Category: The Last Word

the rant By Tim Sampson

But what did I see? A report about whose Apprentice is doing better: the Donald’s or Martha’s. It was very in-depth and it was almost as bad as the news about Nick and Jessica’s possible breakup, which I also heard about. The problem is that I don’t know who Nick and Jessica are or what they have contributed to society to warrant the media attention. I swear, I really don’t know who they are. I was all up on that breakup of what’s-his-name who was in the Trojan War movie and his wife who was on Friends, although I really can’t remember their names. Part of it is senility. This is coming from a person who sat across the booth from someone at a bar several years ago trying to remember who he was, only to finally realize he was my stepbrother at the time. I say I’m awful only because I let this crap actually enter my psyche. Take CNN’s Nancy Grace. I actually found myself offering an opinion about her to someone today. Granted, the opinion was that she is uncannily scary and more than likely was originally a man, but the mere fact that I had an opinion about her of any kind totally freaked me out. The only solace I could find was that I was quoted in a Japanese newspaper article the other day and hoped against hope that a paper in North Korea might pick it up and run it. Thankfully, it was not political in nature, so big men in sunglasses and black suits won’t likely come knocking at my door. Wait a minute. What am I saying? I’d pay to have big men dressed in black and wearing sunglasses come knocking at my door. So I flip away from Nancy Grace, by this time thinking I need to live in Tibet to wean myself from watching television, and I run across a story on teens having oral sex. Seems they take this very casually these days and do it in lieu of intercourse because they’ve been told over and over and over that intercourse is wrong, wrong, wrong. Sure, it’s a problem. But that report was followed by one with the media falling all over themselves about having the first interview with Tom Cruise’s “girlfriend” since she and Tom announced that she’s pregnant. Yep, knocked-up while dating. Isn’t this sort of a double standard? (Not to mention a total freak show?) I also read somewhere that the girlfriend, whoever she is, might have to go through the Church of Scientology’s optional “silent birth” process, in which words are kept to an absolute minimum because babies retain verbal content during birth that can lead to irrational fears later in life. Whoa. Let’s just hope the little fetus wasn’t able to hear them when it was being conceived. I can just hear Tom now, screaming, “Ewwwwe. Gross. Why do I keep having to do this?! Why couldn’t we just adopt like I did with Nicole?!” No telling what kind of fears that would instill in a newborn. Let’s just hope the girlfriend doesn’t have postpartum depression or she’s up you-know-what creek without a paddle (or any drugs or counseling, because Tom knows everything there is to know about that kind of thing and, in fact, has studied the entire science of psychiatry). But it’s all okay. I flipped to another channel where the description of the show was, “A friend is killed during a series of high-profile robberies by men in clown masks.” I knew then that there was still hope.

I really have tried. I really have. I have tried to change my broken record on George W. Bush. People have written letters to the editor telling me to chill out about him. Friends have told me to find new material. And the Lord only knows how much I agree with them. I am sick of it myself. But I have had an extremely strange revelation about him. I never thought in a million years that I would think this, but, to tell you the truth, my heart kind of goes out to him right now. I would actually like to sort of, almost, pat him on the shoulder and tell him it’s all somehow going to be okay. It must be the Buddhist in me. Or something. Whatever it is that makes me believe that everything happens for a reason. At this moment, I really do feel sorry for him in a strange way. He has a job he was not really elected to do. It was handed down to him. All of a sudden, there he was: president of the United States. And that is a pretty damn big and stressful job. I wouldn’t want it. But he took it. And he was probably pretty psyched at first. Had a big office in the White House. His old frat brothers were probably calling him like crazy to congratulate him. Laura was probably thinking she could finally get out of Texas and get some decent clothes. His daughters were probably thinking they could finally get away with whatever they wanted to because their father was now the president. Who wouldn’t eat that up? I really don’t blame any of them. Not even George. After all, he had recently been the butt of a million jokes for trading Sammy Sosa from the Texas Rangers baseball team he owned. Okay, so that’s a low blow and tiresome to boot. Back to his years as president: It would have been frightening for anyone who was president when 9/11 happened. It was bad. Really bad. And what could be worse than learning about it while you’re reading a book about a pet goat to some elementary school students? I don’t have any qualms about the clueless look on his face and his continuing to read the story to the kids for a good while. If I had been in his position, I would have been really freaked out, too. I wouldn’t have wanted to scare the kids by jumping up and running out of the room. I really wouldn’t have. I probably would have done the same thing. I can’t even drive over the bridge to Harbor Town without having a fear-of-heights panic attack that renders me unable to function. Some time ago, I had a conversation with a good friend about someone at his firm who had been given a job about which he knew little to nothing. I kept saying that I felt sorry for the guy because he was just thrown into a position for which he was totally unqualified. My friend did not feel sorry for the guy, and his reason was that the guy shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place if he knew up front that he was not qualified for it. He had a good point. But I still feel a bit sorry for Bush. The last I read, he was going to veto a Senate vote that outlawed the torturing of prisoners captured by the United States in the “war on terror.” This, of course, breaks the rules of the Geneva Convention. Bush made a speech last week that included the comment, “There’s always a temptation in the middle of a long struggle to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder.” I thought maybe he was planning another much-needed vacation, but I suppose he actually was talking about not bringing the troops home from Iraq anytime soon. And in the same speech he said that “the militants believe that controlling one country [Iraq] will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.” Wow. Spain to Indonesia? A radical empire? That’s pretty big stuff. I wonder why over the past couple of years Iraq has become such a place.

