As the parade of long faces marches out of office, George W. Bush has been in meetings with his old pal Karl Rove and his attorney, Karen Hughes. Are they working on the financial mess we're all in? Or perhaps tidying up the Iraq dossier for the incoming Obama administration?
No, they're doing what they've always done, which is to micromanage the 43rd president's "legacy". Such image-burnishing, while hardly surprising, would be quite simple for most of us to handle. Look at last month's employment report, in which over half a million Americans lost their jobs. Laminate it. Put it on an easel. Shrug your shoulders; it's a legacy.
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The price of oil has come down by roughly 70 percent from last summer's peak. Naturally, OPEC has squawked about this, saying that $75 a barrel would be more appropriate. Even so, their production cuts don't stand a chance versus penny-pinching American consumers, as AAA predicts that prices will continue to fall for the rest of the year.
All of this has been accomplished without any further domestic production, which was all we heard about during the election. So much for "Drill, Baby, Drill", which sounded dumb then, and sounds even dumber now - which probably has nothing to do with conservative broadcast outfits like Westwood One and Citadel losing almost all of their stock value this past month.
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Note to Rolling Stone: Size matters.
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India and Pakistan are at each other's throats again. Why the Bush administration allied itself with Pakistan in the war on terror remains unclear. India is much closer to a democratic government than their angry neighbor, and doesn't have an intelligence service that breaks bread with the likes of the Taliban and al-Qaida.
But then, how else could the neo-cons (and their harem of defense contractors) guarantee that great and lofty goal of theirs: War without end?
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What's interesting about the Big Three's request for so-called bridge loans and other forms of economic assistance is the fact that their CEOs are being made to jump through Congressional hoops. Their 33-page "business plan" was mocked by all - but that's still 30 pages longer than Hank Paulson's business plan was, and we gave Wall Street $700 billion (roughly 20 times more than Detroit's request) without blinking. Wake me up when it makes sense.
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Whenever I am vexed by a particular problem, I ask myself, WWOD (What Would Obama Do)?
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Getting back to that legacy thing...
As unearthed memoes have revealed, the White House was involved in making decisions with regard to torture. In fact, the administration used the SERE manual (used by the military to instruct its personnel on torture resistance) to come up with the most effective methods. So when they ask What Would Jesus Do, they're only interested in finding out so that they can do the exact opposite thing.
In that regard, Bush has so much blood on his hands that he makes Idi Amin look like Uncle Remus, and should be treated accordingly by history and the law. Let him live out his days as Dada did - sipping drinks on a stipend in Saudi Arabia, out of reach of the international courts.
pH 12.o6.o8
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