There was a movie called CRASH, too

Watching the gasping last breaths of the Bush Administration is like watching a car wreck, or someone have surgery without anesthesia, or just enough anesthesia to render them immobile but alert, and still feeling pain.  As a matter of fact, that second analogy is exactly what I feel like.   Our entire nation has been trying to notify the doctor for years now, that the anesthesia wasn’t working.  He was humming some idiot tune, obviously not caring and not paying attention.  And the nurse is now mad that the patient doesn’t like the doctor?  Laura Bush was miffed that Barack Obama took shots at the president on the campaign trail?  He has wrecked at least three countries (the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan) and is well positioned to get a couple of more with a continuation foul (Israel, Iran, the Palestinian territories) before he’s through.

Shouldn’t she have been miffed at her husband for:

not catching Osama bin Laden

not helping the citizens of New Orleans

not rebuilding New Orleans

not invading (or even investigating) a country that spawned the 9/11 terrorists

not understanding that the fundamentals of the economy are not strong

not catching on that free markets don’t work

hiring that idiot over at Treasury

picking Dick Cheney

going to war with the guy who tried to kill his dad

invading a country that didn’t attack us

leading al Qaeda into Iraq

torturing teenagers at Guantanamo Bay

Abu Ghraib

Donald Rumsfeld

Barney biting a reporter

making the United States an international pariah

killing 4,500 American soldiers

increasing the national debt

funding abstinence-only education (or as I call it, teen pregnancy)

blaming God for telling him what to do

no child left behind (except those in public schools)

For a smart woman, Mrs. Bush sure doesn’t get it.

The old president is leaving and I hope the door hits him where the good lord split him on the way out!

As I get ready to watch a new president take office – check that – as I get ready to watch President-elect Barack Obama take the Oath of Office (COTUS, Article II, Section 1, Clause 8) and become President Barack Hussein Obama, the breath I’ve been holding, the pain I’ve been feeling and unable to express, the fury at the ridiculous and irresponsible arrogance that has been allowed to run unchecked naked through the streets will escape me!  And like the millions of others across the country (and billions of others across the world) we can finally say like Cinque, “Give Us US Free!”

Bush: I would have done some things differently

Americans happy ‘failed marriage’ with Bush is ending

Bush has lost more domestic battles than he’s won

Bush’s legacy: bully or liberator?

Smooth is Overrated.

President Bush has the lowest approval ratings of any president ever.  President-elect Obama has the highest approval ratings of any president-elect ever.  Why do I want a smooth transition?

The man who has the job right now is doing a horrible job.  He has disappeared from the pole position, letting his deputies and surrogates wander aimlessly through the suburbs of Washington D.C. like escapees from a Disney animal movie.  He’s also trying to get the new guy to pick up some of the slack, to put his stamp of approval on the last-minute maneuvers he’s trying to pull so that his exit interviews don’t go so bad.

Meanwhile, the man who’s inheriting the job (with the one invasion, the other war, the mortgage crisis, the credit crisis, the auto industry quandary, the proposed stimulus package, global warming, and more waiting on his desk) is working his butt off, looking tired like he hasn’t looked ever, putting together a kick-ass squad to come in and start putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

Barack Hussein Obama was elected to CHANGE the bad job that the current president and political party in power have been doing for the last eight years.  The current POTUS is still trying to ease environmental regulations, polluting national parks and making it easier for other people to do it on his way out the door.  The incoming POTUS has specifically said that he is against these deregulations, but that doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t have the power yet.

I think President-elect Obama needs to use his bully pulpit to raise awareness that while he isn’t President yet, the Bush Administration is doing some dirty dealing (like that’s new).  If that makes things a little less smooth, oh well.

The only thing I really like smooth is my peanut butter.

Obama Preserves Political Capital for Stimulus Plan

Transition is Complicating Auto Bailout Talks

Deadlock over Detroit bailout may soon end

Transition’s Timing Hits Climate Talks

No one ‘more qualified’ than Shinseki to head VA

President-elect’s team weighing auto industry options

(Re)Establishing Honor

There is a famous American fairy tale about the first President of the United States and a cherry tree.  When asked, a very young George Washington allegedly stepped up and confessed to chopping it down.  In much the same vein, there is a true story about a young green sash at the West Coast Hwa Rang Do Academy who, having dropped his weapon while practicing alone on the floor, simply picked it up, walked over to the wood, and did his thirty knuckle push-ups without another student in sight.  Both children, the real martial artist and the fictional young president, were practicing self-control, discipline, and accountability.  They had been taught, and they were practicing, honor.

What do these tales tell us today?  They tell us that honor must be taught, must be shaped, must be nurtured, and must be practiced.  Constantly.  Our government for the last eight years has been in free fall, spurred no doubt by the horror of a terrorist attack on our shores, but inexcusable nonetheless. The Hwarang were scholar-warriors during and after the Three-Kingdoms period in Korea.  They were the template and the harbingers for the more widely known samurai of Japanese history.  What both groups have in common, though, is what the United States needs to reestablish in the world community:  a reputation for fierce and unyielding honorable conduct. Whether within our confines, or in distant lands, the insane notion that “we’ve got to act like the terrorists to beat the terrorists” is a morally bankrupt, naïve notion (like Ronald Reagan’s economic ideas) that peace through superior firepower works. One of the most important aspects of CHANGE and the incoming Obama administration is the retreat from dishonor and the reinstitution of honorable practice by the United States around the world.

I know I am stretching to say that the United States has deserved that reputation, contrary to Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s ridiculous assertions, but like that fictitious tale that purports to establish the United States as an honorable nation, that is part of what we should strive for.  And like that young yuk kub who knew the consequences of making a mistake, and carried them out without reminder or immediate instruction because it was the correct thing to do, we as a nation must begin to act in accordance with the ideals we espouse.

Bush must navigate a treacherous post-presidency

Retired officers Meet with Obama aides on Interrogation Policy

The Road Ahead

Americans back Obama redeployment plan

Obama team considers changes to interrogation policy