We Interrupt this Interview...

...to bring an important message:
The Bush/Cheney era is over. The wanna-be king and his 'Richelieu' are gone. Long live the Republic!

The Annotated Cheney Interview (part 4)

For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008
The Annotated Interview Vice President Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times
Vice President's West Wing Office

Q Sort of along those lines,(see part three of this interview) you've been a long-time fiscal conservative.
(Except of course when you’ve thrown money by the tractor-trailer load at the conflict in Iraq and the ill-suited, woefully mismanaged Coalition Provisional Authority (CPI) or whatever corporation, industry or project would best be served by tax-cuts and federal subsidies. )
How do you feel,
(The quintessential wishy-washy no-brain TV interview soft-ball)
what do you think about the markedly larger size of the government that this administration is leaving behind
(a huge hulking behemoth of bureaucracy worthy of Orwell or Stalin)
-- the size of the deficit,
(Ballooned past all control, past all conception, spiraling past fiscal irresponsibility into a macro-economic insanity; a mind-numbing level of deficit spending whereby you squandered the vast surplus that was the Clintonian legacy – the legacy of what you would call ‘tax and spend liberals’ – and mortgaged the future of the USA to the People’s Republic of China.)
from the financial commitments that the government now has to a lot of private industries?
(Not that so much has changed except for the fact that the ‘bail-outs’ are a lot more visible than the SOP of gratuitous subsidies, tax breaks given on silver platters to the corporate sponsors of election campaigns.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, given your druthers,
(That’s a ‘home-spun’ word I learned from the Brush-clearer-in-chief. Makes me sound kind of loveable, don’t you think? Like Wilford Brimley as the Grand Inquisitor.)
you'd rather not have a growing government in terms of spending,
(Growing in terms of executive power, sure. That was the center-piece of the plan.)
or in terms of authority over the economy.
(Not legislative control but executive control. As St Ronnie said, “The trouble is the government.” And so, we’ve always striven to dismantle and undermine the government of the Republic whenever and wherever we can. )
But there are exceptions.
(And you must admit we’ve been exceptional.)
And the exceptions historically have been wars.
(Luckily. Like the Frat-boy-in-Chief quipped, "We hit the Trifecta.")
We've been faced since 9/11 with a war,
(Of our own making and design.)
more than one in the sense that you count Iraq and Afghanistan separately.
(Assuming that you two goof-offs can count that high. It’s all the same ball of wax to me; defense contracts and bonuses from Halliburton.)
Defending the nation against further attacks from al Qaeda has been a preeminent concern of ours,
(Since we really dropped the ball on in 2001.)
and we've spent a lot of money doing that:
(Papering our asses with your hard-earned dollars)
creating the Department of Homeland Security,
(Which Clinton had in the works already to thwart terrorist attacks - we were too busy dismantling regulatory agencies and passing tax cuts for the rich to bother with until after the Towers fell. Lucky for us it was on the shelf, waiting for us to take credit for it.)
enhancing the security of our shipping container business and the airlines,
(It all comes back to taking care of business – Big Business, that is.)
and all of the other things we've done that have made us a safer nation.
(I feel safer knowing that firms like Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel and so on will be safe to profit from unending war as a result of the Muslim world hating our guts.)
And then when you talk about what we've had to do in Afghanistan and Iraq
(Which I trust you will not do but in glowing terms and with patriotic platitudes.)
of the commitment of troops,
(We commit the troops, when they get killed or wounded, the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s to blame.)
the cost of those wars,
(In dollars and cents – not inhuman lives. That’s of secondary concern to us, at best.)
those have all added to the burden.
(The rich, white-man’s burden.)
But I think it's better to do that than it would be to have ignored those needs and requirements,
(Q.E.D.: eo ipso – whatever we did was the right thing to do because doing nothing would have been the wrong thing.)
and seen us not respond the way that the President and I believed we needed to respond to those basic fundamental threats to our nation.
(Say, the EPA and the FCC running amuck with stifling regulation. How can anybody make a buck when you have to worry about wet-lands preservation or public commons. But I digress…)
I think
(So therefore, it's true.)
what al Qaeda represents is a strategic threat of considerable significance.
(Which we have greatly enhanced by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.)
What happened on 9/11
(Even you dim-wits probably remember the official version of what happened.)
was you had 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters
(Which explains why we need new fighter jets, bombers, nuclear subs, bunker-busters, tactical nukes and missile defense systems. How else do you expect to stop fanatics with box-cutters but by invading two countries that had little or nothing to do with the attacks?)
come into the country,
(where the CIA lost their trail and the FBI ignored them)
destroy 16 acres of downtown Manhattan,
(Prime real estate – figure in insurance pay-offs and re-sale; what a wind-fall!)
do major damage to the headquarters of our military over here at the Pentagon,
(Of course, if it actually had been a 737 the damage would have been truly horrific. Donnie’s office might have had to be redecorated. That’s why we decided to use the weaponized drone. Oops. I think I let one slip.)
and kill about 3,000 people.
(Give or take. Since no bodies were ever found at the Pennsylvania crash site or from ‘plane’ that hit the Pentagon, it’s hard to say.)
and If they had been armed or equipped with a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon,
(Or a zombie-making machine or a doomsday device like in ‘Dr Strangelove’ - I love that movie.)
we'd have a much larger problem than we did.
(Duh… )
So I fully support the spending we did because I think it was essential.
(Because it wasn’t my money and it was essential to the industries I serve.)
And it obviously has, as a byproduct,
(A byproduct of incompetency, failures in judgment and a willful and arrogant disregard of human life and rule of law.)
the fact that it increases the deficit and the overall size of government,
(etc, etc… blah, blah blah. How many times have I got to repeat myself? We did what we had to do to ram through our authoritarian agenda. Let’s move on.)
but I think this is one of those occasions like World War II when that was appropriate.
(Except of course that WWII was an actual declared war (i.e a declaration of war was passed by the House and Senate) in response to an attack on US colonial territory by a sovereign nation for the sake of territorial conquest; entirely unlike the Al Qaeda attacks. Not to mention the fact that after the cessation of hostilities, the surviving leaders of those Fascist states which had invaded various countries in Europe, Africa and Asia were brought to trial and executed as war criminals. Let’s be sure not to mention that.)
(to be continued)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081222.html

