Slate Magazine has come out with its 2006 Bill of Wrongs. I don’t know about some of them, but it makes interesting and quick reading all the same.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/30/mosque.pig.ap/index.html

I don’t know that there’s anything I could add to this that would make it more entertaining.

Okay, after my last few posts I feel some need to define how I feel about the Presidency and the president. I feel like I’m firing willy-nilly at the current administration and that I’m not appropriately separating my feelings about the office of the presidency from the current bozo who holds it.

Here it is. I think the Office of the Presidency is the closest thing to a sacred position that anyone can hold in this country. More than Associate or Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, more than Senator, more than Representative, more than any other position. So much so that even given my feelings about the current president, I would immediately and earnestly “serve at the pleasure of the President” if asked. There is nothing that a good citizen can ask for more than this — to be asked to be a part of something SO MUCH LARGER than themselves that it would affect every other citizen of this nation.

(This is not to say that I wouldn’t do my level best to change a few things if given the latitude to do so — all I can say is that I would do my best for my country and use the access to power given to me. But that’s another story for another day.)

Despite my lack of respect for the current president, I have overwhelming reverence for the office. And what bugs me most about the current president is that I feel that he has less respect for his own office than I do. As do his people, as does his vice-president, and so on. I got pissed at Clinton for the same reason — he abused the power for dumb reasons. But given the nature of his transgressions versus the current president’s, I’d be happy to take ol’ Bill again in a heartbeat.

We’re sunk. We currently have the worst administration in the history of the office. Not because of their opinions — I have problems with those, but that’s not the point. It’s because of their lack of respect for the institution of the presidency. It is a privilege granted to a select few by the people. It is an enormous responsibility that should be approached with concern, love, tenderness, strength, and resolve. And our current president seems to approach it with a uniquely disrespectful lack of honor.

His inherent intelligence is not the issue. Against all logic, I think we’ve probably had dumber presidents. It’s his intentions. Halliburton flourishes, soldiers die while Condi Rice assures us that every death is worth it, Ford gets buried by Cheney, and the White House gathers dust while the man invited twice by the people to live in it spends his time in Texas at ridiculous taxpayer expense*. We’re sunk. I’m seriously not sure that the institution of the presidency can survive two more years under these conditions.

And meanwhile a former president is buried by the Vice President and the outgoing Speaker of the House. Where’s Nancy Pelosi? Where’s Clinton? Where’s Ford’s good friend, President Carter? Southwest flies to D.C., right? We should be as embarrassed by our lack of decorum for a former sitting president as we should be for our foreign policy. Wait, we’re not embarrassed by that … are we?

* seriously, if invited to live in the White House for either four or eight years, I can’t imagine wanting to spend ANY more time than necessary NOT living there. Am I nuts, or is this president just not understanding the honor of his office at its most basic level?

Where the hell is President Bush? I know: he’s in Crawford, Texas, coming up with ways to ignore the Iraq situation.

I can’t help but notice, though, that former President Ford is being lain in state in the Capitol rotunda with Cheney as the highest ranking official. While I have just recently adjusted my opinions of Ford (in another post here), I can’t help but notice that our current president can’t be bothered to come back to D.C. to honor the man whose coattails he tried earlier today to jump on. Good or bad, Ford was the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Put some pants on, get on a friggin’ plane, and sit in a black suit for an hour. It’s not the end of the world. Show some respect for a man who, under largely unsought pressure, did what he could to hold the country together through honor and decorum. I’m still pissed about what he did (or didn’t do) most recently, but a former president deserves better than this. Nixon got better treatment. Just sayin’.

Enjoy your time in Crawford, Mr. President. Don’t worry about us — we’ll manage.

Man, you stink at this stuff.

[For that matter, though, where are Clinton, Bush, and Carter?]

China has apparently beat us all again. They have developed a flourescent pig. They say that it will benefit stem cell research. I am not a geneticist, but I see no benefit to this outside of the creepy-and-cool factor. Anyone?

This was presented to me by the Chimp-o-Matic this morning:

There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties.

* * *

We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11.
–George w. Bush

Washington, DC
09/17/2003
(that’s right, said on the same day!)

I thought the timing was kind of interesting.

Doug has a bunch of good stuff about the impending Saddam execution. Check it out. I’m particularly intrigued by Saddam’s final letter, covered by the BBC.

So if you happened upon my blog the other day, you’d know that there was briefly a post singing the praises of Gerald Ford. In light of the newly released Bob Woodward interview (from which I had pulled a quote without reading the whole thing), I got cold feet and pulled the post.

My original post sang his praises for his attempts to rebuild the country after Nixon. The pardon, whether you agree with it or not, was done with true, earnest hope that it would put to rest all the BS and let the country get back to healing from Vietnam, a sagging economy, and a divisive cultural revolution. I talked about how Ford, while not an intellectual powerhouse, was a good and decent man who did his best under impossible conditions. After seeing several joint interviews with him and Jimmy Carter (who were fast friends as ex-presidents), I was convinced that he was a fundamentally good guy from a party that changed out from under him.

I was troubled by the 2004 Woodward interview, though. It was withheld, at Ford’s request, until after he died. It contained damning language about Bush and the Iraq war. My problem was this: how much sooner could the tides have turned, how many people might not have had to die, if an ex-president from the current president’s party had spoken these eloquent and plain words about the criminally flawed logic and deception that led us into this mess in Iraq? Congress turned this past election, true. But could the tone of the Congressional acceptance of this travesty have changed sooner, led by the words of an ex-president who has intimate, specific experience with unwinnable wars?

