George W. Bush: The lamest of lame ducks?

I read a scary article in the Washington Post last week which detailed a Wednesday George W. Bush news conference.  Some harsh light was shed on what kind of leader this man is.

 

A reporter asked Bush what his advice is for American families who are "hurting now, facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing..."

 

Bush interrupted, "Wait, what did you just say?  You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?"

 

In front of everyone in attendance, the reporter had to tell Bush that "a number of analysts are predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline."

 

"Oh, yeah?" Bush said.  "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."  He hadn't heard that?!

 

In the hours and days preceding the news conference, $4-a-gallon gasoline was discussed on the front page of the New York Times and on The Today Show (NBC) and The Early Show (CBS).  It had also been predicted by automobile association AAA and covered by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, and the Dallas Morning News, to name but a few.  Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary took a question about $4-a-gallon gas at her morning press briefing. A poll last month found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect $4-a-gallon gas.

 

But wait!  There's more:  When another reporter threw Bush a softball and invited him to talk shit on Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not knowing much about new Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Bush replied, "I don't know much about Medvedev either."  Whoa.

 

When a reporter asked Bush why he was going to attend the Olympic Games in China even though the country has a disgraceful human rights record, he said "I'm a sports fan."  Oh, well in that case, it's alright.  Certainly being a sports fan takes precedence over setting an example as the leader of the free world.

 

When Bush threatened that Turkey "must move [into Northern Iraq] quickly, achieve their objective, and get out," a reporter asked "How quickly, sir, do they need to move out?"

 

"You know," Bush replied.  "As quickly as possible."

 

"Days or weeks?" the reporter pressed.

 

"Well, as possible."

 

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022804135.html?referrer=emailarticle

Hillary Clinton: On to Pennsylvania! Wow!

I gotta tell ya, I am simply thrilled and amazed about what happened last night in Texas.  Early in the day, I had a feeling Hillary Clinton might pull out an upset…but it was a very cautious optimism.  (After all, in 2004, I was sure Americans wouldn't even come close to letting George W. Bush stay in office.  Stupid Americans!)  Until very recently (like the previous day?), polls showed Obama ahead in Ohio and Texas.  At the last minute,  Hillary pulled ahead in Ohio.  But Texas was still looking like it would go to the first-term Illinois Senator with the basket of speeches and dreams. 

 

When I tuned into the coverage, I planned to turn it off and start reading a book.  But it didn't work out that way.  And as much as I thought I could fight it, Hillary Clinton election coverage is like cashews.  I am addicted. 

 

I was pleased to see Hillary had won Ohio.  She also won Rhode Island but for some reason, that just didn't matter to me.  (Just like it didn't matter that Obama had won Vermont.)

 

As I'm sure you know, Obama had won the last dozen contests so everyone was writing Hillary off.  They thought she wouldn't win any of the primaries yesterday.  I knew she would win at least Ohio and I was happy about that.  As I watched the returns, I figured she can move on from there:  She's won two of the four contests and Texas was going to be very close!

 

Every sixty seconds or so, the Texas numbers would be flashed on the lower left corner of the screen.  My eyes would fly to that little corner, desperately scrambling for something to change.  But every time it changed, Obama still had a lead of around 2,000 votes. 

 

John King was telling Wolf Blitzer why Obama's doing better than Clinton:  Although she was winning what appeared on the map to be an insurmountable majority of the counties, he was winning in the hugely populated ones. 

 

Having won Ohio, and wanting to address the nation before East Coast viewers went to sleep, Clinton came out and addressed the crowd.  It was an electrifying speech which is no surprise because she's very good at that.

 

Shortly afterward, Obama came out and gave what appeared on TV to be a much more subdued missive.  And maybe it's just me but it felt like his façade had begun slipping.  Everyone knows he's all about speeches and words and giving hope without substance.  This time was no different…except that it seemed really obvious.  Suddenly, I felt like he wasn't fooling as many people anymore.  Or maybe he was just depressed because after 12 wins, on this night, he'd only own Vermont and Texas was slipping away. 

