Status Updates From The Greatest Story Ever Sol...

Started listening to this audiobook while at work and holy smokes I hate this guy. Just listening to his previous work before becoming president and constantly changing his mind/statements just made me annoyed. Just learning new things about himself and sentiment on the Middle East is kind of jarring to hear, and makes me regret not knowing about these things earlier in my life.

I was unwilling to finish this book because it was just making me sad. From the deliberate fabrication and misrepresentation of facts by the White House, to the weakness of Congress and the national media, I mourn for the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of deaths that resulted in this power grab by George Bush and his cronies.

So far the book is well written and well researched, and making my stomach hurt.

This takes me back to early 2000s...doesn't seem so long ago, but then it's amazing how much I forgot about.

"By exalting in our parent's wartime service, we could practice what the writer John Gregory Dunne labeled a " virtual patriotism" that made us look noble by association. Seeing Pearl Harbour or giving The Greatest Generation as a Father's Day present could become the cost-free moral equivalent of going to war. We never imagined America might actually have to go fight another one. "

Even if you followed the news closely during the Bush II presidency you'll find so much here to provoke your outrage. Rich, being the NY Times' former theater critic, is especially astute in identifying and breaking down the fraudulent stagecraft of the Bush administration. Everything was even worse than I thought. Cynical con artists all of them.

The Bush administration spent $124 million on fake "news" reports in a PR campaign for the Medicare Rx benefit program.

The Bush administration: Incompetent in governance, masterful and relentless in stagecraft.

The Bush administration practiced "faith-based intelligence" to suit its case for the Iraq war.

After Powell's speech to the UN half of all Americans believed Iraqis had been among the 9/11 hijackers. I wonder whether they still do.