Glob-a-log

(Where the buck once stopped…)

Right, so Barack Obama is already proving to be a disappointment to those who thought that ‘change’ meant some kind of real revolution.

To those naive and optimistic hearts the following: A politician’s ‘change’ almost invariably comes down to the few worthless coins he or she is carrying around in a back pocket and very seldom amounts to anything that could be described as big bucks.

The power and the money will stay safely where they always were. There is, after all, more than one way to interpret old Harry Truman’s famous saying, “The buck stops here.”

Anyway, we’ll return to those Obama plans and promises once he is in office. For now, there’s yet some more fun to be had with, as the Daily Show would call it, the ’still president Bush.’

So, there’s lots of talk about all the various ways that Bush could fuck up things even further for his successor - and knowing Dick Cheney, I think it would be advisable for Obama to send in some explosion experts before the new president actually enters the White House himself. It might also be a good plan not to buy a puppy but a fully trained and very all round sniffer dog…

Anyway, another favourite game right now is to predict whom president Bush will pardon before he goes, gentle or not, into that good night. The Washington Post is even running a prediction centre, where people can open so-called ‘Predictify accounts’:

“As Obama’s inauguration day nears, speculation abounds as to who will join the list of convicted felons pardoned by George Bush before the president leaves office. If you’d like to keep track of your score and participate in other washingtonpost.com predictions, create a Predictify account when prompted or visit our Prediction Center.”

There’s one candidate for such a presidential pardon who never really gets a mention - while I think he should be high on Bush’s presidential pardon list.

I’m talking about Osama bin Laden, of course.

Granted, he may be directly responsible for the death of a few thousand people but then he killed much less than the tobacco industry ever - and knowingly - did.

He also cost the taxpayers a fair amount of money, over the last seven years or so but then, so did Enron, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae, Reagan’s Star Wars and any other government project.

Still, even without any of those mitigating factors, the pros should outweigh the cons for president Bush.

In political terms, bin Laden has been good for him. Without 9/11, Bush would not have stood a chance to win a second term. Hell, he didn’t exactly ‘win’ that first election either, of course, so Osama really helped him out there.

In economic terms, it might be true that bin Laden cost the average Joe the Taxpayer some serious money but the War on Terror and the invasion & occupation of Iraq have been great money makers for the various friends of Bush and Cheney. Think Halliburton and praise Jesus - or Allah, or Osama, of course.

All in all, Osama bin Laden has done more to serve the Bush administration than most of the other presidential pardon candidates and would be deserving of such a pardon for all these rendered services. A kind of extraordinary rendition pardon, if you like.

(Time to smoke the peace pipe…?)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 14:33 and is filed under Columns, Politics, Satire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.