With the nimble-minded literacy of a drunken frat boy calling the girl he just date-raped a whore, conservative wit Ned Rice has often praised Tom DeLay’s audacity and sternly cautioned “the Hammer’s” critics not to make fun of the recently indicted congressman’s long career as a professional bug-zapper. “If you’re going to hang a label on Congressman DeLay … you could do a lot better than ‘the Exterminator,'” Rice wrote, thereby identifying those who mock DeLay’s unwavering commitment to a termite-free Texas as latte-drinking liberals who look down their snotty noses at the noble dirt on the sacred, calloused hands of the American clock-puncher.

“It sounds like ‘the Terminator,'” Rice added, “and [Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger] is really popular.” Of course, Schwarzenegger’s high poll numbers were a short-lived phenomenon, buttressed by the widely held belief that the governator’s most conservative urges would certainly be buffered by the availability (or not) of wife Maria Shriver’s liberal poontang. But in recent months the Kindergarden Candidate’s job-approval numbers have tanked like HCA stock, and Rice’s conflation of ethically challenged prison-bait like DeLay with Conan, the invulnerable Martian robot who gave Satan such an ass-whoopin’ in the unwatchable End of Days, has been squashed flatter than a Dallas doodlebug under the star-spangled boot of justice.

It’s a liberal frame-up job, I hear some of you saying. How can a God-fearing man like Tom DeLay with the unwavering blessings of such theologically astute organizations as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the Traditional Values Coalition be anything less than a Christian martyr? The point is well taken: Whenever I think of the Bug-Man’s documented fund-raising miracles and his ability to take free swanky golf vacations to Scotland, I’m reminded of Christ’s famous encounter with the money-changers. Like DeLay, Jesus sat down with the temple’s highest rollers and laid out a divine protection racket, offering tax breaks, criminalized abortion, a sword-for-plowshares exchange program, and an end to the scourge of loving homosexual relationships in exchange for a small donation to the war chest. Whenever I hear the inspirational tale of how St. Tom took sizable campaign contributions from Saipan and then blocked a congressional investigation into the Micronesian island’s hellish sweatshops, it calls to mind Jesus’ powerful declaration that on earth — as in the kingdom of heaven — the mighty will be given dominion over the weak (who, if left unexploited, would probably die from sheer laziness). But the clearest proof that DeLay is indeed a man touched by God, and not just another slick song-and-dance man riding high on the D.C. snake-oil circuit, is the brave and selfless work he did to give a voice to the voiceless and to bring a Bill Frist-certified gleam of hope back into the eyes of a terminally brain-dead woman. Like the Big Bird Watcher in the Sky, Tom DeLay’s generous, benevolent, all-seeing eye is truly on the sparrow.

