They say that Vietnam haunted LBJ until the day he died, which would indicate he left office with at least part of his soul. I wish I could believe the same with W, but that would imply he had one.

Sitting across the pond when G.W. got in for the first time, we watched with mounting horror as neocon after neocon from Reagan and Bushdaddy’s regimes crawled back out of the woodwork and proceeded to carve up the US and the world and sculpt it in their image.

We’d rejoiced and hoped we’d seen the back of them when Clinton got in, and had gotten used to at least the semblance of a little more US civility on the world stage (though Madeleine Albright’s encapsulation of the estimated 500,000 lives lost in the long-term bombing of Iraq as “a price worth paying” encapsulated a lot that kept me and Mrs. yetanotherfreakingbrit busy and demonstrating during that era, though a lot less so than in Bush Snr’s reign).

I was active on music-making forums at the time (if you think things have been rough online during the election, you’ve seen NOTHING compared to the guerrilla fighting on such venues about even minor issues), and recall intoning to the younger members there that G.W. was mere window-dressing - the crooks and monsters were now charge again and it was going to be a bumpy ride. Introducing young minds to the realities of the likes of Richard Perle and the menace of the PNAC was an emotional experience all round.

It’s one I’m hoping I don’t have to repeat in my life.

the mask slipped and exposed the small, petty failure that is George W. Bush.

He was only a failure in the PR sense for the Bush Gang. But they are used to bouncing back from bad publicity, they had a felon in the family after they pulled the Savings and Loan swindle, and of course, Poppy got a little of that splashed on himself, since that larceny cost the US taxpayers more than World War II adjusted for inflation.

And George I’s father, Prescott was busted for trading with the NAZIs during World War II, but let off with a wrist slap.

George II may seem like an epic fail to someone who gives a shit about the US, but you assume far too much.

The Bush Crime Family made at least a fort knox haul on the $3.50 gasoline price bubble ALONE!! Then the war profiteering, their corporate schilling wasn’t free, rollback everything, and the transfer of wealth to the rich through bank fronts going on right now!!

Make no mistake about it, there has never been a Bush nor a Harriman as successful and profitable to their syndicate as the ‘W’ and his aw shucks buffoon act.

They have pulled some high crimes and misdameanors over the last century, but they have never made as much money, or wielded as much power as they have in the last eight years.

These criminals are now on a par, or close to it, with the old money Virginia mobs and actual power behind the empire and global extortion rackets.

At least a force to be reckoned.

Bush II’s presidency is fail to the population, and the Republic, those are, however, just peripheral details. He is all win where it counts for his interests, and his Gangs.

The memory of the American sheep is so dysfunctional, this will have no bearing on a Jeb run in 2012, after they sufficiently batter Obama with their echo machines for 8 years.

It’s not like the Bushs got caught consorting with Nazis or anything

oh

wait…

also

Hey Betty,whenever George I croaks,let’s get together and have a play date for some drinking Lego-os and grave dancing, my youngest is 10 and my fourteen year old doesn’t even hate me yet.

During last night’s speech, despite the defensiveness and bravado, the mask slipped and exposed the small, petty failure that is George W. Bush.

I was out and missed most of it, except what I saw on Rachel later, but I got the same impression from the press conference that he gave a couple of days ago.

I think a lot of his realization this late in the game that he screwed up so much is because his handlers are no longer there screening him from reality.  For so long every time he spoke in public the audience was relentlessly scrubbed of anyone who might make any protest or give any dissent.

Everyone around him were “yes men” and toadies or, like Rove and Cheney, telling him what to do.  He never had any honest feedback in almost eight years.  But over the last year or so that’s been pulled back and now he’s like a bad actor at the end of the play with the lights off, squinting out into the audience and realizing everyone left long ago.

I’d love to see Bush tried and jailed for war crimes, illegal surveillance, everything he’s guilty of, but I’m a realist and it’s not going to happen.  Seeing him fade into obscurity and unimportance will be good too.

Betty, I hope W. knows it. I think a part of him, well-walled off, knows it. But I agree with Scooter: as far as his crony-capitalist friends are concerned, W. is the shining beacon of everything a president ought to be. He let them loot the country beyond all imagining,and he let them play with all the neatest war toys (except that big one; maybe some other Christmas).

His profiteering friends will surround him in a deluxe protective cushion, and bide their time while Jeb “rebrands” himself for the third part of the Trilogy.

The old man’s tears of shame, or at least mortification, are dried on a hankie finely worked by half-blind orphans, held by the claw of his wife, who never “ruined my beautiful mind” regretting any of it.

They should have never bought him the country. Personally, I blame the mother.

Wasn’t it great though that his speech was overshadowed by the story of a plane crashing into the Hudson river?

All the news channels were covering that instead of him.

I wonder what was going through the news people’s minds?

“Which disaster should we cover? Bush, or the plane crash?”

The horror of the Bush adminstration for me was how it was a cumulative disaster. With every new rip in the Constitution, with every new law rammed through the Senate and House, with every sneer and inappropriate smirk Bush gave, I felt a wave of nausea. I was terrified. I thought that surely THAT last act was the worst this administration could do.

But sadly, the lies, cheating, and deception kept piling on. Eight years, thousands of lives lost, our country’s bosses selling out for money and power. Cheney’s sneer, Bush’s smirk, the endless line of Republican thugs like Rove and Frist and all of the yammering fools like O’Reilly and Limbaugh: these are the images I have from this disaster.

And the images of the drowing victims of Katrina, the homeless, the coffins of soldiers from all sides, the endlessness of it all. I am almost afraid for Obama, who will have this all fall upon him while the self-righteous Right will continue to sneer about his idealism.

So when I watched that miserable excuse for a man giving his mealy-mouthed farewell, I simply shut him off. What a terrible, terrible man.

It could only have been better if—in the instant after he uttered the final syllable of his address—someone in the audience had stood up and yelled, “Let’s get him!”