VPs Say the Darndest Things (part 2)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081222.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008

The Annotated Interview of almost former Vice President (and soon to be convicted felon if there is a speck of justice in the world) Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times (well-known brown-nosers and sycophants.)
Vice President's West Wing Office –

3:20 P.M. EST
December 17, 2008

Q You've been described
(By us...)
and attributed to be (sic) one of the most powerful and influential Vice Presidents in history.
(Mind if I gush?)
How would you describe your influence, your power, and your contribution to this administration?
(And please do feel free to be as candid and forthright, as brutally honest in your assessment as you wish. You really, deep down know that you and the ‘Frat Brat’ screwed the figurative pooch. Right!?)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: In terms of whether or not I'm the most powerful and influential,
(I’m glad you asked that question… precisely as Addington wrote it…)
I'll let somebody else make those judgments.
(Someone well-paid.)
I think
(Something I’m very good at if I do say so myself. And I do…)
-- I do believe
(I do. I do. I do. I do believe in pardons. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.)
that the vice presidency has been a consequential office, if I can put in those terms,
(And of course, I can; seeing as I got me a ‘consequential office’. And you young putzes aren’t about to contradict me for anything I say.)
in this administration.
(Mine.)

But that's, first and foremost, because that's what the President wanted.
(Ever since I told the little screw-off that’s precisely what he wanted if he harbored having even a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting and keeping the White House. And still have time to clear brush and play golf.)
He's the one who asked me to take the job.
(Right after he hired me to find him a running mate. I told him that I was my first choice and his only choice if he wanted to do any brush-clearing.)
He's also the one who decided
(He is the decider, after all.)
during the course of his search process eight years ago
(When I told him to hire me. See penultimate annotation above.)
that he wanted somebody who could be another member of the team,
(Team Arbusto; the ‘A’ team.)
who had a certain set of experiences
(…which had lead to anti-social behavior, a loss of moral compass, frequent psychotic episodes of paranoia, an authoritarian mind-set, delusions of grandeur, megalomaniacal tendencies, rapacious greed…)
and so forth, and could be an active participant in the process.
(…of ruining nearly every aspect of the United States; its economy, its environment, its reputation, its institutions, its government, its political position in the world, …)