But what about Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle? Isn’t he just a liberal partisan out to destroy the reputation of an innocent lawmaker? That’s certainly the story the DeLay camp is pushing. The fact is, Earle didn’t issue the indictment against DeLay; that service was rendered by a grand jury led by an ex sheriff’s deputy who openly admires DeLay. But in his 24 years as a public servant Earle has prosecuted four times as many Democrats as Republicans, so the man clearly has some sort of partisan agenda.

Ned Rice just doesn’t get it. DeLay’s critics aren’t speaking pejoratively when they call him the Exterminator; they are speaking literally. Before he was the king of K Street, DeLay was in the business of using deadly chemicals to keep East Texas free of rats and roaches. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that, like Saddam Hussein, the infamous Butcher of Baghdad, DeLay gassed his own people.

Oh, dear. I am going to have to address this. Immediately. Someone wrote to someone at this paper with the accusation that someone on this staff may have tried to “speak to me” about my criticism of the Bush family in order to hush me up because I haven’t mentioned in a while that Barbara Bush’s face is still on the dollar bill. Whoever you are, are you nuts? You think I am giving them a break? But aren’t you fabulous, thinking that I need to dig in even more on the great unwashed Texas political family? In fact, I was just looking for my atlas to see how close Crawford, Texas, is to the coast. Not that I want Hurricane Rita to actually hit the most visited vacation ranch in the nation, but it could be a good place to send thousands of people who have been forced to evacuate. They could while away the days riding around on mountain bikes and posing with the commander in chief and even practice walking the way he does, always looking like he is racing to the nearest bathroom because he’s about to have an accident. Have you ever noticed that? It’s like a sack of Krystals has just hit him all at once. Evacuees could be put to work clearing brush and mending fences. And Barbara Bush would at least let them all eat cake. But enough about those people. It takes all kinds to make up the world and if there were no bad we would never really be able to fully experience the good. And there is plenty of good out there in the world. In fact, I just saw something jaw-droppingly amazing on television. It was an advertisement for an insurance company, whose services I have paid for before and whose name will go unmentioned. The commercial’s scenario (which the graphics claimed is a “true story”) was that a hurricane had hit and a man who had diabetes and needed to keep his insulin chilled was greeted at the door of his beautiful home by one of the insurance company’s agents, who, in the aftermath of the hurricane, had hand-delivered hard-to-find ice to help keep his medicine chilled. Now, isn’t that sweet? And maybe it did happen. And no, the company is not running this commercial to try to sell you insurance. They are just pointing out what a good corporate American firm they are. Do these vultures think you are really going to buy this mess — not to mention their insurance policies? Does it not seem just a tad tasteless to be running these commercials right now? Talk about trying to take advantage of people’s fears. I guess “Halliburton Is Happy To Rebuild!” spots are next. Wonder how much they paid to run that spot on national television (on CNN, no less, during the coverage of Katrina’s aftermath), money that could have been donated to the Red Cross. But I guess I’m just being grumpy. And there really are a lot of good people out there doing a lot of good things right now, in the middle of what seems to be Armageddon. Like Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas of Galveston telling people to take their pets with them and telling bus drivers evacuating the residents to take their families along and staying there herself with the police department to take care of her city and those who couldn’t manage to get out. Love her. And, as I have mentioned on this page before, the people of Memphis really deserve a big pat on the back. I’ve met several people displaced here from New Orleans and they just rave about the hospitality. Sure, there’s the element that preys on their vulnerability, and they will get what they have coming to them before it’s all over, but by and large the people of Memphis have opened their arms and wallets to do whatever can be done to help. Which is why I think we should secede from the rest of the country. We could be a city that refuses to pay income taxes that are used for war. We could allow gay marriage and legalize marijuana and outlaw SUVs except for families with two or more children. We could be the Amsterdam of the United States and actually be civilized. We could have our own Supreme Court. We could require a really high cover charge for anyone who wants to come into our utopia and have plenty of revenue for such things as free health care, although we already have something similar to that on a limited scale with the incredible Church Health Center. Think about it. The Emerald City on the Mississippi. It’s never to late to dream.

