CLUELESS

I accept that this country will always be a place of have and have nots. It was set up that way. It is the nature of capitalism -- there's a great deal of pie to be had but it is not unlimited, and some people for a variety of reasons will go without pie and sometimes dinner, lunch, and breakfast as well. It is not fair, and truthfully is sometimes deserved, but in general it seems like the pie folks could be doing a bit more to at least save some delicious crust crumbles for the non-pie folks. At the very very very least, have some clue to how other people are living and feeling day-to-day.

As I was eating my breakfast this morning, being all have-y and such, I was reading over the Best of 2008 issue of People Magazine (12/29/08). It is becoming increasingly meaningless to me, as I watch virtually no TV or movies now, but I do think Patrick Dempsey is attractive. Anyway, in this was an interview with George and Laura Bush and their two daughters. When I read this, I stopped eating and just sat and stared in disbelief:

PEOPLE: Which moments from the last eight years do you revisit most often?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I definitely think about the families I've met of the fallen soldiers -- about the compassion, love and determination of the families, to make sure that the Commander-In-Chief hears their stories and knows their pride. I think about throwing out that pitch at the World Series on (October 30) 2001. My heart was racing when I got to the mound. Didn't want to bounce it. Didn't want to let the fans down. My heart was pumping so hard, I wasn't sure if I could lift my arm. I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.

CURIOUSLY ENOUGH????????? I'D SAY.

My god. Over eight years, THIS? This is what George Bush thinks about over everything he has seen and done, a PRESIDENT who has been all over the world, in office during 9-11, during wartime, Hurricane Katrina, a worldwide economic collapse? I sat there and felt my blood boil. George W. Bush is an entitled, vacuous, clueless boor.

Look at the way he structures what he says in the beginning part of his response. His politician reptile brain knows he has to first throw a bone to the devastated folks who have lost a son or daughter to a useless oil war, but it is so weak and shows him as an astoundingly self-centered shallow creep. Some Commander-In-Chief. Yeah, buddy, talk about all the families who want an ANSWER about why their children died, one you can never truthfully provide to them as you return to your cushy life in Texas, forget them and their questions and their faces. Nothing truly changes for the exceptionally privileged, it seems; even in the Great Depression or WWII, there were always people who had so much pie, they just rode it out. Yes, George, you will always be OK, while some poor dumb kid who got his legs blown off sits rotting in an underfunded VA hospital because he wasn't given adequate protection gear in Iraq. Think more about all that wonderful PRIDE the families have in their DEAD. Make that work for you.

The second comment is sheer comic absurdity. Out of ALL THE THINGS faced by a President in very trying times, this guy actually ADMITS that the most anxiety he ever felt in all that time was THROWING A BASEBALL, a month after one of the most horrific tragedies witnessed by the world. He's replaying THAT in his mind, thinking it MEANT SOMETHING to ANYONE?? It made me want to pound my head on the table in frustration, but he just isn't worth it.

PEOPLE: Mrs. Bush, are you hurt more by public opinion of your husband than he is?

MRS. BUSH: Probably. But both of us have a very strong sense of who we are. In a lot of ways, that's just chatter out there.

Um...Laura? No, it isn't:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/26/bush.poll/index.html

Poll: 75% glad Bush is done

* Story Highlights
* CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll finds broad dissatisfaction with Bush presidency
* 31 percent say Bush has been good president; 40 percent call his presidency "poor"
* 28 percent rate Bush the worst president ever
* 82 percent say he did not unite the country; 17 percent say he did

It isn't "chatter." Face it, it is consensus. You married a creepy nasty clueless rich dope, and history will find little, if anything, to celebrate about him. He made the world worse for his efforts, or lack of them. But don't think about that. You know who you are, after all, stick with that.

It is not any crime to be wealthy; I don't give a damn whether people have money or don't and if you do, good for ya and enjoy the yummy pie. But to use your wealth and power and influence for your own agenda, your own families' selfish wants, and to utterly ignore the rest of the PLANET and what you have done, is obscene. The Bush family will retreat back to Texas, surround themselves with sycophants for the rest of their days, and everyone else is left to somehow try to pick up their very, very substantial mess.

It would be some kind of karma if Dubya caught a baseball to the forehead during a pleasant family game on the lawn someday, and it knocked him out cold.