People at the Head
Tom Bates, a former California legislator who was elected last month to be mayor of Berkeley, was in serious hot water even before taking office. It was learned that he took a thousand copies of the Daily Californian, the university newspaper, and dumped them in the trash the day before the election because they endorsed his opponent. As my pard Peter noted, if he'd dumped 'em in a recycling bin, he might not be in such a pickle, but the DA is considering criminal charges, and a whole lotta folks have called upon the once-estimable Bates to resign. Bates says he did the deed and he's apologized for the act, blaming fatigue. His supporters think he should have to do public service, as the mayor.
George Herbert Walker Bush, the former president and father of the current US CEO, has had an aircraft carrier named after him. One of ours. Considering that a great many people think our warmongering against Iraq is part of a mythic effort by junior to bail out senior's rep for having failed to take out Saddam when he could have during Operation Sturm und drang a dozen years ago, ya gotta wonder if it's such a good thing to have a warship named after a war-wuss. Not that I necessarily feel that daddy should whupped the head Iraqi butt when he had the chance, but his failure might now give Bushie sailors an inferiority complex. And just imagine what kinda carnage junior would wanna wreak if the carrier was sunk.
Bush Junior has his own image problems. His economic policies are tanking, and in a nation where capitalism is god -- it's the economy, stupid -- you can wage and win all sorts of nasty little wars, but if the folks back home are having trouble feeding their kiddies' gameboys, the game'll be over for The Bush Boy in Aught-Four. So he last week he pink-slipped Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and top prez econ advisor Larry Lindsey. As if that would make a difference. The two were little more than figureheads, with Dick Cheney calling most of the shots, through the puppet-in-chief. Maybe that's why they didn't go willingly, but insisted that Bush ask for their resignations. Bush-Lite didn't even show the class to fire the two men himself, leaving that sorry task to Cheney, who walks behind Dumbo with a broom-'n-bucket.
Bush announced that O'Neill would be replaced by rail-head prexy John Snow, who's already under fire for a clause in his CSX contract that would pay him millions of dollars if he left for public service. What public service? He's just gonna help his friends loot the Treasury, upholding the long Republican tradition made an art form under the Cheney Administration.
Finally, you can imagine that if someone handed him the wrong script, Bush would screw up his face with faux emotion, and in a serious voice announce that the was firing Bernard Law. What with the Boston archdiocese in open revolt, it would sound like the right thing to do. Hey, it's a joke, only Law is not a joke. He sanctioned child molestation by his priests for more than three decades. Maybe that's what his real boss, the Pope, is discussing with his Beantown cardinal in Rome. Maybe they'll find him 73 virgins and let him retire.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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