I know the job of vice president has been terribly frustrating for a lot of people.
(Especially those who felt consigned to a traditional role or one who felt the Constitution a constraint on their ability to grab power.)
Jerry Ford once told me it was the -- the worst nine months of his life were the years he lived, the months he spent -- it seemed like years -- but the months he spent as Vice President.
(Or something like that. Jerry wasn’t much of a story-teller. You get the idea.)

I watched Nelson Rockefeller in the Ford administration
(Not his best role, in my estimation.)
- - he was never happy with the post.
(4 shows a week for three years. Matinee on Saturday. That close to the Oval Office. It broke him.)

And everybody is familiar with the history that it has not been a consequential office in the past.
(Right? Dan Quayle ring any bells for you dim-wits?)
I think that began to change, I think in particular, during the Carter years.
(Blaming it on the Democrats is a tried and true spin to put on anything, don’t you know.)
I didn't agree with much of what Jimmy Carter did,
(Duh… )
but I thought Mondale as Vice President was a good choice for him,
(He sure was easy for Big Ron to thump in the election, that’s for sure.)
and that the office began to have a more significant role in those days.
(How, for example? Better PR? More press conferences? Bigger desk?)
And I think that's gradually grown over time.
(Like a cyst.)
And I think, as I say,
(and I will, and I do, as I have in the past, and will have done in the future, when history looks back at what I thought, and, as I say, I said, time and again.)
I do believe
(I do. I do. I do. I do believe in pardons. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.)
in this administration it's been a consequential post,
(More like a pillar than a post. A stanchion. A shaft, even.)
because that's what the President wanted to have happen,
(or at least so I told him every morning before the briefings.)
and he's been true to his word for eight years.
(Unless you count all that campaign guff about smaller government, personal privacy, lack of foreign entanglements, taking a more humble international role, lower taxes for the middle-class, other similar malarkey, he’s been true blue.)

(to be continued)

Keeping Terrorists Away

Just read an article entitled ‘Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths’. One is that ‘the Surge’ worked. The other is that torture – or something very much like it - is rationalized (justified?) by the fact that there have been no more attacks on the US since Bush II militarized the war on terror.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/122608.html

This strikes me as much the same rational as related in an old anecdote:

A man is observed shredding newspapers every day in Central Park. After witnessing weeks of this behavior, a passer-by finally asks, “Why are you shredding all that newspaper, day after day?”

The compulsive shredder replies matter-of-factly, “To keep the tigers away.”

To which the passer-by retorts, “There are no tigers in New York.”

The shredder winks and says conspiratorially, “Works pretty well, doesn’t it?”

This is the sort of insane pretzel logic Bush and Cheney are dishing out for us swallow.

I guess we're to assume that attacks on US service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are not to be considered in this most preposterous syllogism.

Prosecute these people and make them account for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis that have been murdered and the thousands of Americans who have died as a direct result of their insanity.

A Not-So-Modest To-Do List for Obama's First Term

Here's a not-so-modest list of actions that should be taken by Obama in his first term in order to right the ship of state and return the United States to the path of a true democratic republic – of the people, by the people and for the people. This is by no means complete or comprehensive; nor are the items listed by priority or expediency.

1. End the illegal war in Iraq and remove all US personnel and contractors other than those necessary for manning and securing the US embassy at levels consistent with other embassies in the Middle-east.

2. End the illegal war in Afghanistan and remove all US personnel and contractors other than those necessary for manning and securing the US embassy at levels consistent with other embassies in the Western Asia.

3. Begin formal process for the providing war reparations to the people (not the governments) of Iraq and Afghanistan through NGOs. (e.g. Red Cross/Red Crescent, CARE, Doctors Without Borders, etc)

4. Arrange a series of formal meetings between the high-level US State Department officials and high-level Iranian officials.

