A Come-to-Daddy Moment

[chefmike]

Mo Dowd's(NY Times) latest hilarious and brilliant column-

A Come-to-Daddy Moment
By MAUREEN DOWD


Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they’re taking it back.

They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical.

In a scene that might be called “Murder on the Oval Express,” Rummy turned up dead with so many knives in him that it’s impossible to say who actually finished off the man billed as Washington’s most skilled infighter. (Poppy? Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?)

The defense chief got hung out to dry before Saddam got hung. The president and Karl Rove, underestimating the public’s hunger for change or overestimating the loyalty of a fed-up base, did not ice Rummy in time to save the Senate from teetering Democratic. But once Sonny managed to heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority — as well as the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. Army — then Bush Inc., the family firm that snatched the presidency for W. in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes.

Mr. Gates, already on Mr. Baker’s “How Do We Get Sonny Out of Deep Doo Doo in Iraq?” study group, left his job protecting 41’s papers at Texas A&M to return to Washington and pry the fingers of Poppy’s old nemesis, Rummy, off the Pentagon.

“They had to bring in someone from the old gang,” said someone from the old gang. “That has to make Junior uneasy. With Bob, the door is opened again to 41 and Baker and Brent.”

W. had no choice but to make an Oedipal U-turn. He couldn’t let Nancy Pelosi subpoena the cranky Rummy for hearings on Iraq. “He’s not exactly Mr. Charming or Mr. Truthful, and he’d be on TV saying something stupid,” said a Bush 41 official. “Bob can just go up to the Hill and say: ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there when that happened.’ ”

Bob Gates, his friends say, had been worried about the belligerent, arrogant, ideological style of Rummy & Cheney from the start. He fretted at the way W.’s so-called foreign policy “dream team” — including his old staffer and fellow Soviet expert Condi — made it up as they went along, even though that had been their complaint about the Clinton foreign policy team. A realpolitik advocate like his mentor, General Scowcroft, he was critical of a linear, moralizing style that disdained nuance, demoted diplomacy and inflated villains. In 2004, he publicly questioned the administration’s approach to Iran.

While Vice went off to a corner to lick his wounds, W. was forced to do his best imitation of his dad yesterday, talking about “bipartisan outreach,” “people have spoken,” blah-blah-blah — after he’d been out on the trail saying that electing Democrats would mean that “the terrorists win and America loses.”

“I share a large part of the responsibility” for the “thumpin’ ” of Republicans, he told reporters. Actually, he gets full responsibility.

W. has stopped talking about democracy as a standard of success in Iraq; yesterday, he said that Iraq had to “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.”

He was asked if his surprise at the election results showed he was out of touch with Americans. “I thought when it was all said and done,” he replied, “the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security.”

So it was just that the American people were too dumb to understand? W. also managed to bash Vietnam vets, saying that this war isn’t similar because there’s a volunteer army, so “the troops understand the consequences of Iraq in the global war on terror.” Is that why W. stayed out of Vietnam? Because he understood it?

An ashen Rummy was also condescending during his uncomfortable tableau with W. and Bob Gates in the Oval Office, implying that he was dumped because Americans just didn’t “comprehend” what was going on in Iraq. Actually, Rummy, we get it. You don’t get it.

“Baker’s no fool,” a Bush 41 official said. “He wasn’t going to go out there with a plan for Iraq and have Rummy shoot it down. He wanted a receptive audience. Everyone had to be on the same page before the plan is unveiled.”

They don’t call him the Velvet Hammer for nothing. R.I.P., Rummy.

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/09...Maureen%20Dowd

[Artmann100]

Oh, thank you Chef Mike.. that as a great way to start my day. I never dreamt things would get so ugly that I would be overjoyed to see Bush the Senior's team back in office.
But compared to the Crawford Clown and his croneys, George 1's tenure in ofice is looking like a minor Golden Age in America(yes, he got us into Iraq in the first place, and then got us back out ASAP.. something that it is obvious his son had no desire to do)

[chefmike]

I know how you feel. And I love how the author calls Baker's study group “How Do We Get Sonny Out of Deep Doo Doo in Iraq?” .

[chefmike]

[chefmike]

No doubt about it, Bush Inc. have put sonnyboy shrubya on a very short leash...

[chefmike]

Regarding shrubya and the invasion of Iraq:

Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in612067.shtml

It is now apparent that shrubya's appeals to his "higher father" for advice fell on deaf(as well as dumb) ears. Or maybe the chimp-in-chief's "higher father" was just having a bit of sport with our dim-witted chickenhawk prez...so now sonny has finally admitted that he needs his "earthly father' to pull his fat out of the fire yet again.

