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        Grave Importance   

Fancy color sketches and models of the George W. Bush Presidential Library have been loosed upon an anxious world, and must be mined for clues.

Like, where will they bury him?

Assuming Bush follows the pharaoh-ic path of FDR, Truman, Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and his father’s plan at College Station, he’ll have to be buried on site. If the “Texas Rose Garden” above is a little too outdoorsy, there is the Freedom Tractor Beam inside.

 

The careful viewer will note a presidential quote on the wall behind the generic assembled white folks.

It’s a line from Bush’s 2004 Republican Convention acceptance speech, in which he claimed we are summoned by a “calling from beyond the stars.“  Here on Earth Bush had begun the year attempting a call to greatness with a vague drumbeat for Mars exploration, then buried the exciting initiative by the time of his State of The Union address.

The convention speech itself was delivered with a spaceport motif. 

The Library grounds are touted as a Bush gift to the nation, or at least SMU, providing “numerous spaces for events and gatherings,” but don’t plan your protest rally just yet.

“… unlike the formal, tree-lined landscape of the main campus, this garden contains hills and draws and winding paths that conceal surveillance cameras and other security equipment.“

      

To Equatorial Guinea, where the Dark Continent meets the Deep Blue Sea, and oil floats the ruling family to a higher realm.

A spectacularly corrupt kleptocracy has evolved this West African island and some coast into a tropical gangster parody.

Think Of It As A Name Tag  

President-Till-The-Cows-Come-Home Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has presided for three decades since killing his uncle, the previous dictator, and now the New York Times reports that a swanky bit of Malibu may be forever E.G.

Strongman scion and heir apparent Teodoro Nguema Obiang spends much of his time in a multimillion dollar mansion in this suburb of the stars, despite US laws that nominally bar corrupt foreigners from our shores. 

Equatorial Guinea has been in an expansive mood lately.   The regime recently sprang a mercenary jailed in a murky coup attempt, freeing an unhappy Simon Mann to pursue his claim that Son Of The Iron Lady Mark Thatcher helped the plot.

President Obiang, shown here gathering strength from the martyred Che Guevara,    has friends throughout the world. 

The regime’s website practices a level of delicious shamelessness, posting headlines like  “DEMOCRACY AT ITS PEAK IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA” and leaving them up despite mockery.

  A vast presidential mansion is being built, and even better,  a presidential library! 

Where did this big idea come from?

Equatorial Guinea has had a storied relationship with one American who has promiscuously spread himself over our nation’s Presidential Library universe.

World Beater

Joe L. Allbritton is a cartoonish exaggeration of Washington incestuousness, serving on boards for the Kennedy Center, the Lyndon Johnson, Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential Libraries, and a failed effort to bring George W. Bush’s to Baylor University.

Alblbritton financed his service to former greats’ memories through his ownership of Washington’s Riggs Bank, a daisy chain of power ensnaring Russian spies,  Saudi princes, a Bush uncle, General Pinochet and the Obiang family.

For hiding Obiang and Pinochet millions Allbritton lost the bank.  Riggs paid $39 million in US civil and criminal penalties, $8 million in Spain.  Allbritton and his son personally paid one million dollars to Pinochet torture victims.

 Retiring Type    

The Washington Post’s Howard Kutz is puzzled at the incessant media coverage of Barack Obama minutia, and for guidance he turns to grizzled George W. Bush handler Mark McKinnon

McKinnon is professionally awed at Obama’s mastery of image burnishing, contrasting him to Bush’s modest self effacement:

“the former president liked his privacy, was wary of the media and had an aversion ‘to anything that smacks of self-promotion.’“

Kurtz’s probing questions continue, turning to burly, bandito-mustachioed Thomas Friedman to understand why those leftest whiners seem so upset with Obama.

Puzzler 

                               This Is Not Happening! 

Feisty tabloid The New York Post reports Former Presidents Clinton and Bush have canceled a once mildly interesting sounding speaking event, vowing no longer to  “undoubtedly generate heated discussion as the best political minds of our day examine the most talked about topics surrounding current events.”

The two had been slotted to appear in the “Minds That Move The World” series at Radio City Music Hall, but the Post says they backed out after seeing the event’s lame hype.

Sites promoting the event are already scrubbed or strangely empty, and    now we will never know what these “minds” think “In light of the new political environment that faces our nation.“

 Straight Poop

George W. Bush made his world-changing motivational speaker debut in Ft. Worth this week, and he went with the tested material.

How to rouse the Texas throng while auditioning for future speaking gigs?

Turd jokes never fail!

Bush wowed ’em with tales of cleaning up after his dog, showing that former Presidents are just like us. The Washington Post watched the relatableness unfold in real time:

“He is just a normal guy! He wasn’t the best speaker. But I was happy to see him!” said Lubbock salesman Patrick Kruger, 50.”

 

Bush’s fascinating pet sanitation anecdote saw light in March, when he tried it first outside the country in Canada.

Next to China, where April saw the former chief executive talking shit at the Boao Forum.

A May high school graduation provided the first domestic audience to enjoy Bush’s scatological stylings, and Vanity Fair expressed concern that the ex-president was repeating himself.

Bush defied the glossy monthly, regaling Michigan business leaders with dog stories in late May, and again in Toronto.
Squintee is a man of few words!