Who is the Joker?

What I want to know is this: are the same people who are outraged about this, the same people who were pleased with this?

"As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before Nine-Eleven. But I never did."

"Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our Nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe."

I think those are the best lines from President Bush's farewell speech.

(HT: IAG)

You can see that I've placed the "retirement" tag on this post. While he can't really "retire" from the presidency - not being elected again isn't the same thing as retiring - it is safe to say that Bush is "retiring" from public life.

What will the Bush haters do after next Tuesday?

Poor Bush haters. They've had one main object of derision for the past eight years. They even have his portrait to hate. And now, he's about to pass into history. Who will their fire consume now?

LOLBush

Hilarious.

You know you're not a fan of the 43rd president when....

... you see this book title, and instantly think that it's about his administration.

Of course, there's this book, too.

And this one, about his last year in the White House.

This game could go on and on...

Hyperbole

Well, he is a writer, so he knows how to use it.

a Texas wedding

The New York Times has photos of Jenna Bush's nuptials. The president called the wedding "spectacular."

Who has destroyed the Republican Party?

It's exactly who you think: George W. Bush. He certainly did it for me: a disastrous war with Iraq, his peddling of ridiculous "compassionate conservatism," and his (ab)use of evangelicals.

the buck stops there

Oh, my. Former press secretary Scott McClellan has written a book which contains, among other things, an apparent admission of misleading.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

Whenever I hear about a he-said/she-said situation (and all its variables), especially in regards to whether or not a specific event occurred, I want to ask: who stands to benefit more from giving false statements?

I imagine my Democratic friends will rush to vilify Wilson/Plame and demonize Bush & Co., and my Republican friends will attack McClellan.

who's the biggest spender since LBJ?

Yep. This president. And they say Republicans want a smaller government...

the latest Bushism

Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

Admit it. You'll miss them when he's gone, won't you? I'm sure you don't have to worry, because he'll provide plenty on his inevitable speaking tour.

Forget Obama. I got a crush on Mahmoud.

I certainly believe that in a democratic society, the citizens have a fundamental right to question the actions of the President. To paraphrase Michael J. Fox's character from The American President, it's our responsibility because this is our president. We have a right to voice our concerns and to vote for those who we think will best lead the country.

However, I don't think we should pay that much attention to what leaders of other countries are saying about our leader, especially leaders of certain countries which have a history of ill will towards us. I believe things are seriously warped over at Daily Kos if one of his "diarists" thinks it's worthwhile to examine Bush through the lens of Ahmadinejad.

I know I'm a Jewish lesbian and he'd probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon...

I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding.

If Bush was speaking "blunt truths" about Admadinejad, would they post about that? I know, I'm stupid for even asking such a question. Of course they wouldn't.

i want money, lotsa and lotsa money...

See? A president can be like an ordinary American when it comes to birthday presents - money is the best gift.

what will Bush's lasting legacy be?

Many people will be tempted to say "Iraq," but I'm willing to suggest that it will be this. It's important to remember that Bush has another year in power. It's improbable that another justice will step down during his remaining time in office, but not impossible.

Notice in the picture of the Supremes that Roberts doesn't wear anything to show distinction from the other justices, as Rehnquist did.

what are we doing in Iraq?

Okay....

President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available.

... beginning to discuss... training and advising Iraqi troops...

Shouldn't have this been happening already? Let's send the troops first, and then discuss what they'll do. Does this make any sense? Short answer, no.

[Blank]'s faith worries [Blank]

You know whose name goes in the first [blank], right? I mean, there's almost no question as to who it is. You know it's not going to be John Kerry's name or Hillary Clinton's name or Dennis Hastert's name - heck, it's not even Tom Cruise's name. You know FOR CERTAIN that it's not going to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's name there, although that is certainly a cause for worry. You also know that even though he is reportedly a Christian, Tony Blair's name isn't going to be in there.

Okay, I'll say it. It's George W. Bush - but you knew that already. Now, the next issue is, what "faith" is being talked about here? Is it Bush's faith in the power, power, wonder-working power in the faith and goodness of the American people? No. It's the faith that always seems to be causing concern these days. I'm not talking about Islam here. I'm talking about Bush's religious faith, Christianity. Someone is worried about Bush's Christianity - how it affects him, what he thinks about it, how it guides him. You can be sure that when person A worries about person B's religious faith, and there's some article in the media about it, that faith is going to be identified as Christianity - not Islamofascism, not Scientology, and not whatever-those-Heaven's-Gate-people-actually-believed.

The second [blank] is Madeline Albright, AKA the second Secretary of State under Clinton. She's written a book, see, and it's called The Mighty and the Almighty. She's expressing her concern about Bush's Christianity. She recalls with fondness the days of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and how their personal religious views never influenced their political actions (although I believe that there are certainly arguments to be made that those two individual's religious views DID affect their political actions).

"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different," said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. "The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us." (CNN)

Yes, Madame Secretary, we should all be worried about absolute truth. Our only safety is in relativism. We certainly don't want a president who identifies what is good and what is evil in this world. Better to be completely uncertain about what to do...

Remember: he's a uniter, not a divider

Blame games never end, do they?

President Bush, on a Gulf Coast inspection tour that included his first visit to this city's storm-shattered Lower Ninth Ward, bluntly accused Congress on Wednesday of underfunding the repairs and called for speedy action to make good on federal commitments.

The president said Congress has been slow to provide funding to rebuild housing destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and, while pledging to make New Orleans's levees "equal or better than they were before" the storm, attacked a congressional decision last year to redirect $1.5 billion from his request to repair the region's flood-protection system to projects in other storm-affected states. (WaPo)

Yes, Mr. President, this is the way to woo Congress with those votes that you desperately need for that ill-conceived idea of handing over control of some ports to the United Arab Emirates. This is just the thing to get those pesky senators and representatives to say, Wow, we should help him out more often.

The president has been a uniter in this, though - the Republicans have united against him. I don't think that's quite what he wanted.

"He shall, from time to time..."

Didn't watch the SOTU - too busy napping to prepare for work. Read the transcript - nothing too exciting. Yes, "the state of the union is strong," but doesn't every president say that? I think only Abraham Lincoln could have said (in 1862), "The state of the union is extremely weak, what with all those southern states seceding and all, but wait a few years and it'll pick back up again."

Actually, if you want to read the addresses by all past presidents, follow this link. You can read the addresses from George Washington's first on January 8, 1790, to George W. Bush's address last year on February 2, 2005.