“This is the weirdest damned article I’ve read in ages,” writes Digby. Yup:
On most of the 365 days he has enjoyed at his secluded ranch here, President Bush’s idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground.
If the soil is moist enough, he will light a match and burn the wood. If it is parched, as it is across Texas now, the wood will sit in piles scattered over the 1,600-acre spread … […]
For Bush, who is known to spend early-morning hours hacking at unwanted mesquite, cocklebur weeds, hanging limbs and underbrush only to go back for more after lunch, it borders on obsession.The president of the United States likes to spend his suburban ranchette vacation killing time cutting stuff down with a chainsaw and then torching it. Holy shit. Does it get any more symbolic than that?
(It reminds me of the tales his pals told about his childhood, stuffing frogs with firecrackers and blowing them up.) […]
… This is the the only thing he can think of to do when he isn’t running or biking. Mindless, loud, repetitive manual labor. It’s like obsessively jackhammering sidewalks for fun.
Maybe it’s time to amend the Constitution and require a psychiatric examination (and public report) for presidents and candidates.
What happens when the whole world knows we’ve got a nutcase in charge? Just what happened to Saddam, I guess.
Would anyone ever get elected? π
Bush is only the worst example. I can’t think of anyone sane who would want that job
It is what he does to keep from drinking? I don’t know. He is just the weirdest piece of work in my life span. He makes Michael Jackson look sane…lol.
It is just one of the posts propagandistic threads, designed to make him look like a cowboy.
Being a cowboy is a highly technical job requiring a lot of skills and good judgement, not an obsessive activity.
Obsessive wood cutting of that type is designed to shut down the mind when it is trying to go to undesired and uncomfortable places. Sort of like playing freecell repeatedly, but it involves the whole body, not just the mind and the mouse.
Kind of like Zen destruction, if you will.
Bush should have been declared mentally and emotionally incompetent and “Baker Acted” out of office a long time ago.
His massive ignorance and staggering arrogance alone make him “unfit for duty”; nevermind his predatory narcissistic pathology, his “dry drunk syndrome” and his anger management issues.
OK. So Bush is an uncurious, administratively passive and depressed dry-drunk easily manipulated by Rove and Cheney, but if he were removed, is Cheney even as good?
Cheney is to Bush what Agnew was to Nixon – impeachement insurance.
It’s “weird”, not “wierd”.
I really think we need to check in on the water they drink in Texas!!!!!!!!!! :o) I do not want to drink anything but bottled water, if I have to go there. The man and many others he keeps company with, are very sick puppies, in my simple opinion. What has made them that way will be a very good research paper for some student that has nothing to do for a thesis someday….:o) I just want him and his cronies gone!!!!!
Anyone read the book or seen the movie entitled ‘Rain man’? Bush’s mannerisms surely sounds a lot like Rain man’s. Rain man was a retarded person who craved rigorous routines in his daily life to somewhat function. Of course, when they took him on a ride to Vegas it turned out he was a heck of a card counter. Get Bush over there and see what he’s made of π
Interestingly, the December 2005 issue of Scientific American has an article on the anatomy of the berain of Kim Peek, the inspiration for the character “The Rainman.”
It also has a fascinating article on the recent fossil discoveries that shed light on the development of legs from fins which allowed fish to crawl out of the sea. Just a little tidbit to use to infuriate your local Creationists. ;}
It is a home that was built very energy conscious, they heat and cool using a hole drilled 300 feet deep and the constant temp of deeper earth. It was made out of scrap limestone also and not something fancy and costly…..professionally designed to be able to run off the grid if need be. We have three dying trees on our property that we will cut down so they don’t fall down during a hurricane. We have a fireplace with a blower even and we will burn our trees to heat the home for the rest of the coolness of this southern winter, it seems wasteful do it any differently and then we have Bush chopping and burning like a fricken mad man. Somehow I don’t think that he had anything to do with designing his home for energy efficiency.
