George W. Bush Archives - Page 2 of 4

Roger Answers Your Questions, Jaquandor

Jaquandor, who kindly plugged Ask Roger Anything asks:

1. List at least three movies that you love despite the fact that the world has united against them in abject hatred.

You mean like your love of Titanic? Initially, I was really hard pressed to think of one. OK, I did consider one, Continental Divide, with John Belushi and Blair Brown. The critics I read at the time savaged it. I went to Rotten Tomatoes to verify this, and what do I find? 75% positive; of course, that was only 6 out of 8 critics who liked it. Maybe it’s aged better. I have a great affection for the 1945 version of State Fair, while not pillaged (and regarded far better than the 1962 Pat Boone version), was rated only so-so compared to the 1933 version. Finally, Requiem for A Dream wasn’t exactly hated, but with its unrated status and difficult content, it’s no surprise that the 2000 film only did $2,546,851. Ellen Burstyn should have won the Oscar that year rather than Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich, though that might have been Julia’s best performance.

But then I remembered some movies I saw 30 years ago that I haven’t seen since – a 1977-78 trilogy of films of the Burt Reynolds/Sally Field oeuvre. Smokey and the Bandit, about running beer across county lines, with Jackie Gleason; The End, a comedy about bungled suicide, with Dom DeLuise; and Hooper, about a stunt man. My girlfriend at the time really liked them, and I found myself enjoying them as well in spite of myself.

And how about a film that I haven’t seen in 40 years? Mark Evanier lobbied for it to be released on DVD, and it is so. The Night They Rated Minsky’s – my first movie that I attended that was rated M for mature audiences; this later became GP, then PG. I remember who I saw it with: my friend Carol (not to be confused with my wife) and her friend Judy (for whom I had an unrequited crush). I remember the songs (You Rat You, Perfect Gentleman, the title tune, plus Take 10 Terrific Girls – But Only Nine Costumes, which I know by heart) because I own the soundtrack, on vinyl, given to me by my grandfather, a janitor at a radio station (WNBF, Binghamton, NY). He got it because the station was THROWING IT AWAY. I remember the opening, done by Rudy Vallee: “In 1925 there was this real religious girl, and by accident — she invented the striptease. This real religious girl. In 1925. Thank you.” I may have to watch the DVD just to see if the film, the first one with Elliott Gould and the last one with Bert Lahr, is as much fun as the soundtrack is or as good as I remember.

2. Since I assume you do a fair share of toy shopping these days, are there any toys you see out there that make you think, “Wow, I wish I’d had that when I was a kid!” Or, conversely, are you the type to go to an antiques store with your kid, see the toys you yourself played with, and subject your kid to lectures about how much better those toys were?

She has some toys, notably her train set which is much more sophisticated than anything I had, and her cars with a track, but I don’t covet them, mostly because, generally speaking, I’ve ODed on “stuff”.
Nor do I try to force my childhood on her, though she just got a ball and bat, not exactly a Wiffle ball, but similar. I suppose some day I hope she can appreciate the wonder that is Slinky, but I guess I don’t worry about it much. She seems happy so far with her stuffed bears, dolls, books, videos, puzzles, and coloring books for now.

3. What does the entire area of New York State west of, say, Troy have to do to get Albany to realize how bad things are out here?! (By “Albany” I mean of course our state government and not people who just live and work in Albany.)

Given the bath the state government has taken over the Wall Street crisis (Bear Stearns, et al.), recognition of the problem may not be the issue, it’s doing anything substantial about it.

4. Describe something that makes you laugh deep and hearty, despite the fact that few other people think it’s funny.

Bad puns. Henhouse Five Plus Two doing In the Mood like chickens; indeed anything that is done in the style of chickens. Ode to Joy per chicken. Smoke on the Water per chicken.

5. KFC: Original or Extra Crispy? (I prefer Original myself.)

And speaking of chicken: oh, original. The extra crispy tastes like cardboard. That said, can’t remember the last time I had KFC – it was since I’ve been married but before Lydia was born.
Actually, I have a historic fondness for KFC. On or around my 19th birthday at college in New Paltz, my roommate, my girlfriend, my best college friend and some others conspired with my parents (who came with my sisters from Binghamton, a couple hours away) to have a surprise party for me. I was surprised, in part because I walked into my room and my glasses steamed up. I took off my glasses to clean them and noticed over a dozen people in my room, none of whom I could make out – is that my father over there? They brought KFC, and there were leftovers that the poor college student ate over the next several days.

6. What scares you more: John McCain continuing George Bush’s foreign policy, or John McCain continuing George Bush’s economic policy?

