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I jinxed myself by saying I would have some free time. Among other things that have come up, everyone and their brother want sandals for their beach wedding, in 3 days! Whatever happened to planning ahead? I have had some time on the road though, and that means time to read.
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind was a good start on summer reading. Bush appointed Paul O'Neill Treasury Secretary and then fired him two years later because Bush and his cohorts are allergic to the truth and O'Neill is too old and rich to be afraid to tell it. His descriptions of his meetings with our president are absolutely chilling. There's nothing there folks. If you gave him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change. O'Neill has a great memory and backs it up with documents drawn from a collection of 19,000 files.
O'Neill remembers that 10 days into this administration, at the 1st meeting of the National Security Council, "Getting Hussein was now the administration's focus. From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it--the president saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"
I just started Molly Ivins Bushwhacked. It's too infuriating to be funny but I did laugh at this little gem she quoted from William Brann " The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough." ha! That goes for our Oklahoma Baptists too.