“How Many Mai-Tais are enough”.
Contrary to popular rumor, RockThrower is not dead. And no, I haven’t been whisked off to some secret Bush Gualag. Not yet anyway. It’s just that I have been a little busy on an important research project exploring the question “How many Mai-Tai’s are too many? I won’t bore you with the sordid details, but let’s just say that as long as Bush is President, the answer is there in no such thing as too many.
Frankly, I am down to dark rum and ice these days, and the temptation to remain here under the Banyan tree sipping my cocktail until 2008 is strong. But now that Josh Bolten has come along and let the big dog loose, I figured I better sober up long enough to throw a few rocks.
For a moment there I was almost a little hopeful. When Bolten told the White House senior staff that “if anyone is thinking about leaving, now would be a good time to do so,” I could almost see the gleam in the President’s eye. Rumor has it that Laura found him walking down the driveway with his suitcase packed, his plane ticket back to Texas in his hand and a cab waiting at the gate. Apparently though she told him that he couldn’t leave until after next year when Uncle Dick had collected another tax refund check for $1.9 million. Besides, she said, Cheney might shoot him if he went back to Texas where it is apparently O.K. to shoot your friends in the face. She also pointed out that she and the girls have more shopping to do before they head back to the ranch.
And so he stayed. Which is really too bad, because until President Bush is gone (or better yet, in jail), Josh Bolten’s changes amount to little more than arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The real purpose of Bolten’s moves was to set Karl Rove free to go on the attack against Democrats. A lot of states are about to find out that they have a serious gay marriage problem.
But as far as policy goes, the bottom line is that nothing has changed. The dumb, mean, corrupt, Republicans that were working for Bush have just been replaced by more dumb, mean and corrupt Republicans. The only difference is that the first set will get rich first working in lobbying jobs winning no-bid contracts and earning earmarks for Bush’s friends.
Until Bush and his corrupt congressional cronies are gone and his policies changed things aren’t going to get any better. Under Bush we have:
• A foreign policy that has engaged the United States in a questionable war, lowered global public opinion of the United States and made our nation less safe.
• An economic policy that has destroyed jobs while making the rich richer, the poor poorer and screwing the middle class. Not to mention converting a budget surplus into a staggering budget deficit that my grandchildren will have to pay.
• A homeland security policy with torture as a cornerstone that says that spying on U.S. citizens is a good thing, even if it is a violation of the United States Constitution.
• An energy policy that has made oil companies billions, but failed to develop of alternative energy sources. The Bush administration’s idea of alternative energy is to open the Alaskan National Wilderness Refuge to drilling.
• An environmental policy that calls a plan that will increase air pollution the Clear Skies Act. The Bush administration plan for global warming is apparently to mandate swimming lessons
• A health care policy that has increased the number of Americans without health insurance and driven-up the price of prescription drugs.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has done a done a “heck of a job’ responding to Hurricane Katrina.
Changing the chief of staff or putting a new liar behind the White House podium isn’t going to make a whit of difference. The only thing that might is the election of a Democratic Congress willing to mount an aggressive investigation into the corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration.
I just don’t know if my liver will hold out until then.
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