You seem to suggest that George W. Bush HAS an economic policy. OK, the rich get richer. But even THAT’S not working very well lately. McCain has shown no grasp of economics at all. And it’s difficult to separate the foreign/defense policy of spend without ceasing from our economic woes. OK, I’ll pick foreign policy, because if we continue to isolate ourselves, that is NOT in our national interest.
Here’s the awful thing: I think John McCain has a very good chance of winning in November. I saw a poll recently and Clinton Leads Pack in Negative Ratings; moreover, in the self-selecting poll AOL had, the results were the same:
Clinton 28% positive, 61% negative, 11% neutral Total Votes: 650,265
McCain 42, 32, 26; 604,308
Obama 38, 47, 15; 618,110
Yes, McCain is the only one with greater positive than negative ratings. Also note the vote totals; more people went out of their way to dis Hillary than Barack or John. Meanwhile, the Hillary supporters are beginning to hate Barack, and vice versa, and threatening to vote for McCain, or no one in the general election. A huge number of women in particular will be most disappointed if Clinton loses and will opt out; likewise, Obama supporter, many young and/or black, will not embrace the former First Lady. I have a BAD feeling about this; I hope I’m wrong.

Oh, the woman in the picture: Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, who some tout as Vice-Presidential on the McCain ticket. “The first-ever woman Governor of Alaska, its youngest (44) governor, and the first to have been born after Alaska became a state. A onetime beauty queen, high school athlete, and TV reporter, Palin was elected mayor of Washila in 1996 and, two years ago, made national headlines by defeating present and past governors to win the state’s highest office.” Unfortunately, the pundits observe, Alaska only has three electoral votes and is likely to go Republican anyway. I STILL think McCain’s picking a governor or former governor as his running mate.

ROG

Sex, drugs and politics QUESTION

Here’s a promise for you: I’m never running for elective political office. You never know what skeletons, or even perceived skeletons, might pop up. Well, maybe when I’m 70, when I will be able to honestly say, “I don’t remember” when asked about my presumably sordid past.

I’m thinking about this because New York’s NEW governor, David Paterson, is caught up in some sexual infidelity. Truth is, I don’t much care because it’s none of my business, and, unlike his predecessor, “I’m a f***ing steamroller” Spitzer, he hadn’t set the morals bar so high that his affairs are major disappointments. Mostly because most people outside of Albany didn’t even know who David Paterson was until a little over a week ago. In any case, he’s likely to survive this politically because he would be succeeded by the Senate Majority Leader, who is a REPUBLICAN, Joe Bruno.

This begs the questions:
1) How much of a person’s personal life should be open to the public when he or she is considering running for public office?
2) How far does one get to dig about someone’s history and place as relevant? I recall that GWB said some years ago that he had not done certain drugs (cocaine, I believe) in the previous 25 years, answered in such a way that it suggested that perhaps he HAD used it earlier than that. As much as I dislike GWB politically – and I mean a WHOLE lot – I don’t much care about an old drug bust.
ROG

President’s Day, sort of

It’s Presidents’ Day, or as I noted last year, Washington’s Birthday. Don’t know why, but I know all of the Presidents, their political parties, and their years in office; very useful in Trivial Pursuit or on certain game shows.

Among the useless pieces of info in my mind:

Washington’s first secretary of State was Jefferson.
Jefferson’s only Secretary of State was Madison.
One of Madison’s secretaries of State was Monroe.
Monroe picked JQ Adams for his Secretary of State.
Jackson picked Van Buren as his first Secretary of State.
So, all of the early Presidents, save for the Adamses, picked as the head of the State Department someone who would succeed them as President. Oddly, except for Polk’s pick of Buchanan, no other Secretary ascended to the White House after that.

Many of you know that the President elected in the years ending in zero from 1840 to 1960 died in office. I always wondered what it was like for the country to have its leaders assassinated so close together in the latter stages of the 20th Century (Lincoln-1865, Garfield-1881, McKinley-1901 – OK, not the 19th Century, but close enough.) The 1881 assassination created a unique situation: three Presidents in one year: Hayes, finishing his term; Garfield; and his successor, Arthur; that had happened only 40 years earlier, with Van Buren, WH Harrison, and Tyler.
But can you name the only President who died in office that WASN’T elected in a year ending in zero? Here’s a clue: he was a Whig, one of four Whig Presidents we had, who served only a total of eight years.

That would be Zach Taylor, who was elected in 1848 and died in 1850, succeeded by Millard Fillmore. When I was memorizing the Presidents, I had the greatest difficulty with the late 1840s and early 1850s, mostly because I somehow morphed Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce into Mildred Pierce.

My question to you: what is your favorite mundane piece of trivial President information that you use to impress your friends and stun your enemies?
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This recent Harris poll of top Presidents left me shaking my head, with the current occupant coming in at number 10. Then I saw the AOL poll that asked where W fit in the pantheon of Presidents. As of 9 pm EST last night:
Among the bottom third 62% 269,198
Among the top third 25% 108,585
Among the middle third 13% 57,379
Well, all righty, then.
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Democrats Target Kucinich for Defeat.
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McCain wrong on the one issue I’d previously given him credit for.

