Pardon me for putting up this photo, but we’ve got a few last minute things to attend to before the country magically transforms into a land of milk and honey and ponies.

Politico has a piece up today predicting 10 pardons the Dear Leader might issue.  I think they’re wrong on several fronts, including the number of pardons, but here it is:

As the clock ticks down on his presidency, George W. Bush has shown few signs he plans to indulge in the frenzy of last-minute pardons that marked Bill Clinton’s final hours in the Oval Office.

But Bush could quickly leap back into the spotlight in the next two days if he issues a blanket pardon immunizing CIA and military interrogators, as well as their bosses, from criminal prosecution over harsh treatment of prisoners from the war on terror.

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Nobody seriously expected the President to own up to everything on his way out the door.  And that certainly did not happen.  But as we have come to understand, the man never fails to amaze.

The last address — which actually was rehashed during the weekly radio address on Saturday, so call it the next-to-last address — offered nothing memorable or earth-shattering, except for one final demonstration of a lack of self-awareness, of total cognitive dissonance:

America must maintain our moral clarity. I’ve often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.

It is beyond clear.  The man, to the last, had no interest in winning hearts and minds, but sought only to preach to the faithful — a rather lonely crowd at the moment.  Really: moral clarity, in an age of euphemisms for torture and imprisonment of the unconvicted and uncharged.  Speaking of advancing the cause of peace, while in the sixth year of an unnecessary war.

That’s enough.  The Bush Adminstration has precisely 24 hours remaining.  Let us be done with it.

Open thread, y’all.  Send him off in style.

Has it really been a year?  It seems difficult to believe that much time has passed since one of the most difficult and exhausting yet strangly satisfying weeks I have had in a long time.  I feel like I have known all of you for so much longer, and I guess in a way I have.

So pour yourself a drink my lovely Stinquers, sit around the campfire and let General Homofascist spin you a yarn about the spark that ignited the explosion that hurled us travelers into this little corner of teh internets.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-UwFLAx298

If you wanna get anal about it, we have three or four of them — but our Wanderings began the day Homofascist launched his Protest Blog, and to simplify history that’s the date we’re sticking with.

Please stand and cover what passes for your heart with your hand, as we present… um… well, we don’t have an anthem. This will have to do in a pinch.

Good Morning, Ladies & Gentlemen [Homofascist’s Army]

(Update for Our Future Robot Overlords: The now-deleted video was “Look for the Union Label.” If you hear it in the Soylent Factories, the uprising is about to begin.)

I am headed to O’Hare soon.  Please pray to the FSM that my plane takes off relatively on time and doesn’t end up splashing down on Lake Michigan – there really aren’t ferries to rescue us out there, and I really don’t feel like doing my best Titanic impression and becoming an ice cube.  I will do my best to check in this week, as this week is significant for a whole host of reasons.  More tomorrow!

If you have anything you would like me to pass along to Michelle when we get together for tea and manicures (you know, girl time!) please send them along.

It was supposed to be a quiet year for Fearless Leader.  Everybody knew everything they needed to know about the man.  Reminders would serve only to make John McCain’s task more difficult.  As it was, the Ancient Mariner could not shake loose from the albatross.  But, Bush’s intentional absence probably saved the Geezer from a more vicious beatdown.  So give the man credit.  He did not make a disaster worse than it already was.  The man can be taught after all.

Anyway: what Bush did do essentially ran to form.  For a guy who is not known for his agility in language, “enhanced interrogation techniques” was such a lovely turn of phrase.  Vetoing a ban on such tactics allowed him to cling to that fiction just a little bit longer.  And the explosion in gas prices gave him a pretext for pushing for more drilling, the environment be damned.  And the dodging of subpoenas and the asserting of executive privilege and so on and so on. 

And, finally, the last straw.  The economy was, supposedly, the only strong point left, as the job market — notwithstanding the shift from manufacturing to service jobs, with worse pay, benefits and job security — was still hanging in there.  But, after years of lax regulation and oversight, the economy imploded.  He feebly tried to talk his way out of it, but nobody was listening anymore.

The bottom line?  Dubya was never one for polls — which is a good thing, because he reached the depths of his unpopularity just as people were getting ready to decide who his replacement would be.  And yet, despite it all, he summoned up the gumption to openly mock “the angry Left” at the Republican National Convention.  He, of course, was within his rights.  How could anyone have cause to be angry with him? 

There are about seventy different versions of this quote, but this one sounds about right:

America can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities.

Amen to that, brother.

Title: The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Common Sense Lessons from the Commander-in-Chief

Authors: Carolyn B. Thompson & James W. Ware

Rank: 540,896

Blurb: “‘We did it,’ says coauthor Carolyn Thompson, a leadership expert, ‘because he’s so widely underestimated and because everybody thinks he’s not what he really is.’ That would be Master Leader, she and James Ware conclude in their scholarly study.”

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