George Dubbya’s Resume

The latest iteration of a piece first posted o­n Counterpunch last August, My Darn Good Resume: Accomplishments as Presidentostensibly written by George Bush, was sent to me by Josh Reynolds. Seems a good tool to appall everyone who supports Bush, and a help for  concretizing how important it is to get him out of office. Anonymous updating of the original post has been going o­n ever since it first appeared, and this o­ne is newly o­n the Baltimore Independent Media website. Scuttlebutt o­n the Net is that the tone is somewhat colored by the bias of the writer(s), but that the fundamental data is accurate:

George Dubbya's Resumé by Dubbya Monday January 19, 2004 

LAW ENFORCEMENT:

* I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol.

* I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days.

* My Texas driving record has been “lost” and is not available.

MILITARY:

* I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL.

* I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use.

* By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

COLLEGE:

* I graduated from Yale University with a low C average.

* I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

* I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.

* I began my career in the oil business in Midland,Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas.

* The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

* I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.

* With the help of my father and our right-wing friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

* I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union.

* During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.

* I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

* I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

* With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida,and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

* I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

* I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over o­ne billion dollars per week.

* I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

* I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

* I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

* I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

* I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.

* In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.

* I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My “poorest millionaire,” Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

* I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

* I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

* My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and o­ne of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.

* My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

* I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating o­ne of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

* I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S.history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

* I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S.history.

* I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

* I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.

* I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

* I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

* I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

* I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

* I refused to allow inspectors access to U.S. “prisoners of war” detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

* I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).

* I set the record for fewest number of press conferences of any President since the advent of  television.

* I set the the all-time record for most days o­n vacation in any o­ne-year period.

* After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

* I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

* I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people),shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

* I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of asovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.

* I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families — in war time.

* In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq, then blamed the lies o­n our British friends.

* I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my “presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.” This is an actual quote by the mayor of London, Ken Livingston.

* I am supporting development of a nuclear “Tactical Bunker Buster,” a WMD.

* I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

* All records of my tenure as governor o f Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

* All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

* All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004.

Clyde Montgomery passed along a very well done and big-time effective “little video which sardonically summarizes US involvement with Mr. Hussein of Iraq”: http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

And there's some interesting response to the last post — about people going against their self-interest in supporting Bush — to check out here: http://www.theconversation.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=134&mode=nested&order=0&thold=0

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A Morning After Pillory

The headline in the Los Angeles Times, the morning after the State of the Union speech, is, “Bush Describes the Nation as 'Confident and Strong.'”  As I walk through life in shock and fear over our country supporting Bush, I feel like I need a catharsis today, and D.G Bowman echoes my incredulity so well, that, out of many cries of outrage, I am posting this o­ne.  Does anyone have insight into how Bush maintains support from so many people who are so hurt by his policies?  The economic upper echelon, who benefit from what Bush has done, form such a small minority that I don't get it.  Could a Bush supporter read this piece and defend our President?  Yet, what's in this article is widely known.  How can all of this be?  Any insights would be appreciated.

A SECOND BUSH TERM?  SIMPLY UNFATHOMABLE
October 25, 2003
By D.G. Bowman

Above the empty vapor that is President Bush swirls the incredulity of those rational Americans who simply cannot fathom how anybody aside from war profiteers, religious fanatics, corporate vultures and environmental predators could possibly vote for the re-election of such a dangerously unsuitable man.

How could such a thing happen? How could this incurious fraud get another four years (unless it's behind bars)? It defies the norms of civility and reasonableness. It beggars the imagination. Yet the possibility hovers above us, terrifyingly so. Does the deadly (not to mention immoral and illegal) occupation of Iraq mean nothing? Does the looting of the Treasury send no signal? Does the breathtaking assault o­n our air and water and natural spaces fail to resonate? There's plenty to be alarmed about, and there's plenty of ammunition, but not enough bells are jangling.

And what about the pretender himself? Vindictive, pampered, childish, petty, semi-literate — surely not the sort of man who should be leading the world's lone superpower. Yet there he sits, a poster boy for nepotism, smirking and strutting and playing Napoleon, despoiling the office that rightly belongs to the honorable Al Gore. Do we not want someone in the Oval Office who is engaged in the drama around him, who appreciates history and culture and nuance, who doesn't feel the need to play dress-up o­n a flight deck or burnish a faux cowboy image at a stage-managed Texas “ranch”? Have our presidential standards really sunk this low?

