ONE MORE HEAD ON THE PYRAMID

PEOPLE OF EARTH: ATTENTION

 

 

By Paul Nicholas Boylan

Columnist

[Reprinted with permission of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, where this article first appeared]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People of Earth, by now you’ve heard that still-President Bush is in the process of pardoning lots and lots of criminals.  Some of these pardons were expected.  For example, the President has commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby – the guy convicted of lying to federal officials about revealing the identity of a CIA secret agent in order to punish her husband for criticizing the President’s handling of the war in Iraq.

 

 

Scooter Libby (when he's relaxing)

 

Everyone knew that Bush would pardon Libby, but Bush is also signing some completely unexpected pardons.  For example, the vast majority of the criminals Bush pardoned so far were jailed for drug related offenses, primarily marijuana and cocaine.  Who could have foreseen that George W. Bush would have any sympathy for drug users, especially cocaine and marijuana users?

One of these pardons captured major news coverage.  The president pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie – also convicted of lying to federal officials. But then, on Christmas Eve, Bush revoked the pardon, sending Toussie back to jail.

Here is how it went down:

Mother:  Kids!  Kids! Gather ‘round!  It is a miracle!  A Christmas miracle!
Son:   What is it mom?
Mother:  Dad is coming home!  The President has pardoned him!
Daughter:  Praise the Lord!  It is a miracle!
Mother:  Now everything is going to be all right. Let’s gather around the Christmas tree and sing our praises to the Almighty for showing us His mercy.
[Phone rings]
Mother:  I’ll get it.  Hello?
President Bush:  Hi. This is the Decider. I decided to change my mind. Isaac staying in jail.  Merry Christmas, y’all!

That's right! Back to prison! Hahahahahaha!!!!!

 

 

Why did this happen? Why did still-President Bush satisfy the wildest hopes of that family only to bring them crashing down on Christmas Eve?

 

 

Bush said he did it because, after he granted the pardon, he heard the guy’s father gave money to the Republican Party.  In other words, the President sent that guy back to jail because letting him out would make the Bush Administration look corrupt.

 

 

 

Isn’t it way too late for Bush to worry about looking corrupt? Doesn’t the Bush Administration already look corrupt? Let’s review:

 

 

    During the Iraq War, the Bush Administration gave trillions of tax dollars – through no-bid contracts – to businesses and people who gave money to the Bush family (on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld admitting “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions”).

 

    The Bush Administration was defined by the high level of “cronyism” it embraced.  Bush gave high paying government jobs to his friends – even if they had no experience or were incompetent – to an extent never seen by any other administration in American history.

 

    When the Bush Administration didn’t like scientific data, it fired the scientists who compiled the data or pressured scientists to come up with other, bogus results.

    When Federal attorneys refused to start fake investigations designed to help friends of the Bush family, those attorney’s were fired and replaced with attorneys who would do it.

 

    The Bush Administration created and implemented policy designed to hide evidence of official wrongdoing, where email records were automatically destroyed or where official business was conducted using Republican National Committee email accounts. Just a few days ago, a federal court said Bush couldn’t keep secret the list of people who had been invited to stay at the White House. It was too late: the list had already been destroyed.

 

 

All of this looks fairly corrupt to me. And not just a little corrupt – it looks really, really, really corrupt. In the face of such a record of brazen corruption, it makes no sense that Bush believes that pardoning that guy would make his administration look any more corrupt than it already looks. It is like Attila the Hun worrying that one more head on top of a pyramids of human heads will make Attila look barbaric. So what is really going on?

 

 

 

I asked my good-for-nothing 17 year old son, Evan – who has a gift for summarizing complex situations – why would Bush revoke a pardon on Christmas Eve? My son blinked and said “he did it to be mean.”

 

 

"Kitten is best when eaten live, he he he."

 

 

 

 

And suddenly it became clear.  Bush and his cronies like hurting people.  It explains so much – from Bush and his buddies sitting back and watching Katrina destroy New Orleans to Dick Cheney shooting his “friend” in the face. It explains why they fought so hard to make sure people got tortured.  It explains why they lowered food safety standards, resulting in mass poisonings. It explains why they allowed the economy to collapse – why they actually did things to make the fall deeper and more painful.  It explains why they gave hundreds of billions of dollars to the people who caused the collapse and none of it was used to help people who were losing their homes.

 

 

 

 

 

I suddenly understand that Bush and his cronies like to hurt people, and now it all makes sense.

 

 

They sent that guy back to prison on Christmas Eve because they wanted to make him and his family sad.

 

 

Mission accomplished.