5. Bring the US into full compliance with the IAEA and the non-proliferation treaty.

6. Fund and promote alternative energy sources, comprehensive energy and resource management policies and ‘Green’ product development.

7. Bring the US into reasonable accord with the international community regarding war, human rights, economic policy, etc and assume a temporary non-voting seat on the UN Security Council.

8. Withdraw unconditional support for State of Israel. France, the oldest ally of the United States does not have that permanent status. American foreign policy is NOT Israeli foreign policy and vice versa.

9. End the bloat at the Pentagon; keep our armed forces strong but keep them at home. (Homeland Security... get it?) Reduce the Pentagon budget by at least 50% over the next four years.

10. End the Federal Reserve's strangle hold on the economic lives of the US people. Make the Federal Reserve directly accountable to Congress by placing it within the Treasury Department. Limit each term of the Federal Reserve Board Chairman to 4 years with a limit of two consecutive terms.

11. Amend the fractional reserve system and return to the gold and silver standard.

12. Remove corporate entities from Constitutional protection as individuals. Corporate entities are NOT individuals any more than any organization (e.g. the Catholic Church, the Lions Club, the Republican Party, etc) is an individual but rather a formal association of individuals comprising a group. If an entity does not develop from a human fetus then the entity is not, CANNOT be a citizen and therefore is NOT entitled to the rights of citizenship.

13. Stop all of this blather about the Free Market as if it's Holy Writ. Regulation of industry, business enterprises and corporations are as necessary as regulation of government and therefore in a democratic society must be primarily for the benefit of the people.

14. Let failing commercial enterprises fail but provide workers a safety net. The bosses responsible for the failure of the enterprise are guaranteed ‘Golden Parachutes’ why shouldn’t the workers who toiled and gave their sweat, blood and life-force as wage-slaves be afforded the same guarantee?

15. Social services must come before service to commercial enterprises including the military-industrial complex (i.e. the Pentocracy).

16. Dismantle the Patriot Act brick by brick and restore the constitutional rights of citizens and residents.

17. Abrogate the Imperial presidency and restore the Constitutional balance of power.

18. End signing statements and restrict the power and number of presidential orders per term.

19. Declassify all documents related to the events of 9/11.

20. Declassify all documents related to the Torture Programs, Rendition and Black Sites.

21. Declassify all documents related to the illegal wire-taping of US citizens.

22. Repeal and renege on the order of amnesty to those companies which participated in any illegal wire-taping.

23. Establish a bi-partisan commission to re-investigate the 9/11 attacks.

24. Establish bi-partisan commissions to investigate the possible War Crimes committed by members of the Bush/Cheney administrations.

25. Establish bi-partisan commissions to investigate the possible crimes committed by members of the Bush/Cheney administrations against the Constitution and civic law.

26. Name independent prosecutors with full subpoena powers for each of the aforementioned commissions cited on this list.

27. Last but not least, repeal the National Security Act of 1947 and the subsequent mis-named security acts and dismantle the Security State for the sake of the republic, the people and the world.

Phun Presidential Phacts: not-so-trivial trivia

Here's a little brain-teaser the answer to which will make any Liberal or Progressive suffer gastro-intestinitis and probably make many Libertarians and old-school Conservatives blanch.

On Hardball - in case you missed it - Chris Matthews brought forth this little bar-bet fodder:

"When was the last time the Republican party won the White House without Nixon or a Bush on the ticket?"

For the answer go to:

http://votersthink.org/?p=664

Get your Pepto ready...

Is there anyone in this country that hasn't yet gotten the idea that the USA is very flawed as an example of a truly Democratic Republic? This nation is governed by the business elite through their appointed lackeys - and Bush I & II and Nixon are only three on a long list of Oval Office stooges.

Should Obama win (knock wood), he will be castigated by the Righteous Right for simply out-spending poor Sen McCain in a further attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency.

(They will of course fail to mention that Bush II set the bar that Obama bested because that would negate their point and rob Bill-O and Rash Limberger of an opportunity to riff and rant)

The Right will be (gulp) right. It takes a bloody fortune to gain occupancy of the White House. Is another metric necessary to convince Americans that we are governed by the elite? You have got to be super rich or make lots of back-room deals with those who have the money to burn because they have even vaster amounts to make should their candidate win.

