Gratitude is quite possibly the most important thing in life. If it’s not, it’s up there with the front runners. Without gratitude you have no appreciation of the good things in life. Gratitude and appreciation are virtually the same thing. One is focused on the thing itself (clean running water, for example), and the other is focused on where it came from (a higher power).

Religion confuses the issue

I don’t want to get into any debate about God or religion – no good comes from that kind of thing, far as I can tell. A totally uneducated person from an undeveloped country can experience appreciation and gratitude, and indeed can focus that gratitude on some higher power just as well as a highly educated person brought up in a developed country with the dubious benefit of a religious upbringing. And the moment you start to assign any particular aspects of individuality or personality to that higher power, you can be sure you’ll be stepping on someone’s toes.

Each of us with a religious upbringing has his or her own ideas of God, formed long ago and largely due to someone else’s ideas. And those ideas too often are exclusive, and require you to reject the ideas and beliefs of others. So it’s probably as well to steer clear of saying God is this or that, if you’re going to start getting in any way specific. No good can come of it. Virtually every religion teaches much the same thing, but each has its own particular ‘flavour’.

Most of the trouble in the world today seems to spring from the clash of beliefs of one group or another. And yet, when you speak to individuals, almost nobody holds the extreme views behind all the trouble. It seems these almost take on a life of their own, regardless of the fact that most people are largely accepting of the beliefs of others (and much more so these days, thanks largely to the proliferation of knowledge generally, and specifically of the world’s many cultures, due to computers and the internet).

Reminds me of the Big-endians and the Little-endians in Gulliver’s Travels; the two groups had disagreed over so much over the years and finally had split apart totally over the vastly important matter of which end of a boiled egg to crack open at breakfast. One group held that it was vitally important to open the big end, while the other group held fast to their long-held belief that to crack anything but the little end was not just wrong but heretical.

Generations had fought and gone to war over this issue and countless lives had been lost, because obviously this matter was of such fundamental importance that a person’s beliefs in it had to be defended to the death. That’s religion in a nutshell. Or should that be an eggshell …

Anyway, strip it all away and just accept that all the good we receive comes from a higher power and suddenly the teeth of these enemies have been pulled. No longer is there a need for a “We’re right and you’re wrong” attitude, because it becomes obvious we’re all saying much the same thing – it all comes from the Source of all things, an unnamed power or force. And maybe Star Wars wasn’t far wrong when its characters wished each other, again and again, May the Force be with you! – that’s the higher power, or Source energy, or whatever you want to call it. But it we can just manage to keep it simple and not get hung up on details, maybe we can all live together peacefully.

Back to gratitude … why be grateful anyway?

So, it call comes from Source. The Source of All That Is. And if we’re suitably grateful for these things, life becomes so much richer and more beautiful. But why should we be grateful anyway? Well, I’ve just answered that – it enriches life and makes it of so much more value. But there’s another reason.

If someone gave you something of value, wouldn’t you feel that the decent thing to do would be to thank them and show your gratitude? Of course you would! It’s only natural. And if you didn’t, it would hardly be a big surprise to you if that friend held back from being so generous in future. So, even from a selfish point of view, gratitude is of very real value. The more you feel and express gratitude, the more you can expect good things to appear in your life. It’s like opening up an avenue of communication between yourself and Source energy. Source energy reaches out to you with gifts of all kinds, and in showing gratitude you’re reaching out also, and connecting with Source.

So gratitude, in my opinion, is of the highest importance. It’s a way of communicating your appreciation, and the more you do that, the more readily Source will communicate with you, and give more freely of itself. That’s gratitude in a nutshell – it’s the key to communicating with Source, and it’s probably the most effective prayer you could ever voice.

Bushisms

For some reason, I came up with the title for this blog post almost immediately I started thinking about the subject of gratitude, and for some unaccountable reason I used a Bushism in the title. From there, I started thinking about how to include other Bushisms, but after just a minute or two my head started to hurt. Thinking along those lines does strange things to a brain, and it can’t be done for long periods without the risk of headaches, or worse.