Now we’re waiting patiently for the current president to announce his rejection of the bipartisan review of his actions, and likely looking at a troop increase that will cause more American and Iraqi deaths and result in no better solution to the problems we have created or exacerbated.

President of the United States is a lifetime job — once you have done it, you are a president for the rest of your life. It is your responsibility and your privilege to speak your mind and heart and be heard with the experience that comes from having a position so huge that only 43 people (okay, 41 and Grover Cleveland twice) have held it. I don’t expect Bush 41 to bash his own kid (particularly for taking out the guy he couldn’t, back when it could have been morally and ethically justified), but Carter and Clinton have been fairly clear about their opinions of this current mess. But they’re both from the opposing party — imagine the power of the words of Gerald Ford, the president who personally tried to heal the nation and his own Republican party after its worst crisis to date.

Sadly, he didn’t even ask that his words be held until after Bush left office. That would imply that he didn’t want to attack a sitting president in a time of war. Still not acceptable by my personal math, but I can see how that would be one way to do it. No, as near as I can tell, all he wanted to do was avoid having to answer to his own opinions. And meanwhile, American kids (really, kids: a lot of these people had not yet been to their own prom a year ago) are maimed or killed over BushUndCheney’s conscious, calculated lies. Not to mention countless Iraqis.

In light of the Saddam execution that looms, I can no longer sing the posthumous praises of Gerald Ford. We invaded a sovereign nation and ousted a sitting world leader after the better part of the UN implored us not to; imposed puppet elections and manufactured a silly, meaningless trial to convict him; and are now about to release him to our own puppet government there to execute him under cover of darkness. If it was just Saddam Hussein, that would be one thing: however, it has cost thousands and thousands of lives on all sides. And almost three years ago, a former president from the controlling party with a unique view on unpopular wars could have spoken out to begin the long process of change.

Three years earlier. Three years. I’m too scared to even try to tally the stats of how many were killed or wounded since the interview.

I’m no longer impressed by Gerald Ford. I don’t care that he was old and likely too tired to want to deal with the media blitz it would have caused, I don’t care that he pardoned Nixon for the right reasons (even though Nixon should have, by all rights, gone to jail). I don’t care that he was an elder statesman who held the most cherished, important office in this country, an office for which I have struggled to continue to hold respect in my heart and impart respect in my child against increasingly difficult odds and finer and finer distinctions. While he was not elected to either the vice-presidency or the presidency, he held both and enjoyed the honors associated with both. But the jerk wussed out at the most crucial time of his post-presidency. And in doing so, he left hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, people who volunteered to serve and protect this nation (a promise that has been abused by the current administration), high and dry. This makes him no better than the criminals who put them where they are in the first place. Farewell, President Ford. You had a soft one down the middle, and you swung and missed. You blew it.

Where’s the f—in’ Tylenol?!?

As part of my personalized Google page, I get a random Bush quote called the “Chimp-o-Matic.” Today I got this:

If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

George W. Bush, commenting on the CIA leak that he and Cheney later admitted they approved.
Washington, DC
09/30/2003

Just saying.

So we just got back from our great adventure with my parents and a rented van, going to and from my inlaws’ place in Vermont for Christmas. We had crappy but relatively merciful weather all the way there and most of the way back, and had a truly appalling meal at an Applebee’s. We received no speeding tickets despite our best efforts, had a lovely time with Lizzie’s family, and met the first truly gentle pit bull I’ve ever met (I still don’t trust her around Nora, though). We lost a cell phone in upstate New York and bought a new one, found a GREAT diner in Hudson Falls, New York that is now marked in our atlas, and had good clam chowder at a Holiday Inn. We had a lovely Christmas day full of gifts and family, and a lovely Christmas Eve full of family and pork pies.

However, we did stay in the second creepiest hotel we ever stayed in. The first was the Aquamarine Resort in Avon Lake, Ohio, where Lizzie and I broke down on this same Christmas drive by ourselves years ago. It’s a golf resort, so it was totally empty except for us and another equally startled Indian couple. It’s the only place where I ever tipped a chair under the doorknob — the guy at the counter was deeply creepy and it was far too dark and deserted for our comfort.

But the second creepiest hotel goes to the Albany Airport Best Western. Nice people working there and a life-saving restaurant/bar where we spent the evening, but dig these pictures. The walls literally have ears. And it’s like this all over the place, including in the rooms themselves. We thought that was strange enough, but then I noticed that the carpet in the halls bore a striking resemblance to DNA mapping like you see on documentaries.

I’ll admit, I woke up the next morning feeling a bit sheepish. I thought perhaps I was making it all up. But then we saw an employee walking along the hallway spraying yellowish liquid on the carpet. He was spraying the hell out of it, and I suddenly logically realized that he must be feeding the hotel. Some kind of saline/protein spritz. It smelled like Hotel Smell and cigarette smoke (pure carbon, no doubt). All my fears returned — my suspicions were confirmed.

So stay at the Albany Airport Best Western at your peril. The people working there are very pleasant, but I can’t help but think of the tasty-looking tongues that venus flytraps have. Perhaps this hotel baits for prey with good service (admittedly, a rarity among the hotel service crowd these days).