Bush Said To Be “Invigorated”. Ready To Tackle Issues

Post Election, Staying With New Policy, Bush Pushes Old Agenda

Says Voters Sounded Mandate to Press Lame Duck Congress To Approve Bolton And Sanction Wiretapping

White House insiders are telling The Garlic that, after a rough patch the past week, or so, President Bush is feeling “invigorated” and “has gotten the message” from voters this week.

With this new mandate, yet staying with the new “Hello, I Must Be Going” policy, the President is calling on the Lame Duck session of Congress to confirm United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and, among a hodge-podge of bills, to sanction and approve his Illegal Wiretapping Program, otherwise known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

“The voters this week,” said one Senior White House official, “have clearly told the President they want these things. The combination of the Domestic Terrorist Surveillance and having Ambassador Bolton in place, has made the United Nations safer ... It hasn’t been attacked in the past year.”

“He’s already alienated a lot of us, offered Hugh P. Varicator, a consultant with the conservative hawkish think tank, “Cry Wolf”, that is said to be closely affiliated with The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and, some say, may be an adjunct to the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, “with firing Rumsfeld. . He needs to send a strong message to the terrorists and he can do that by keeping up the wiretapping and keep Bolton on-board.”

Soon-To-Be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and newly-minted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were outraged when advised of the President’s planned agenda.

“Maybe,” said Speaker Pelosi, “rather then talking about measuring drapes, the President should open his, there, in the Oval Office. It’s a new day and he doesn’t control the agenda.”

Majority Leader Reid was more blunt.

”The ink has dried up for his rubber stamp. If he wants to take a swing at us now, he’s going to get swung back at, and all the Signing Statements in the world aren’t going to be much help to him. They’ll have to come up for what is worse, what’s lower than Lame Duck if he tries to play games with us.”

Series of Bush-Cheney Gaffes Added To “Thumpin”

The White House is looking at the call to the Lame Duck Congress as a means to get the President back on track, after a series of stumbles, and then the “thumpin’” the GOP took in the Midterm elections, losing the majority in both the House and the Senate.

First there was Vice President Dick Cheney, in a radio interview, endorsing the use of torture, waterboarding, during the interrogation of terror suspects. The Vice President issued a clarification but, with the President confusing audiences on the campaign trail with his calls to “Just Say No”, causing widespread drug raids, was drowned out.

Then, the gaffe meter registered a toss-up, between the dust-up with Senator John Kerry (D-MA) on whether Kerry was insulting the U.S. Troops, or challenging the intellect of the President and, in the final days of the campaign, the discovery of how the Bush Administration placed documents on their “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal” Website that offered detailed instructions on how to build a nuclear device.

Rumsfeld and Rove Factor Into Loss

Lastly, the President has enraged fellow Republicans with his firing - the day after the Midterm Elections - of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, believing, had the President done it sooner, it could have favored GOP candidates in certain races.

“You have to throw in there,” offered Holly Martins, Publisher of Axis of Evil Illustrated, a quarterly publication, that is rumored to be a house magazine for the Project for The New American Century “that Special White House Guru Karl Rove didn’t come up with an October Surprise. There’s a lot of hostility over that.”

Rove, instead, offered the GOP candidates, not just any reading of the polling data, but the application of Rove’s “The Math” that the man called ‘Bush’s Brain” projected would give the GOP a clear-cut victory in the Midterms.

“Rove couldn’t have done any worse,” said David Aaronson, editor of 'What Color Is My Coat Today?', the Capital Hill Newsletter that tracks politicians who turn on their own party, “then if he went around and poked every Republican candidate in the eye with a stick.”

It’s not clear if President Bush truly believes he has a mandate to push Bolton and the Wiretapping through the Lame Duck Congress, or, as he has recently admitted, he’s lying simply to move the agenda forward.

“That’s the beauty of the “Hello, I Must Be Going” policy,” said Aaronson. “The President can say one thing one day, then come back the next day and deny he ever said the first thing the day before. It’s maddening, but, hey, it’s worked for them so I suppose they’ll stay running with it.”













Now down to just the “Two Amigos”, President Bush is attempting to push his old agenda through the Lame Duck Congress