So I just looked up Bushisms online to refresh my memory – I thought I’d probably find a few I could tweak into shape and use for my own purposes, but that’s easier said than done. I had an idea to include lots of Bushisms right throughout this blog post, but the more I read of them to refresh my memory, the more I realised it could be a huge mistake. Firstly, if I kept reading that stuff I might never keep a straight face long enough to actually write anything, but there are also other reasons.

Not only could I never carry them off like the Master of Bushisms himself, but the resulting blog post would be practically unreadable. And more importantly, the message I’m trying to convey would be lost, completely unintelligible amidst the mangled text that I might somehow manage to produce. So I thought, I know … I’ll just add a few originals at the end because, let’s face it, you can’t really fake the real thing, not in this case. It takes a certain flair to mishandle and mangle the language so effectively, and frankly I don’t trust myself to do it properly (or should that be improperly?). Nobody says it quite like Georgie boy.

Bushisms: credit where it’s due

So here’s a few (quite a few actually) of the originals, utterances of the Master of Miscommunication. And they’re plucked from a much larger list on a page by Jacob Weisberg.

And this is something else to be grateful for; enduring a presidency where the holder of that exalted office is barely able to cobble together a meaningful sentence, and actually surviving it, is definitely cause for celebration. And gratitude. Thank God George never got too confused and pressed the wrong button or gave the wrong command. Or maybe that should be Thank the Source of All That Is …

It’s astonishing really that a man whose command of English was so weak, and who clearly had barely a ten-year-old’s grasp of geography and world affairs, and so many other things that I wouldn’t even try to list, should end up as supreme commander of the world’s last remaining super power. Astonishing, and quite frightening.

Enough chat, here’s the Bushisms; a word of caution – don’t read too many one after another, that could lead to problems, and if your ribs can’t take it that’s your own lookout, I accept no responsibility.

BUSHISMS
… from the man himself

“I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.” — Washington, D.C., June 26, 2008

“The German asparagus are fabulous.” — Meseberg, Germany, June 11, 2008

“The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It’s not as good as we’d like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we’ll move.” — Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008“Should the Iranian regime—do they have the sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power? So, like, if I were you, that’s what I’d ask me. And the answer is, yes, they do.” — Speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., July 2, 2008“Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.” — Charlottesville, Va., July 4, 2008“We got plenty of money in Washington. What we need is more priority.” — Washington, D.C., June 2, 2008“And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place.” — visiting the Silverado Cable Co., Mesa, Ariz., May 27, 2008“A lot of times in politics you have people look you in the eye and tell you what’s not on their mind.” — Sochi, Russia, April 6, 2008“And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq.” — meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008“I don’t particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it.” — Crawford, Texas, Nov. 10, 2007“We’re going to—we’ll be sending a person on the ground there pretty soon to help implement the malaria initiative, and that initiative will mean spreading nets and insecticides throughout the country so that we can see a reduction in death of young children that—a death that we can cure.” — Washington, D.C., Oct. 18, 2007“All I can tell you is when the governor calls, I answer his phone.” — San Diego, Calif., Oct. 25, 2007“You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket—in this case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it — they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented additional opportunities for people to work.” — Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007“As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.” — New York, Sept. 26, 2007
“Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit. I appreciate—APEC summit.” — addressing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Sydney, Australia, Sept. 7, 2007
“I’m going to try to see if I can remember as much to make it sound like I’m smart on the subject.” — answering a question concerning a possible flu pandemic, Cleveland, July 10, 2007
“We understand the fright that can come when you’re worried about a rocket landing on top of your home.” — Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007
“Information is moving—you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it’s also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets.” — Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007
“And so, what Gen. Petraeus is saying, some early signs, still dangerous, but give me—give my chance a plan to work.” — in an interview with Charlie Rose, April 24, 2007 (Thanks to Dana Stevens.)
“My job is a job to make decisions. I’m a decision — if the job description were, what do you do — it’s decision maker.” — Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007
“Suiciders are willing to kill innocent life in order to send the projection that this is an impossible mission.” — Washington, D.C., April 3, 2007 (Thanks to Garry Trudeau.)
“I’m a strong proponent of the restoration of the wetlands, for a lot of reasons. There’s a practical reason, though, when it comes to hurricanes: The stronger the wetlands, the more likely the damage of the hurricane.” — Discussing post-Katrina wetland improvements, New Orleans, March 1, 2007
“I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality.” — Speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007
“The best way to defeat the totalitarian of hate is with an ideology of hope — an ideology of hate — excuse me — with an ideology of hope.” — Fort Benning, Ga., Jan. 11, 2007

