Reply #13: September 2007: "I'll Give Some Speeches, Just to Replenish the Ol' Coffers." [View All]

[Amerigo Vespucci]

"I'll Give Some Speeches, Just to Replenish the Ol' Coffers."

Posted September 3, 2007 | 11:34 AM (EST)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-sturdy-beggars/ill-give-some-speeches_b_62903.html

Just when you feel impenetrably numb to the delusional ravings of our Punk In Chief, comes a sentence so multilayered in obscenity, so richly textured with arrogance and solipsism as to make Ayn Rand look like Albert Schweitzer.

Let's put aside the coffers of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis now eternally empty. Let's put aside the refugees who left their coffers behind when they fled. Let's put aside the amputees at Walter Reed who can no longer grip their coffers. Let's even put aside that his major domestic initiative centers on denying health care to children whose coffers exceed twice the poverty limit.

No, for any student of the career of George W, the true cause for projectile vomiting can be found in the word "replenish". This is a man who, from buying tropical plants to specializing in dry holes to responsibility-free board appointments to being given his own baseball team, has never done anything to plenish his coffers in the first place.

And...wait for it...he is going to give speeches. Speeches! Charitably, he has had perhaps three thoughts in the past seven years. And he has used them in every lip sucking spittle-encrusted yammer. Smugly flipping through his sentence per page binder, finding it "interesting" that Japan is now an ally and "fully" understanding that war is "tough". Ahh the comatose stares around the Carlyle Group's banquet hall, as member's struggle not to pass out in their omelets during the brunch speaker's power point presentation "Oceans Don't Protect Us".

Bush's great ambition: wealthy boredom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/03/usa.edpilkington

The Guardian, Monday September 3 2007

Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life after the White House to conflict resolution around the world. Presidents George Bush the elder and Bill Clinton have campaigned together on behalf of communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. So how does President George Bush junior imagine spending his retirement years?

"I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch," he says. He also has big plans for making money. "I'll give some speeches, to replenish the ol' coffers," says Mr Bush, who is already estimated to be worth $20m. "I don't know what my dad gets - it's more than 50-75 , and "Clinton's making a lot of money".

The insights into Mr Bush's ambitions once he steps down from the most powerful job on Earth in January 2009 are contained in a series of interviews he gave to a journalist from GQ magazine. It may be that the writer, Robert Draper, comes from Texas, like his subject, but whatever the reason, Mr Bush has chosen to be singularly open with the author and provide a rare glimpse into the inner life of a very private president.

During the course of six one-hour interviews, Mr Bush, feet up on his desk, munching on low-fat hotdogs, tells Draper of the loneliness of the US commander-in-chief. "Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency. This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity," Mr Bush says.

When it all gets too much for the president, his wife Laura storms to the rescue. "She reminds me that I decided to do this," he tells Draper.

The interviews came after Draper lobbied the president for several years to give him access, arguing that he would write the first draft of history on the Bush presidency.

The book to emerge from their conversations will be published tomorrow, but an early taste was given in yesterday's New York Times.

The book's title, Dead Certain, is ominously ambiguous, given the 3,728 US personnel - and by some estimates more than 70,000 civilians - who have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. For those around the world who are already perplexed by Mr Bush's strategy in Iraq, his comments to Draper will not be reassuring.

The president says to the writer that one of the failings of his prosecution of the war was that Saddam Hussein's army was broken up, in contravention of Washington policy and leading to looting and chaos across Iraq. "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Mr Bush says.

But, Draper points out, it was Paul Bremer, the man chosen by the president to administer country after the invasion, who ordered the disbandment of the Iraqi army. What did Mr Bush think when he learnt of that?

"Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said: 'This is the policy - what happened?'"

It gets worse. Mr Bush reveals that whenever he feels depressed about the death toll in Iraq, he turns to God for comfort. "I've got God's shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot," he says. "I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count."

Mr Bush says when his time in office is up, he will be only 62 and "really young". Apart from the joy of getting bored, he is looking forward to setting up a "fantastic freedom institute in Dallas" for young democratic leaders around the world.

There is at least one point on which the president and his detractors will agree. In a moment of breathtaking candour, Mr Bush laments the fact that the media no longer listens to him. "I've been here too long," he says.