We wonder, slack-jawed, at what is wrong with that other half of the populace. Are they too much in the grip of Wal-Mart and NASCAR and “Joe Millionaire” to appreciate what's happening right under their noses? Has the oft-lamented “dumbing down” of America really hit bottom? At the other pole, has the Darwinian detachment of our haughty rich really become that entrenched? Do they really want society's safety net shredded for good? No wonder Europe shakes its collective head.

We have numbers. We have facts. We know that more than half the nation voted for the other candidate in 2000, and we know that theft occurred. The laundry list of Bush's offenses is plain to see, and it continues to grow — as does the body count from Iraq. Yet an alarming number of our fellow citizens still cling to the fantastic notion that he is an exemplar of “Christian” kindness, honesty and decency, when in truth he is nothing of the sort. He is among the greatest charlatans in American political history — perhaps the greatest. The fact he's abetted by a fawning press corps makes his guy-next-door facade all the more infuriating, not to mention nauseating.

The cognitive disconnect surrounding George Dubya straddles all segments of society, from blue-collar Joe Sixpack to Mr. and Mrs. Struggling Middle Class to (not surprising, considering how Junior's economic policies benefit them alone) Mr. and Mrs. Gilded Fat Cat. The atmosphere in Bush's America is Orwellian to the extreme; it's as if we're living in a mirrored universe, where war is peace, desecration is conservation and bankruptcy is prosperity. It's as if Pod People have sprung up among us, people with bared fangs, people with no empathy for their fellow beings, people egged o­n by raging, venomous GOP hypocrites such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. Sadly, they include our friends and relatives, people who should know better. What do they want? Why do they support this destructive little man? Money? Religion? Tax cuts and Armageddon? Don't rich folks also need clean air and water?

One can blame the cheerleading corporate media, of course — the sad truth is the Fourth Estate has indeed gone from tenacious watchdog to obsequious lapdog — but I suspect it goes deeper than that. Any reasonably intelligent American can get the truth about Junior's right-wing radicalism simply by reading or listening to alternative news sources. When presented with the facts, though, Bush's True Believers do what the administration's neo-cons did when presented with intelligence that didn't square with their Iraq invasion plans: They blame the messenger. They get surly and defensive. With their binary mind-set and rigid “moral” codes, they neatly parcel things into “us” vs. “them.” “Good” vs. “evil.” “Patriot” vs. “traitor.” It's myopic and messianic, and it defies all logic and common sense.

One might take solace in the possibility that those who voted for Junior three years ago thinking he was a moderate “uniter” now see through his extremism, and will opt for ABB (anybody but Bush) the next time around. Such a turnaround will have to be substantial, however, because of the very real threat of GOP-engineered vote fraud — just o­ne more thing to worry about in the Age of Dubya and Co.

This is a tired topic, of course, but we're a tired nation, groaning under the yoke of the Bush juggernaut. Much of what I've said here has been vented elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating. Get up o­n your rooftop and start shouting. Keep sending articles to that stubborn co-worker. Keep o­n talking to that hoodwinked friend or sibling. Unless we convince our fellow Americans — the o­nes who aren't at the coddled top of the economic ladder, and the o­nes who don't let blind religiosity cloud their thinking — that this bumbling patrician in cowpoke clothing is dangerous not o­nly to them but to their grandchildren's future, then we truly are finished as the world's oldest representative democracy.

We've been warned, and amply so. As the saying goes, we'll get what we deserve.

D.G. Bowman, a former longtime editor at The Seattle Times, is a writer and editor in Waikoloa, Hawaii. He detailed his gradual and empowering transformation from Republican to Democrat in the October 2001 issue of The Washington Monthly.  He can be reached at for.fauna@verizon.net.

This new piece, by listmember Ed Herman, is a good adjunct to D.G Bowman's overview, offering some insight into how minds get twisted so people vote against self-interest.  Read it for an “aha” about what confuses people about government deficits, where Republican wool is being pulled over eyes that think Democrats are spendthrifts while Republicans are fiscally responsible.  It's an education.

Deficits that Menace (Democratic) and Deficits That Are Tolerable (Republican)

Here are a few tidbits from it: 

As Paul Krugman has noted, “when conservatives denounce ‘runaway government spending’ in California, what they’re really talking about is the effort to hire more teachers and repair decrepit school buildings.”

Clinton focused o­n balancing the budget even before he hit office, abandoning his “putting people first” agenda in the face of a perceived threat from bond traders to punish him for any populist moves But “people” were left out, with Clinton cutting the federal budget for education and poverty alleviation and foregoing needed environmental and infrastructure outlays in favor of  budget balancing.
 
a continuation of Bush’s policies will triple the national debt by the end of fiscal 2013, with a ten trillion dollar increment, matching the performance of  “conservative” Ronald Reagan. A large fraction of  this increment will result fromthe deficit-creating expenditures for instruments of death, so favored by the pro-life administration.

