Rich White Trash

I feel compelled to replicate the entirety of this great post by TRex at FDL. First of all, there's this thing about bush's reputed reading, including disparaging remarks about audio-books. That hits me right where I read, since as any dutiful reader-recipient here knows, I just in the last couple years have added audios to my own repertoire; I wouldn't dare hide that bit. What do you mean it isn't reading?!?

But that's merely a sidebar. This post says too many wonderfully cranky and apt things too well to dwell on that one nit. George as "unsung genius" and reader of 87 books this year (how many times did he count "The Pet Goat"?) are just simple examples of what ought to draw you in to this enthusiastic ode to the president and commander-in-chief that never was.

Turning it over now to a maestro (TRex titles it, in a stroke of genius, "Stay the Corpse"):

Every now and then, I hit a wall. There comes a point in every political blogger’s life, I think, when you’ve soaked up as much Bush idiocy, rank incompetence, duplicity, deceit, and downright dumb-assery as you can reasonably stand. I am saturated with Teh Stoopid.

This makes it especially difficult for me to swallow this latest PR line about how actually our Toddler in Chief is an unsung genius, whose keen and canny intelligence and practicality are obscured by his “scruffy charm”. “Scruffy Charm” here being shorthand for a grown man who chews with his mouth dangling so far open that scraps of food fall freely from his maw.

“He’s read 87 books this year,” sigh the fawning press releases.

Right.

Okay, let’s get something straight here, gang. Listening to books on tape while you’re pulling your pud on the stationary bike or jogging around some underground track at Quantico is not reading, especially given that The Decider has the attention span of a brain-damaged gnat and doubtless tuned out every other word while he was daydreaming about, oh, I dunno, a giant robot replica of himself that roams the desert outside Vegas and shoots lasers from its eyes.

President Bush no more held 87 books in his hands and read every page than OJ Simpson broke into that Vegas hotel room with a gun over the weekend because he was still trying to catch The Real Killers. Get real. The Commander Guy’s head is so pointy he can’t even read a “No Smoking” sign without asking Josh Bolten to help him sound it out.

Watching this Robert Draper interview on Bill Maher is an interesting exercise. Draper, the author of Dead Certain, seems to be trying to have it both ways, to encourage us to somehow find it in our hearts to see the Everyman in the president, but he can barely keep his own upper lip from curling into a sneer of open disgust at the jumped-up Rich White Trash parvenu currently taking up space in the Oval Office.

But just for shits and giggles, as they say, here are some excerpts from Draper’s book:

He was edgy that day. Earlier that morning, Bush had decided that a major address slotted for next week was going to have to wait another month. The subject was Iraq, and he was, frankly, unsure of what to say on the subject.

Frankly, I find this amazing, since Bush only ever gives one speech, as I wrote here:

It can’t be easy to be a speechwriter for George W. Bush. In fact, to my thinking, it’s right up there with Superfund toxic cleanup worker, Saddam Hussein body double, and cat-food taster in the running for Worst Job Ever. Given that Preznint Pustule only ever makes one speech, it seems like it wouldn’t be that hard of a job, but the devil’s in the details, of course. Anyone who’s ever tried to write a poem with one of those magnetic poetry kits will understand just how mind-bendingly difficult it must be to write a speech for Dubya.

I’m guessing it goes a little something like this: You go to the White House break-room refrigerator and take the square that says, “9/11″ and line it up with the one that says “terror”, drag over “NOOK-ya-ler”, “cut and run”, and “tax cuts”. You’ve got to fight the urge, these days, to use “stay the course” since Karl Rove kicked it under the fridge. (Of course, Rummy and Joe Lieberman keep trying to dig it back out, blow off the lint and dog-hairs and stick it back up there, but then Ken Mehlman flounces through and throws it on the floor again.) …

And so forth and so on. But back to Dead Certain…

His hot dog arrived. Bush ate rapidly, with a sort of voracious disinterest. He was a man who required comfort and routine. Food, for him, was fuel and familiarity. It was not a thing to reflect on.“

The job of the president,” he continued, through an ample wad of bread and sausage, “is to think strategically so that you can accomplish big objectives. As opposed to playing mini-ball. You can’t play mini-ball with the influence we have and expect there to be peace. You’ve gotta think, think BIG. The Iranian issue,” he said as bread crumbs tumbled out of his mouth and onto his chin, (Ewwwwwwww-ed.) “is the strategic threat right now facing a generation of Americans, because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion. Iran’s a destabilizing force.”

Oh, that’s rich. Here is the man who charged headlong into Iraq in spite of the fact that he knew full well that there weren’t any WMD’s there, disbanded the army and the government, and has presided over the biggest foreign policy cock-up since the Crusades, a disastrous invasion and occupation that has left a once sovereign nation a burning, abandoned husk, and he’s calling Iran a destabilizing force.

And that’s where I have to bail before I become so angry that I punch a wall and turn my fist into a maraca. It find it frankly amazing that the DC Dems think it’s okay to leave President Turnip-Head sitting there in office until the end of his term. “Impeachment wouldn’t be worrrrrrth it,” sighs Grandma Pelosi from her perpetual state of frozen ennui.

Does it not occur to anyone within the incestuous confines of the Beltway that having a president who makes Terri Schiavo look breathtakingly astute on foreign policy issues is a terrible danger to everyone in the country and by extension the world? How stupid are we all going to look if Bush and his pro-apocalypse BFF’s like Joe Lieberman actually get to launch their strikes against Iran? Or what if there’s another huge hurricane? Or a massive West Coast earthquake? Are you all okay with Bush and his appointees presiding over a major disaster? What about a terror strike?

I don’t get it. Why is he still there? Why, God, why?