Objectivists in the mirror

Are smaller and lazier than they appear.


So the otiose Derelict-In-Chief of the Republican’s Lazy Dubya Ranch put down his longneck, climbed down out of the saddle of his official White House BarcaLounger to give a speech last night.

He shoulda stood in bed.

What will surprise historians who study the moral and mental arc of George W. Bush from whelping chickenhawk to old lame duck will not be the degree to which circumstances and time have stamped his empty brow with hard-won wisdom.

Instead they will be amazed at the degree to which George W. Bush has been a remarkably consistent creature his whole life. Specifically, a rat-shrewd, lazy, petulant, shallow, sadistic punk. A man with a superficial, breezy, vicious style bred into him from before he was at suck at Mommy’s vinegary teat. A habit of thought and speech not based on an essentially positive view of the world, but based on the bone-deep awareness that Daddy’s wallet and Daddy’s minions would give Lil Dubya an impenetrable firewall no matter how badly he wrecks the car, or how many bystanders are killed.

And today he was pushed out on stage to give one, last, awful speech.

How icky was it?

There was one moment – immigration -- where appeared to occur to Dubya to be vaguely Presidential. But past that let’s just say that the Harlem Globetrotters flaying the Washington Generals running at the same time on local Channel 50 was a fucking masterpiece of suspenseful drama and surprising outcomes by comparison.

There were three parts:

The MSNBC Commentariate part, specifically Chris Matthews’ slobbery atavism about which much as already been made.

His delusion that, thus far, Condi Rice has largely escaped criticism. That she is so Impressive. And the GOP loves her so much.

Condi Rice? The same Condi Rice who shirked and shrugged and Not-My-Jobbed her way out of some of the worst foreign policy failures in memory?

The same Condi who hasn’t made a single competent decision other than to disinter the Clinton Plan for North Korea and run it point-by-point?

That Condi?

Matthews opines that, given the “ethnic excitement” – oopsie – the “American” excitement of Barack Obama might be transfusibel into the GOP in a “Break Glass In Case Of Southern Strategy Blowback” Big Name Negro Celebrity Partisan kind of way.

Keith Olbermann: Isn’t this about as irrelevant as watching someone’s drunk uncle scratching his ass?

Matthews: People wanna know, when is the check coming and when are we getting the fuck out of Iraq.

Olbermann: Does the Preznit leaven the Iraq by pretending to give a shit about the middle east now, at the 11th hour?

Chris: Nah. I think was all want every time to agree that we need to Do Sumpin! To move forward.

Do Something! The New Battle Cry of the Crippled Republic to be sure, but impossible to implement as long as one side believes that the reason we are so deeply fucked has been the merciless implementation of BushCo policies…and the other side believes that the only way forward is the brutal redoubling of the same heartless madness that ran us off the cliff on the first place.


Then came Dubya.

Oh Lordy.


Dubya: Don’t delay or derail the Save American Bill with stuff I don’t like! This Congress is my bitch and do what it is told.

Dubya: If you roll back my Tax Cuts for Millionaires programs, 116 million Americans would see their taxes rise by an average of a thousand dollars of munnies!

Don’t you just love it when they make with the “averages”?

Dubya: Most Americans think their taxes are high enough.


driftglass: Yeah, and a lot of American believe the Earth is 12,000 years old and that God put woman and minorities on that Earth to act as footstools for the White Chosen Few.

A lot of Americans believe they’re much better looking than they actually are. That their kids aren’t spoiled idiots. That gas should cost a dime. That the Consitutition permits every paranoid mouthbreater to own a tactical nuke.

So what? People believe a lot of silly shit.

Dubya: If any bill raises taxes, I will veto it.

Dubya: I’ll cut the budget. Murrican Families have to balance their budget, so should their gummint.

driftglass: Really? So we’re using the "Murrican Family" metric now? Well y’know, I bet if Murrican Families had stomped into a neighbor’s yard –- the wrong neighbor in the wrong yard based on a pack of filthy lies -- and gotten hundreds of thousands people killed and pissed away billions of dollars of the hard-eared munnies of a lot of other Murrican Families, that after five years they would have long ago been dragged by their short ones out of that yard they never should have gone into in the first place.

That is, if we’re using the Murrican Family metric.

Dubya: I will veto any budget that doesn’t cut earmarks in half. Every earmark should be debated and voted on. Every judicial nominee should get an “upordown” vote.

Of course everything else should be filibustered into the Stone Age.

Dubya: Health Care Bitches! More tax cuts…for health care.

driftglass: Oh tax cuts! Is there nothing you can’t do?

