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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Memories of the Plucky Little President

I wrote this just to assuage my grief almost two years ago. It seems to me now might be the time to look back and see how it was then.

Letter to the Plucky Little President (PLP)

31 March 2006

Dear George,

How goes it today? I heard you on the radio the other day talking again about what a tough job you have, how hard it is, how you have to make all these decisions, but, hey, you said, ‘that’s my job; that’s why the American people elected me…to make decisions’ And I thought of you sitting there all day long (or at least part of the day, as I hear you are not somebody to put in longer hours than you have to), looking at your optimistic yellow rug and making decisions to bomb people, to tell some people they can’t be prime minister or president of Iraq and--I guess--to tell other people they can, to decide what to do about all the little brown ones we’ve got running around the country (just like down at your brother Jeb’s house! Remember when your dad called Jeb’s kids ‘the little brown ones’?), and et cetera. And it was then I thought about what a plucky little president you are and how we ought to always keep that in mind. So, George, you old PLP! I thought I might write you a letter which, if you wanted to answer, you could, because it would really not require you to make any decisions at all. Just a good old fashioned pen and paper to let me know how your days are going. You have a lot more to write about than I do, I’ll bet, given that I’m old and retired and live in a dinky town in rural America where we all know everything about each other already and nobody is doing anything new, although sometimes they are doing it with somebody new, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I see today on the news that Condi is trashing you over in England, and I thought well I bet THAT doesn’t improve your day, even if you do have an optimistic yellow rug. I don’t know whether you hear much about that kind of stuff (we get some reports that they kind of keep bad stuff away from you). What she was saying was she didn’t mind that there were protesters all around because that’s what freedom of speech and all that stuff is about. Well, that’s true enough, of course. But then she went on to add, gratuitously I would say, that it would be just dumb to only go and talk to people who already agreed with you. [Reuters, 3/31/06: ‘Rice Admits Thousands of Mistakes.” G. Long, S. Pleming. “Each individual all over the world has the God-given right to express themselves. I'm not just going to visit places where people agree with me. That would be really unfortunate."] Is that ever a back-handed slap! I mean, she didn’t mention your name, but I think we all knew who she was talking about. Does loyalty stop at the Washington, DC, airport, George? It makes me practically weep to think of you being subjected to that kind of embarrassment. And to top it off, she said that you’d made thousands of mistakes, and everybody knows that you said, right there on that national debate a year or so ago, that you couldn’t think of a single mistake you’d made. Does she think you made thousands of mistakes just since then? What is that woman thinking (or, not thinking, more to the point..is she spending a lot of time shopping, like they say? Maybe that’s why she’s talking so goofy.)?

And this is only a week after your senior white house advisor for domestic affairs and religious and church help got busted for shoplifting! I mean, do not these people know when they’ve already got enough stuff! And if he is working hard for our government (and I imagine he was if he was helping churches, because they need a lot), how did he have enough time to also do shopping, let along complex shoplifting? (Did Condi ever go shopping with him?) Maybe you need to get those people to put in longer hours, George. Boy you gotta be a PLP with that kind of help. It’s always been hard to get good help, but you seem to be having a real run of bad luck. The Scooter guy (what were his parents thinking when they named him that? ); the Savafian guy (and that’s another weird name). Who in the world is doing your hiring these days? And over at the Congress…well let’s not even talk about that, at least until all the indictments are in.

Well, we’re up to the weekend now, and spring is coming and even the first of April is coming, which means that you have finished the second quarter of your second year in your second term: is that some kind of trifecta? I imagine you’ll be following the situation in Iraq closely this weekend. It’s just a tragedy what’s going on there, after all we’ve done for them. You tell that Jafaari guy you don’t want him to be the president, and he gets all pissed off! I bet he doesn’t have any optimistic yellow rug in his office. He sounds like a very moody guy and in any case where does he think he would be if we hadn’t helped him out? (You know where: still in exile in wretched Iran, with the rest of his Dawa Party (dawa sounds like baby talk to me).). More disloyalty, I guess. I think if he were more of a PLP kind of president, he’d just leave when asked nicely. But, what do I know?

I think that’s enough for now. Later, ‘gator!

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