In my dreams, he'll always be Patty McCormack as The Bad Seed, and I savor the moment at movie's end, as he hurries along the rainy pier in his little slicker, and receives his final Message From God - in a flash.

It plays over and over in my mind - the cartoon determination, the obliviousness, the banality and mean-spiritedness, the little pile of soot. Helps to take my mind off the mountain of pain he's engendered.

Cheap, I know, but effective.

is alive and well at Salon.com

I was watching a TV interview with Osama Bin Laden in which he said he was planning something big (can't remember the station but it was one of the big ones... I think ABC) before Bush entered office. Everyone knew Bin Laden was out there and everyone knew they should be doing more about it.

On the other hand, it was Bush who took a catastrophe and spun it into a complete change of attitude for the entire country, for the sake of getting his greasy little paws on the Constitution and shredding it.

So, the 1993 attacks were not on U.S. Mainland?? Okay, whatever, ehh besides that, you are honestly going to defend Fannie and Freddie on this here thread, because, ehm, to not extend mortgages to people who couldn't afford them would be RACIST????? Wow, stunning. This sort of rationale, my dear, is why we are currently in a world of shit. Look into it.

Republican rule has been a disaster, to be sure. But there was no peace under Clinton, and the country's wealth was moving from poor to rich all the while. Recall, please, that the bombing of Iraq never stopped for a day under President Clinton and that our destruction of that country's power, water and sewer systems was blamed for half a million deaths, a price our secretary of state said was 'worth it' to contain that beast Saddam. Recall, please, that some of our most vulnerable citizens were stripped of public assistance in the name of welfare reform; watch 'Roger & Me' again for a reminder of those times.

Bush and Cheney will burn in Hell for all they've done. But the Clinton era was no golden age of peace and shared prosperity.

of course we can never know for sure.

...you elect a vain, incurious, ignorant, arrogant moron to be president, and he'll fuck up the country. Everything else is commentary.

We can only hope that we've finally learned this, at least temporarily.

not everyone believes the right wing bullshit.

Boy! President Bush can cause severe Hurricanes and warm weather for seven years? No wonder why we're all so mad about Iraq. He could have just summoned his climatological powers and blown away the Iraqi regime with a Mummy-movie-like windstorm. He could have done a Mr. Freeze on Osama in the mountains of Afghanistan.

It kind of makes you wonder why he didn't cause a freak snow storm on election day. You know how unpleasant weather makes the public transit and bike riding comrades stay away. Oh -- I know why. Because he'd have to listen to even more bellyaching about the outcome of the election. I can see it now: MoveOn.org v. Old Man Winter.

Now I'm really ticked off at Mr. Bush. I just remembered that my Fourth of July barbeque was rained out! He couldn't have just held off for another day? Come to think of it, Columbus day was a bust too.

But pondering further, this sure blows a hole in Mr. Gore's global warming theories. I hope he won't have to return that Nobel prize.

Maybe the evil Mr. Bush can be rehabilitated so that after his term he will use his weather-manipulations for the good. I wonder if Mr. Cheney controls the earth's ocean currents? That would explain why he and the President need to be partners. I think I remember reading that when Cheney was in hiding there were noticeable anomalies in the tidal patterns.

Well, it's a theory. At least as good as the ones that turn up on these pages on a regular basis.

I'm embarrassed for our trolls. Carmina forgot to add the Beirut Marine barracks bombing and Vincent Foster to his/her list of FDR's atrocities.

Even worse than all the wasted money, I would argue that the elevation of bullying to Official Policy is among the worst outcomes from Bushco. The bully mentality does not represent a lack of confidence. On the contrary, it is a display of over-confidence that veers headlong into self righteousness, vanity and stupidity. There is no reflection, no thought, no intellectual work on that trajectory.

My second place nominee for Worst Legacy of Bushco is the Orwellian level of discourse, the whole "we create our own reality" routine of Bush, Cheney, Condi, and everyone else both inside and outside this administration who baldly denied truth and crammed everything into a political box of their own creation.

We've always been at war with Eastasia...We don't torture...If the President does it, it's not illegal...the birth pangs of the New Middle East...War is Peace.

I would laugh at all this if I weren't so scared.

The collective amnesia of the right wing trolling platoon is astounding, as if the past 8 years hadn't happened.

It is quite telling than on a thread dedicated to evaluate the past 2 presidential terms. A significant number of posts are talking about Clinton. For a bunch of guys hell bent on shoveling "personal responsibility" some of the people of the right wing persuasion in this forum seem to be way too eager to pass the buck.

Color me unimpressed. But then again, it sort of explains the mindset of the average person who would have been able to vote *twice* for Bush. You know, the people who to this day like Bush because he would be the kind of guy they would like to have a beer with. Because everybody knows that supposedly recovering alcoholics make swell drinking buddies.

I weep for this country...