Things I Just Learned I Didn’t Know: Special Bush Legacy Project Edition

The pickings are getting slim content-wise over at the White House website. Curiously, the catapulted propaganda for privatizing Social Security is still up, perhaps in an act of ironic bravado. You’d think that would have been one of the first items scrubbed when no one was looking.

Maybe the website staff was too busy uploading and catapulting the final piece of White House propaganda, 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record [PDF].

The spunky PowerPoint style features lots of action verbs -- combat, strengthen, provide, protect, advance, transform, create -- and key items set ALL CAPS lest we gloss over them. However, there are no references (the White House don’t need no stinkin’ references) and -- exasperating in a document promising exactly 100 things -- no enumeration.

At first I read 100 Things with pencil and paper at the ready, trying to keep a thing count as I went along, but I soon gave up. I mean, would you count this as one, two, or three things?


Or would you, viewing the statement as one man’s wishful thinking about his epitaph, just disqualify the item for list inclusion?

More often it’s not the math that’s the problem but the reality. What can you do with these things other than laugh or cry or laugh and cry?


How can you read that last thing and not think of this….

I’m inclined to approve this thing for inclusion on the list since first-person testimonial is on file.


The testimonial is that of Chanley Painter, Miss Teen Arkansas-America 2001.

I have always believed one should remain abstinent until marriage. Not only are you protecting your heart, mind, and body, but also your future family from the life-changing and deadly affects of premarital sex. My Christian faith, the teaching of my family, and my positive role models are also main factors in my pledge of abstinence.

Being a part of the "Choosing to Excel" program has allowed me countless opportunities to reach out to youth in my community….

But how on earth do you evaluate this thing? If you took all the stupidity and arrogance contained in this statement and loaded it into the Large Hadron Collider, surely the first couple rocks from the sun would be destroyed.