“I’ve reminded the prime minister—the American people, Mr. Prime Minister, over the past months that it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship.” — Washington, D.C., June 29, 2006
“I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it’s easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?” — Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006
President Bush:  Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?
Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times:  I can take them off.
Bush:  I’m interested in the shade look, seriously.
Wallsten:  All right, I’ll keep it, then.
Bush:  For the viewers, there’s no sun.
Wallsten:  I guess it depends on your perspective.
Bush:  Touché.
— Exchange with legally blind reporter Peter Wallsten, to whom Bush later apologized, Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006
“If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon they could proliferate.” — Washington D.C., March 21, 2006
“I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them then I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president.” — Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 1, 2006
“As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself—not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch.” — After visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006
“I can’t wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs.” — Poplarville, Miss., Sept. 5, 2005
“I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep on the soil of a friend.” — On the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington D.C., June 29, 2005
“We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge.”  — Washington, D.C., April 20, 2005 
“We’re spending money on clean coal technology. Do you realize we’ve got 250 million years of coal?” — Washington, D.C., June 8, 2005
“I think younger workers — first of all, younger workers have been promised benefits the government — promises that have been promised, benefits that we can’t keep. That’s just the way it is.” — Washington, D.C., May 4, 2005

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 
“We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge.”  — Washington, D.C., April 20, 2005
“I’m going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it’s the Mother in me.”  — Washington D.C., April 14, 2005 
“If you’re a younger person, you ought to be asking members of Congress and the United States Senate and the president what you intend to do about it. If you see a train wreck coming, you ought to be saying, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Congressman, or Madam Congressman?” — Detroit, Feb. 8, 2005
“I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. … He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.” — Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004

“Our country puts $1 billion a year up to help feed the hungry. And we’re by far the most generous nation in the world when it comes to that, and I’m proud to report that. This isn’t a contest of who’s the most generous. I’m just telling you as an aside. We’re generous. We shouldn’t be bragging about it. But we are. We’re very generous.” — Washington, D.C., July 16, 2003
“Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace.” — Washington, D.C., July 25, 2003
“It’s very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America.” — Dakar, Senegal, July 8, 2003 (Thanks to Michael Shively.)
“First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren’t necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn’t mean you’re willing to kill.” — Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003
“The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.” — Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003
“I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn’t here.”
“For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times.” — Tokyo, Japan, Feb. 18, 2002

“And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state —my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years—4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. That’s what I asked — 4,000 hours.”  — Bridgeport, Conn., April 9, 2002 

“I suspect that had my dad not been president, he’d be asking the same questions: How’d your meeting go with so-and-so? … How did you feel when you stood up in front of the people for the State of the Union Address—state of the budget address, whatever you call it.” — Interview with the Washington Post, March 9, 2001
“I think there is some methodology in my travels.”  — Washington, D.C., March 5, 2001
“I suspect that had my dad not been president, he’d be asking the same questions: How’d your meeting go with so-and-so? … How did you feel when you stood up in front of the people for the State of the Union Address—state of the budget address, whatever you call it.” — Interview with the Washington Post, March 9, 2001
“I think there is some methodology in my travels.”  — Washington, D.C., March 5, 2001
“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” — Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
“The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money.” — Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000
“They have miscalculated me as a leader.” — Ibid.
“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.” — CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000
“Actually, I—this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I’m talking about—when I’m talking about myself, and when he’s talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”  — Hardball, MSNBC, May 31, 2000
“I understand small business growth. I was one.” — New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
“The senator has got to understand if he’s going to have—he can’t have it both ways. He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road.” — To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000
“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.” — Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000
“Will the highways on the Internet become more few?” — Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.” — Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000
“How do you know if you don’t measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?” — Explaining the need for educational accountability in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
“This is still a dangerous world.  It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses.” — At a South Carolina oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan. 14, 2000
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” — Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

