Dubya: The surreal afterlife of an ex-President

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:



Dubya: The surreal afterlife of an ex-President
What has the most unpopular US President of all time been doing during his first year of retirement? Telling bad jokes – and defending his reputation, discovers Alex Hannaford in Texas

Tuesday, 15 December 2009


George W Bush is clearly enjoying himself. Alone on the stage, mic in hand, he tells a story about a moment earlier this year when he was walking his dog, Barney, around the Dallas suburb he now calls home. "I wanted to say hello to my neighbours," says Bush, "because I was worried we'd inconvenienced them when word was out that George Bush was moving where they lived. I hadn't walked in a neighbourhood in eight years. Ain't that interesting? Barney had never walked in a neighbourhood either ... he only knew the lawn of the White House; he only knew Crawford, Texas, he only knew Camp David."

He decided to go up to a neighbour and say hello, Bush tells us. But just as he goes to shake the neighbour's hand, Bush realises that he still has a plastic poop bag covering his hand like a glove.

The image of Dubya holding a poop-scoop mitt settles on the audience who have come to see him speak at a stadium in San Antonio, Texas. Then he launches into another anecdote – an old favourite about the time Laura asked him to go out and buy a battery from the local hardware store and someone asked whether anyone had ever told him he looked just like the former President. It happens all the time, he'd replied. "The guy then takes a couple of steps away then turns round and says, 'That must make you mad'."

He soaks up the applause from his position on a stage in the centre of the stadium. I can see Bush fairly clearly from my seat, although his voice is occasionally drowned out, not just by the cheers of the crowd, but by four middle-aged women who are yelling "war criminal" at him at the top of their lungs. He can't hear them though, and after a while they're escorted out of the venue by security guards. Bush looks at ease with this crowd as he strides from one corner to the other. He is wearing a sharp grey suit, and smiles regularly as he regales us, a mostly adoring audience, with tales of how, at 63, he is now adjusting to life as a 'regular guy'. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dubya-the-surreal-afterlife-of-an-expresident-1840867.html

[itsrobert]

1. hmm, I thought he was still President

as it's more of the same.

[msongs]

2. he's already got his never-gonna-be-prosecuted card handy nt

[marmar]

4. Mon dieu......

:eyes:

[izquierdista]

3. After making sure no one else could

Before he came along, I had a regular job, with regular benefits, decent health insurance and vacations.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. What a bullshitter.

"When I campaigned I never said 'Elect me, I look forward to being a wartime leader'. It's the worst thing a President ought to be, and it's the last choice of a President to put his troops into harm's way. But I made the decision that the best way to protect the country from cold-blooded killers was to go on the offensive, stay on the offensive and bring them to justice before they hurt us again."

Right Dubya, you old war criminal. You never came out and campaigned on it, but we know you had a hard-on to be a war "president" from day one to prove something to old man Poppy and to yourself - i.e. that a washed out, coke-addled, intellectually stunted dry drunk like yourself could really leave a mark in history for something besides being the most unlikely, unsuitable and unqualified presidential candidate to ever find himself sitting in the Oval Office with the job title of President of the United States of America.

Bush did want war with Iraq and that was before he became president. He told his ghost writer, Mickey Herskowitz, while Bush was still governor of Texas, that he wanted to be a great president. All of the great presidents were war presidents, said Bush. I want to be a war president and the country I want to go to war with is Iraq. So the main reason for Bush to go to war with Iraq was for his ego. Thousands of US military personnel and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent men, women, and children, all dead for Bush's ego.

http://www.helium.com/items/138724-why-bush-wants-war

[Tutankhamun]

6. George Bush: peaceful leader turned reluctant warrior

:sarcasm:

[burning rain]

7. Many forget that in 2000 he campaigned against military entanglements & nation-building,

I was a Republican at the the time--only switched my registration in 2004--but voted for Gore simply because Bush's stupidity and smug ignorance scared the hell out of me. I thought it would make him putty in the hands of some or other nefarious advisors or interest groups. That proved accurate, but I had no idea at the time they'd include warmongering neo-cons. He'd campaigned on low-key domestic conservative issues, so I was thinking more along the lines of uncompromising business interests that would get W to let them befoul the environment and shit on workers to their shriveled hearts' content. As it turned out, that wasn't the half of it.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. I don't like the fact that he's still out of jail so up in my face.

That weasel motherfucker would do well to maintain a very low profile.

[wizstars]

9. That, Sir, is an insult to the Mustelidae family.

In the future please confine yourself to comparisons to lower non-mammalian life forms--preferably in the Cyanophyte phylum (i.e., pond-scum).