senate voted to deny brother Jeb an honorary degree.
Those who have acquiesced comfort themselves by thinking about
“the potential for classroom visits and other student access to institute
fellows would be a tremendous asset to our teaching, particularly in fields
like political science, history, and economics.”
Some have even resorted to the desperate claim that anyone
who continues to express concern or offer opposition “seeks to circumvent the
duly constituted authority of the Faculty Senate.”
What’s next? Accusations of unpatriotism? Of aiding and
abetting terrorists?
I realize that more than a few professors in some
departments are as giddy as schoolgirls about the prospect of some Republican history-makers
in residence at SMU.
I’m quite sure that at night some even dream of discussing
Soviet-era diplomacy or listening to stories about the good old days at the
Hoover Institute with Condie over coffee
and donuts or hashing out the nuts and bolts of Mid-East power brokering with James Baker at brownbag lunches.
Perhaps by the time the Institute is built, Condie’s dream of "work[ing] with our many
partners around the world ... [and] build[ing] and sustain[ing] democratic,
well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct
themselves responsibly in the international system" will have become a
reality.
Some no doubt think that having Karl Rove or Donald Rumsfeld speak to classes is a good
idea. I know I would go to any length to secure a front-row seat to hear Paul
Wolfowitz justify his failed pre-war assessments (just don’t ask him to take
off his shoes) or listen to Council on Foreign Relations President Richard
Haass argue that the Administration’s primary mistake was planning for the wrong peace rather than
the wrong war.
Indeed, our students could learn so much from anyone in the
Bush cabal who has had a direct hand in formulating the myriad of failed
policies that constitute the worst presidency in history.
I bet there’ll even be a position for Mary Cheney as the
Senior Fellow for Gay and Lesbian Studies. I can’t wait to read her first
white paper: “Acquiescing to Homophobia for the Good of the Party.”
Alberto Gonzales,
of course, would be Senior Fellow for Constitutional Law. His white paper, “How
to Interpret the Constitution to Justify Whatever the Boss Wants to Do,” would
be instructive for law students.
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, now at the American
Enterprise Institute, could be cajoled into giving lectures on “How to Sell the
War of Your Choice” or “How to Create Scary Buzz Phrases Like
‘Axis of Evil’."
Scooter Libby, no doubt, would be called upon to teach
seminars on “Taking the Fall.” Harriet Miers will certainly be free to do
something, bring coffee, remind the guys that they are the best. Jack Abramoff
should be out of jail by then. They’ll probably want to tap him to be the
Institute’s lobbyist.
And they’ll need someone who works exclusively on firings. Kyle Sampson,
Gonzales’s fired chief of staff, could hold that “fellowship.”
Oklahoma Republican Senator (and global warming denier) James Inhofe and convicted Deputy Secretary of
the Interior Steven Griles could duke it out to be the first
ExxonMobil Distinguished Fellow of Environmental Studies.
The Distinguished Fellow of Election Fraud, uh
Reform, has yet to be decided. That one will probably go to Rove. Rove,
I'm sure, will hold multiple fellowships.
The list of Bushies with impressive records of
disservice to our country is long and infamous. Of course, the government will
probably want to open a federal prison near by so fellows can rotate weekends while serving their sentences for
corruption, perjury, obstruction of justice and treason.
What have I been thinking? Institute supporters are right.
Now that I’ve thought it through, I am excited about what our students could
learn from such the cast of miscreants and criminals that could grace our
campus.
It is no surprise that some within the religious Right have embraced former gay escort and porn actor Matt Sanchez.
The notion that Sanchez has seen the light and turned his
back on the evils of homosexuality allows people like Kevin
McCullough (left) to propagate the false notion that homosexuality is both a
choice and a destructive lifestyle – not unlike alcoholism or drug abuse – that
can be cured with prayer and a group hug. Let's face it, the ex-gay industry is a multi-million dollar enterprise for the religious Right. It allows people like James Dobson, Kevin McCullough and the rest of the modern-day Pharisees to live the lifestyle that Jesus actually did condemn.
Scandals like Ted Haggard and Matt Sanchez allow people like McCullough, who have bet their economic futures on combating homosexuality, to paint all homosexuals with the same broad brush: all homosexuals are engaged in a destructive lifestyle, just one step away from prostituting themselves and acting in dozens of gay porn videos like Sanchez.
Like Ted Haggard, the only thing gay prostitutes and their
clients have to do to be accepted (back) into the fold is blame their deception
and destructive lifestyle on "diabolical liberals." God doesn’t care about the origin of the
sin. Kevin McCullough, James Dobson, et al do. It
doesn’t matter if men like Haggard sought out men like Sanchez to perpetrate their
fraud. Nor does it matter that millions of gay men have never done anything even
remotely as destructive as Haggard and Sanchez.
