Letters to the Editor
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Is this really for the best?
Remember when Ascroft resigned and we all thought "Whew, I'm glad that nightmare is over with. Whomever is the next Attorney General certainly couldn't be any worse!"?
I am actually surprised that Gonzales resigned. I figured the only thing keeping him in the job was the fact no one else would be stupid enough to take it. Loyal Bushie or not, there is a limit to how much abuse a man can take. Under normal circumstances, I'd expect a politician to tell a loyal supporter in this situation to "think of the team" and "you did your best" and "I thought you did a smashup job however...".
Was it just loyalty that made Gonzales sit in front of Congress and look like a complete idiot? Heck, if Gonzales was really loyal, he'd be willing to resign to keep the heat off Bush. If Bush was really loyal to Gonzales, he'd have done his best to protect his friend from the suffering, and moved him elsewhere in his administration. Somewhere more out of site of Congress.
So, who is Bush going to appoint in the remaining 18 months? Who'd want a job at such a broken department working for one of the most lame ducks of lame ducks?
Michael Chertoff may be the only one who is stupid enough to actually take the job. Plus, he wants to get out of Homeland Security before the next hurricane hits.
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the Wheels have come off
they've lost O'neil (wrote a book with suskind, saying that Bush was like a blind man in a room full of deaf people) Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz from the World bank, Rove and now Gonzales. Bush today said
"It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons,"
now he would say that wouldn't he, but it never fails to amaze and indeed shock me what a brazen liar Bush is for an avowed Christian. His other notorious trait is to make pronouncements brimming with threat and menace which at the same time reveal a comic lack of self-awareness, for example when he turns up the full bluster accusing Iran of being a foreign power meddling in Iraq. I mean it's hilarious. In fact one of the salient qualities of this bunch of self-proclaimed men of faith is just how basically nasty they are when they are called to account. I'm not naive, I know that politics is a dirty game and they are under massive pressure, but really!
Since they've ridden out all sorts of campaigns of disapproval without giving a damn what other people have said, they must be feeling really beleaguered now, rats, ships and all that. The project to politicize the federal government and to win election after election proved too ugly and too divisive for the American people despite the worst media and congress oversight of any single presidency since the inception of your democracy. The Mainstream media has concluded that Bush is a dead duck, and I say amen to that. It's not because the MSM are nice people either, but because as a brand Bush is radioactive and nothing he says or does is taken seriously by anyone except his 30% die-hard deluded core base and that is not enough even for the media [see advertising etc...]
the two trump cards that they now have are something to give them a casus belli against iran either as an attack in the US/Iraq or Lebanon/Israel and then a massive retrubution to show just how good they are at protecting us from terror, which usually boils down to "it happens on their watch" but nobody ever bothers to point that out. There won't be enough ink or paper in the whole world to explain and to warn future generations the sheer depth of Bush 43's 2 term exercise in perfidy.
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There are no more laws to break or ignore
At least not any more laws President Shithead cares about. So there is no longer any need for Frito.
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Bush fired Rove, Gonzo jumped ship
Rove tried to talk sense to him, steer him back on course but he refused. Rove isn't stupid or self-destructive - Bush may well be both. And Rove didn't spend his entire career getting to where he is to simply walk away.
Bush's petulant sneer (at his VFW speech) that Washington politicians wouldn't decide the leadership of Iraq was particularly telling, given that a Republican lobbying firm was engaged to do just that. Perhaps Bush was referring to members of his own party who have decided Maliki must go, against the Deciders's own wishes.
Finally there is the fact that although Gonzo resigned on Friday the announcement was delayed until today because Bush wanted to have him down to Texas to (presumably) talk him out of it. But Gonzo still bailed.
So what we have left apparently is a marginalized, delusional self-important (but extremely powerful) nut at the wheel - and now he is without any rational voices to curb his megalomania.
Hopefully Cheney is up to the job because GWB has suddenly become a much more dangerous man.
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My gut, my gut, my lovely lady gut
Hey, if Chertoff can make pronouncements about national security based on his gut, I guess I can, too, concerning the Gone-Gone-Gonzales.
And my gut says the allegedly "retired" Rove has orchestrated this move. It's all part of a gradual, ongoing remaking of the Republican party that is going to continue until election day -- to the point that currently disgusted Republicans and independent types will have forgotten all about Bush and the denizens of Bush World, and have a new cast of blank-slate Republican faces they'll be lulled into placing their trust in.
Sadly, Democratic candidates should not be celebrating or even assuming the worst is over; quite the opposite, actually. They need to be stronger and more solid in their positions than ever, to counteract the middle-American likelihood of votes for AnyWhiteGuy who isn't superficially associated with Bush.
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The life of a puppet is arduous
When they unlatched that little door at the back of Gonzales' head to replace his batteries, Justice Department officials found nothing but ashes.