Wandering through my den the other night
after smoking five bricks of hashish, shooting up a few hits of smack, taking a couple of tabs of purple microdot (acid, for those of you who didn’t attend Wooddale High School in the 1970s), drinking a liter or two of vodka, snorting 14 or 15 lines of crystal meth, and taking a few roofies to take the edge off it all, I saw the Bush Crime President on television and thought I heard him say something that sounded really strange. It sounded sort of like “I take responsibility,” but I figured it was just the haze I was in. I also lunged out of the room when I saw him on the screen, horrified as always by the site of his face, and figured that the action might have impaired my ability to hear clearly. Then, lo and behold, I ran across a column in The Commercial Appeal by the much-loved Wendi Thomas, and she confirmed what I thought I had heard. He said it. Perhaps for the first time in his presidency? He was talking about the botch job his cronies did on the Hurricane Katrina disaster rescue. And how could he not say it? Or, probably more accurately, how could his spin doctors not tell him to say it? With his approval ratings at an all-time low and no way out of this one, thanks — for once — to the mainstream media, he couldn’t very well go back to his “What didn’t go right?” attitude. And I’m sure a lot of people are praising his honesty at this point. Garbage. Baloney. Bunk. It was — as he always is — too little, too late. It was like the guy who fathers three or four children patting himself on the back for paying his child support. Like the thief on trial admitting to his crime. It’s not exactly heroic. But he did say something truly wonderful. When asked about his opinion on Roe v. Wade, he said, “I don’t care how those people get out of New Orleans!” Okay, okay. I just threw that one in for the two or three of you out there who haven’t already received that joke via the mass e-mail chain that constantly goes around the world. I don’t know who came up with it, but it’s one of those times where I slap myself on the head (I do that a lot), thinking why, oh why, could I not have come up with that? But then that would have made me a finger-pointer. A blame-gamer. Just like my disdain for the Iraq war debacle makes me unpatriotic, and by writing such an opinion, I am aiding the enemy and helping put United States soldiers in harm’s way more than they already are. I’ve really had about all I can take of that Pillsbury Dough Boy Scott McLellan mouthing his broken record and about not having time to play the blame game and getting on with the work that has to be done in New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast. Do we think anyone in this administration is going to be spending any time rowing or wading through the flood in New Orleans to help out (like that fabulous, fabulous Anderson Cooper)? I guess I am just a mean old jaded person and not as nice as Fidel Castro, who wouldn’t comment on the U.S. government turning down his offer to send 1,100 doctors to New Orleans, not wanting to kick an administration while it’s down. I can sympathize with that. I guess that makes me a, uh, well, Castro sympathizer! But that Mr. Kook (real name) who wrote the letter to the Flyer accusing me of that a few weeks ago has already dropped that dime on me. And why did we not accept Castro’s offer for medical assistance? Would that not have been a toe in the water for establishing goodwill between the United States and Cuba? Or do we just not care about the people in Cuba? Or was it that we didn’t care that much about the people in New Orleans? Someone needs to take responsibility for that and tell us why. Maybe Anderson Cooper will look into it and let us know. I’m sure we’ll never find out otherwise.

If anyone out there knows where they are staying and how to contact them, please contact the Flyer and leave a message for me. And if you’re reading this, Sherrye and Kevin: I am so happy you got out in time and are okay.

Secondly, whew. I need to lighten up. I guess because I spent my summers growing up in New Orleans and moved there for a while as an adult and love the city so much, I’ve taken this catastrophe on like it was a personal attack. Not the hurricane itself, but the shenanigans that have gone on since — Bush playing that guitar at that fund-raiser; Condoleezza Rice hopping about New York taking in plays and shoe-shopping; Barbara Bush saying that people crammed into the Astrodome were underprivileged anyway so the situation they’re in now seems to be working out just fine for them; Rumsfeld taking in a baseball game and being shown smiling in the stands on live television; Laura Bush referring to the storm as “Hurricane Corina”; Michael Chertoff referring to the disaster area as “the city of Louisiana”; Bush asking Nancy Pelosi about the response, “What didn’t go right?”; Bush viewing the destruction and lamenting about Trent Lott losing one of his vacation homes; 1,000 emergency-trained firefighters sent to Georgia thinking they were going on rescue missions but learning that their only job would be to hand out pamphlets with the FEMA phone number on it to people who have no way to make a telephone call (and only 50 of them were deployed to the hard-hit area — to pose for the camera with Bush); FEMA director Michael Brown not knowing about the chaos at the New Orleans Convention Center until he saw it while watching television; Bush telling “Brownie” he was doing a “heck of a job”; finding out that Bush wouldn’t fund the needed construction to rebuild the “levees” prior to the hurricane because he thought they were Jews (okay, maybe I heard that on talk radio) … I could go on and on. But I won’t. It’s all been said. I just move from the television to the computer and back to the television and I know a lot of the worst is yet to come, but I think I need to take just a little break from my obsessive hand wringing and waiting for the water to recede and waiting for my hero Anderson Cooper to jump into the filthy water again to try to give some clean water to a stranded dog. Nothing’s going to be done about this botch-job, and no one is going to be held accountable, and those who didn’t do their jobs will likely get raises, and Bush will continue giving his pals jobs they don’t know how to handle, and Bill Frist will keep posing for photo ops with his stethoscope, and all, except for the people of New Orleans and the city itself, will eventually get back to business as usual.

