I'm just the guy that can't stand cant. ___________

 
GONE FISHIN': The Self Made Pundit, Mrs. Pundit and the two younger Pundits will be on vacation in a cabin in the woods at an undisclosed location for the last two weeks of August.

Check back after Labor Day for the usual trenchant political analysis and well-deserved sarcasm directed at the most inept Presidential administration since Hoover's. Since I'm on vacation, my wife won't let me mention you know who.

I may try to escape from the cabin and find an online computer to make a quick post if He Who Must Not Be Named commits some egregious offense against truth and decency. Wait a minute, that's too low a standard, he does that every day.

See you in September (If not sooner).
posted by Gary at 10:01 AM

 
IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS: And I don’t mean the compassionate conservative heart of President Bush.

I’m not writing about the mean-spirited and disastrous policies of Bush today because I want to discuss what it was like to be one of the 50 million Americans and Canadians thrown into darkness, just as America was thrown into darkness when the Supreme Court selected Bush as our president.

At 4:11 p.m. yesterday, a conference call in which I was participating suddenly went silent as electrical power to my mid-Manhattan office shut down as abruptly as brain power ceased at the White House on January 20, 2001.

For the next few hours, my co-workers and I would listen to a battery-powered radio’s reports of the biggest blackout in American history and wander the halls aimlessly, wondering what to do, acting as if we were Bush’s clueless economic advisers confronting the worst economy since the Great Depression.

At about 7:30 p.m., one of my few remaining colleagues and I decided to see if we could make our way home, and we opened the door to the musty and pitch-black stairwell, just as Bush has opened the door to dark and dank environmental policies.

We descended into darkness, unsure of our footing, much as Bush is plunging us all into the darkness of record-breaking budget deficits with no end in sight.

My colleague and I blundered down the stairs with only the occasional flicker of an inadequate lighter guiding us, just as Bush has America stumbling through Iraq and Afghanistan with inadequate forces to rebuild those countries.

We made it down the stairs and staggered out of our office building and into the hot and chaotic streets of Manhattan with no clear idea how to get home, much as Bush has no clear idea how to pacify a defeated, yet chaotic, Iraq.

With the Grand Central trains out of commission, I waited on Madison Avenue for three hours as I scanned each packed oncoming bus, searching in vain for a bus that would take me near home, just as American forces have searched futilely for those numerous – yet apparently invisible – weapons of mass destruction that Bush claimed imminently threatened America.

After an exasperating three hours on the darkened, yet crowded, streets of Manhattan, at 10:30 p.m. I finally settled for a bus that took me out of the city and about half the way home, just as Bush and his crew have decided to settle for proof of programs of weapons of mass destruction as supposedly justifying a preemptive war to end an imminent threat.

Shortly after the bus ended its route in a dark and unfamiliar neighborhood of a nearby city at about 11:30 p.m., I was ecstatic to see my wife driving up in the dark to end my bleak adventure, just as citizens who care about democracy (with a small “d”) will be ecstatic a year from November for the chance to drive out of the darkness of Bush’s inept policies.

I feel like I’ve made a breakthrough – I wrote an entire Self Made Pundit that was not about President Bush. I think I might finally be over my obsession with the amazing Bush, who has the fascinating ability to combine incuriousness, ignorance, self deception, hypocrisy, duplicity, outright dishonesty and sheer ineptness into one seamless catastrophe of an administration.

Or maybe I’m not.
posted by Gary at 3:17 PM

 
VACATIONING IN BUSHWORLD: Orlando had better look out because it is facing fierce competition from a new contender for the title of the most fantasy-filled vacation spot in America – Crawford, Texas.

Forget about Disneyworld and Universal Studios, the leading theme parks of yesterday. Soon, they will join the aging Weeki Wachee Springs water park and its sad mermaids as vacation spots that have been overshadowed by the latest theme park dedicated to the fantastic.

Welcome to Bushworld, the theme park dedicated to entertaining President Bush with fantasies about his policies as he vacations in Crawford. As the Associated Press is reporting today, Bush is going to be treated to a fantasy-filled revue on the economy performed by his cheerleading cabinet secretaries:

When President Bush gets a state-of-the-economy report Wednesday, there will be hearty agreement all around the table that his tax cuts are spurring a recovery.

There won't be dissenting views because the president's own economic team will be presenting the report at Bush's ranch, unlike last summer when he heard truck drivers, welders, investors and business leaders pour out anxieties about lost jobs, falling stock prices and corporate corruption.

This year the discussion will be led by Treasury Secretary John Snow, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Away from the ranch, there's no shortage of skeptics about Bush's policies. Some prominent critics said Tuesday that Bush is digging a deficit hole that will severely hurt the economy in time.

“Current economic policies are the worst in our 200-year history,” said George A. Akerlof, who shared the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. “Within 10 years we are going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility.”

Akerlof took part in a conference call in which economists – including former Clinton advisers Gene Sperling and Laura D'Andrea Tyson – said that Bush's tax cuts are not stimulating the economy and are producing structural deficits that will hurt over the long run.

....

White House officials say the ranch meeting is intended to review how Bush's tax cuts have helped the economy.

They’re going to review how Bush’s tax cuts have helped the economy? Boy, that’s going to be a short meeting!

The nation's unemployment rate stood at 6.2 percent in July; businesses cut jobs for the sixth month in a row, and the administration announced this summer that in part because of the weak economy the budget deficit will soar to $455 billion this year and $475 billion in 2004, both records in dollar terms.

The list of Bush’s economic accomplishments does not stop there. Bush’s disastrous economic policies have also resulted in the economy losing three million jobs since he became president. This administration is on track to become the first presidential administration since Herbert Hoover’s to experience a net loss in American jobs.

Bush’s economic record is so dismal even Bush has come to realize that he has to take decisive action. Unfortunately, Bush can hardly be expected to take any action that goes against the tax-cutting interests of his corporate and wealthy backers. So Bush is resorting to his standard response of pretending that his disastrous policies are succeeding as he cheerfully proclaims that peace and prosperity are just around the corner.

Since Bush is intent on constructing a massive fantasyworld to tout his record-breaking economic policies, perhaps he could actually accomplish something useful by buying the collapsing Weeki Wachee Springs water park and transporting it to Crawford. I’m sure those struggling Weeki Wachee mermaids would be excited to put on a show touting the administration’s economic achievements.

The Weeki Wachee mermaids would certainly have more credibility discussing the nation's economy than the incompetents who gave us this mess – Bush and his team of economic cheerleaders.
posted by Gary at 8:29 PM