Coup or not, he's set a course that will be very difficult to reverse for quite awhile. Iraq is a mess, of course, but look at how his tough talk in Iran and missile shields in Europe has given Putin a platform for restarting cold war bully bluster on both sides. Thanks, George! The cold war was such a productive use of resources the first time; I'm glad we will have a chance to go through it all again.

Bush's bullying and bravado helped bury any drive toward moderation in Iran and has helped foster the growth of Islamic resistance by confirming that we are indeed almost callously indifferent to how our actions impact the lives of people in the Middle East.

On the home front, bridges are collapsing, steam pipes in New York are exploding, our infrastructure is almost hopelessly tied to the needs of big oil's drive for profits, and a major city has almost literally been told to go fuck itself. This is not entirely Bush's fault; we've been ignoring many of these problems for decades, but Bush has made it clear that the lack of progress is willful and deliberate as he pushes to privatize all the things we've developed for the common good. A levy breaks, a bridge collapses, hundreds of people die or are still left homeless, but that's just the way it goes, I guess. Show me in the constitution where it says you have the right not to be crushed by an aging bridge collapsing on you?

And speaking of the constitution, it and our rights are all but officially ONLY what the administration defines them as. Privacy? What's that? Habeas Corpus? Huh? Speak English! No torture policy? No we don't torture because we redefined it into nothing.

Can we talk about the economy? When and how can we ever hope to even finish paying for this one war, and he can't wait to start the next! Pay for it all? That's what permanent tax cuts are for! The sooner we can reach that magic number of zero dollars being collected, the sooner we'll see the ocean of red ink start to go away!

Worst of all, serious opposition to this seems to be non-existent. Bush still wins political battle after battle when he should have been impeached many times over, using any kind of standard that was applied to Bill Clinton. Bush and his administration have pulled hundreds, even thousands, of little stunts that make Clinton's parsing of the word "is" seem like sneaking a cookie when you're supposed to be on a diet. Thanks to Bush, and what we've allowed him to get away with, there are quite literally no standards of conduct at all anymore. If Bush can do what he has done and get away with it, then no one should ever be held accountable for anything.

Yes, he'll be sticking around for quite awhile, I'm afraid. We've been sprayed by a skunk on a daily basis for years now. We can change our clothes, but you don't lose that kind of stink just by changing your shirt.

Someone goes to the rescue shelter and it's a pretty sure bet that they are looking to adopt a lively young pet, not adopt a hugely expensive never-ending vet bill for a miserable old dog that would probably be better off humanely euthanized. Yet your desire to provide a good and loving long-term home actually counts against you.

But the way the shelters seem to think, I bet if you did take over the medical bills, and the dog poops and pees uncontrollably all over the house as it's vital functions break down, but you stick with it, and spend half your day nursing the dog, cleaning up after it and trying to coax it to eat, and administering medications, and draining your bank account on one sick old dog when for the same money you could have given a home to to or three young healthy dogs, and after all that the dog died half a year later anyway — after all of that, how much you want to bet that if you went back to the shelter they would look at their records and say something like, "Didn't we just give you a dog a few months ago? What happened to that dog? How can we trust you with another dog?"

There is much that rescue workers have to be proud of, but unfortunately all their good traits can be the same traits that ultimately work against their cause.