The under-rated George W. Bush -- right-wing hero

They said the same things about Ike that they said about W ---

"Oh he couldn't possibly know what's actually going on."

Good old uncle Fudd, Ike was, kind of ignoring that fact that only a few years before he'd juggled the egos of Viscount Montgomery, Winston Churchill, Charles deGaulle and a few more egomaniacs while planning and executing the largest single military operation in history.

Gary Wills pointed it out in his book: Nixon Agonistes, that Nixon's fatal mistake was that he thought Eisenhower was politically shrewd, never understanding that Eisenhower was a political genius, and no one but another genius could pull it off. Nixon was no political genius.

Ike a genius? Uncle Fudd? A man who knew the difference between power and authority better than any living man (others who thought they knew -- MacArthur, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo -- learned the difference too late.
Ike -- as Wills ALSO pointed out, was NEVER more than an arm's reach from a loaded .45 -- even behind his desk in the oval office.

W, on the other hand, didn't have much going for him, pre-presidential, but the same name as his daddy and obscene piles of money brought to him -- much of it unsolicited -- while he was a video-game playing gym rat Texas governor.

And yet -- going back to the policy generated by Grover Norforms' tiny government ideal:

"NO TAX INCREASES EVER EVER NEVER NEVER!"

Bush was The Man.

The policy?

Started in the Reagan Admin -- in short:
"Piss away every cent we have or will ever have until we're so broke we can't afford the Communist-plot programs like Social Security and Medicare and Department of Education, or any of the other Commie stuff."

And then W, the dry drunk fumble-fuck no one ever would hold liable to actually KNOWING what was going on did a couple of things:

1. Cut taxes.
2. Started two endless wars:
a. The first one in Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein (and make sure none of the documents proving the October Surprise Treason or the later Iran-Iraq War bribes came to light.)
b. Piss away our empire down the rat-hole of Afghanistan

By the time he left office we were more than broke -- we were in free-fall -- and every lock-step Republican could learn the script:

"CUT SPENDING."

SO W was not a genius -- just a world-class fuck-up who could destroy our economy just by doing his best (and having no idea what the people appointed by his evil puppet-master -- Dick Cheney* -- were up to.)

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* Dick Cheney -- now playing the fatherly advisor -- Keerist -- I am not joking when I say I would sooner hear what Charles Manson has to say about the government than the thieving-murderer-turned-wannabe-elder-statesman. Having read much said from both, I think Mr Manson has been -- hands-down -- the more honest of the two.

One question to ask voters about Herman Cain

Look at that meanness under the forced smile -- would you want that man to be your boss?

All together now:

NEIN NEIN NEIN

Remember when the purity-mongers demanded that ALL Muslims come forward and denounce the Islamic crazies of 9-11? Time for the Mormons to man up.

I don't care about religions.

Don't think the Mormons' mental maze any more stupid or absurd or malign than any other.

But last year they sent millions of dollars into California to prevent us from correcting a long-time civil wrong, i.e., that gay people had been denied the same right as thieves, rapists, drunks, felons, religious fanatics, politicians, and other reprobates, i.e., the right to marry the person of choice.

They paid many millions for the hysteria-mongering lies that help Prop 8 pass -- the Proposition that singled out gay people as not worthy of marriage.

So I call on any Mormon who wants to be considered an equal member of society to denounce the craven and vicious assault on our freedoms.

They can run their theocratic dictatorship in Utah as they will (who can stop them?)* but that sort of religious fanaticism doesn't play well here in the Golden state.

So it's only fair that the people of California boycott any business run by Mormons, refuse to allows Mormons to be employed by the state in government or schools, etc -- UNLESS and UNTIL they disavow the freedom-denying behavior of their co-religionist's bigotry.

Fair enough, isn't it? Just as fair as they said would be ok for Muslims.

The first Mormon that needs to set the standard is Mitt Romney.

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* Full disclosure -- a friend of mine once taught at Brigham Young, and when they discovered he didn't believe in their particular version of moonlight, fired him, forced his wife to divorce him and take the children (gee, how would a Utah state judge rule in a custody case?) and declared him apostate (although he regarded that last bit with pride -- his point of view: "If people like THAT like YOU, you need to wonder about yourself.")

A Salon.com article about the Wall Street Protest reminded me of long ago learning moment

It was a William Hoegland article that the Wall Street protest is, in a way, the contemporary version of the Whiskey Rebellion, and as such, has its roots in the American tradition of throwing down on the elites.

1960 -- I was a freshman at Penn State and Jack Kennedy had just been elected. Thanksgiving -- too far, too much time to go home, so I went with a friend to Thanksgiving Dinner at his family's home in upstate Pennsylvania.

His grandfather was sitting on the porch when we got there.
Made introductions and then brought up the big news, that after years of a retired general in the oval office, a young man was going to be president.
And I asked his grandfather what he thought about that, about John Kennedy's election.
And his reply:

"The sonsofbitches put a tax on our whiskey and I ain't had no use for them since."

And I thought.. what's he talking about?
The Whiskey Rebellion?
That was, like what? -- 1789?
And he's still pissed off?

That was what I thought at the time, all enthused as us liberals' kids were.
And it fascinated me.

And still does.

(We're not talking about the Tea Party -- the Boston Tea Party where a bunch of rowdies dressed up in costumes and went out and dumped English tea in the harbor and rolled off laughing about how "We really showed 'em," leaving the people of Boston to deal with the Brit boots coming down on them, blockaded harbor with no supplies coming in, no access to the ocean to fish, all trees cut down for fuel for the troops -- a a bunch of drunken frat boys who had a party and left everyone else to pay the bill -- those people now canonized by a present-day bunch of yahoos who dress up in costumes and clamor to trash stuff and yell "We'll show 'em," and leave everyone else to deal with the damage.)

These were people whose income depended on turning corn into whiskey.
They did not want to change the country.
They just wanted to continue living as they had.
They "had no use for them sonsofbitches."

But Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, decided that they had to pay off the national debt, that they had the power to tax and that going after the sinful distillers, the country bumpkins out west, would be a good way to start.
The cost of 5 years and more of insurrection, notwithstanding.
There were those who said that Hamilton wanted to deliberately provoke the rebellion, as a way to establish greater government authority and power.

There were those, years later, who held that Aaron Burr (who killed Hamilton in 1804, in a duel) was a true patriot and an American hero.

But the point of the article (and the rebellion) was to tell them sonsofbitches to back off.

And the people who were telling them to back off -- the people Hamilton thought it OK to fuck over -- were the ones who had fought alongside him in getting a new government in the first place.

The American principle, held throughout our history from Minutemen to the IWW, is that you don't go whining to some government, you take direct action against those who stole from you.

And the people spending day after day in sight of Wall Street know who the thieves are.


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Mr Hoegland is the author of The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty (Scribner, 2006)