Thursday, January 8, 2009

Laura Bush: Killer, Accomplice......Birdwatcher?

"No one can be anti-environment.....can they? It doesnt make sense." - Mr. Scott

Ah, if only you were right, Mr. Scott.

Mr. Scott was a highschool teacher of mine...I think he taought economics. Hell, that might not even be his name, but thats not the point. Mr. Scott was a Large Man who obviously thought sports were Very Important and gave off the distinct scent of being a raging Republican. After I graduated, he got into deep shit (rightfully so) for slandering a gay student of his. Anyway, I remember one day he briefly started talking about the environment. Already being a raging nerd (birdwatcher), I had my guard up, but was surprised when he had pretty positive things to say about the subject.

To this day, I am always shocked and surprised (although I know I shouldn't be) when I find out a conservative has any substantial environmental concerns. Ideologically, I am so skewed to the Left that I have difficulty thinking that I can find much more common ground with a Republican than agreeing that the sky is blue, water is wet and beer is good.

So today, I got a huge shock, and also an answer to one of the big political questions Ive been wondering about lately. Pretty much everyone will agree, on both sides of the political spectrum, that George W. Bush has been one of the worst (in my opinion, The Worst) presidents in American History. This is especially true when considering the environment. To my knowledge, he has done exactly two (2) good things of significance in his eight (8) year occupation of the White House; successfully helped fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and protect 340,000 square miles of ocean, coral reefs and islands from an array of potentially destructive activities.

Why, why would the president do anything to help protect the environment? The answer; his wife, of course.

The phenomenon of Powerful Women is well-documented and well-known. The question, then, is why would Laura Bush give a flying fuck about the ocean?

Because she is a birdwatcher.

Yes. I said it, and it appears to be true. Midway Island, my future home, was visited by Laura Bush a few years ago, and not coincidentally is now one of the centerpieces of the new national monument that has been put in place in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. At any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of seabirds nesting there, which probably melted Mrs. Bush's face right off, as it will mine.

I find it absolutely astounding that this has happened, especially for the reasons it did. Laura Bush has killed someone (look it up). She is married to a war criminal/the most hated man on the planet, and is probably one of the only people (if not The Only Person) who knows what Dubya is really thinking. And she is an avid birdwatcher.

Anyway, here is a cheesey excerpt from a speech she gave back in 2002 at a Girl Scout conference. Who knew?

“I remember that all the girls earned bird badges. For the girls in the troop, this just meant that we had completed our basic study of birds and bird watching, but for my mother, it led to what would become a lifelong hobby.”

“Bird watching became a big part of whatever we did as a family. We often drove out to the home of a woman we knew who kept her yard in its wild, natural state - just to attract birds.”

“I remember driving to see my grandparents when I was in high school, trying to sleep in the back of the car, when suddenly my mother would gasp, pull out her binoculars and announce, "There's a Hawk!" or "Did you see that Painted Bunting!' Being a teen-ager, I didn't want to be bothered, of course. But eventually, I did develop an interest in bird watching and the outdoors.”

“In fact, through bird watching I learned a little bit about "community" - about being a part of something bigger than my close group of family and friends.”

“One year, my mother identified a bird called a Varied Thrush in our own back yard. This was a rare bird for that part of Texas.”

“During the bird's stay in our garden, a lot of bird watchers in our town would come over on their lunch hours, sit at the counter in our kitchen and patiently wait for the bird to show up. As they waited, they got to know each other better through their common interest.”

“A lot of times the bird would never come, but when it did, everyone would jump up and hug each other -- they were so thrilled that they had spotted this rare bird. And my Dad would watch it all and say to me, ‘You know, bird watchers are really good people.’"

- Laura Bush

Finally, here is a passage from the San Francisco Chronicle. Fucking hilarious.

The debate over the latest maritime national monuments was notable chiefly because it featured a standoff between first lady Laura Bush, a bird-watcher, and Mr. Dark Side himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, who opposed the plan. But without oil exploration crews and fishing trawlers in the picture, it wasn't much of a fight.

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