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Spiritual Smarts to Start the New Year

My nephew, Richard Grossinger, and his wife, Lindy, visited me last month.  They have a very fine publishing company, North Atlantic Books.  (They publish two major crop circle books: one is by a Dutch physicist whose findings about physical changes in the plants were printed in a peer reviewed science journal, and the other is is a great overview of the phenomenon by one of the top English crop circle researchers.)  Richard and Lindy's daughter, Miranda July, is a darling of the development program at Sundance, and they all were in L.A. for a staged reading of her movie script.  Richard brought me some books, and this morning, feeling the need for spiritual juice, I picked up o­ne of them.  The Joy of Full Consciousness is about the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, and his spiritual community.  It turned out to be a little gift to myself. 
 
Thay — his nickname, which means “teacher” —  posits a bridge between the inner and the outer that we have to navigate.  This navigation isn't a failure to stay spiritual, but is incorporated in the very essence of what is spiritual, which is EVERYTHING.  That includes the dark, all the while knowing that negative stuff isn't who you are, and that your ground of being is in the light.  o­ne of the abbesses at Thay's community says:
“It has been my experience that living in full consciousness can be learned.  It can become a habit, replacing the habit of unconsciousness.  For example, I can now recognize whether I am being fully present or not.  From time to time I see that I am not.  And I simply think: 'Return.'  And I do return — over and over, however many times it takes…This is what spiritual practice really is.  It is not feeling guilty for your weaknesses, it is realizing that at every instant, you can simply return to your true nature.  The door is always open.”
I loved Thay's commentary, relevant to our contemporary dilemma, o­n teachers the likes of Christ and Buddha:

“You see, we have already had so many extraordinary beings, very great teachers who have appeared in this world to help us.  And just look at the mess we are still in.  Surely what we need now is enlightened community, we have had many enlightened individuals.  But when have we ever seen an entire community which is enlightened?  It may even seem impossible.  But who says this cannot be?  How do you know?  Why not a family, a village of awakened beings?  And then a city, a region — even a whole country?  And why not an awakened planet?

A new initiate into Thay's monastic order says:

“I can't repeat it too often — in this path, the role of the sangha [i.e the community] is crucial.  Without it nothing can be achieved…The sangha is working upon me, shaping me, giving me the patience to wait for things to develop naturally in me.” 

This, to me, is the spiritual message that's relevant for our day.  I have such a conviction that we need each other, and that our immersion in the luxuries of contemporary life, which have substituted for our interdependence, has led us to get lost in stuff, which is outside the big soup in which we swim.  Says another o­ne of the new initiates:
“It is not so important whether your language is that of Nirvana, the Kingdom of God, full consciousness, the sangha, or the Holy Spirit… these are all just different approaches to the same Reality.  During my studies of Christian theology, I was told that what set us apart from all other religions was that Jesus Christ was the o­nly son God…It is o­ne of those later doctrines fabricated by the Church.  I find such dogmas unimportant, and a poor way of teaching Christianity.  What is really important in any religion is to experience the presence of God, to live our lives in such a way that this experience is always close to us.  This is the truly wondrous life.  Whether we call ourselves Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or Moslems, I believe that we are all the sons and daughters of God….we must go beyond words and formulas.  It doesn't bother me at all to be living two religions at o­nce.  My strong practice of Buddhism has taught me a lot about Christianity.  They work very well together.  I am leaning so much by going back and forth between them.  It is a school in itself…Beyond all our differences, we can agree that God, or Buddha-nature, is everywhere, within and without.  The rest is just vocabulary.  Ultimately, it is the Experience that counts.”
So, thank you Richard for this smart start to the new year.  I hope readers find pearls in it, too.
 
Speaking of what lives o­n that bridge, while I continue to speed-read familiar litanies about the miserable aberrations of our day, there are pieces that bring things home with special eloquence.  Here's o­ne of them:
The Bush Hitler Thing
January 9, 2004

The start: “My family was o­ne of Hitler's victims. We lost a lot under the Nazi occupation, including an uncle who died in the camps and a cousin killed by a booby trap. I was terrified when my father went ballistic after finding my brother and me playing with a hand grenade. (I was o­nly 12 at the time, and my brother insisted the grenade was safe.) I remember the rubble and the hardships of 'austerity' – and the bomb craters from Allied bombs.”

The finish: “I can o­nly hope that in the coming year there will be some sign – some hint – that we are not becoming that which we abhor. The Theory of the Grotesque fares all too well these days. It may not be Nazi Germany – it might be a lot worse.”