Is it any wonder that social programs get such short shrift?

Bush explains ‘Free Enterprise’

Bush bails out more of his buddies; McCain still thinks banking deregulation is just peachy and Paulson could give a good-god-damn about the US taxpayer.

Bush explains ‘Free Enterprise’

Simply put: it’s not ‘Free’ – not for the taxpayers, anyway.

President Bush: “Our system of free enterprise rests on the conviction that the federal government should interfere in the marketplace only when necessary. Given the precarious state of today’s financial markets and their vital importance to the daily lives of the American people, government intervention is not only warranted, it is essential.”

Essential to maintaining the position of the unscrupulous wastrels, socio-pathic mega-gamblers, and the morally bankrupt business elite, that is.

John McCain weighed in, as well. The Straight-talking Senator was asked by Scott Pelley of ‘60 Minutes’ if he still defended his support of deregulating the financial industry in light of the fiasco on Wall Street.

Scott Pelley: “In 1999, you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?”

Sen. McCain: “No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.”

It should be remembered that McCain’s former advisor on economic affairs, Phil Gramm, was one of the principal conspirators in pushing through legislation de-regulating the banking industry.

Meanwhile, on the Hill, Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson feels that American taxpayers who are caught in the credit squeeze created by the mis-management of investment bankers are not entitled to bail-outs or assistance.

Henry Paulson: “The ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this troubled asset relief program provides to our financial system, even as it will involve a significant investment of taxpayer dollars. I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative—a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion.”

How Mr Paulson has been able to foretell the future with sufficient accuracy to determine ‘the alternative’ to the American people shelling out an estimated $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) to rescue failed businesses when he presumably could not foresee the current financial debacle remains unanswered. Mr Paulson did not elaborate upon whether or not other less extreme, less ‘bold approach(es)’ had been considered.

It is evident that President Bush and his administration are confident of the largesse of the American taxpayer to rescue even foreign banks from the financial calamity brought on by deregulation and the ‘Free Market’. Over the weekend, the size of the proposed bailout grew as the Bush administration said foreign banks, including Barclays and UBS, should be eligible for the bailout. The Financial Times reports some industry groups are lobbying for the fund to grow even larger by including a clause that would allow banks to account for any losses realized over a number of years.

Secretary Paulson is convinced that the American people will be less burdened by this $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bail-out than by any attempt by the Fed or the Treasury to assist those millions of home-owners facing fore-closure, homelessness and destitution. Mr Paulson did not expound upon this irrationality.

His worry is ‘economic expansion’, and those folks in foreclosure as a result of predatory sub-prime loan programs simply cannot be expected to be a viable part of the anticipated ‘economic expansion’. Now, that’s what some wags might call ‘compassionate conservatism’.

900,000,000,000

Nine hundred billion

Nine-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero.

No, that number's not from the odometer on the Starship Enterprise nor the distance from here to the center of the galaxy.

That’s $900,000,000,000!

US dollars, that is.

First Bear-Sterns, then Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, now AIG; all are being bail-out by the US government!

That means the US taxpayers (not those who top the 5% stratum and have been getting all the breaks from Reagan-omics Mark II but all the rest of us) are now being forced by the administration to borrow more money to bail-out companies mismanaged by greedy, unscrupulous gamblers.

Meanwhile, some 4,000,000 home-owners who were at the mercy of predatory loan-sharking are forced from their homes for lack of government support. Not to mention our deteriorating infrastructure, under-financed education system, nearly-non-existent health care system, etc which could be - should be – at the front of the line for disbursements rather than these vipers in pin-stripe.

Add that astronomic number to the billions spent (and borrowed) every week to pay for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and anyone with more numeric savvy than a third-grade can see that the US economy is in deep doo-doo.

To hear Bush and McCain talk, you’d think otherwise.

“Sound Fundamentals”? Fundamentally F***ed, you mean, don’t you?

Lingering Ruminations on the RNC (ugh)

You know what really amazed me about the RNC?

