back in '82...

(graphic love by darkblack!) 

You know, every couple of months, I think that this is It.  Bush has jumped the shark and his inevitable decline, fall, and trip to the Hague are mere months away.  And yet, each morning, I wake up and he’s still there, mugging and shrugging and making yet another disastrous speech for yet another gaggle of sycophantic slag reporters, none of whom (except, apparently, Helen Thomas) have the stones to ask him the hard questions.

I have fantasies about my own day in the White House press room.  In it, by some freak mischance, I have been able to pose as a male prostitute or a Pox News "reporter" or something and thereby wormed my way through security and then, amazingly, he takes my question.

Bush: Yeah, the 60ft. Tyrannosaur there in the back, heh, I don’t think I know you.  Can I call you "Barney"?

TRex: Ah, no, Mr. President.  I’d rather you didn’t.

Bush: Heh-heh-heh, well, you’re a feisty one, arncha?  Aheh.  What’s your question, Barney?

TRex: (sighs heavily) On 9/11, Osama Bin Ladin’s forces killed 2,763 American citizens, whereas the war in Iraq has now killed  2,613 U.S. military personnel.   With only 150 dead Americans to go, how do you plan to celebrate tying and ultimately breaking Osama’s record? 

At which point, I suspect I would be dragged, kicking and roaring, from the room. 

TRex: Oh, and by the way, it’s NU-CLE-AR, you DIPSHIT!!

Yeah, it’s probably a good thing that no publication in the United States would ever be foolish enough to grant me press credentials.

More and more, Resident Bush is reminding me of Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite".  Just sort of useless, always hanging around.  Always bragging about some scheme or another or trying to make you watch his videos of himself posing with a football.  Except Uncle Rico is stuck in 1982, while Bush seems to be stuck somewhere in late September, 2001.  

(Scene: A bedroom in the White House living quarters.  President Bush is lying with his head pillowed in Karl Rove’s ample lap.  A glass of warm milk sits steaming on the night-stand as Karl gently brushes the strands of hair across Bush’s forehead.) 

Bush: Karl?

Rove: Yes, my Lord?

Bush: Tell me again about how great I was at Ground Zero.

Rove: Again?  I’ve already told you that story three times this week!

Bush: I know, but it’s my favorite.  Heh.  Heh-heh.

Rove: Alright, one more time, but after that it’s lights out.  You’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, and even the Leader of the Free World needs his eight hours of sleep.

Bush: No, then I want you to tell me how good I looked in my flight suit that day on the deck of the Lincoln.

Rove: Goodness, aren’t we bossy, tonight?

Bush: Heh!  What’re you gonna do?  I’m the Decider.  I decide what’s best.  And I think you better tell me how great I was at Ground Zero.  Or I’m gonna give Josh Bolten your office.

Rove: You already did that.

Bush: Oh, right.  Heh-heh, aheh.  Now, tell the goddamn story.

Rove: Okay.  It was September 14th, 2001.  You went to Ground Zero and jumped up on that pile of wreckage with a bullhorn…

Bush: Don’t forget where I hugged the fireman!

Rove: Yes, you did.  You hugged that fireman all by yourself.  And everybody thought you were the Greatest President Ever.

Bush: That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?

Rove: It was cool, very, very cool, and then…

(Fade to black…)

Seriously, though.  I’m starting to think that something is neurologically wrong with the man.  Well, aside from being less astute than a plate of cabbage.  Take a look at the moment about halfway through this press conference (about a minute and 35 seconds) where he just seems to…gray out for a second.  He’s in the middle of a sentence and then seems to completely lose track of where he is and what, exactly, he’s talking about.  Not that you can particularly tell, these days, when his train of thought derails.  I mean, all the cars are empty anyway, so what’s it matter?

And then there was Monday’s fiasco, where he did finally cop to the fact that there were never any WMD’s in Iraq and that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but of course, he gets into some pretty fine hair-splitting when he insists that "no-one" in his administration suggested that Saddam was behind the attacks of 9/11.

Well, no, they didn’t say that.  But let’s not forget Dick Cheney’s multiple appearances on "Meet the Press" where he deliberately misled the public about Saddam’s relationship with Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks in 2001.  From Media Matters:

On September 14, 2003, Cheney said the following on NBC’s Meet the Press: "If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11."

But, you know, if "no-one in this administration" actually means, "Dick Cheney, and a few dozen sock-puppet pundits we keep on ice in the basement", then yes, the President was telling the truth on Monday. 

And we’re supposed to cope with two more years of this heavy-handed b.s.?  Isn’t anyone besides us paying attention?  

Each night before I go to bed, I say a little prayer that the Democrats not only take back the House in November, but the Senate, too.  (Subpoena Powers, ACTIVATE!!)  I want to see the legislative branch completely in Democrat hands and leading an accountability bloodbath.  A blizzard of subpoenas, Freedom of Information Act requests, the disclosure of the minutes of Cheney’s meetings with the Oil Barons who wrote our Energy Policy, and on and on.  No more illegal wiretaps, no more free rides for K Streeters and golf trips to Scotland.  Oh, yes.  Know this.  Once we win these elections, the next two years in DC are going to make the Clinton impeachment look like the Teddy Bears’ Motherfucking Picnic.

And I’m going to be right there in the front row, laughing like a drain.  Hell, I might even get myself cable TV again, so I can relish every minute of the Republicans’ long, agonizing fall on C-Span.  Let’s make a date to watch it together, shall we?  What kind of popcorn do you like best?