REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Well, the Idiot King did it again. He managed to upstage all the superbly choreographed grace and pageantry of opening night at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing with his 24/7 buffoonery and irony-free malapropitude.

Who cares if Ossetia is burning? Bush was too busy molesting beach volleyball players, fondling Michael Phelps' gold medals, tripping down the stairs at the Aquatic Center, embarrassing the shit out of his daughter, Barbara (who's STILL not married, by the way!), and generally basking in the reflected glow of actual athletes to spend any considerable amount of time contemplating the Russian bombing incursion in the erstwhile Soviet Georgia. junket.thumbnail.jpg

Bush even got to ride on the Olympic mountain bicycling track, something he's apparently been planning since Jacques Rogge first announced that Beijing would host the 2008 Summer Games. And judging from the scabs on his right arm (visible in the upper photo), that ride, like his presidency, did not have a happy ending.

In an on-air interview with Bob Costas, Bush even fondly recollected his first time cycling in China back in 1976. But back then, he noted, everyone rode bikes, so all the cars clogging China's roads today are a sign of "progress." That's Bush logic, for you. So fucking backwards that it creates a rift in the time-space continuum.

The only thing he managed NOT to do was bean himself throwing out the opening pitch for the U.S. baseball team. Then again, he did only get one shot at it.

This is not to say that Bush did not find time to flex his "10-meter board" diplomatic belly-flopping skills. He managed to find time between all the physical gaffes to insult the host country's attitude toward religion and to scold Russia about invading sovereign nations, even while he was cozying up to Vlad Putin at the U.S. basketball game.

He landed back in D.C. this afternoon. Someone needs to double-check that he didn't smuggle Michael Phelps' Speedo back in his suitcase. Y'know. For his Preznitial Lieberry.