So I’m trying to lighten up. A friend of mine told me the other day, “I get it. You hate George Bush. Why don’t you write about something else?” And she’s right. The point has been made. And while I realize that it’s un- likely that W’s image is going to land on a bill or coin or stamp anytime soon, someone has come up with an idea to commemorate him: George Bush toilet paper, with his image on each little square. A friend of mine actually has some. But I think it could be expanded into a series. The college-age W toilet paper: It comes rolled up so tight you can snort cocaine with it! The National Guard-era W toilet paper: You can find it anywhere except in Alabama. The 9/11 W toilet paper: perfect for relaxing on the throne reading about a pet goat! The Iraq war W toilet paper: after you flush, a battery-operated speaker that comes with it proclaims, “Mission accomplished!”

Because of deadlines, I am having to write this a few days in advance of when this paper hits the streets and my sincere hope and prayer is that a miracle happens and no more people die in New Orleans. But at this writing, five days after we’ve been in the midst of the absolute worst disaster in American history, I have to ask: Mr. President, where in the hell are you and where in the hell is your precious military? We know you sacrificed a few days of your month-long vacation to “monitor” the situation in New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast from Washington and to give up a little of your precious time to announce from your rose garden that people need to be “patient,” but why have you not given New Orleans one-millionth of the resources you have committed to attacking a country that never did anything to ours? How can you explain the fact that we have thousands of helicopters and airplanes and tanks and buses and trucks and everything else it takes to fight a war that has absolutely nothing to do with us, while elderly people, babies, sick people, and everyday citizens of a major American city are dying by the thousands from starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion, and just plain stress because they have been left there to die? If we are so equipped to fight the insurgents you’ve created in Iraq, why can’t you send in enough troops to New Orleans to take care of the handful of people who have lost it and have become violent? I know you don’t read newspapers and have to be “briefed” by your staff on such matters, but it is five days after the hurricane and you are just now touring the region today. You have just now promised from your office in Washington to offer the largest federal relief effort in American history. Do you know your FEMA team learned about the crisis at the New Orleans Convention Center after CNN had been there reporting on it and showing images of it for more than a day? Reporters can be on the spot at the Convention Center and doctors can get in to donate their services, and you can’t figure out a way to send in enough drinking water to help prevent pregnant mothers from literally dying from thirst? Yes, it’s a very difficult situation, and no, you alone can’t do everything it takes to save every life in New Orleans. But where are you? You have unlimited billions of dollars to spend in your trumped up “war on terror,” but you have to ask your daddy and Bill Clinton to raise money needed to help people in your own backyard? With all due respect, Mr. President, while you were on vacation, the damage was already done, and you are just a little bit late. Or were you just waiting to see if the region’s oil supply would be endangered? You should have thought of all this before you took the federal help away from New Orleans in 2003 — when they were in the process of trying to reinforce their levees in case something like this happened — and spent it in Iraq. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m an angry left-wing liberal Bush-basher. I guess that’s what comes with seeing dead babies with flies all over them in a city five hours from my hometown. A hometown, I might add, that has come to the frontlines of this crisis in a way that is so tireless and generous that it makes me cry to think about it. The members of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau should be hailed as some of the finest heroes in the country for the around-the-clock work they are doing to help the displaced hurricane evacuees find comfort, medical help, and the basic necessities of life. The Memphis City Schools system, with all of the problems it already faces, has offered to shelter as many people as possible in vacant schools and educate every affected child. The Beale Street Merchants Association has created hundreds of jobs for displaced New Orleans musicians and restaurant workers and is feeding them lunch every day in Handy Park. Waiters in clubs and restaurants along the street have given up shifts so that the evacuees can wait tables to earn enough money to get by until they somehow get their lives back together. Churches have opened their doors. Area museums and attractions have offered free admission to give the evacuees the chance to have at least a respite from their despair. I am sad and I am angry and I have friends and family in New Orleans and I don’t have any idea if they are dead or alive. I feel immensely proud, however, to say that I am from Memphis. I apologize for sounding divisive at a time when we all need to pull together. I did just hear that Congress approved $10.5 billion for the efforts to save some of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina. In the meantime, I am going to rip the word “economy” out of my dictionary. It just doesn’t really matter anymore. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I have baby food to deliver to MIFA.

