Tabloid update: The Bush marriage collapses

Well, we promised to keep you up to date on the tabloid reports of the collapsing Bush marriage, but frankly, we think this week's big front-page story in the Globe, "Laura Nails Cheating Bush; his candid confession; divorce bombshell," is a tad oversold.

The story says Laura Bush confronted the president about rumors that he was seeing Condoleezza Rice on the side, and that he refused to deny it and refused to discuss it.

According to the Globe's sources, Laura was incensed and threatened to throw aside their reported deal, which called for her to stick by the president's side until he was safely out of office in 2009. The Globe says the first lady told friends she did not want to endure one more day of humiliation, she wanted a divorce and she wanted it immediately.

Here at America Wants to Know, we're fully convinced that the president is sleeping with his secretary of state. We believe that the Bush marriage is over. We don't doubt that the first lady has spent a few angry nights at Washington D.C. hotels and we wouldn't be surprised if she has already bought a place to live in Texas that will never have George W. Bush's name on the deed.

We don't believe the Globe's reports that Queen Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth, for God's sake) told the president that he should patch up his marriage for the good of the nation, or that the president drank a prodigious amount of alcohol and told the Queen of England to mind her own damn business.

We do believe that Laura Bush has hired a very expensive divorce lawyer and we wouldn't be shocked if these silly Globe stories were nasty little negotiating tactics designed to up the cash value of the divorce settlement.

Go get him, Laura. He wouldn't have been re-elected without you. Distance yourself before you catch all the blame for Iraq.



Copyright 2007

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Ed Gillespie: Counselor to the Presidential Library

Why, you might ask, would a president who is buried alive in an unwinnable Middle East war, a battle with his own party on Capitol Hill, and a mountain of crumbling popularity decide to tap a lobbyist and longtime Republican fundraiser to be his new White House counselor?

There's always a reason.

President Bush has just eighteen months left in his administration, and he needs to raise an estimated half-billion dollars to build that presidential library and think tank that will spend the rest of eternity trying to explain why the Iraq war wasn't a mistake.

Current law does not require presidential library foundations to reveal the names of their donors, but current law may change, and that makes it awkward for President Bush to fund his library with mega-donations from powerful people in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as his father did. It would be so embarrassing if FBI computer programs tracking terrorist financing uncovered a stream of wire transfers from Abu Dhabi to SMU.

So what's a president to do?

Enter Ed Gillespie.

The Associated Press reports today that as a partner in the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, Gillespie lobbied the Senate last year on behalf of Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tyson Foods, Safeway grocery stores, Entergy, Bank of America, and NBC Universal.

Lobbyists, if you've just arrived on the planet earth, make a living by having clients in the private sector and contacts in the government. They present their clients' legislative needs to their contacts, and they maintain their contacts by delivering campaign donations from their clients.

Ed Gillespie knows what everybody wants.

President Bush wants large, respectable, corporate donations to fund his library.

What do Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tyson Foods, Safeway, Entergy, B of A and NBC want?

We'll all find out together when they get it.

And five years from now, when their corporate logos are etched on the wall of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, no one will suspect a thing.

A clean getaway beats a legacy any day.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested to read the earlier post, "The president's motive in the ports deal."

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The decline and fall of The Sopranos

In the end, the acting was so much better than the writing.

The brilliant James Gandolfini, who told an interviewer recently that he feels he still has to prove himself, doesn't have to prove himself ever again. That scene with Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) in the retirement home was so exquisitely performed that Gandolfini has to stand shoulder to shoulder with the finest American actors ever to walk in front of a camera.

James Gandolfini brought Tony Soprano's whole lifetime into that scene -- the resentments of the child, the menace of the killer, the grief of the survivor. And he did it all without raising his voice above a whisper, barely moving a muscle in his face.

If James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Jack Lemmon, Gene Hackman or Jack Nicholson ever gave a finer performance, we can't point to it.

What an actor.

If only the scripts of The Sopranos could have matched his genius.

Series creator David Chase deserves credit for bringing forth some of the most fascinating characters ever seen on television. But the remarkable achievement of the characters only makes the frustration of the plotlessness more aggravating. As the seasons wore on, the scenes of action and suspense were fewer and fewer, and the scenes of sitting in chairs and contemplating were more and more frequent.

In a crowning aggravation, Chase turned the final season into an extended practical joke. Scenes of apparent suspense turned into red herrings. Plot lines vanished. Characters developed sudden and unexplained stupidity that allowed them to be killed. Brand new personality traits emerged in mid-life without explanation. In one episode, Tony Soprano came down with a severe gambling addiction, borrowed money, turned anti-Semitic, and then went back to normal as if it had never happened.

