Now, this

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Today I read about a lot of celebrity Republican politicians---both of today and yesteryear---praising President Obama for "wisely" following the lead of George W. Bush's antiterrorism strategy in order to bag OBL.

Steve Benen of Washington Monthly has, in response, provided a nice collection of linked articles documenting the lack of concern Bush and ultraconservative personalities publicly displayed about OBL's whereabouts and significance dating back to March 2002. (!)

For a "bonus level," Benen throws in a link to a 17 April 2002 Washington Post story about bin Laden slipping through Tora Bora to Pakistan in December 2001 thanks (reportedly) to strategic cockups by Bush's Afghanistan operations chief, General "Tommy" Franks. I leave it to the reader to assess any potential relation between the 2001 Tora Bora failure and Bush's cavalier attitude toward OBL in 2002.

So, no: if you are among those who think the world is better off without Osama bin Laden, you owe precisely zero thanks to George Walker Bush for the terrorist's demise.

And Dove Bars shall issue from the assholes of the righteous

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Predictably, it begins: the call for "civility" by a Beltway pundit, "Howard Fineman," who hopes all of us will emulate George W. Bush "at his ardent best" on a 9/11 rubble heap, as he lathered up the nation for the willy-nilly destruction of Afghan places and people completely uninvolved with the Bin Laden cabal. Or Hillary Clinton's peckerwood husband as he drooled platitudes about "God and the Bible" and "tolerance, forbearance, and love" a few days after a right-wing conspiracy executed the largest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

This "Howard Fineman" creature is the worst that corporate media has to offer. He asserts, with only the same information at hand that you and I have right now, that the Giffords massacre was "not about politics, ideology or party." And that, therefore, an appeal to "civility" is the salve to be applied. While posing as a voice of reason and moderation, this "Howard Fineman" instructs the nation to avoid discussing the level of accountability that might be assignable to the right-wing media and political ringleaders. These animals who have clawed their way to wealth and power by trading on unvarnished prejudice and violent political rhetoric over the past several decades must not be connected with the predictable fallout of their actions. We must avoid analysis, one supposes, because this might create discomfort for "Howard Fineman" and his paymasters, and the horrible, horrible people he shares cocktails and finger foods with to gain personal validation.

Never fear. I am certain that President North Star will lap up every refined droplet of "Howard Fineman's" wise counsel. And that as a result of same we Americans can look forward to a new Era of Good Feelings that will usher in a hundred years of prosperity and peace. Long Live "Howard Fineman"!

Politicians make some funnys

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HuffingtonPost has put up a report from the annual Al Smith Dinner, where politicians get to clown with some well written jokes, a number of them having an actual biting or even self-satiric edge. I leave it to me to tell you that the dinner is a fundraiser for Catholic Charities since the fool writing for HuffPo failed to mention that. (I haven't watched the video; just read the text.)

McCain said "That One" is his pet name for Obama, and that Obama has reciprocated by giving him the pet name "George Bush." Obama told the gathering that "My greatest strength would be my humility. My greatest weakness is that it's possible I am too awesome." There's some funny stuff there, but it looks like a few of McCain's gags may have bordered on being a bit too ill-spirited for the Al Smith gig. Maybe I'm being judgmental. You decide.

Eight years ago Al Gore and George Bush attended this dinner. At that time, Gore joked that he invented the internet. Bush made the remarks about "the haves and the have mores" being his base, which were unfairly lifted out of context by Michael Moore and spliced into Farenheit 911. This probably happened because Michael Moore is fat.

Bush bailout speech: I report, you decide

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Coupla things struck me while listening to Bush's address to the nation about the financial crisis a few minutes ago.

First, as McCain "suspends" his campaign to chicken out of his first debate with Obama... um, I mean, fly to Washington and save America Herself, The President of the United States --- "our first MBA president", in fact, as NPR's Adam Davidson informed me --- could barely spare 14 minutes before his bedtime to read a canned speech about the proposed $1 trillion Republican Wall Street welfare package.

Second, President Bush spent almost all his time stumbling through his sanitized Republican textbook version of the origins of the investment banking collapse, but neglected to mention either the role of Reaganomics or the cost of his proposed giveaway. Neither omission is surprising, but large slices of his audience have at least some understanding of both those issues, and some citizens may consider the President (even more) cowardly (than usual) for not acknowledging their own intelligence regarding the salient facts.

Third, he sounded completely disinterested in what he was saying as if he already knew that he would be moving into his parents' cushy basement in Kennebunkport on 20 January 2009. (The got a big-screen TV down there, and five different kinds of beer --- in their own kegs!)

And fourth, he ended his speech with the plaintive closing, "Thank you for listening." To which I say, "You're welcome, man, you're welcome for wasting 15 of my precious minutes." Doesn't this fool understand that some of us have blogs to tend to?!?

I have no idea what Bush's handlers thought his speech might accomplish considering that 80-something percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and by a margin of 2 to 1 they believe that Republicans are responsible for current U.S. economic problems, and 0% believe the U.S. economy is improving. My hypothesis is that Cheney made him give the speech just to "torture" him; just to submit him to a little more humiliation plus the unpleasantness of staying up on a Wednesday night past bedtime.

Update before I've even posted: Blogger's spell checker flags Kennebunkport as a misspelling. The options it offers for correcting the error are "Outspokenness" and "Drunkenness"!

WPE cafe blogging!

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I heart my new MBP and am taking a smidgen of time away from the Simple Country Editor grind to blog, just because I can now, in style.

A certain meme, documented in this case by Atrios, has been floating around since Our President has fallen into disfavor with a majority of die Volk. Specifically, the meme is that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president "in modern times." I wonder: why the qualification? Do we really know of any president who has been more unpopular? A more important question, in my opinion, is why it took a majority of the people 7 years to reach this opinion. Everything about Mr. Bush --- literally everything --- was apparent on its face since before his election, when I remember news reports of him standing at a Florida stock car track or something, repeatedly bleating "W" in high-school Spanish to a crowd of frothed-up Cuban exiles, with the learned media commentators asserting that this behavior displayed not only Governor Bush's fluency in a foreign language, but also his deep connections to the "Hispanic" community.

I believe there is one, and only one, reason why Mr. Bush's popularity ratings are so dismal: people are afraid that they can't afford all their great stuff any more.

Acronym alert: for the benefit of all you puny humans out there, WPE means "Worst President Ever."

Bottom-feeding on the irony circuit

Since the following morsel is too small for the heavy hitters of political blogging, I suppose it's up to me to put it on the record. This, from President Bush's White House press conference today (transcript excerpt from Fox News, to which I will not link):

Question: I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those with when (sic) we disagree.

Bush: What's lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What's lost is it'll send the wrong message. It'll send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It'll give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.

As if you, my most sophisticated and highly intelligent reader, need me to interpret for you, I will just point out that Bush's words could just as appropriately have been aimed at his own administration by the leader of any democracy that still abides by the Geneva Conventions and the various nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

The President's words were evidently a swipe at Barack Obama, who would glorify dictators by considering the use of diplomacy to solve international conflicts. Now, is anybody really worried that a competent Secretary of State couldn't easily achieve all key U.S. foreign policy goals with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea within a year? I'll bet it wouldn't take much more than secretly offering Castro, Ahmadinejad, and Kim each a few boatloads of swag, a bottomless expense account, and carte blanche at David Vitter's favorite brothel. Seriously.