You know, you almost have to love Pat Robertson, bless his heart. He’s a man who says what’s on his little mind. Like claiming hurricanes will hit Orlando, Florida, because

Disney World hosted a “gay day.” Or claiming equal rights for women would turn them all into home-wrecking

lesbians. And claiming that equal rights for women — and homosexuals — were the cause of 9/11. You just have to love him. I’ve looked at many so-called left-wing Internet sites to find out the general reaction to his suggesting that covert agents of the United States government murder the president of Venezuela — that’s the way to bring down gas prices! — and it’s all pretty funny. Letter-writing campaigns calling for his evangelical television show to be yanked from the airwaves! Angry groups denouncing him as a threat to the good old U. S. of A! People seriously worried about why the Bush administration isn’t jumping up and down and screaming, “We are not like him! We don’t believe in murder!” There might be a good reason they aren’t jumping up and down to distance themselves: They probably agree with him, and they probably are plotting to kill or overthrow Chavez. After all, he is trying to help the poor in his country, and they love him. I’m quite certain there are thousands of PR spinners out there spinning around in anti-gravity circles and crapping their pants with brilliant ideas about what all camps should do over this snafu. I say, big woo-hoo. I just wonder how Pat is doing today. And I wonder what next he might say! Okay. I’ll stop. Look, we have bigger things about which to worry, what with a president of our own with an IQ of a lentil. Still, my favorite thing so far is Pat’s apology. Even though he couldn’t come up with an alternative meaning of assassination, he played the only card he could and said that when he suggested that the U.S. government could just “take [Chavez] out,” he could have meant that instead of murdering him in cold blood as he previously encouraged us to do, agents of our government could have merely “kidnapped” him. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. I love this man. So much so that I did some research, and I found out why Robertson hates Chavez so much. See, they used to date. Each other, that is. This is no lie. They had a house in the Hamptons and a huge collection of Sylvester records to which they regularly danced before going out on the town and day-tripping to Fire Island. Well, one day Hugo came home to their tony little cottage and asked Pat to buy something that would take him from 0 to 200 in five seconds, and Pat bought him a pair of scales! Okay, so those are all lies. I apologize. Smack makes me say weird things and taints the way I see things. (Does anyone know of a psychiatrist who won’t try to heal me by asking me to say five positive things about myself in the mirror in some kind of creepy self-affirmation exercise?) But Pat’s apology was priceless. It was almost as good as something I read the other day in a full-page Commercial Appeal advertisement from some organization formed to save the historic name of our beloved Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. This isn’t an actual quote, but one of the reasons the people were asking readers to send them money — allegedly to save the park’s name — was that Forrest wasn’t such a bad guy after all because he took 44 of his slaves with him into battle! I’ve never spit out an Amoco-bought sandwich in laughter that fast in my life. Yes, goooood Nathan Bedford Forrest. That was so kind of you. After inspecting their teeth and purchasing those human beings, he was good enough to them to take them into a war he was fighting to maintain the right to keep owning them. At least the ones he wasn’t raping and impregnating. Hell yeah, leave his statue there. Not many people can pull off something like that. Except for maybe Pat Robertson, my new hero. Now that he’s suggested killing Chavez and Chavez is thinking of ways to sell oil at a reduced price directly to poor communities in the United States and cut everyone else here off, maybe he’ll lay a few barrels on Memphis and we can just burn the statue down. Oh, don’t frown. I’m just clowning around. I’m just freaked out that there are bodies down there in the park in the ground. How creepy is that? Almost as creepy as Pat!