The fact that each of the speakers at the RNC, Thompson, Leiberman, McCain and Palin (et al.) went on and on about the problems of America but never, ever mentioned the Bush administration or any of the principals who have master-minded the mess we’re in. Of course, they want to distance themselves from Bush/Cheney and company – Bush delivered his speech from the White House; Cheney was in the Caucasus shilling for Big Oil – that’s easy to figure.

The amazing thing is the deceitful, callous panache, if you will, that was displayed by those hard-working spin-meisters who crafted the speeches at the RNC. Any writer will tell you that would be incredibly difficult to be able to bring up the Iraq debacle, the faltering economy, record home foreclosures, rising unemployment, the power of lobbyists, and so on, pushing all of the right ‘hot buttons’ for voters without ever mentioning or alluding to the fact that all of these problems lay directly at the door of the Bush administrations and the GOP.

Granted that the Dems – inept, complacent bunch of craven goldbricks that they are, with few exceptions – have done next to nothing since gaining control of Congress but rubber stamp the decrees from the Imperial Palace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the big problems were well out of the gate by then.

And then to top it all off with calling McCain/Palin a pair of Mavericks and a ticket for Change! Wow! Mavericks that run with the herd and change that won’t actually change anything. Amazing chutzpa!

Of course, it could be called worse things.

They're At It Again!

Like murderous 2-year olds, you can't take your eyes off of them for a moment. They're making war with an ally, now!

The Bush and Cheney Gang - who else!? While the ridiculous spectacle of personality politics in the US distracts us, Bush/Cheney are attacking Pakistan.

Again and again!

Killing hundreds of men, women, children and - oh, by the way, the occasional member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

My, my. Do tell! There are Taliban and Al-Qaeda member in Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan? In the Tora Bora Mountains! There!?

This is not news. This is the same old info we’ve had since before the Russians bailed on their Afghani adventure. The CIA and the ISI recruited and hired those thugs to harass the Ruskies. The thugs did a pretty good job and they continue to do a pretty good job at harassing occupying forces. And they’re still in the same area of the world where the USA armed them.

Of course, with the Bush/Cheney eyes on a different prize, they were not so interested in finding some Arab with bad kidneys in a cave and bringing him to trial. (What would you imagine we could all learn from several days of Bin Laden’s testimony in a witness box?)

A third of world oil reserves! Makes your head spin! Bush could revive Arbusco Oil (and probably run it into the ground)and Cheney would probably get free virgins and a gazillion bucks a month in retainers from Halliburton just for his rolodex.

But I digress…

US forces are attacking our ‘key partner in the War on Terror’! What the f… is with that? I suppose Bush/Cheney and their round-table of socio-paths figured the Pakistanis wouldn’t mind if the US killed a few dozen people in the Tribal Areas for a ‘good cause’. Of course, they were advised against such an insane, immoral action by the Intelligence Community, but did they listen? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

You’ve got to give credit where it is due, though. This is a tried and true tactic for winning the war on terror; it’s proven successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a nutshell, here’s the plan: make every person in the region hate the US for brutally murdering a family member or loved one. Then everybody in the region, man, woman and child, will share a culturally rooted vow to affect terrible, bloody vengeance on the USA.

That will take care of ‘collateral damage’ for good; whoever’s on photo-op detail at the White House will simply read the teleprompter and sign the executive order making ‘them’ all terrorists.

Ipso facto…

Presto change-o! Nobody’s an innocent because they’ve all been defined as ‘evil terr’rists’ by Imperial decree.

Then we just nuke ‘em all and take the oil.

Bush’s 2008 RNC speech: (Reading Between the Lines)

Borrowing the technology of 'Being John Malcovic', the author is able to provide annotation for Bush's speech to the RNC as heard through the mind of the 'Decider'.

And now, Ladies and Germs, give a warm Republican welcome to the 'Decider', the Commando-in-Chief, the President of the United States of America (for at least another fiscal quarter), GEORGE W. BUSH!

(Cue ‘Applause’…)

I know what it takes to be president.

(Unfortunately, I don’t have what it takes to be a good one.)

