Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

Presidents Doofy, Cheney & Exxon

I've got a picture of the "Three Stooges" taped to my bookshelf but superimposed beneath the funny haircuts are Bush, Cheney and Powell.

The more I look at them the more I realize that it is the American people who are the real stooges.

Henry Waxman, D-California looks like he may have to go to court to find out who in fact sat down with Vice President Dick Cheney and hammered out our energy policy. What a ridiculous kabuki dance this is. We know that Cheney has bent over forwards to accommodate the oil and gas industry. We know that Cheney had big oil reps sit down with him and strategize an energy policy that favors industry to the exclusion of the consumer and the environment.

Cheney knows that he can maintain deniability if he just doesn't admit it.

Henry Waxman, the man who held tobacco executives up to ridicule by getting their lies on the record, is going to force Cheney to either lie, cover-up or admit that he is a pawn of big oil. Do you think Cheney would have been so covert if he had members of the Sierra Club in on his meetings? Cheney will go to court in order to hide his indiscretions and we; the taxpayers will foot the bill.

Senator Jeffords recently took a hit in Vermont's Brattleboro Refomer. The writer blithered about what a traitor Jeffords is and how our government was thrown off the rails by the shift in power. You would have to look at the world through two Saran Wrap tubes to fault Jeffords for creating some balance in our government. If Jeffords had remained on the GOP rolls, we would have gone through several changes by now.

English would be our official language. We could purchase handguns in vending machines. Diversity would mean having regular Baptists as well as Southern Baptists in the cabinet. Minefields would be planted along the Mexican border with warning signs in English. Not only would we start drilling for oil in wildlife refuges but we would start up the whaling industry again.

So thanks again Jim. Predictably, President Doofy took to the airwaves to explain his thought processes and soul-searching agony around Federal funding for stem-cell research. He consulted with scientists; academics, ethicists and religious leaders before coming to the momentous decision to wimp out and try to satisfy both camps. The up side is that the plan is so open to abuse that cheating on obtaining new stem-cell lines should be child's play. His description of the heart-rending journey to this decision was laughable.

Here's a guy who presided over the state of Texas, whose prisons execute more criminals than Afghanistan. His concern over the future of blastocysts was endearing though.

I willingly admit that I am biased against any GOP President but I don't remember feeling such contempt for his father. I felt just a little ill when George W. joked about being a "C" student to a Harvard graduating class. Why couldn't the GOP come up with a "B" student to run the country? And why did you people elect this walking embarrassment?

I think that the voters who swing both ways will certainly dump Doofy in the next election.

His tax cut didn't do much for his ratings and his cabinet choices have been just to the right of Vlad the Impaler. I am most concerned about his efforts to isolate the United States in global affairs. While Europe makes efforts to unite and the world courts are finally making headway in sentencing war criminals, the U.S. is breaking treaties and taking an approach to globalization that is shortsighted and eventually self-destructive.

The Democrat who takes over the White House in 2004 will have a big job ahead of him. Our ship of state is turning into a heavily armed oil tanker with a hull as thin as tissue paper.