ROG

Weird but True

And all happening this past week:

Monday or Tuesday night, my wife was having trouble with my home computer, so I checked it out. When she typed in a URL, it would come in backwards. So www.aol.com would show up as moc.loa.www – and, BTW, it didn’t work. I rebooted – the universal solution to all computer problems – and ended up with no Internet connection at all, so I had to call Time Warner, who do the voodoo they do and fixed it remotely.
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My work fax is tied to my work e-mail, but I don’t receive very many faxes. Generally, those I do get are junk faxes. But Wednesday morning, I got this letter from the NYS DMV explaining why a woman’s driver’s license was suspended for medical reasons. Below that, I see the woman’s rebuttal as to why the suspension was not medically necessary. Clearly, this fax has been sent to the wrong number – mine – so I looked up her number and left a message explaining what happened. She called me back late that afternoon and thanked me for letting her know that her letter had been waylaid.
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Ash Wednesday was a cold and rainy-turning-to-icy night. Carol, Lydia and I went to church, then I took Lydia home on the bus, since Carol had a church meeting. We left the light on the front porch. About 8:45 p.m., the doorbell rang. I assumed it was Carol who left her meeting early and didn’t want to fumble with her keys. Instead, it was this woman I did not know, who appeared drunk and/or stoned, who wanted me to call her a cab. Apparently the cell phone in her hand wasn’t working. So I closed the door, got our portable phone, opened the door and started calling taxi companies for her, first from the numbers as she recalled them, then from the Yellow Pages. I let them each ring over 10 times and got no answer – this was six or seven different companies, a couple I called twice. Finally, I got one who said a cab would be there in 45 minutes. The woman on the porch asked, “It’s coming, right?” And I said yes, but I didn’t give her a time frame. I felt sorry for her, since it was cold and wet out, but I was disinclined to let her in since 1) she appeared wrecked, 2) I had my daughter in the house and 3) the woman was smoking a cigarette, with a very long ash that had somehow stayed intact. About 20 minutes later, I looked on the porch, but the woman wasn’t there. Twenty minutes after that, my wife got home; the woman was still gone. Thirty minutes after THAT, or over an hour after I had called the taxi company, I heard beeping in front of our house, which I assumed was the cab; whether the woman ever got on it, I’ll never know.
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Wednesday night into Thursday, I sneezed in my sleep and bit the left side of my tongue. Boy, that hurt!
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I was on the bus Tuesday night, Primary Night in New York and elsewhere, heading to the polls. This woman I know only from riding the bus was telling this story – not just to me, but anyone within earshot – about a dream she had had the night before: There was a terrorist attack on Washington in early November 2008. President Bush declared martial law and postponed the elections. It was later discovered that the Bush administration had planned and executed the bombing itself.
The woman telling the story then explains how she woke up screaming and her upstairs neighbor ran downstairs to see if she was all right. He was about to call 911.
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I won’t even get into talking about my WORK computer, which died – as in as though someone pulled the plug – a week ago Friday thrice, Monday thrice, and Tuesday once, went to another computer, which did the same thing once on Wednesday.
An

ROG

Legacy QUESTION

In a year and a day, George W. Bush will no longer be President. What will his legacy be on: 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, peace initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere, the economy, the environment, Constitutional issues, human rights, security, etc.?
Will it improve in the next year or get worse?
Will history be more kind to him than we are?
Is there any cause to impeach him, as George McGovern called for recently? Or is it too late?
For me – well, if you’ve read this blog enough, you probably have a good idea.

The distortions that ran up to the Iraq war were revisited last fall, when former W henchman Karl Rove said the White House was opposed to having the Senate vote on the Iraq war so close to the elections, fearing it would “politicize” the process. (The Senate voted October 11, 2002.)
VIDEO.
That, of course, was utter ~~bullsh~~ nonsense. Google any number of articles, including this White House press conference of September 24, 2002:
THE PRESIDENT: I’m confident a lot of Democrats here in Washington, D.C. will understand that Saddam is a true threat to America. And I look forward to working with them to get a strong resolution passed.
From CNN, October 11, 2002
“Bush also must certify that action against Iraq would not hinder efforts to pursue the al Qaeda terrorist network that attacked New York and Washington last year.” As the forgotten war in Afghanistan is now getting more troops, that seems to have worked well.
I do think that people might get a little soft-headed about W as he moseys off into the sunset over Iraq if American deaths diminish, but this will be countered by rising anxiety over recessionary concerns of higher prices, higher unemployment, shrinking investments in a bear stock market, and fear of losing one’s home really sink in.

I don’t think history will see him as another Truman, as much as he has invoked his equally beleaguered predecessor.

Yes, he should be impeached – him and his little dog, too – but I know it won’t happen.
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2008 Presidential Primary Info. Voter Registration Deadlines, Delegate Allocation, Polling Hours.

ROG