So many great plot possibilities were thrown away, especially in the last two seasons. Think of the scene in which Tony was shot by Uncle Junior in a moment of dementia. In the show, Junior is immediately held for the crime and institutionalized. But imagine how much more interesting the season would have been if Tony lost consciousness before he could tell anyone it was Junior who shot him. His crew might have suspected any number of people and started a war which Tony would have had to end, or fight, when he regained consciousness.

Earlier in the series, an opportunity to add depth and conflict to the character of Tony's analyst, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) was pointlessly tossed aside. There was a scene in the analyst's office when she appeared to be ready to tell Tony that she had been raped and the police had let the rapist get away. Think of how much more interesting all their scenes would have been for the rest of the series if Tony had hunted the guy down and killed him, and Dr. Melfi was forced to live with the knowledge that she was glad he had done it. Think of how much more punch there would have been in that final strange scene when Dr. Melfi throws Tony out of her office because she believes she has enabled a sociopath. Instead, it just looked as if David Chase wanted Lorraine Bracco's salary out of the sequel's budget.

At least a planned sequel would justify the conclusion of the series' final episode, a string of cartoonish "here it comes" moments followed by a blank screen and no ending at all.

Maybe it's deep and existential. Or maybe James Gandolfini did his best acting when he convinced an interviewer that he has put Tony Soprano behind him.


Copyright 2007

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Our psychics were right

And you laughed.

On May 25, America Wants To Know took note that former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston has asked the House Oversight Committee for immunity from prosecution, and that this would be a good time for Vice President Dick Cheney to check the batteries in his pacemaker.

And he did.

On Friday, June 8, Vice President Cheney had a check-up at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, where doctors told him he needed a new battery in his pacemaker.

Coincidence? We think not.

Either our cracked team of psychics and gumshoes knows what it's doing, or the vice president is reading America Wants to Know.

All right, it's a coincidence.

But in case it's not a coincidence, welcome, Mr. Vice President, congratulations on the birth of the new grandchild, and please read "A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property."


Copyright 2007

Editor's Note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Where the rivers of scandal join: Meet Susan Ralston" and also "The Motive for War: How to End the Violence in Iraq" at www.SusanShelley.com. If you're tracing the links between Vice President Cheney's office, Jack Abramoff and the appointment of Patrick Pizzella, you might be interested to read "Solving the mystery of who leaked the tunnel plot."

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Mugged by reality in a dressing room

Hillary Clinton has big plans.

On Tuesday she told an audience at the Manchester School of Technology in New Hampshire that she's for a "'we're all in it together' society" based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

Then on Thursday, she presented a nine-point "innovation agenda" to high-tech executives in Santa Clara, California, warning them that their success could fizzle out unless the nation spends tens of billions of dollars to improve education and health care.

She predicted that powerful interests will fight her plans. "I have no illusions about how hard this will be," she said.

But while Hillary Clinton was making big plans to gore other people's oxen and share other people's prosperity, she broke down and admitted that an earlier big plan to save the earth from global warming and dependence on fossil fuels has run into an unexpected problem.

"Every woman in this audience knows what it is like to try on a bathing suit in a dressing room with a fluorescent light," Senator Clinton said. "There will not be broad-based market acceptance until we get a better glow from the fluorescent lights."

It's true. The compact fluorescent light bulbs so enthusiastically touted by environmentalists as the savior of the planet could drive a woman to suicide.

Seriously.

And not just in dressing rooms. If you ever have to stay at a Marriott hotel, bring your own lightbulbs, or bring prescription anti-depressants.

On paper, compact fluorescent bulbs look like a great idea. A compact fluorescent lightbulb is said to use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs, last ten times longer, and generate 450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants.

It doesn't matter. The temperature in Manhattan could be 120 degrees in December and you're still not going to convince women to be seen looking greenish and splotchy. This is why Revlon gives its foundation colors names like "Cameo Beige" and not "Iguana Pink."

Senator Clinton is right. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs will not find broad-based market acceptance. Until they throw off a more attractive light, they are going in the garbage. And they contain mercury, so this story just gets better and better.

Senator Clinton should remember the dressing room experience the next time she hears herself denouncing the people who oppose her big plans. It may be, it's possible, there's a chance those people are right, no matter how good the plans look on paper.



Copyright 2007


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