So long Bush, may ye rest in pus

Sit back, put your feet up, pour some tea, and just enjoy this outrageous gem of vitriol

by Jennifer Matsui

The catastrophic success of Hurricane Katrina in carrying out the Bush administration's second term agenda in only a few short days should have been cheering news for the beleaguered war prez. Even though he is being forced to lick his wounds publicly while the key players of “Operation Hurrah Katrina” quietly celebrate “Mardi Graft” behind closed doors, the president should have had plenty of reason to rejoice along with them, that is, if he hadn't already outlived his usefulness both publicly and within his own party. Having secured New Orleans as ground zero for a long-awaited ethnic cleansing, while laying down the blueprint for a police state nationwide, Bush is now in the awkward position of having to appear penitent while signaling “Mission Accomplished” to his dwindling base.

Already we can see the damage he's inflicted on his trademark smirk, as he wheezes and grimaces through his openly scripted public appearances. Not even his renewed hard line stance against Syria can re-ignite his fizzling approval ratings, which have dipped to record lows for a second term president. Funny how the plight of homeless Somalis swimming around in your own backyard tends to put a damper on even the heartiest appetites for destruction. Add a grieving Gold Star mother left to bake outside your Texas ranch and you've got yourself a public relations nightmare. And that's not even counting Tom Delay's recent arrest for money laundering, Bill Frist's SEC woes, and Karl Rove's impending indictment in the Valerie Plame affair. Clearly, Bush is living off the chump change left over from his much vaunted and mostly illusory "political capital."

After publicly praising fellow patsy and former FEMA chief Michael Brown—the Lee Harvey Oswald of this reverse political assasination (What else do you call it when a public figure is set up to kill thousands of his fellow citizens?), Bush himself has become a fall guy for the Whitehouse's Cheney-led cabal—yet another expendable player in the shell game of Empire. Having achieved everything they set out to do (destroy the Bill of Rights, expand the powers of the Patriot Act, make Homeland Security a branch of the military, give permanent tax breaks to the rich, legalize torture, normalize pre-emptive war, eradicate public education, to name just a few), the junta has little reason to concern itself with trivialities like Bush's plummeting popularity.

Still, the junta may have underestimated the fallout from the recently disclosed e-mails from a FEMA staffer to Michael Brown's secretary proving that “Brownie” fiddled with his dinner arrangements while New Orleans was being wiped off the map. "Let Brownie Eat Cake" will likely linger in the collective memory long after the heads of America's current Imperial rulers roll into the gutter of history.

Rather than the fiery “End Times” finale many expected would mark the end of Bush's second term in office, a confluence of comparatively minor but highly symbolic events have contributed to the steady erosion of his approval ratings, leaving him vulnerable and ridiculous. Even die-hard loyalists have to admit that only a horse's ass would promote a horse show organizer to the nation's highest emergency relief agency. And only a horse's ass would praise the efforts of this mass-murderer's bungled hatchet job on his own presidency. "Guten arbeit, Herr Braunie".

Bush's choice of loyal spinster Harriet Miers, his one-time legal counsel and head cheerleader as his Supreme Court nominee, gives impetus to the notion that the president is a lonely and isolated figure in his own administration. At first glance, this latter day “Miss Hathaway” seems a natural choice for the Supreme-Being Court—an asexual evangelical frump with a corruption-riddled resume and a paper trail of love letters to the guy who is now championing her promotion to the federal bench. Being unfamiliar with the complexities of constitutional law as she is with the correct application of eyeliner, Miss Harriet fits right in with all the other unqualified comfort-giving cronies (emphasis on “crone”) whom he has appointed to key positions based on loyalty and a willingness to play wet nurse to his inner demons. It's not hard to imagine (although painful to visualize) wee George struggling with mater Barbara's whalebone corsets only to find himself suckling the butt-end of her mother-of-pearl-handled Smith and Wesson. The wildly unpopular choice of his former lawyer to the nation's top court merely reinforces the view that the boy king feels increasingly frozen out of the decision-making loop and is seeking maternal reassurance from yet another tough old nanny figure who will soothe his daily public spankings with lollipops, and lend a sympathetic ear to his private deliriums.

Conservative opposition to Harriet Meiers' nomination is based not so much on her ambiguous stance on Roe vs. Wade as the blow holes of the religious right would have us believe. More likely, it stems from the residual rage Bush loyalists feel after seeing “Dear Leader” clearly for the first time—minus the Karl Rove Light and Magic Show. Image, more than ideology, has always explained the political genius of George Bush. By maintaining a barricaded and heavily armed distance from the grunts on the ground (at home and in Iraq), the boy king's regal disregard for human suffering could always be marketed to his advantage at the skilled hands of his puppet masters. Through the power of image, the silver spoon he was born with became a dirt tipped shovel, his cowardice, “courage,” and his notorious insensitivity, “compassion.”

But overnight it seems, Bush has transformed from the buff “commanderin'chief” strutting aboard an aircraft carrier into a cowardly sea captain standing idiotically resolute on the prow of a life boat, watching helplessly as his slave ship sinks. That's not to say that Bush loyalists are shedding too many tears for the chained human cargo who perished aboard the SS Katrina. Indeed they have made clear that they privately endorse genocide if it accomplishes what decades of tax breaks for the rich, cuts to social services, and curbs on civil liberties have failed to do, namely kill off “undesirable” populations and keep the remaining majority paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.

But even those who benefit most from the bidness a’guvmint and religion take exception to having their agenda laid out in the cruel glare of daylight. For them, Bush's criminality is not so much his utter contempt for human life but his ignorant disregard for the protocols of Empire. Through arrogance and incompetence, the Junior Bush has revealed the tricks of the globalist trade, allowing the inmates a prolonged look into the infernal center of their prison planet. For that he will live out the remainder of his term in disgrace and obscurity.

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