White House staffers have been revealing a

“genuine sadness” around the West Wing these days. One report

said that President Bush was concerned that his presidency is being
compared

to Herbert Hoover’s. But that would be an insult to Hoover. His
morale was reportedly so low, he practically

gushed when honored by the Air and Space Museum that everything was
“fabulous,” from the brave troops to his fabulous Dad. Sarah Palin went
out of her way in a Miami speech to thank Bush for keeping the nation
safe from another air attack of hijacked domestic carriers, while our
currency sank like the Lusitania. An anonymous assistant
explained that Bush is so distraught because his administration had
planned to spend his last few months in office doing “legacy stuff,”
but the sudden economic collapse prevented them from accomplishing
much. Let me clue the Bush folks in: The economic collapse is
his legacy.

While all crashes down around him, Bush still persists in believing
that a deregulated free market is the soundest regulator of itself
— a true believer until the bitter end, just like Herbert Hoover.
No, Bush’s “legacy stuff” consists of criminal capitalism masked by a
populist concern for small “bidness,” the war in Iraq, torture,
rendition, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Blackwater mercenaries, illegal
wire-tapping, the corruption of the Justice Department, and the No-Fly
List. And who doesn’t know in their heart that it was Dick Cheney who
ordered the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame to get even with his
critics and that it will only be a matter of days before the criminal
Bush gives a full pardon to the patsy Scooter Libby? And now we’re
treated to a battery of headlines in the conservative media about how
horribly Bush has been treated by all parties in the recently concluded
election.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for Bush because his name was
exceeded in toxicity only by Cheney’s? No one wanted to be seen with
him, including McCain. Bush was the bubonic plague, the kiss of death,
and the evil eye for any Republican who dared utter his name. All he
has attempted is in tatters, especially the Constitution, so it will
take the new president at least half his first term to unravel Bush’s
political dingleberries. But now he’s feeling lonely because he’s no
longer popular. This from a man who came to the office with no vision,
only a cult of personality that carried him along like a leaf in a
gutter after a rain storm. The Bush presidency was the biggest farce
foisted upon a gullible populace since Milli Vanilli, and the full
effects are yet to be felt by all those hapless loyalists who have lost
their jobs and don’t even know it yet.

Possibly Bush’s greatest accomplishment, aside from re-starting the
Cold War, is his escaping impeachment. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi
announced in 2006 that “impeachment was off the table,” I remembered
Tip O’Neill, who said in reference to Nixon in similar circumstances
that “the best interests of the country must come first.” Nancy, you’re
no Tip. And Bush’s most egregious and visible violation is that he
betrayed his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution and
he knows it. That’s why he’s working double time to write immunity for
himself and his cronies into law before he leaves office. Bush
envisions a leisurely life, commuting between a home in Dallas and the
ranch, when he’s not off on a lucrative speaking tour to “fill the old
coffers.” But I envision Bush answering summons after summons without
protection from a Republican president, in the way Gerald Ford
protected Richard Nixon. This is a man with questions to answer, and
it’s best that they be asked under oath.

George W. Bush is the Frankenstein monster created by the unholy
alliance of fundamentalist Christianity and a godless corporatocracy.
He was a Pied Piper, born-again evangelical, ruthless free-market
capitalist who granted access to untold riches for the already rich
while preaching that “government is the problem” to the social
conservatives. Even now, while jobless claims are skyrocketing, retail
sales are plummeting, and the GOP coalition has been shattered, a Pew
Poll found that 60 percent of people who identified themselves as
Republicans believe the party should go in a more conservative
direction. Nixon’s 1968 “Southern strategy” has come to its fruition,
the GOP has become the party of the Old South.

Mine is not the only family who has decided to cut back this
Christmas. Instead of lavishing presents on everyone, we’re going to
draw names and buy one nice present each. Other families are teetering
on the verge of bankruptcy or foreclosure this holiday season, with
nothing to hope for but a new administration. So when Bill O’Reilly
revs up his annual “War on Christmas,” he need look no further than the
White House to see the Grinch.