NOOOOLA!

When the powerful lose their minds, especially when they're despicable, it is not a cause for celebration.

It's a tragedy for everyone in the blast radius.

Right now, as we watch, the President of the United States is losing his marbles, and soon he'll be taking a Very Long vacation, because George Bush is no kinda man for a fight.

Never has been.

Oh, he has always been willing to strut and preen and wave the bloody shirt...as long as other men -- better men -- do the actual dying. Or as long as Rove slithered up behind them and shivved them in the kidneys first so his Master could do victory laps over their broken bodies.

But one-on-one? Man-to-man?

Never gonna happen. Because at his core Dubya is a coward. An effete weakling, bred to sneering privilege who has always had a massive and pricey buffer between him and the ruin he inflicts.

But now the Devil is at the door with papers to serve, and won’t be fobbed off on underlings or flaks.

Reality is patiently whamming away at gate the with great, stone fists, and like the beating of that terrible Telltale Heart, the pounding just keeps getting louder.

This from Steve Gilliard regarding Dubya’s melt-in-his-suit-not-in-your-mouth weirdness behind the podium yesterday covers it pretty well, but I think it can apply longitudinally to his performance since the day he took office, and certainly since the first Presidential Debate in 2004.

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Oh, I agree. President Hastert will be withdrawing what is left of US troops. I don't think Bush has another six months of sanity in him. And Cheney lies about his health like Doyle Brunson lies about his poker hands.

I don't think Bush sees 2009 in the White House. I don't think he has it in him. Too much is up in the air for Bush to not have something land on him with both feet, my bet is the collapse of the Iraqi "government", but it could be a Rove indictment or Abramoff or illegal spying. Bush has problems everywhere and no resiliency to deal with them.

And I think something else, as the election draws near, people are going to be far more willing to elect people willing to impeach him.

There was a LOT of caterwalling on the left about Russ Feingold's censure move. Which I think was smart to get in the open, but WAY too early to really vote on. People are used to the idea. It will come up again.

I don't think we'll get to impechment. Because Bush is a weak man, a man living in a fantasy world. America is living in Bush's Days of Wine and Roses.

When you're a young man, being a drunk playboy is cute. Bush had some sharp, mean edges to him which made it less appealing, but still, as Prince Hal, he was tolerable. But as a leader, he's more MacBeth than Henry V, with Dick Cheney as Lady MacBeth, pushing him on to further crimes.

People say he's going to blame the liberals or the media, but that won't work. Bush pushed this war way past its sellby date to the point where he's delusional, where jokes about Army Group Steiner make more sense every day.
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Bush is, in the words of Hunter Thompson, "a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters." A vicious, core-less, rudderless dry-drunk who simply cannot function in power without acres of cotton-batting yes-men and reality-dampers to giving him a nice, fat, soft cushion against The Real.

But his decision to sacrifice the safety and good name of the United States and lie us into a war for profit, partisan gain, and to appease the "Apocalypse Now!" Dominionist who bear his Party on their backs and the Neocons and Oligarchs who write the checks -- and all that has unfolded from that Primal, Original Sin – stripped that ablative shielding away.

Iraq was the liquid oxygen that froze the Bush Presidency into a fragile, inert, dead simulacra of a functional government.

And Katrina was the Hammer that smashed it into dust and the flinders.

And while it is a terrible and frightening thing to see a President lose his grip on reality, my hope is that before he slips forever in Funnyville and is bundled off to Crawford like a talentless, GOP Syd Barrett one can at least hope that, as the last of the props are stripped away and the last of the sycophants jump ship to pen exciting “What I Saw During The Final Days” bunker-dramas, that Dubya is forced by the scruff of his neck to stand face-to-face with the terrible truth he has spent his life dodging:

That the failure and disasters that tumble one into another like dominoes and radiate out from him in every direction have many co-executive producers, Best Boys, key grips and Foley artists.

But in the end, only one Author.

And his name is George Walker Bush.