Kevin McCullough doesn’t care if Sanchez was accepting money from closeted, probably God-fearing, married men or that he is still advertising for sex on gay websites in the present – as long as he blames liberals. In turn, Sanchez is more than happy to give people like McCullough what they want – just like he gave hundreds of pay-for-sex clients and video customers what they wanted.
Make no mistake, Sanchez is still prostituting himself. The only difference is Kevin McCullough is now his pimp.
For
years, I’ve been trying to convince diehard Bush fans (the 30% that still think
he’s the best thing since twist-off beer caps) that he’s the worst president in
history.
For years, I’ve been banging my head against a closed door (that’s a metaphor
for Bush’s supporters’ minds), hoping that the person on the other side would
open the door (again, metaphor for mind) and realize that Bush has been truly a
horrible president.
Silly me! As it turns out, I’ve been wrong all this time. Bush’s isn’t the
worst president in our country's history, he’s merely the worst CEO – Ken Lay
included.
In the interest of disclosure, I can’t take credit for the reclassification –
or even the evaluation.
The credit belongs to Warren Hellman, founder and CEO of Hellman & Friedman, a private equity investment firm.
In
addition to sitting on the boards of the NASDAQ Stock Market, Levi Strauss
& Co. and the Sugar Bowl Corporation, Hellman consults with corporate
boards on evaluation CEO performance.
You might say he helps boards decide when it’s time for a CEO to go bye-bye.
According to Hellman, Bush’s time has come.
Hellman
published his analysis in an article in Salon magazine.
In a nutshell, Hellman says, “If the United States were a company, if would be
a troubled one. A disastrous war in Iraq;
another war nearly won, now at risk in Afghanistan; massive budget
deficits -- USA Inc. is beset by many crises.”
Fair enough. No one, except possibly Dick Cheney, believes things are going hunky-dory in the United States. The question, then, becomes, to what extent are the company’s, uh country’s problems Bush’s fault.
Hellman judges Bush’s performance based on six criteria, the same criteria he uses when advising boards on evaluating their CEOs’ performance: 1) fiscal responsibility, 2) strategic decisions, 3) execution of strategic decisions, 4) personnel choices, 5) research and development, and 6) adherence to the company’s charter and bylaws.
So how did Bush the CEO do? The short answer: “If Bush were the chief executive of a company, he would in all likelihood be given a good pension and quickly replaced.”
How’s $210 million? That’s what Home Depot paid former CEO Robert L. Nardelli forcing him to resign for failing to turn around the company’s poor stock performance.
I don’t know about you, but I’d pay $210 million dollars to get rid of Bush. Heck, I’d even pay $211 million.
In the first category, “fiscal responsibility,” Hellman criticizes Bush for squandering the surplus he inherited from his predecessor, record deficits, a “skyrocketing” debt service, and a growing trade deficit with China. More importantly, he accuses Bush of “hid[ing] the magnitude of the [company’s] losses.”
Isn’t that what Ken Lay was convicted of?
As for the second category, “strategic decisions,” he faults Bush for “minimize[ing] the importance of stabilizing Afghanistan, while at the same time choosing to invade Iraq,” adding, “Those choices turned out to be a perfect example of the adage ‘fire, aim, ready!’”
“Not only were those decisions based on faulty intelligence,” he writes, “but Bush also had no business plan for his new endeavor.”
In the third category, “execution of strategic decisions,” Hellman concludes, “Bush has left USA Inc. with no good options as to how to fix the [Iraq] problem. If USA Inc. were a corporation, an effective board would almost certainly not choose to ask the executive who got the company into such dangerous trouble to be the one extricate it; the board would find a new CEO.”
For number four, “personnel decisions” he writes, “Excellent chief executives make excellent personnel choices; they are willing to admit mistakes and replace the occasional bad personnel choice with alacrity. This has not been the case with our chief executive.”
"Instead," Hellman says, “Bush stuck too long with his mistakes, remaining stubbornly supportive of inept individuals from Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld…”
Number five: “Because of the strategic error of invading Iraq, our CEO now finds his company can't spend money on conducting basic research or rebuilding its physical infrastructure, plus it is drastically shortchanging its educational system.
In the final category, “adherence to the company’s charter and bylaws,” Hellman chastises Bush for “allow[ing] his ideology to subvert the charter and bylaws this country was built on, namely the Constitution.”
So what should the board of directors do?
“When a company is going in the wrong direction, the board of directors has the responsibility to do everything possible to change course and move forward with better direction. […] For the past six years, Congress has abandoned that role,” Hellman says, adding, “If [Congress] were a corporate board of directors, there might well be shareholder lawsuits over how it has neglected its oversight responsibilities.”
The $211 million is starting to look better by the minute.
