S. Blumenthal: Bush's Unhappy Holidays

[kskiska]

The presidential vacationer is being besieged

While the president worries about restoring "balance" to his life, Americans are worried by stratospheric gas prices and growing fed up with the war in Iraq.

(snip)

Home on the range more than the deer and the antelope play. Near a drainage ditch by the road leading to Prairie Chapel, President Bush's Texas ranch, the mother of a dead soldier has pitched a tent. Cindy Sheehan has refused to leave until she is granted an audience with the president. Her son, 24-year-old Army Spc Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic, was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4 2004, and she calls her makeshift vigil in memorial "Camp Casey".

Her previous meeting with Bush has only impelled her to seek the satisfaction of another one. "He didn't even know Casey's name. Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject."

(snip)

For the American public this news melds in their daily lives with the spike in gas prices. The Iraq invasion, of course, was supposed to guarantee perpetual cheap oil. While the price boost has erased wage gains and flattened consumer demand, this oil crisis is more than a tale of statistics. Like oil crises in the past, it strikes at American feelings of independence, mobility, freedom and exceptionalism. Not since the oil crisis during the summer of 1979 that provoked President Carter's "malaise" speech have such frustrations surfaced.

Sandstorms by the banks of the Euphrates swirl to the Waco River, and the presidential vacationer, besieged by alarms and marches, has turned querulous and peevish. As his crusade was being overtaken by a sense of drift and futility, Bush explained why he would not meet with Sheehan: "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life." This week he has planned a bike ride with Lance Armstrong.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1551392,00.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. The Closet Pyscho Prez comes out...he is now in the open...

A CONFIRMED NUT CASE.....

[ixion]

2. interesting. the word 'peevish' has been edited out... in fact, the whole

last paragraph has changed.

I don't know, I think peevish is a great word to describe chimpenator.