Published on Thursday, December 12, 2002 by the Los Angeles Times
He's Humble in a Way That Only Godzilla Could Be
by Arianna Huffington
Remember how the Bush administration ambled unassumingly into office? "I
hope I'm viewed as a humble person," the president said just before moving
into the White House. And on his first day on the job, he counseled his
senior staff members to "be an example of humility and decency and fairness."
Well, those days are long gone. Forget tiptoeing. Team Bush now stomps down
the halls of power like Godzilla trampling the streets of Tokyo. When
describing the administration at midterm, the words that come to mind are
arrogant, cocky, galling and drunk with power. The prevailing motto seems
to be: "Our way or the highway. If you don't like it, you can move to Canada."
The latest example was the stunning appointment of cover-up cover boy Henry
Kissinger to head the 9/11 commission. Was Bush deliberately trying to
select the one person in the world least likely to get to the bottom of the
foul-ups that preceded Sept. 11? Was Saudi Prince Bandar too busy reining
in his wife's charitable impulses to take the job?
The only thing more ludicrous than naming Kissinger to head this inquiry
would be picking somebody who thinks "pollution is a right" to head the
Interior Department, or selecting a guy who made his name fighting the
authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission as its chairman. Oh,
wait a minute -- that's right, Bush already did both of those things too.
In the last few months alone, the White House has shown its disdain for
public opinion -- and indeed the public interest -- in an exceptionally
wide variety of areas. Here are just a few of the more blood-boiling cases.
* On the environment: Not satisfied with just gutting the Clean Air Act,
the White House chose to announce its polluter-friendly decision in the
most dismissive, least accountable way possible, delivered not by the
president or Environmental Protection Agency head Christie Whitman but by a
low-level administrator, on a Friday afternoon leading into a holiday week
and with no cameras allowed.
* On stealing from the poor to give to the rich: In an act of reverse Robin
Hood effrontery, the president helped defray some of the cost of his
nonstop campaigning with an accounting trick that allowed him to dip into
the coffers of the Office of Family Assistance by piggy-backing campaign
appearances onto trips ostensibly made to talk about welfare reform. That's
right, money meant to assist poor families was used to help elect
politicians who believe that, even with all the problems facing this
country, cutting taxes for the rich should be job one.
These, of course, are the same Scrooges who did nothing to stop the
unemployment benefits of 800,000 workers from expiring during the holiday
season. Ho, ho, ho, poor people!
* On sucking up to special interests: I guess that the back-channel passage
of that tailor-made -- and White House- approved -- homeland security bill
amendment protecting Eli Lilly, maker of the questionable vaccine
preservative thimerosal, from billions in potential lawsuits just wasn't
enough of an insult to democracy. To pour salt in that fresh wound the
administration has asked a federal claims court to block public access to
documents unearthed in more than 1,000 thimerosal- related lawsuits. Take
that, suffering parents of autistic children!
* On political patronage: As the White House was moving to scale back pay
increases for career federal employees it was also secretly doling out
big-buck bonuses to political appointees -- a practice banned during the
Clinton presidency because of abuses during the last Bush administration.
Who was it again who was going to restore integrity to the White House?
(Actually, he didn't say "integrity", he said "respectability", and he has
done that, from an insane extremist neo-conservative point of view...)
* On fighting the war on terrorism: A majority of Americans have a negative
view of Saudi Arabia. As well they should, given the desert kingdom's
two-faced attitude, the money that ended up in the pockets of 9/11
hijackers, its telethons for suicide bombers, its refusal to let U.S.
planes targeting the Taliban take off from Saudi soil and the
not-insignificant fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. In spite
of all this, the White House continues to treat the spoiled princes of the
House of Saud as bosom brothers. In your eye, American people! (hey, gimme
a break. I'm being paid to demonize them, to justify our next stop in the
Emperor Bu$h (New) World (Order) Tour...)
Arianna Huffington writes a syndicated column, and still thinks that 911
was the result of "terrorism", despite the fact that a coup has obviously
taken place in America, and fascism is growing faster than the economy.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ask her for the PROOF to back up the
official conspiracy theory being peddled by the Reich ... er ...
Administration.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=223158&group=webcast
Thumbzilla is still peddling smut online for all the 'zilla watchers out
there btw.