Dubya: False populism is bad!. Blood drunk Neocon Imperialis wearing a ”democracy” codpiece…is better.

Switchgrass? S—w—i—t—c—h—g—r—a—s—s?

(Ah, There’s Dick Cheney, looking like someone beat his soul to a pulpy death with a sack of potatoes.

And there’s John Dingle looking like one of the potatoes.)

Dubya: Fund my shit! And quit trying to fund your shit!

Dubya: The Constitution means what it says.

Except, of course, where it says “impeach”.

“Habeus corpus”.

“Due Process”.

“Checks and balances”.

And so forth.

Dubya: We’re gonna have a conference in New Orleans. So that’s all done now.

Dubya: Purple Fangers! Osama bin Who?

Dubya: We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of our time.

driftglass: Do you mean nuclear-tipped, Christian Dominionist Theocracy versus Democracy, or conscienceless, slaughter-drunk, metastasizing corporatism versus Democracy?

Dubya: All we have to do is stay in Iraq forever is overwhelming numbers…and everything will work out great.

Dubya: I pledge the military will have everything it needs to protect Murrica. Which is why I call for the conscriptions of Young Republicans in every city, in every state, on every campus, passed out in every basement, etc.

Dubya: The enemy we manufactured out of whole cloth and incompetence in Iraq will be displaced by keeping troops in Iraq forever!

GOP: Yay! Yay!

Dubya: Iraqi leaders are making some trivial progress. They’re debating stuff. Some local neighborhood groups are having book clubs and bean bag parties even.

Dubya: And in the Holy Land, a new hope. My flyover photo ops are paying dividends. There is no actual, measurable progress towards anything by anyone, but if seven years of Republican Rule has proven anything it is that simply making declarative sentences about how we wish things were is a perfectly adequate substitute for actual action for the 27% of Americans who are incapable of thinking for themselves.

Shorter Dubya: Congress must pass a bill immunizing telcoms from illegally spying on Americans or I will let Americans die.

GOP: Yay! Yay!

More money for stuff!

Dubya: Our greatness is not in our Government but our People.

Dubya: Of course the Government, is “We the People.” Which means that our conservative citizen’s seething, reflexive contempt for Government means a seething, reflexive contempt for…

Anyone?

Bueller?

Shortest Dubya: The country is so important that unless you do exactly what I tell you I’ll let this fucker burn.

Did we miss anything?

Well, health care. Housing. The deficit. All of those things that President Stupid dare not speak aloud

And then comes the Democratic response from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

Sebelius: I’m a Democrat, but that doesn’t matter tonight. The fact that you’re tuning in suggests that you’re


Oh, Jebus. Pause, while I roll my eyes and reach for the Fwow Up Bag.

Sebelius: I will now detour from the traditional “partisan” response and give an “American” response.

Sebelius: We’re fucked, people! We have to do something! And a temporary fix is not enough. We need to get Real Results.

Sebelius: The Democratic Majority has begun to move us in the right direction , so Mr. President how about you join us? A Majority are ready to pass SCHIP. So how about it, Mr. Preznit? Won’t you join us and help the lil’ chilluns?

driftglass: No, he will he will not do these things because he does not believe government should do these things. What, have you been passed out drunk in the Little Centrist’s Room for the last 20 year?


Sebelius: The New Democratic Majority are ready…if only our Republican Congressional colleagues would stop behaving like assholes and join us.

Sebelius: I know Gummint can work to benefit the People.

driftglass: Are you high? Don’t you read…anything? GOP 101 is that Gummint is Evil. Except when it is bombing scary brown people to atoms. And stuffing Bibles in lady’s vaginas like they're Gideons stocking motel room drawers.

Sebelius: A new American Majority is ready to share a belief in something greater that ourselves. Not just the individual good, but the Common Good.

driftglass: Excuse me but who put this stupid bint on my teevee? Yes, Governor Non-Partisan, you are right. There is New American Majority. It even has a name. We are called Liberals. We have been around forever, and we have always been the Majority.

And the people you are so sweetly asking you to join us have risen to power almost entirely on the basis of referring to this “Majority” as traitors and any talk of the your beloved Common Good as pure Devil Communism.

This side of the grave there is no reasoning with these people. They’re not merely irrational, hateful and fact-impervious, but they are proudly irrational, proudly hateful and proudly fact-impervious.

You do not get rid of a rabid dog running wild in the public square by playing kissy face with it.

Or don’t they teach things like that in the Kansas public school system?