- George W. Bush is an uphill skier - one of those intellectual
snow bunnies who, when learning to ski, has to be told over and over again
by the ski instructor, "The pants go on first ñ and then the
skis."
-
- It has been said Bush is evocative of the unworldly and
vacuous Chance the Gardener, portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie "Being
There." The analogy fails on one set of disparities. Chance was naive
and well-intentioned. George Bush is trivial and dull. To relegate any
matter to Bush's attention is a sure way to reduce its importance from
urgent to casual. Our nation's standards for leadership have deteriorated
from George Washington to George Wimpington. It has been speculated that
George W. Bush is keeping a real president out of a job.
-
- It is understandable that Andrew Johnson looked bad following
Lincoln ñ and incomprehensible that anyone could look bad following
Clinton. Bush has managed it.
-
- The media caricatures George Bush as a free-form president
whose aides are compelled to sweep him into a pile behind his desk each
morning, and then brief him from a storyboard. (After all, it works at
Disney.) Because of his unwillingness or incapacity to fight back, the
media snipe at him with impunity. It makes for poor sport - like shooting
a sitting bird - but that is, after all, what the media do best. The media
will spend the next three and a half years devaluing him, and then the
historians will take it from there. If Bush goes into the annals at all,
it will be because he was arrested for impersonating a president. Johnny
Carson used to describe a person of comparable mental acuity by saying,
"His porch light is set on 'dim'."
-
- Like innumerable failed leaders throughout history, Bush
believes he can intensify the devotion of his political base by thwarting
its will. He finds the "logic" of that irresistible. The coddling
of the Clintons is, of course, the defining policy of his administration.
To adversaries and colleagues alike it makes Bush a pathetic, even contemptible,
figure ñ a conclusion that is uniquely bipartisan.
-
- Bush has made the Clinton immorality his adopted bastard.
GW does not wish to enforce the law, nor is he artful enough to convincingly
feign respect for it ñ so America is stuck with four more years
in a backwash of the Clinton/Reno sludge. As a consequence, William Jefferson
Clinton sleeps soundly, secure in the knowledge that he will remain at
large and feeding high off the hog for as long as Bush feels the need to
keep his own impotence pristine. Theoretically, that proposition could
add another leg to Eternity.
-
- Bush is generally conceded decency, dignity and respect
- but his claim to it is a sham while Clinton walks free. Bush cannot be
the highest authority in this nation so long as he chooses to answer to
an unscrupulous one. (Allegorically, Clinton still retains the pink slip
to the presidential motorcade.) The highest authorities remain Bill and
Hillary Clinton, the Borgias of Arkansas, who, our elected officials have
ordained, are above the law. Bush does not have the viscera to make them
go away - and so the Clintons always seem to surround us ñ like
insipid elevator music.
-
- So long as Bush is president, Clinton will have a psychological
ring through his nose. Via Dubya's indulgence, Bill Clinton continues to
foul the footway through history. If Bush represents some upgrade of the
Washington Mesozoic slime of the past eight years, it is because Clinton
betrayed the entire population while Bush betrayed only the half that voted
for him. That's as good as it's going to get.
-
- By his easy decision to let the Clinton swamp of immorality
molder and contaminate, Bush has forfeited the respect that comes automatically
with the presidency. Yet every failing Bush exhibits is represented as
"being reasonable." Bushies (who also like to be identified as
"First Time Callers") have embraced the term "reasonable"
as their code word for delusional. Bush will do anything to avoid an adversarial
confrontation, so "reasoning" with Bush is like trying to rearrange
foam. However, "being reasonable" gives Bush something to do
when he's not busy "moving on." Trippin'
-
- The late Myron Cohen, dialectician and raconteur, told
of a yenta-person boasting to a friend about a lavish vacation trip from
which she and her husband had taken, saying, "We went all over the
world. Next year we're going someplace else." (I didn't know the Borscht
Belt extended all the way to Jupiter.) Bush considers his recent trip to
Europe a comparable success.
-
- The fact is, an American President driving through the
socialist capitals of Europe with a bumpersticker on his limousine that
reads "Get Global" is about as popular with the commonality as
a cart full of aristocrats getting a flat on the way to the guillotine.
