Dateline: Bali, Who Cares About The Date

So it's come down to this.  One lonely man, sitting amidst the historical splendor of 400 years of the greatest democracy ever to muscle its way around the world. A man of quiet dignity, perhaps? A man close to his God... or so he hopes. A family man. A really rich business bungler. And now, a president — George "I was only kidding" Bush.

It's easy to throw off platypuses immediately after a presidential speech to the nation. No one's really listening, and if they are, they won't remember who said what twenty minutes later. That is why your intrepid reporter has waited to inhale the fumes from the presidential after-burner, to hear the voices of average Americans crying out for their trans fats, to see what really has happened since that night, so long ago, when Bush spoke to us.

Of course, there’s the matter of the speech itself that I didn’t hear because I was involved in serious medical research, and didn’t read because the dog ain’t my paper. However, given the response I’ve seen, Bush was pretty pooh-bah bad. 

This opportunity, of course, was perhaps Bush’s last at forging some kind of bipartisan alliance to do something other than lose the war in Iraq and then Afghanistan. According to sources as diverse as foot soldiers to former important people, Bush did not do his family proud. 

I mean, let’s face it boys and girls, do we need some grunt over in Iraq telling us what any multicellular animal would figure out? Said one officer, who figured it was safer to remain unanimous, "We… were not fighting a military campaign, but a political campaign… Fighting terrorists was only something we did when needed, because it interfered with our political objectives. If we could ignore the terrorists, we were winning. If we had to stop our economic and political activities in order to fight terrorists, they were winning." But, but, but, what about the worldwide war on terrorism?  

What’s the response in Congress? Well, Sec’y of State Rice and DefSec Gates had to run the gauntlet between Democrats who whacked their asses with sand bags while laughing themselves silly and Republicans, many of whom put rocks in the sandbags and were crying. Just as interesting in its own way, in Baghdad, the Iraqi government, such as it is, “responded tepidly” to the idea of getting 20,000 more troops.   

One hates to bring up sore subjects, but why is the Dow climbing to an all-time high for the second day? Do you think war is good for big companies? Do you think maybe they don’t even know there’s a war on, given how long it takes to count their multi-sourced compensation?