Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

Yeah, man, politics on a Friday. You heard me. Obama needs to let this happen: “open a full investigation of the many laws that were evaded, twisted or broken — pointlessly and destructively — under Mr. Bush.”

So why break the law, again and again? Two things seem disturbingly clear. First, President Bush and his top aides panicked after the Sept. 11 attacks. And second, Mr. Cheney and his ideologues, who had long chafed at any legal constraints on executive power, preyed on that panic to advance their agenda.

I know, they’ll never serve a day but history deserves to be informed. And when it all comes out they need to put it on a plaque in that George W. Bush library in Texas for all to see.

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

- Joe Klein, “Bush’s Last Days: The Lamest Duck”

Can’t add to that, it’s a damn near perfect assessment.

Good god, who is this Jack Cafferty of CNN? He’s my new hero:

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. “It means I’m saved and forgiven.” Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries.

One after another, McCain’s answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has — virtually none.

Yes, but it’s those simple one-liners that so impress the evangelicals–hell, they impress the whole right-wing movement. Black and white. No big words. Absolutes. Nuance? That’s code for “thinks too much.”

He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the “Straight Talk Express” for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes.

That’s because he can’t keep the old “maverick” version and the new “conservative talking point” version of himself straight. He’s rightly confused. Let’s not mention his age.

George Bush’s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens’ faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

Well, yeah. That’s like what this entire Booze Cabinet has been saying for almost 8 years about Mr. Bush, boiled down to a paragraph. The legacy has already been written. Cheers to Mr. Cafferty. And as for McCain, don’t say we haven’t been warned.

So yes, Bush held up the American flag at the Olympics and it was backwards. Big deal. It’s better than not wearing a flag pin! I mean, that’s unpatriotic! Bush had an entire American flag on him! Backwards, yes, but still.

Really, I don’t care. We laugh at Bush because he’s so easy to laugh at. He makes stupid faces too. He’s a buffoon. But how can people seriously get worked up about stuff like flag pins? Why is the Right filled with such whiny pricks? Why is up always down?

Sullivan:

Imagine that Bush is a Democrat (not that hard when you consider his fiscal record). Now imagine that a Democratic president had presided over the worst attack on American soil in history, a far stronger Iran on the brink of nukes, and a resurgent, aggressive Russia, willing and able to invade and terrorize a neighboring country in part because the president long believed that its president was a good man, and had looked into his soul.

I think they would have impeached him a few years ago, no? He would be viewed as the Carter to end all Carters. But they are actually arguing that the man who has held no executive power these last seven years is responsible for the triumph of America’s rivals around the world. And they describe everyone who is dismayed at Bush’s Carter impersonation as leftist.

You have to laugh. Everything was Clinton’s fault before and now it will Obama’s fault after. All that stuff in between? Wasn’t me.

The literal, and long, version of this cartoon is found over at Glenn Greenwald’s blog. You want to know why the Congress has such a low approval rating? Here’s one good reason.

If you were so inclined you could look around at the many right-wing sites that have cheered Bush and his war (and everything else) and find this sentiment again and again, regarding Scott McClellan’s book: I’d have more respect for him if he resigned instead of waiting until now to vent his feelings.

Which is, of course, not true at all. He would have been a hero on the left if he had come out and said that he can no longer spew the propaganda and then resigned in disgust; it would have actually meant something. But he didn’t, and so he doesn’t get that credit. He is simply confirming what we all knew.

So let’s fix that: I would have more respect for him if he resigned and then said what he has said; the entire right-wing would have tore him apart and destroyed him if he had done that. Just like they are doing now. Don’t pretend that it would have been any other way.

Years too late and way past time for redemption, Scott McClellan finally writes his book that says what we knew all along. Doesn’t do us much good now, but it serves as another reminder for the Apologists who’ve been blindly supporting Bush for so many years: wrong as usual. And yet, in the race for the next president, we have serious examinations of flag pins and preachers, and plenty of fake outrage to go around. We really do get the country government we deserve, as if any more proof is needed.

“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.�

“History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.â€?

Now, what to do about the war criminals responsible?

One of the many many many reasons that John McCain is going to lose to Barack Obama this November can be summed up by a headline that I love to see:

“Religious right feeling left out in race.”

The religious right (wrong) were a fad and a farce, and could only have thrived in the same kind of atmosphere that would elect a George W. Bush. A minor, if disastrous, blip on the radar. Now, back to the fringes of society!

Andrew Sullivan wonders why anyone would still take Karl Rove seriously. And why continue to refer to him as “genius”? Well, he got Bush (re-)elected four years after everyone knew what they were getting. That takes some sort of genius, I would imagine. Fooled the shit out of half the people. I’d say he’s a goddamn wizard.

White House admits fault on “Mission Accomplished” banner. Wolfowitz admits they were “clueless” in Iraq. We all know about the “WMDs” that never were. We’re still not in the “last throes” of anything. Is there anything left for the architects of this unjustified and immoral war to concede?

The anti-war left was right; the neocon right was wrong. When John McCain finally loses, I will be convinced that we are past this and heading in the right direction, so to speak. Until then I still can only wonder how we allowed all of this to happen, right before our eyes, when it was all so obviously wrong.