 

I really wanted to go to sleep after the candidates addressed supporters but I just couldn't.  Texas was going down to the wire.  I wouldn't be able to sleep.  So I kept watching.  And as more results came in, Clinton started closing the gap.  Suddenly, Blitzer and Co. shifted their rhetoric to a "What if?" scenario.  And a few minutes later, things changed again.  Clinton surpassed Obama.  His 2,000 vote cushion had turned into a few hundred vote cushion for her.   

 

King was quick to warn Wolf—and the viewers—that Obama can wipe her lead away by simply maintaining his majorities being reported in those heavily populated counties.  He was winning them by 60% and 70% margins and the results were still rolling in.  We'd better not change the channel!  We'd better not go to sleep!

 

For as many times as King repeated the threat, it just wouldn't come true.  Clinton's edge kept expanding.  She had a 20,000 vote lead, then 30,000.  For a long time, it was 50,000 and then it grew to 60,000.  Then 70,000.  And then 80,000.  I started wondering how Obama could possibly close such a gap even if those populated counties stayed in his column.  Turns out he couldn't. 

 

With 75% of the precincts reporting, CNN went to commercial.  I flipped to FOX News (some of their pundits were actually less annoying than that eyebrow guy on CNN who just whines and cries all night about how much he loves Obama)—and before my very eyes, they called Texas for Clinton.  Like any clear-thinking American, I don't trust FOX News as far as I can throw my television so I flipped back to CNN and waited for them to come back from the break.  When they did, their first order of business was projecting Texas for Clinton.

 

I stayed up a little while longer to see what that annoying Obama guy would say.  He had been saying "the Clintons" move to goal post all the time—and that's pretty much what he did after Texas slipped into Hillary's column.  I wish I could remember the guy's name because I'd love to publicly tear him apart…but I can't remember it.  And I am unable to find him on the Internet.  Apparently, he's a total no one who simply has a hard-on for Barack Obama.

 

In the end (well, near the end—99% of precincts have reported), Clinton won Texas by 98,223 votes.  It's "on to Pennsylvania!"  And then?  The White House, of course.

FINALLY! I can breathe again!

You guys can't possibly know how relieved I am right now! This will be long, but I'm gonna try to nutshell it for you.

In 2004, I lost a job I'd been at for seven years. I had been planning to leave anyway because the company was in bad shape. But I wasn't planning on losing the job I had before I started the new one.

For me, the feeling of being unemployed was shocking. I had no idea it would impact me quite the way it did. I was scared. I felt worthless. I actually cried constantly. And I never cry! It is a feeling I never want to experience again. It is nauseating and horrific…and I'm sure it shaved years off my life.

Eventually, I did get the job I'd applied for. But it was way out in West Chester, PA which is nowhere near my home. Not even close. The job was terrible but I fnally was making a salary I deserved. I ended up segueing into a position that was perfect for me—at the same salary. The only thing was that it was still in West Chester.

When I decided I couldn't keep living that way, I started applying for internal jobs near where I live. I took the first one I was offered—which, in retrospect, may have been a huge mistake.

I got an apartment ten minutes from my work location but the job was absolutely atrocious. There was no way I could stay in it. It was way over my head and I had no interest in it so there was no chance I'd get any better at it.

That's when this awful dude I used to work with decided to steal me away from my boss. He hates my then-boss so he actually created a position for me in his one-man department.

The job was fine: It was important but mostly consisted of menial numbers-crunching. At any rate, I could have done it forever and ever. But the department function will dissolve into irrelevance in a matter of just a few years. It was worse than a dead-end job. It was, like, an "impending doom" job. The kind where you keep working, knowing that the bottom's gonna drop out eventually.