 

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein

Life would be kinda dull if we all spoke like, y’know, the same language. We should be thankful, in a gratitudinous fashion, that there are people, other people, with their own missions, whose methodology of saying communication doesn’t just tread the same old beaten path to my door. Thank you, my friend George, who I haven’t known personally for quite some time together, for all the laughs and nearly putting me in a hospital bed with rib damage caused by, or not wholly subject to, the endless and some might say wise words of the former times leader of the free world. His tweaking or twisting of the meaning … the words I’m saying … his turns of phrase, like any comedian, come out of left field in such a way it makes birds take flight suddenly and with, er … y’know, the way those birds fly south. At least in the winter.

Needless to say, these are all quite genuine. Well obviously – you just couldn’t make this stuff up! If you created a character in a sitcom whose miscommand of the English language was this … well, this all-encomp – hey, really wide, I mean like city-wide, let’s say … then the script guy, y’know the commissioning editor guy, as he’d probably be keen that you called him yourself … that guy, him … he’d most likely, or probably not whichever is the most achievable … he’d probably, with his eyes upcast, tell you like it is … that this kind of thing can’t be y’know, just foisted on the American people, or the people of the whole free world, be he American or otherwise, if not believable. It’s something important for speech … the words that come out … they have to say something, and I like to think the childrens can learn from this. When you try to say something, the words … those uttered words of whichever tone, they have to be a meaning unto themselves … and that meaning is to be clear and present in the minds of all those who hear the words emanating … coming out of, that is, to use a smart, five-dollar phrase … it’s coming out of the mouth of the actor guy, and if it’s not to be fully believable, it’s not the commanding guy, y’know the commissioning guy’s fault if it all goes tits-up and sideways like a heavily-laden SUV on a road with ice on … an icy roadway that’s slippy and unfathomable, with bends and twists and you can’t see them in the poor light when it’s dark at nighttime, in the normal course of events. Driving a speech like that in those conditions … it’s the kind of thing a bad writer could make a pig’s dinner out of, if he’s not way too careful to make it make some kind of sense, in a sensible and formative way. And before you get way up there on your high horse’s saddleback and try to pin me down for being a backwoodsman with no education, let me just heavily explain that it’s not education that’s, how can I put this … it’s hardly not at the thick of it when it comes to saying it plain and simple as mom’s apple pie. There’s only one way … well, there’s two ways of looking at it I suppose, one is this and then there’s the right way, which is my way, and I say it clear (thanks, Frank, much obliged), it’s my way or the highway, and don’t think I mean Highway 66 or the Highway to Heaven or some such tomfoolery, keep your mind focused now on the matters at hand, I think you know exactly, in a pig’s eye, what the hell I’m talking about. I’m trying my damnedest to make it as plain as your own nose, so you know it like the back of his hand, if it was him you referred to in a meaningful way. But don’t let that misinterpretation of the simple facts get in the way of how to mean what I say and I do say … I say … I mean, I say the things I mostly mean and if I sometimes don’t even use the words of a educated professor guy that’s probably only because in my office, which is oval, I’m lord of all I survey and my word goes … it goes far and wide, even, in its entireness, into foreign places where those other guys live, the ones in foreign lands that are most decidedly not America. So thank you, my good friend, who I’ve almost known for quite some time, I hope I’ve made that more than sincerely plain. The last thing I’d want to do, if ever it were possible in this crazy world of ours, is to somehow make it not as plain as a … well a pike’s staff isn’t plain enough for me so I’ll settle for a plain something else like a plain vanilla thing, no strawberry juice stuff or crushed nuts or anything else on top, or maybe something else that’s hardly just vanilla alone, which is truly plain.

Lest we forget …

It has to be said, as a president, Bush was a heck of a comedian.

And on the subject of gratitude, let’s be unceasingly and wholeheartedly grateful that this wise and knowledgeable politician, with his unequalled statesmanship and clarity of thought was prevented, somehow, by some miracle, from gaining access to dangerous things like red phones and nuclear buttons while in office (y’know, that oval one). Let’s all be so, so grateful for that!