forwarded from my friend Byron Marshall of Pineville LA (not a member of agl)

[Michael Eisenstadt]

I note the following:

--- a member of the Austin ad hoc discussion group
wrote, in response to a comment by Mike:

<<
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I disagree with the premise that "conspiratorial" or
"magic thinking" does not extend itself wholesale and
willy-nilly (my phrases) across the American
Landscape.  This country is so full of base-less myths
as to be utterly laughable.

How else can you explain our current President? 

What set of "rational" arguments would lead anyone to
vote for Dumbo the Clown and his Nazi cohorts...except
of course, utter venality and mendaciousness.

==================================================
>>


Well said, but perhaps a little extreme?

Let us be both temperate and exact in our
consideration of the current President and his team.

====================================================
        * * * THE CASE FOR THE PRESIDENT * * * 
====================================================

1) Bush not only avoided serving in a war, he avoided
the alternative service that let him avoid the war

2) Bush was a crack-head. I have nothing against
crack-heads but should they be major Presidential
contenders? We now say "former" but this might be
wrong.

3) Bush was a drunk who thought he could ignore common
traffic regulations.

4) Bush was and is contemptuous of learning

5) Bush was and is contemptuous of the English
language.

6) Bush knew nothing and knows nothing of foreign
countries

7) In a famous bit of campaign history, Bush got
peevish and putout when his ignorance of foreign
policy was brought out. That is, Bush responded like a
teenager who was caught having not done his homework.
(This response was more significant than his actual 
ignorance, I propose.)

8) In a famous bit of campaign history, Bush and his
peculiar vice president, Cheney, made dirty cracks
about a reporter who had dared to criticize them, big
time.

9) As President, now Bush spends most of his time
exercising. Nine-eleven found him in the home state of
his brother, and what did he do during the entire
morning attack? He read a story about goats to fourth
graders. 

10) When recently told of some egregious bumptiousness
on the part of his peculiar Secretary of Defense, Bush
replied, and I quote, "Yes!" 

11) This seems to encapsulate a great deal of his
thinking process. A friend of mine, who has spent an
unnecessary amount of energy listening to Rush
Limbaugh, now responds favorably to pictures of Bush
insulting the United Nations with the remark, and I
quote, "Yes!" 

My friend also gets excited at a picture of a U.S.
helicopter in Afghanistan that has been painted by
"our boys" (believed to be a reference to paid adult
troops) to look like an American Eagle. "Can you
imagine what those Muslims in Afghanistan make of this
when they see it flying overhead?" my friend says, his
mirth almost too much to contain. 

Apparently the idea is that the ignorant savages are
scared shitless. "Feets, doah yo' stuff." 

12) It would seem that this encapsulates U.S. foreign
policy. (A) We devote large amounts of money to
annoyng the citizens of foreign countries with
helicopters painted up to look like American Eagles.
(B) We don't catch bin Laden. (Incidentally, my friend
has not yet said "Yes!" to the picture of the Eagle
Helicopter or to pictures of angry Muslims. I am
waiting breathlessly.)

13) My friend previously said, not long after
nine-eleven, picking up the early line from Rush
Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal Editorial Panel,
that in response we should plaster Afghanistan and
Iraq with bombs (an accurate forecast of our actual
response, by the way.) When his son asked him, "what
about the civilians?" my friend replied, "If they
don't want to be bombed, they shouldn't live there."

I think I'll quote that again.

Speaking of the innocent citizens of other countries,
my friend said: "If they don't want to be bombed, they
shouldn't live there." 

14) This seems to encapsulate U.S. policy towards
other countries. 

Other countries are over there to be bombed. 

15) I have got ahead of the chronology. I wanted to
mention that at the Iowa Caucus, the peculiar Bush
political director said to the campaign director of
another Republican candidate: "You better not get in
our way, or we'll destroy you." (My memory of the
exact words may be inexact, but I heard him say it, at
the tail end of the C-SPAN coverage of the Caucus.)

16) And how should I forget? The Bush people waged
their decisive South Carolina campaign against Bush's
Arizona Republican opponent--who personally I have no
great respect for--on the following grounds: (a) the
Republican Senator from Arizona had married a
foreigner (b) he was in favor of Breast Cancer (c) he
was a Catholic (remember, this was in South Carolina)
(d) he wasn't "really" a Republican (?) ...and...
drumroll... the Arizona serviceman had served in
Vietnam and been a prisoner of war and thus he was 
mentally unstable. To denounce another Republican as
mentally disturbed by virtue of his patriotism was a
new groundbreaker for Republican campaigning.