[chefmike]

More on Poppy Bush bailing out shrubya yet again-

Junior Eats Shit, Calls Poppy For Help...Again
Bob Cesca

Anyone who continues to live under the delusion that President Bush is a competent, strong leader who stands on his own skill and talent needs to seriously re-evaluate his or her concept of strong leaders who stand on his or her own skill and talent. And for these remaining 31 percent who believe President Bush continues to do a heckuva job, I strongly recommend they carefully place corks on all their forks before hurting themselves... and others. That's not to say they're idiots, but this sort of continued support despite the myriad of facts to the contrary is, at best, dangerous.

Meanwhile, for you and me, it comes as no surprise that President Bush, after -- WHOOPS! -- spazzing his way through a pair of bloody wars, has been left with no other option but to call in Poppy's team of proctors to carefully push corks onto the official White House forks. And it's not the first time for the president. His entire life has been an ongoing saga of either using Poppy's influence to avoid trouble or using Poppy to bail him out after eating shit.

A large part of his education path was modeled after and aided by Poppy. The president attended Phillips Academy, then Yale where he was a member of the fabled Skull & Bones Society; all three of which were attended by Poppy and granddad Prescott. In a patrician family like the Bushes, it's not a stretch to say that the family name had something to do with the academically-challenged Junior's admission to these prestigious schools. Had the president been left to his own stubborn devices, I imagine he'd still be wandering the plains of Midland -- 60 years old and carrying a rotting box of Lunchables and a Trapper Keeper, wondering aloud when the short bus will finally arrive.

Then there was the Vietnam draft and the president's golden parachute: the Texas Air National Guard. After scoring just above a passing grade on the entrance exam, President Bush was somehow catapulted to near the top of the admissions list, landing in the privileged Champaign Unit reserved for upper-class citizens and relatives of famous Texans. Poppy and his pals successfully kept the president out of Vietnam.

Then there was his cocaine possession arrest in 1972 which was magically expunged from the president's record. Junior snorted shit this time and Poppy made a call to fix the record.

In 1977, President Bush formed Arbusto Oil and perpetually required Poppy's connections to wealthy investors to stay afloat after hitting oil at fewer than half of his drilling locations. Later, during the controversy surrounding the president's opportunistic sale of Harken Energy stock immediately prior to a crippling loss (Harken had absorbed Spectrum 7 which had previously merged with Bush Exploration/Arbusto), the president's lawyer in the SEC investigation was Robert Jordan who was a partner at James Baker's Baker/Botts firm. Jordan would later become the president's ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The list goes on and horribly on. The 2000 election recount? James Baker front and center again.

This is all well worn territory, but the point is clear: when President Bush goes it alone, he eats shit and needs Poppy to Heimlich said shit from the presidential esophagus. When he plays it safe and employs Poppy's influence, he keeps his nose clean. Um... yeah. So when he set out like a neocon-guided armadilla' hunter destined to change the world with Shock & Awesome bunker busters while refusing to listen to Poppy's seasoned team of foreign policy experts (including the expert who was his first Secretary of State) he was destined for disaster. This time, though, we all were.

Yet scores of true believers, up through and including Katrina, swore by President Bush's competency. By the way, who did the president call to put a kindly face to his heckuva job in the Gulf Coast? Poppy. To this very day, 31 percent of America continues to believe in the president's job performance. This is an astounding testament to blind faith and non-reality based delusion, which isn't surprising considering the sheer multitudes among us who continue to believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11 (31 percent according to a September NYT/CBS Poll). And now with American and Iraqi civilian casualties mounting by the day and the thought of victory appearing almost as quaint as a Lindsay Lohan kids movie, Poppy's Proctors are back. Again.

Tragically, it required nearly four years of quagmire, death and waste before the real adults were called in with a Hummer overflowing with corks. And this begs several key questions. How many lives could've been saved had this happened in the first place? And should we take seriously any right-wing objections to congressional hearings as to why this didn't happen prior to the invasion or in the early days of the occupation (sometime between "major combat operations have ended" and "bring 'em on")? Instead, blind knee-jerk jingoism and cowardice has, all along, enabled the president in his latest failed attempt to handle utensils without proper protection and without the necessary adult supervision.

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ONE FINAL NOTE. Imagine being Vice President Cheney right now. He was supposed to be the mastermind. He was supposed to be the Dad who could do anything. And now it's as if Child Protective Services has been called in by concerned neighbors to haul his kids into protective custody on a live episode of COPS. And he must know that writhing on the front lawn in his boxers and wife-beater is out of the question, so there he's forced to sit. Taking it. On the world stage. With his shotgun tied in a cartoony knot. Couldn't have happened to a better guy. But like I said, it should've happened four years ago before he participated in the abuse and neglect.

column and URL footnotes-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ce...p_b_34059.html