"It's unfortunate that he ran out of time before he got to talk about Katrina." - Bert Kolb, Systems Analyst

What we are witnessing is the downside of the stability built into the American political system -- the inability of a four-year presidential administration to fall of its own weight. If this were a parliamentary system, all it would take would be a no-confidence vote in Congress to bring on a new presidential election. And probably even a significant minority of Republicans would support such a heave-ho motion. But instead -- keeping in mind that incompetence is not an impeachable offense -- we are saddled with Bush and Dick Cheney for another two years.

Right, the downside. And the upside is...... what, again?

Unfortunately the Framers can't be impeached for incompetence either, because they're all dead. But there is virtually nothing to recommend our current system, and the Bush Administration is close to a slam-dunk argument against it. Bush took power without winning the people's votes, and he's sustained in power now only by an eighteenth-century Rube Goldberg constitutional system unlike any in use in any other advanced democracy. In a parliamentary system, it wouldn't even have taken a no-confidence vote -- his own party would have responded to the damage he was doing to them by yanking him, as Thatcher was deposed intra-party in 1990. And if they didn't, control of the Executive would automatically have flipped as soon as the other party won an election and took over the legislature.

Even so, Thatcher was prime minister for 11 years, John Major for nearly 7, and Tony Blair is now going on 10. So there's nothing about a parliamentary system that necessarily gives you instability in the Executive (as long as its rules are set to prevent the legislature from fragmenting into many tiny parties). Put simply, the American system achieves stability by ignoring how the people voted, or at least greatly devaluing this. It was designed by a bunch of guys who (literally) thought that "democracy" was a bad word.

Walter, I can’t believe you would write such words. Is conspiring to invade a sovereign nation, that was not a threat to your own, on the basis of a fiction which changed to suit the circumstances and which has resulted in death and injury to tens of thousands, an act of incompetence? Is rape now an act of misdirected fun?

History - if anyone is left to write it - will no doubt regard the Bush administration primarily as THE ONE THAT WASTED THE FEW YEARS WE HAD LEFT TO HALT AND REVERSE CATACLYSMIC CLIMATE CHANGE.

If Gore (remember him guys? the one we actually elected??) had been president these past 6 years, the prospect - now all but inevitable - of all of Greenland and parts of the Artic shelf melting and raising sea levels for 40 feet globally within our lifetimes would be significantly lower.

Not to mention dead oceans, deserts stetching from New Jersey to California, and storms that make Katrina look like an average, ordinary summer's day.

The truth is too absurd to seem plausible:

We actually sat on our fucking hands & allowed a silly, goofy, twit of a featherbrained clownish monkey wreck the planet.

Or more accurately:

We allowed him to allow us to wreck the planet.

Those 8 torturously long, fantastically surreal minutes of "My Pet Goat" should have prepared us for 8 years of dithering on the "issue" that makes the others "issues" look trivial by comparison.

That is the state of the Union - and of the Earth.

Shall we draft Gore on 08?

Have a president of wisdom and integrity for a change?

We will certainly need someone of character, resolve & determination to guide us through the coming crisis.

The Bush Presidency has always been on a suicide mission; stealing an election or two, the pace of their reactionary legislation, the milking of (inter)national sympathy after 9/11 to ramrod their ideological agenda through -- it always spoke to me of desperation on their part, a keen recognition that time wasn't on their side, and if they could just get their tax cuts for the wealthy codified into law, then nobody would be able to take them away without incurring political damage.

Gulf War II, what's to say, exactly? A gambit that failed? Then again, the usual scapegoats emerge -- we tried to bring them freedom, but those stupid Iraqis screwed it up; our noble ideals were tarnished in the cauldron of Baghdad. And those damned turncoats at home, sapping the will of the nation to make a war of opportunity work. Maybe nothing's been learned -- the Democrats paid a heavy price for the Vietnam War they inherited; I hope the Republicans pay as steep a price.

But as we see the sun setting on the Bush League, we also see another carrier group deployed to the Persian Gulf, even as the US tells Iran to "back off" -- akin to having somebody getting in your face and saying the same thing. There's still time for another crisis, a belated Gulf of Tonkin-style event, time for a war in Iran.

Bush has already demonstrated that the will of the people means jack to him, and only Fox Newsworthy hagiographers-in-waiting will find any silver lining in the dark cloud of this administration.

So, why not a war with Iran -- why not get while the getting's good? War forgives all sins to those who perpetuate it, so long as you win. The Decider has literally nothing to lose. Get us bogged down in the whole region, ensuring that all future presidents have to deal with the problem he created (sort of the way the deficit and the tax cuts have mortgaged America's future -- nice one, guys!)

I'm more scared of this administration now than ever. For all the talk of lame ducks, I think this administration has a more bestial aspect. Cornered, the beast will surely lash out.

An albatross. Around all our necks.

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift

Bush is a great president, and you are all sore losermen.