In these past eight years, I’ve sat at the Resolute desk

(That’s the one next to the water-cooler outside Cheney’s office.)

and reviewed the daily intelligence briefings, the threat assessments and the reports from our commanders on the front lines.

(Well, I didn’t actually ‘review’ cuz, y’know, I just hate to read but Dick or that nice Addington fella told me the gist of it.)

I’ve stood in the ruins of buildings knocked down by killers

(the ones in Jew York City and the ones in Iraq, too.)

and promised the survivors I would never let them down.

(I just hope that don’t hold me to it cuz I’ve got more brush to clear down on the ranch and that thing in Afghani-whatever ain’t going so well, Condi says.)

I know the hard choices that fall solely to a president.

(And I’m batting pretty close to 1.000 on getting them all wrong but ‘Hey’ you gotta swing for the fences, right? Or why step up to the plate? (I love a good baseball metaphor, don’t you?))

John McCain’s life has prepared him to make those choices.

(For me, it was my close ties with the Saudi Royal family and my personal ‘hot line’ to Jesus.)

He is ready to lead this nation.

(Down the primrose path, for four more years of economic ruin for the middle- class and the poor (who ever they are, I forget…) and prob’ly a couple more cool, never-ending conflicts to show the world we’re still #1 at ‘standing tall’ and kickin’ ass!)

From the day of his commissioning,

(when he barely passed the flight training – something we have in common!)

John McCain was a respected naval officer

(whose father and grandfather were admirals, so those tars and avi-a-tors had damned well better respect him.)

who made decisions on which the lives of others depended.

(Mostly of course it was decisions like when to drop bombs on the Vietnamese peasants and the like; y’know - ‘Life and Death’.)

As an elected public servant,

(of the wonderfully generous lobbyists of Big Oil and my other buddies)

he earned the respect of colleagues in both parties

(who are also deep in the pockets of Big Oil and my other buddies)

as a man to follow when there’s a tough call to make.

(F’rinstance when he has to figure out which of his mansions he wants to spend the weekend at.)

John McCain’s life is a story of service above self.

(Or is that ‘the service of story to self’? Whatever… But the ‘official’ story of John’s life 40 years ago is the story we’re selling here so even if all the facts don’t fit, Karl says that’s no matter seeing as Americans’re such a stupid bunch.)

Forty years ago in an enemy prison camp,

(I’ll never understand why those folks took being bombed and slaughtered so personally…)

Lieutenant Commander McCain was offered release ahead of others who had been held longer.

(Cuz they thought he was some kinda royalty or something, I guess, his father being an Admiral an' all.)

His wounds were so severe that anyone would have understood if he had accepted.

(Let’s see, about that time, I was outside Houston in the Air National Guard - when I wasn’t AWOL! Heh-heh)

John refused.

(I guess that just goes to show you there IS a difference between the two of us.)

For that selfless decision, he suffered nearly five more years of beatings and isolation.

(Let’s see, yeah, I was on my way to Harvard Law School. They sure were surprised to see a ‘C’ student sitting in class! Just goes to show, ‘It ain’t what you know but WHO you know.’ So, there, Obama-jama.)

When he was released, his arms had been broken, but not his honor.

(Prob’ly best not to mention that his nickname was ‘the Songbird’; he was hurtin’, after all. Just wish some of those Al Qaeda boys in Gitmo would start singin’…)

Fellow citizens,

(Not all of you, just the rich, connected ones, okay?)

if the Hanoi Hilton

(Always flash on that crotch-shot of Paris when I say that…)

could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country,

(Like, y’know, staying alive and that sort of stuff.)

you can be sure the ‘Angry Left’ never will.

(I’ll never understand why they’re so pissed. Why don’t they like me? I’m a pretty regular guy for a spoiled rich kid who’s led the country to ruin three different ways to Sunday. But that’s mostly Dick and Donnie’s doing, y’know. And that Addington guy and Paul and, and Condi.. and….)

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_mysticalmccain.htm

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/McCAIN%20RADIO%20BROADCAST%20from%20Ha%20Noi%20060269.pdf

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html?PageNr=1