President Bush: Coward in a Plastic Bubble

I woke up in a terrible mood this morning. The new baby weighs on my mind, my editors aren't emailing me back, and my nose-to-the-grindstone writing schedule hasn't seen a single return worth getting excited about. It's an overcast day outside, varying from cold to hot without warning (hey, it's LA), and I can't leave my apartment. Why? Because the president wants to drive down my street.

In yet another sign that absolutely no one except his donors and his transvestite mother loves him, George W. Bush had to lock down entire stretches of West Los Angeles today so he could make his way to some backscratching function or another without having to come across a single person who hates his guts. I mean, cops are everywhere here, and they are blocking driveways, streets and anyone who wants to cross either. Because they just don't seem to know when Bush might come drunkenly careening down it and run over one of his citizens. Or something like that.

You think I'm lying but when Bush's motorcade came up the street, they blazed, as if Iran and Syria and the ghost of Saddam were tailing them on fire. It was hilarious, and another fine moment in police history. Evidently, the statutes on speeding, careless driving and locking down city blocks so one tool can take them over were suspended for the day, all the while with scores of Los Angeles cops looking on and doing what they usually do, which is to say nothing that important.

My wife warned me not to talk any shit off the balcony of our apartment, at the cops or the passing motorcade, while she held our beautiful, innocent daughter in her arms. And that's when it hit me hard: This is America? This is the land of the free and the home of the brave? A place where the president, who is supposed to represent all of the people in the country -- not just the fundamentalist necks who put him in office -- can't drive down the streets of the country he serves without clearing, holding and building up a massive bubble around him? There was a time not too long ago when presidents weren't afraid -- yeah, afraid -- to at least mingle among the people, drive near them, talk to them, and hear what they have to say. But this fool? If the total lockdown of any area he visits isn't a sign that he's a dictator, then I don't know what is. I mean, I had neighbors who couldn't cross the streets to get home because of the possibility he would be rolling down the street with his press bitches in tow, like the multinational pimp that he is. They'd ask the cops when he'd be back around so they could cross and go home, and the cops -- useful public servants, as always -- would merely shrug their patented could-give-a-fuck shrug and say they didn't know. All the while playing the man as they told grannies to take their groceries and get back on the curb.

I'd like to rant more, but I'm sure the point is taken. And my daughter is crying, so I have to pick her up, and lie to her about how great things will be when she gets older. How lucky she is to be born into a country that puts unelected presidents in office, invents wars that costs thousands of innocent lives, and wastes billions of the taxpayers' cash while ignoring environmental catastrophe breathing down their necks like....well, asshole presidents who are free to go anywhere they want and do anything -- anything -- to anyone.

I sure hope his trip to that one Californian who still likes him was worth it.