Still, Dubya expects to go down in history as George the Globalizer. His
fellow Globalists rolled out the red carpet for Bush, and we can still
see the crimson stains left on his trousers from walking it on his knees.
-
- Bush believes every despot has a silver lining. His subservience
and flattery of the world's tyrants is the benchmark for his policy of
international global smoothing. Still, all Bush's open mouth kissing with
Putin, that hobgoblin on leave from the KGB, has not made the world one
iota more secure.
-
- The European functionaries George W. Bush courts so ardently
regard him as an affable but inefficient clerk they have chosen to mind
the store while they go about the business (read conspiracy) of globalizing
and reprogramming humanity into cultural cretins. The Russians are now
being as ardently wooed by Bush as the Chinese were by Bill Clinton, who
gave them nuclear secrets in exchange for money to "grease" his
political campaigns, and since, Bubba has moved into a three room apartment
up Jiang Zemin's ass. During their recent tete-a-tete, Russian President
Vladimir Putin found Bush "sentimental" and even considered awarding
him Russia's most trifling medal, The Red Badge of Porridge. Bush reports
to us that he and Anthony Blair are "soul mates." England, in
a state of perverse decline, is in the midst of committing Blair-i-cide,
the desiccation of the nation's testosterone. Blair's emasculating influence
will not leave enough viable sperm in Ol' Blighty to produce a single Harry
Faversham.
-
- Not only immaterial, but also, all this diplomatic spit
swapping is disgusting. If Bush wanted to accomplish something positive
in Europe, he should have gone to Lenin's Tomb and made sure the sonofabitch
is still dead.
-
- In relating to the New World Order, the Bush Administration
is being guided by the pragmatism "like them or not, we have to work
with them." This is the same rationalization used enlisting the services
of the Gestapo, the Waffen SS, and other free lance mass murderers at the
end of WW II. Under Clinton and Bush, we have grown neither more selective
nor more sanitary.
-
- Compassionate Conservatism ñ Pandering Without
Purpose Compassionate conservatism, like gonorrhea, is fun to contract,
but unpleasant to live with. It is most frequently observed in adults with
puzzled expressions and tissue paper spines. Compassion in politicians
is thought to be an aftereffect of a childhood disease - a glandular condition
that fills its host with a throbbing, intractable, and unreasoned sympathy
for traitors, rapists, and people who cross against the lights with their
zippers open. (Does the name William Jefferson Clinton ring a bell?) Others
theorize compassionate conservatism is caused by a sissy virus, which can
infect Presidents with a footstool mindset.
-
- George W. Bush's spaniel-like yipping about compassionate
conservatism has endeared him to no one. Compassion conservatism is not
really anything, but more likely a substitute for something else that might
be even worse. That which George Bush calls compassion, he demonstrates
as submission. Even a graduate of Yale should know those two words are
not interchangeable. Bush went to Yale, which is, in itself, an act of
submission.
-
- It is incredible how Bush can be both compassionate and
comatose at the same time. Apparently they've checked his vital signs,
but not his relevant signs. He is indifferent - make that oblivious - to
most virtues and competencies that made this nation unique. Rather, he
is absorbed in maintaining the viability of the Clinton contamination;
the caramelization of the races, the pansyfication of the military, the
sissification of the Boy Scouts, and the presumption of the United Nations,
which, were Dante still with us, would be a squalid and malodorous rest
stop on the way to the lowest level in the Inferno.
-
- Bubba and Dubya: Ruthless and Toothless
-
- Throughout the 90's, Bill Clinton insulted truth so regularly
that he drove it into hibernation. Yet, the media hung on his words as
though they were carved in stone and delivered from Mount Sinai. It is
unarguable that journalists were and are incapable of seeing Clinton as
the con man he is, despite the fact that, when he smiles he looks like
a crooked roulette wheel.
-
- [Note: Anticipating Clinton, the Ancients gave us the
word "perverto" which translates from the Latin, "He who
exposes his genitals in the Coliseum." Like the Clinton Administration,
looting the public coffers brought down Ancient Rome. Nor was anything
helped by the Roman Senate passing legislation allowing the homeless to
piss in the aqueduct.]