Well, my new boss turned out to be quite a piece of work. All the time, I hear people complaining about their bosses and I always think it's funny. Because there's no way these bosses-from-hell can be as rotten as everyone says. I realize now that I'd simply been lucky up to that point. I'd never had a real boss-from-hell. But this dude is a monster.

In all the years I'd known him, I was benevolent about his sad little "life" (for want of a better term). I believe that, to a large extent, people create their own situations. Sure, things happen that are out of our control. But if you're living a completely miserable existence, completely devoid of happiness or friendship, that is all you. You created that. And you can change that. He just doesn't seem to have the relatively tiny amount of get-up-and-go required to improve his life. And I don't need to have that in my life.

I was desperate to get out of the job I had and he was waving this new position under my nose, making everything sound like wine & roses. So I jumped at it. I thought I could separate my life from his dark clouds. After all, we're talking about two separate things here: My work life and my real life. Never the twain should meet. But he made that impossible.

It was immediately clear that he wanted two things from me: First, he wanted me to do all the day-to-day functions of his department. (I honestly have no idea what he was doing from August through October.) And second, he wanted a friend. But he didn't want a friend to improve his bleak non-existence. He wanted someone he could suck into his black hole.

While I was more than happy to do all the work, I was not letting him suck me into his hole. And being the unprofessional freak he is, he decided to throw everything away because he wasn't getting his way.

One morning, he asked me exactly what it is I do there all week. That's the sign of a good boss, isn't it? He told me what to do—and I was doing it, otherwise it wouldn't be getting done—but he didn't really know what any of it was. So I spent an entire week writing down every single thing I did so I could present it to him in the form of a report. (As if I had time for this bullshit. I was busy running his fucking department.)

A week or two later, after months of telling me what a great job I'd been doing, he sat me down and said, "I don't think this is the job for you." He'd obviously realized there wasn't enough work to justify two people. And since my salary is about half of his, he was in a bad position. I was doing all the work, after all. When it came time to get rid of one of us, it wasn't gonna be me.

He couldn't fire me outright because he'd been terribly unprofessional throughout the entire experience. I also suspect he knew I'd begun documenting every infraction he'd perpetrated. So he took all the work away from me. He had to start doing everything himself again because his boss could ask for an accounting at any moment.

That was at the end of October and since then, he's had me going into work and collecting paychecks for doing nothing more than showing up. I've done no work. None. There is nothing work-related on my desk.

The cunt was pretending to be kind enough to give me the time to find another position in the company. And I found one. In fact, I found two. But as the offers were being finalized, my entire division was placed under a hiring freeze. So months went by during which he tortured me however he could and acted as though the ax could fall at any moment. I hate to admit that he was effective to any extent…but he was.

Every year, I wait for November and December. I love that time of year. I live for it. And he was ruining it. The only stress I should be experiencing during that time of year is shopping!

Fortunately, things kept popping up to make the important dates (my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's) better. I kept getting little bits of good news at all the right times. Inevitably however, I'd receive more bad news. But I had some breathing room during the most important days of the season. I don't know how it happened, but I'm so glad it did.

Anyway, my point—and I do have one—is that everything finally got unfrozen. All the approvals went through and I'm getting my offer letter tomorrow. I start my new job on Monday! I think when I get that letter in my hands, I'll be able to really start breathing again—the full, deep breaths I've been robbed of since early fall!

And things are starting to look up in other areas of my life too. My friends who were living abroad have moved back to Philly. And I may actually end up moving to within a few blocks of them. And you have no idea how much I would love to live in South Philly!

My mom's worries about losing her job and being able to afford the costs of her healthcare are working out even though she actually did lose her job. Believe it or not, it couldn't have come at a better time: She's eligible for Medicare and my father will be eligible in a few months!

And I have a date with a real cute guy this weekend. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on him (or anyone) with all this drama going on…but now the drama is over!

So here we go, on to the next chapter of my life! I really can't wait!