17) Bush--on the basis of the items described
above--was clearly an insult to the Republican Party
and an insult to the American people. However, the
cable press liked him, perhaps because they were paid
to, perhaps because they really like a good drunk and
crack-head. 

Gore, they said (accurately enough) was a bore. So
lets elect a Nazi instead.

18) Bush was also repeatedly described as "clearly
more popular" with the American people, an illusion
which would be of great assistance during the
post-election debacle, and in its implication as to
what kind of American opinion now counts, of great
assistance during the jingoism after nine-eleven.

19) Bush, the clearly more popular candidate, lost the
popular vote

20) Bush probably lost the electoral vote, also. (We
might also remember that the decisive electoral
scandal took place in his brother's state; his brother
was in charge of the irregularities of the voting
machines.) 

Bush was given the Presidency by the Supreme Court,
some of whom should have recused themselves. For
example, Justice Thomas, Rush Limbaugh's good friend.
Thomas' wife was on the Bush Transition Committee.
Accordingly, she would have lost a lucrative job if
Thomas had not voted for Bush. Thomas voted for Bush.

21) Bush has filled his Administration with oil
people, some of whom are very resistant to letting
anyone know what they were doing during the California
oil crisis--I am referring to Bush's strange Vice
President, Cheney. 

The major gang of Bush's advisors on foreign policy
are "neocons", in particular, a group of neocons who
have very peculiar ideas about the future of the
United States. 

22) Bush senior once referred to the "vision thing." A
year after nine-eleven, Cheney, Bush's very odd Vice
President, commented on the consequences of Bush's
"war on terror", which will extend into the future for
"decades ... if not forever." 

As accompaniment to the "war on terror", which many
Americans assumed was a way of making events like
nine-eleven *less likely*, Cheney said that the future
would bring a steadily increasing number of successful
terrorist attacks on American soil, with nuclear
explosions, atrocities at our local malls, and a
steady crop of national monuments going up in smoke. 

This, he proudly said, is *his* vision of America's
future.

23) I have already mentioned Bush reading about goats
to fourth graders when thousands of people were losing
their lives in New York City. 

It is now been disclosed that there was a very high
volume ... let's make that a very, very high volume
... of warnings of something about to happen, with
some warnings mentioning air attack. Despite this, the
Bush Administration failed to ramp up the air defense
system. 

This is easily documented by looking at the official
time table of U.S. response on nine-eleven. Without
invoking *any* "conspiracy theory", it is simply the
facts, ma'm, that there were a mininum number of
planes sent aloft; and that they were not in a special
state of alertness. 

This last is clearly evident in that even after the
second attack on the WTC for forty minutes there was
no defensive action underway at the only base assigned
to protect the nation's Capitol.

The public did not know at the time of the level of
warnings, and accepted the idea that "it was a
surprise" and "nothing could have been done". In fact,
the lack of defensive steps for air security was clear
dereliction of duty on the part of the Bush
Administration, and this dereliction should be
hammered home by *some* Democrat until the public
suddenly "gets it". 

Admittedly, the unfortunate Anthrax attack launched by
foreign terrorists not only put the Congress out of
commission but showed all of us that it was time for a
garrison state.

24)What a happy thought! A garrison state! With that
very thought in mind, Bush has appointed among his
coven the very peculiar John Ashcroft, who when he
isn't dicing up the U.S. Constitution, covers the
breasts on statues in Washington; the highly peculiar
Poindexter, former convicted conspirator, who is
planning to dice up the U.S. Constitution by
eliminating internet and credit card privacy; the
highly peculiar Secretary of Homeland Security, who
devotes his enormous budget to issuing color coded
"alert edicts" and organizing "focus groups" to see
what Americans think about duct tape; ...and...
...drumroll... the incredibly peculiar advisor Perle,
who while advising (for money) Israeli right wingers
to deep-six peace accords and support an invasion of
Iraq, and while advising the President to invade Iraq
and the rest of the Middle East, also (for money)
assists a company that sells U.S. missile secrets to
Red China.

====================================================

Now, having laid out with fairness and exactness the
virtues and achievements of this faux President and
his awful Administration, how can anyone say those
terrible things about him? 

:-)

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