Five weeks ago, in this commentary, I speculated George Bush must have nothing to do now that voters have deprived him of the opportunity to send troops off to be poisoned in Iraq.

Well, I was wrong and I admit it. It turns out George Bush has plenty to do. It seems our former president has turned into something of a cottage industry. I recently read a newspaper account of Mr. Bush and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney lobbying Indonesian President Suharto on behalf of a Canadian gold-mining firm.

A few days earlier, I read in a different newspaper that Mr. Bush was traveling in South America with Reverend Sun Myung Moon. The newspaper said Mr. Bush was helping Rev. Moon launch a newspaper in Buenos Aires and dedicate a Unification Church seminary for women in Uruguay.

When I first read that I thought, “Wow – George Bush is so bored he’s turned into a Moonie.” For a minute, I had a vision of George Bush and all his secret service agents. selling flowers in the terminal at the Buenos Aires airport. I imagined he’d have that Moonie sales pitch going. “Hey, wanna buy a flower? The money goes to send poor kids to camp…”

I was so stunned, I stopped reading the paper altogether. When I started again, I learned Mr. Bush was not selling flowers at the airport, but was in fact giving speeches, extolling the virtues of Rev. Moon.

The newspaper said Mr. Bush gets between $70,000-$100,000 per speech. So Rev. Moon paid upwards of one hundred thousand dollars to subject his followers to the fractured syntax of George Bush. One hundred thousand dollars for George Bush. Think about that for a minute and then try to tell me the Unification Church is not a cult. People were probably not even allowed to leave the room to pee. Or is that Werner Erhard?

So we know how much George Bush charges to praise cult leaders, but the other story didn’t say how much he charges to lobby repressive dictators on behalf of Canadian gold-mining consortiums. That story was in a Canadian paper and they’re so polite they probably didn’t want to ask.

So what’s next for George Bush? I did some checking around and I hear his people have been talking to Don King about Bush being Mike Tyson’s next pushover. I also heard he may be joining Pete Rose as a greeter at Bally’s casino in Atlantic City. Then there was the rumor that he would have a tearful reunion with his old buddy Manuel Noriega on the Oprah show.

As the old saying goes, we not only know what George Bush is, we also know his price. When Jimmy Carter left office, he picked up a hammer and started building houses for poor people. Ronald Reagan has become a model for people with Alzheimers. And George Bush – I thought we voted him out of office to prevent him from becoming a national disgrace.