-
- The media's slavish adulation for him notwithstanding,
Clinton made the case that you can be a Rhodes Scholar, even a President,
and not worth sh*t as a human being. Even in the light of that inviting
comparison, George W. Bush has made himself a magnet for detraction among
journalists with a compulsion to vilify.
-
- Bush is the Prince of Platitudes. His prose is sufficiently
barren as to require a scavenger hunt to turn up anything he says that
could be memorable. Still, he can hardly wait to hear what he's going to
say next. When addressing the press, Bush conveys the impression of someone
astride a goat with an albatross hung around his neck. Indeed, at White
House press conferences, 90 percent of the questions are addressed directly
to the albatross that is somewhat more nimble with its ripostes than Bush.
-
- Bush lies curled up against the sweating walls of the
Oval Dungeon, daily trying to screw up his courage to continue to do nothing
about Bill Clinton's treason and rapes despite the uneasy inclination that
the respectable among the electorate he humbugged are getting pissed off.
-
- (Even as this is written, Bush remains in a near catatonic
state as a former Clinton aide continues to destroy incriminating documents
that would have put Bubba in the slammer until the next Ice Age.)
-
- Bush's resolve in the Clinton matter is somewhere between
unmeasured and unmeasureable. Bush does not do the right thing because
he is incapable of it. A case might be made that you can't hate someone
simply because of something of which he is incapable. A better case can
be made - oh, yes you can! In any event, the question of whether or not
he has the willingness to do the right thing is by now immaterial and devoid
of interest.
-
- Bush fears Bill Clinton. He knows Bubba is no garden-variety
miscreant. He is a traitor's traitor, a sex offender's sex offender and
a darling of the mainstream media. (The ladies of the press are always
poised at the inner edge of orgasm, just knowing Bill Clinton is buried
to the hilt in their software.) Hence, Bush feels he must think twice before
unbalancing Clinton's exquisitely poised and fine-tuned corruption. As
it has been ordained there shall be no accountability for Clinton, the
only other alternative is to bash Bush, although at this juncture any disparagement
of him seems increasingly jejune and redundant.
-
- Worse than having become the conservatives' disappointment,
Bush made himself the media's grist. While Bush deploys his artless and
simpleminded bromides, the press portrays Clinton striding the Earth like
a horny colossus, going from sink to sink to finish himself off. They cannot
see him as he is - the political gigolo, the American Remittance Man leeching
off the system, a cancer on the bureaucracy he did so much to promulgate.
He is a two hundred-pound Democrat hookworm, still sucking blood off the
rich and poor without fear or favor. The media marvels at the way Bill
Clinton redefined America. It is now the poor who tell the rich how to
run the country - an America in which the losers tell the winners "where
it's at" and "which way is up." Clinton has excavated a
tunnel at the end of the light.
-
- It has been suggested Bush is held at bay because Clinton
has some discrediting information about him. (If he doesn't the press will
make some up for him.) Every law officer in America has some incriminating
evidence on the Arkansas Hustler, which Bubba considers more advertising
than incriminating - so we can dismiss that as a deterrent. The terminally
undiscouraged still insist Bush is working on Clinton's case behind the
scenes. They are undismayed by the tattoo on Bush's chest that reads Free
Willy! It refers not to Willy the whale but to Willy the Wanton. Ashcrost
and Powerll: Key Non-players
-
- In a Bush cabinet meeting it takes only ten minutes for
a great idea to die of input. Like Republicans in the Senate, they can't
seem to fight the impulse to make a contribution.
-
- It became quickly apparent why Bush labored so hard to
get John Ashcroft approved as Attorney General, and even more apparent
why Senate Democrats relented in their opposition and confirmed him. He
is a reliable extension of the Janet Reno investigative paralysis that
gripped that Bureau of Bumbledom, the Department of Justice ñ and
Director Louis Freeh's FBI, sometimes referred to as Inspector Clouseau's
Closet. Ashcroft is another slipped disk in the spine of the Bush Administration.
Like Reno, he is as selectively unselective about which laws should be
enforced. Because of his torpor, the Second Amendment remains in jeopardy.