I’m with you, Tracy … the energy efficiency must have been chosen by Laura, or suggested by the architect to Karl.
Dare I mention birds and wildlife whose habitat he is destroying?
How many baby birds has he killed with his insane chopping?
And, in the winter, birds and small mammals need the protection from the elements afforded by the cover of thickets and brush areas.
At a place where we’ve bought wild bird seed, we picked up their newsletter and they recommended — if one has no thickets or brush areas — to put up small piles of dead branches and trimmings, under which small birds can nestle for warmth.
Yeah, and those piles of branches and brush also harbor rats and snakes who prey on small birds. All of which in my neighborhood provides excitements for the feral and semi-housed cats.
Ever watch a mockingbird dive bomb a cat as the cat heads for tall weeds? It is a fascinating sight to watch. Helps the semi-housed cats keep their weight down, too.
I remember reading about his energy efficient ‘ranch’ also…and thinking how completely out of character this was. My second thought was it was built this way strictly with publicity purposes in mind. To use for example if bush was assailed for not doing enough about protecting the environment and he could point to the fact that his ranch proved he was environment and energy conscious.
That 300 ft. deep hole in the ground is to allow the demons of the netherworld easier access to Bush’s dysfunctional brain..
Because I can picture George sneaking off in the middle of the night (cause we all know Laura ain’t gonna miss him in bed…and that Xanax really knocks the hell out of her) and standing over the hole and chanting with his arms raised to the heavens and then the Incubus emerges from the hole and has sex with him (cause we all know he ain’t gonna miss Laura in bed….and that Xanax he slipped her really knocks the hell out of her).
Lyrical.
I think the ritual you describe is actually what Cheney does when he visits. George just likes to watch while dressed in his cheerleading outfit from prep school.
I had an intructor who had a severely retarded child. When the world got too much for the child it would go to the vacume cleaner and turn it on and lie down next to it to drown out the world. George reminds me of this.
That’s why Mister Bush’s core base is so loyal. They too blew up frogs with firecrackers, and tied bottle rockets to cats’ tails, and fed dogs hamburgers laced with razor blades.
My therapist friends tell me that’s that kind of cruelty a child never outgrows.
Virtually all serial killers and mass murderers have a history of such behavior.
And of course George is no different from the rest of his brethren…except he’s still not in jail.
the Montreal Protocol (1987, 1990, 1992) on protecting the ozone layer as it adds to the carbon debt of the planet. GWB is supposed to put the cedar wood in a chipper so it can be recycled into mulch. Can’t he do anything right?
Resigning would be a start… the man is, beyond question, unqualified for the position he holds.
Peace
No, it’s not at all like that. Sidewalks aren’t alive; sidewalks aren’t habitat. It’s more like shooting buffalo from a moving train for the hell of it. All part of the f#$%ing pseudo-cowboy wastrel personality syndrome.
God gave them the earth to subdue, and all that crap.
With each passing day, he makes it harder and harder for me to stand by my belief that there aren’t evil people, only stupid ones. Although his stupidity takes the cake, sometimes the wanton cruelty of this administration really pegs out my meter.
Not to compare this to torturing prisoners, but it starts with running frogs through a hand-wringer on an old washing machine (boy am I dating myself there) and ends in Abu Ghraib, or helter-skelter. π
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Rather than evil, I think he is just a person in severe pain trying to alleviate it in ways his very restrictive culture socially permits. Meaning no therapy or anti-depressants.
I guess a lot of his brush is at risk as he gets increasingly manic trying to take out his rage on the woods. He’s getting hemmed in, constrained, no longer has a free hand, critics everywhere he turns so he turns to the woodpile, over and over. Like the branches he’s taking an axe to, I see him snapping.
I watched Blazing Saddles last night – and except for the womanizing, feel that Mel Brooks as Gov. William J. LePetomaine was a near perfect reflection of Bush. Hedley Lamarr was trying to be as evil as Cheney