Hate To Say "I Told You So"...

As a certain filthy, traitorous Liberal Commie blogger said five years ago:

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In five years, having voted for Bush will have become the parachute pants of this decade.

It will become the “Oh my GOD. What the fuck was I thinking?” shameful secret people will occasionally and elliptically allude to by piping up with, “well, he did good after 9/11” as schoolchildren are taught what a disaster on every front and by every measure he was, and as adults who now have to pay and pay dearly for the myriad lies and crimes and follies of George W. Bush recount his Top 100 Fuckups and bitterly laugh and laugh and laugh.

And now, five years later...

From the Rand "King of Greater Teabaggistan" Paul via "Reason" magazine (emphasis added):

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Imagine this—what if there had never been a President George W. Bush, and when Bill Clinton left office he was immediately replaced with Barack Obama. Now imagine Obama had governed from 2000 to 2008 exactly as Bush did–doubling the size of government, doubling the debt, expanding federal entitlements and education, starting the Iraq war–the whole works. To make matters worse, imagine that for a portion of that time, the Democrats actually controlled all three branches of government. Would Republicans have given Obama and his party a free pass in carrying out the exact same agenda as Bush? It's hard to imagine this being the case, given the grief Bill Clinton got from Republicans, even though his big government agenda was less ambitious than Bush's. Yet, the last Republican president got very little criticism from his own party for most of his tenure. For conservatives, there was no excuse for this.

Paul goes on to say stuff like "any self-described conservative who 'misses' the last president and his version of the Republican Party should probably quit subscribing to that label..."

To be clear, I was in no way unique in my take on the Bush Administration, the future of the United States and the apparently infinite capacity of Conservatives to self-absolve and self-Limbaugh-tomize their way out of ever taking any responsibility for any of their horrible, horrible fuckups.

Quite the contrary: almost every liberal I know was singing from this same hymnal five years ago.

And 10 years ago.

And 20 years ago.

And 30 years ago.

Which is the whole point.

At every step along the way as the Party of Lincoln was devolving into the Party of Jefferson Davis, these fuckers were warned that they were headed for disaster.

And at every step along the way we were told -- loudly, and clearly -- by the vast wads of stupid that make up the Right that we were foolish, bleeding-heart, America-hating, Commie dupes.

And so there is a certain grimly funny (and entirely predictable) irony in watching the professional brain wizards of the "Let's Save Conservatism from the Dimwits" brigade appropriating the critiques of David Broder's "vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left" by the job-lot to try to accomplish their hopeless task (Conservatism was born in sin, guys, and screwing around with the timing-belt on the Pretty Hate Machine ain't gonna change the fact that without Dimwits to power your movement and Oligarchs to fund it, Conservatism would dry up and blow away tomorrow.)

So here, for my own amusement if nothing else, are a few snips from the original, 3-part series I did back in 2006 in which the little snip about parachute pants was originally run.

Back before every wingnut in America had spit George Bush's dick out of their mouths and pretended they had always hated deficits, damn it!

Back when what we Liberals were saying was still "devil music".

From Part One:

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Some of us knew full-well what it would probably be like to have a vicious, stupid, cowardly Imperial CEO, buffered from scrutiny a gutless, complicit Republican Congress.

A man who was hired by swine who view government – not Small government, or Large government, or Smart government or Responsive government…but ANY Government – as a failed product line full of nags and auditors to be gutted and outsourced so that Corporations could complete their evolution and take direct control of the United States. And use all of that yummy-yummy jurisprudent and military power to advance the causes and fortunes of the few.

And now, after five years of this tragedy of a Presidency and comedy of a Congress we can see the results: The craven bleatings of Kenny-Boy Lay and Heckuva-Job Dubya have become indistinguishable from one another, because they are both spun from the same ethically debased DNA.

Both men are the most degenerate example of the CEO culture where leaders not only are unaccountable, but arrogantly braying that they deserve to be unaccountable. That how DARE any mere mortal tread on that special set of Divine Law vouchsafed to them and them alone by their Boards and Almighty God to do whatever the fuck they want, whenever they damned well feel like it.
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From Part Two:

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It doesn’t especially shock me that you find men with good hair and fascist hearts conspiring with others of their breed to grab power. What nauseates me is that so many millions of my fellow citizens think that having them rule – knowing that they despise the Constitution and the rule of law – is an excellent idea.

That so many millions of Americans are driven by such perverse racist and theocratic-based ideologies. That they have such open contempt for their own country, or are so sunk into their own delusions that they vote ever sharper axes into the bloody hands of their own executioners.

Where did “humility” go? “Public Service”? The Commonweal.

Occasionally you hear the White House using some term along that spectrum. Coming out of the Administration of boundless deficits, limitless tax cuts for millionaires, a lie-drive war, torture, murder, hundreds of “Fuck-You” signing statements and domestic spying…such words are the worst kind of obscenity.

Because the alibis of the Lays and the Bushes of this world have blended, intertwined and resolved into a single, wormy drone.

I didn’t know!

My minions failed me!

Blah, blah, blah the Board.

Blah, blah, blah the Auditers.

Blah, blah, blah the CIA.
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From Part Three:

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These men – the fictional ones, and those that currently run our country – simply do not comprehend the notion of right and wrong.

They are creatures of craft and tactics, feign and betrayal, boot-licking and back-stabbing…all to advance their position, station and power.

Bushworld is a world of presumed monarchical privilege. People who rule based on no principle other than their inbred belief that it is their Divine Right to do so, and in that domain the reason for everything is power for power’s sake. Sometimes they choose – for brief interludes – to act as benevolent tyrants. At other times they lapse back into their natural, Bushie state: Peevish, feeble-minded autocrats.

In either state, their worldview remains absolutely anathema to Democracy. And in either state they do not know what to make of anyone who acts out of a sense of compassion or justice or sense of concern the common, except to mock and slander them.

We will never be rid of such morally stillborn monsters, but the least we can do is never, ever let them anywhere near positions of unchecked authority.