Ashcroft needs to be cautioned he took an oath to protect and defend the
U.S. Constitution, not, as his predecessor did, superintend its sabotage.
Whatever Ashcroft's proficiencies are, he keeps them well concealed. In
Silicon Valley, at Reno's departure, they were about to break out the champagne
until it became clear, for the computer industry, Ashcroft is another "blue
screen." (Bush may have to appoint a new cabinet officer called The
Amnesty General just to keep pardoning Roger Clinton.)
-
- By his appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State,
Bush has managed to delegate his inadequacy, although the evidence suggests
Powell is more Khofi Annan's Secretary of State than Bush's. (More of Annan,
the U.N.'s Voodoo General, in due course.)
-
- Powell is the subject of much mis-lavished prestige.
He is regarded in this country as the cream of the black aristocracy, if,
indeed, one exists. So far as is known, it consists of him and somebody
who some months ago changed his name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy. This
set off a celebration of Mardi Gras proportions, which is reported as still
in progress.
-
- Powell is from Jamaica where they drink adult beverages
with foliage draped over the lip of the glass, and pound on empty oil drums
to make music. As Jamaica is an island, any direction you walk ends up
being a day at the beach - hence the State Department's indolent, day-at-the-beach
mindset. Powell's most notable act was his highly public submission to
his wife forbidding him to run for President.
-
- This is the man Bush has chosen to light the fuse in
the Middle East, and fulfill the Scriptures ultimate prophecy for the world
to end in fire (a truer, if somewhat more dramatic, manifestation of global
warming.) Considering his military record (it's rumored Powell once commanded
Jamaica's crack Calypso cavalry) Powell's assessment of the Middle East
shows he can't count noses, measure land or read a map. His idea of negotiating
peace is to give the vastly outnumbered and more vulnerable Israelis a
series of next-to-the last warnings. Whereas Bubba attempted to con Ehud
Barak into selling out Israel's birthright for the sake of the Clinton
legacy, so Powell thinks he can threaten Ariel Sharon into it.
-
- If Powell is not an anti-Semite, than water is not wet.
The only Powell Middle East policy success that can be anticipated from
his machinations is a military alliance of Harlem and the Palestinians.
The Jews in Israel would have gotten a better break from Pharaoh than they
are getting from Powell. It will be remembered, during the Gulf War, Israel
was under missile attack and prevailed upon not to fight back. Powell can't
count on that again. If allowed, Powell will negotiate the Jews into the
kind of peace they got in the Warsaw Ghetto. (It was there that the children
of Israel came to know what G.W. Bush will never learn - forbearance with
tyrants and terrorists is just pissing up a rope. As far as the near future
of U.S. relations vis-a-vis the People's Republic of China, let's just
say Powell is this year's Neville Chamberlain.)
-
- [Note: In international matters, Powell must be taking
his signals from the UN's Khofi Annan, who comports himself like Chaka
Zulu in a blue serge suit. Apparently, Powell has promised Annan American
forces will come to the aid of China in the event it is invaded by Israel.
With Kofi Annan reorganizing the world, one wonders why people of hue can't
find one place in the immediate universe where they won't feel discriminated
against. It may be time for a resolution in the General Assembly that will
address two trouble spots at once, by making Cincinnati one of the Balkans.
With Annan at the head of the UN, it looks like One World is One World
too many.
-
- The Decline and Fall of the 'New Tone'
-
- In yet another exercise in misplaced confidence, Bush
believes he has brought a "new tone" to the Washington's political
destruction derby. Who is he kidding? Before there is a "new tone"
in Washington, there will be a religious revival in The Pit. Bush's "new
tone" is about as close to reality as that "Earl Scheib $39.95"
shpritz was to Porsche factory paint.
-
- Like Captain Queeg with his missing strawberries investigation
aboard the slack ship USS Caine, Bush keeps trying to reenact the scene
of his only wispy triumph as Governor of Texas - getting along with Democrats.
In Texas even the cattle manage to do that.
