New Bush Book

By Bob Draper, who wrote the great history of Rolling Stone. Among the highlights:

"The Times had noted that Bush, asked about life after leaving office, told Draper, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Glad to see he's going to be OK.
I guess cleaning bedpans at Walter Reed is out.


More here:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003634171

 

I was kind of worried about that, too. I'll sleep well tonight.

 

Mr. President, your father and his successor can speak English.

It's always been one of the great unspoken joys, to come.

No one will give a shit.

He can go back to Crawford, play cowboy, and wonder why the phone doesn't ring.

Lack of self-awareness is very, very ugly.

 

If public speaking doesn't work out, he can always fall back on being the inept owner of a professional sports franchise.

 

Well, the Rangers had their most successful years under W. Don't know how inept he was.

 

WaPo had a story about it today. Some interesting stuff in there, namely how the author claims it was John Roberts that put forth the idea of nominating Miers; was not a very popular pick. Rove supposedly was shouted down when he objected, and Miers herself had to be talked into accepting the nomination.

Roberts denied that, however, in the story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090201422.html?hpid=topnews

Good tidbits in there, namely about Bush's biking habit and the fact that Rove and Dan Bartlett were 'at war'.

 

7+ years of national hell summed up in fewer than two sentences.

Thank goodness for "Macaca," or else we could have another buffoon of an offspring in position to be elected to the White House.

Dubbya makes H-Dubbya look like a combination of Washington, Lincoln, Bismark, Roosevelt, and Einstein. And that isn't easy, given Poppa Bush's own limitations.

So the guy who came in with dismissed reports of terrorist plans to fly jetliners into buildings gets to leave, apparently, with his own Vietnam. And that doesn't even take into consideration whatever is going to happen with Iran.

A W defender was trying to convince me (i.e., convince himself) of how great these 7+ years have been today. It was sad, like listening to a fighter who stuck around too long or something. Mr. sub-30% approval ratings just keeps fumbling on, as his minions fall all around him, from Libby to Rumsfeld, Miers to Rove.

There are a number of people on the board who are older than me, but I cannot remember feeling as fearful for the nation's well-being as those first few years after 9/11. Not because of the catastrophic trauma itself, but because of how it was manipulated - and willingly permitted to be manipulated by docile Congressmen and Congresswomen on down the organizational chart - to silence any and all opponents of the Project for a New American Century cartel. For a period of time there, I really felt that I had an idea of what it must have felt like at the beginnings of the formations of the fascist regimes of the past.

And now we have "America's Mayor" running for office, fresh off of, um, dissembling about his own role in post-9/11 NYC. How fortunate for him that he and disgraced cronies like Kerik could make bucketloads of cash speaking about their own apparently-overstated sacrifices in the wake of the tragedy. And now we're supposed to vote for the guy who's on, what, his 3rd wife and who - according to some - had NYC ill-prepared for 9/11 even though he took office only months after the NYC terrorist attack in 1993?

Nah, I think not.

We've already had Bush I and II. No need for Dubbya's apparent choice as his would-be successor. At least not to me.

 

Whatever.

 

He apparently lied to Draper, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/washington/04bremer.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

 

Whatever.