Hideous reality twisted into sublime surreality Column By Curt Andersen Vice President, Dick Cheney, was in Green Bay the other day. Bless his heart for arriving at the evening rush hour and blocking homebound traffic for 30 minutes/many miles in all directions. I would love to tell you that Green Bay’s crime rate went down while he had his breakfast with supporters, but, astoundingly, the FBI does not keep track of “white collar crime” statistics. Still, if you felt a short interval when your wallet was not being tugged, it could have been the absenteeism of the weevils. President Bush has decided to use the phrase, “compassionate Conservative,” again. Liberal friends always take this in stride (not), with gaping maws and stunned looks, as in, “What? You wouldn’t know compassion if it bit you on the nose!” Just the fact that they had to coin a phrase like this is evidence of a wide acceptance of a lesser view of Conservatives. It’s all Public Relations malarkey. The lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street deal with the “compassionate Conservative” hooey. The song is reprinted here, in part: You’ve got a lotta nerve To say you are my friend When I was down You just stood there grinning. You got a lotta nerve To say you’ve got a helping hand to lend You just want to be on The side that's winning. You see me on the street You always act surprised You say, "How are you?" "Good luck" But you don't mean it. When you know as well as me You'd rather see me paralyzed. Why don't you just come out once And scream it? I wish that for just one time You could stand inside my shoes And just for that one moment I could be you. Yes, I wish that for just one time You could stand inside my shoes You'd know what a drag it is To see you. The babbling about compassion from the White House belies their desire to stay the course with the holier-than-thou preaching. They don’t care about the less fortunate, but they lie and say they do. Too bad they don’t have the Ten Commandments enshrined in the White House or at GOP headquarters. While no direct connection can be traced, the word “babbling” may refer to the tower of Babel and the word Babylon, which is defined by the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, as “a rich and magnificent city which is believed to be a place of excessive luxury and wickedness.” The Bush White House is the new Tower of Babble. It’s disturbing to see how many people are ready to believe the outright lies of the Bush Administration. The chutzpah of their public relations grinder is awesome in its ability to twist hideous reality into sublime surreality, like a meat grinder making lovely sausages out of lips, eyelids, anuses, and testicles. Bush’s cliffhanger economy is still stumbling along, though hampered by a fear of the future. Look into the want ads under EMPLOYMENT and get the heartbreak of your life. Few jobs are there, and those that are there will not pay decent wages or have good benefits. Some people are still thrilled by the Bush “tax refund.” Hey, if you use a credit card check to withdraw $1000 on your account, you still have to pay it back, plus a fee. If you use a credit card anytime, you have to pay it back eventually. Not only will we have to pay back the tax refund we got, we will also have to shoulder the huge tax refund that Cheney and his ilk got. We can say one thing for Bush: he told us he was the “education president,” and he has gotten everyone reading. Good literature or bad…we’re all reading more these days, most of it about his lousy leadership. Too bad he under-funded No Child Left Behind. We would understand this better if he had invited us out to dinner (his treat) and then disappeared when the check came. Bush and his Bumblers have gotten us into what may be an un-winnable war in Iraq, at least according to Bush, himself. They have created the monster we fear most…terrorists. (“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” And Bush, of course.) To be fair, foreign terrorists are way behind domestic terrorists in the harm they have done to America. I refer to the polluters, pirates, colluders, wheeler-dealers, and other offal who have made this paradise into a toilet. Sure, it’s mostly diluted now, but somewhere, someone is already being harmed by one of the above. Bush and his Bumblers have been supporting both domestic and foreign terrorists… this is why they should be turned out in November, if for no other reason. As my dad used to tell me, “Just give them enough rope and one day they’ll hang themselves. From your lips to God’s ears, Dad. ((Note to Zell Miller)) Sir, I am the one who took the last bowl of strawberries. I’m sorry. Please accept this gift of steel ball bearings as a token of my sincere apology. (God approved this column.) Curt Andersen is a Green Bay native. He is a 4-year Navy veteran (Communications Technician, CTO2), (who, unlike President Bush, served his entire hitch), owns a small business, is vice president of Clean Water Action Council, and is an adjunct instructor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. You may contact Mr. Andersen at [email protected]