-
- Bush's most off-putting characteristic is his tolerance
of vilification by the Democrat leadership. His romancing Tom Daschle is
like trying to milk the venom from a rattlesnake, though, God knows, there
isn't a milking stool in Washington low enough. Daschle is making a concerted
effort to keep the Bush Administration from sending religious wildcatters
to Alaska to do some faith-based oil drilling. Tom Daschle criticizing
Bush is like Hannibal Lector complaining about airline food - and Richard
Gephart is like the maitre d' of a termites nest.
-
- Daschle and Gephart rail relentlessly against Bush, although
it is baffling how they can manage to be constantly offended by anyone
as innocuous. The thing that Bush, Daschle and Gephart have found in common
is they don't care that Clinton betrayed our country. That is bipartisanship
in its most contemptible form. Even diehard "Bushies" barely
seem to be holding their dissatisfaction (and their noses) in abeyance.
-
- Bush's natural inclinations have led him to believe the
nation wants a compassionate Nanny-in-Chief. Benignity is no substitute
for resolve in a hostile world. Passivity is no substitute for probity
in a corrupt one. Still, Bush has no trouble with the Washington policy
of "get along - go along" government primarily because he's unsure
which is which. (He has a similar problem with "inertia" and
"peace.")
-
- Contrary to the conventional wisdom, six months is long
enough for any President to do damage. It is more than enough time to demonstrate
affability, if that's your highest priority. There is no obstacle George
W. Bush feels he cannot surmount merely by being a patsy, hardly an admirable
characteristic in a President. Still, Bush's compassion leads him to believe,
to understand the game of badminton you have to see it from the shuttlecock's
point of view. Daschle and Gephart are not moved by Bush's malleable attitude.
It only intensifies their contempt. Bush remains undismayed and un-nettled.
Seemingly, the W. stands for "Who, Me?" It's hard to insult a
guy who is so adept at "moving on."
-
- Bush even allows himself to be disparaged by the likes
of Gray Davis, who looks like something that was squeezed out of a tube.
What Alcibiades designed for Carthage, Davis inflicted on California. Desperate
to remain in office, Davis will ultimately attempt to remedy California's
rolling blackout problems placating the gods by throwing UCLA coeds into
a volcano, and blame the need for human sacrifice on the Republicans.
-
- We do not understand Daschle and Gephart's displeasure
with Bush, whose idea of governance is to accept every plan the Democrats
propose - and add water. It is a form of high colonnic socialism. America
needs solutions. Bush provides dilutions. Socialism is nature's way of
filtering out the elements that determine the survival of the fittest.
It filtrated the Soviet Union off the map. Oblivious to this reality, both
parties are in a competition to underwrite idleness, and create in America
a subculture of government-sustained loiterers.
-
- Bush has made it unequivocal that he feels no sense of
obligation to those whose support elevated him to the Presidency. Instead,
he occupies himself with embellishing Clinton's leftover schemes for shoveling
America's largesse into the inner cities and negotiating compacts underwriting
the despotic regime of the Shaman of Ooga Booga Land. Like Rumpelstilzchen,
Bush is busy spinning loans into grants and following in the Democrat tradition
of giving the working people of this nation a financial hernia.
-
- Bush took a powder on his conservative base, deserting
them in order to play Perle Mesta to Daschle and Kennedy and the rest of
the Commiecrats. Under Bush, the "Republican Party faithful"
is like a B-17 about to bomb Dusseldorf, that just found out their Captain
has bailed out on the crew. Having abandoned the silent majority, Bush
now must count on the "iffy" support from the un-polled majority.
-
- Bush needs to be advised Americans do not want the Marine
Guard at the White House to admonish visiting Congressional Democrats,
"Don't forget to wipe your feet on the President before you leave."
If Hollywood ever makes a move about Bush, it will likely be called "Mister
'Kick Me' Goes to Washington."
-
- *** Norman Liebmann is a former television writer [Johnny
Carson; Dean Martin; wrote and produced "Chico and the Man" and
created the characters for "The Munsters" (who are all named
after his relatives)] and a brilliant and insightful columnist/humorist.
Please visit his Web site, Firehat, a treasure trove of Clinton- and media-bashing.
E-mail: firehat@gte.net
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