Bush Ends With a Whimper; "His right eye kept narrowing to an uncontrollable squint."

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Bush Ends With a Whimper
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 16, 2009

President Bush bid the nation goodbye last night with a simpering speech that may have appealed to those who still believe in him, but offered nothing to change the minds of the vast majority of Americans who don't. Bush smirked and twitched while delivering a highly defensive farewell address in which he tried to hearken back to his glory days right after 9/11, sought credit for having made "tough decisions" and insisted his intentions were good.

There was no real attempt to bind the wounds he leaves in his wake. There was no apparent awareness of irony when he held up his administration as a champion of moral clarity and human dignity. He even gave himself credit for his response to the financial crisis he didn't see coming: "When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them," he said.

And he tried one last time to conflate his "war on terror" with the unrelated debacle in Iraq, recasting the American troops perilously occupying that benighted country as "part of a broader struggle" between "a small band of fanatics" who demand "total obedience to an oppressive ideology" and a system "based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God, and that liberty and justice light the path to peace."

In a fitting end for a presidency that has often operated in its own reality, Bush was greeted warmly by his audience -- a hand-picked selection of hangers-on and human props -- even as public-opinion polls show that the nation is way past ready to move on.

David Hiltbrand writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "At times, as he spoke before a handpicked audience in the East Room, Bush seemed as if he were channeling the Will Ferrell spoof of him, the blithely unaware leader who had declared the Oval Office 'a bummer-free zone.' The closest he came to acknowledging failure was a vague wave in its general direction. 'I have experienced setbacks,' he said. 'There are things I would do differently if given the chance.'

But the strain Bush has been under showed. His right eye kept narrowing to an uncontrollable squint."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2009/01/16/BL2009011602311_pf.html

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. The day we judge a president only on intentions is the day this country dies.

But that is the story of Shrubbie McFuckstick's life, isn't it?

He intended Arbusto to find oil.
He intended it to be profitable.

and so on and so on, with every company and organization and state he's been involved with.

We don't care what your intentions were, you fuckstain - you fucking FAILED EVERY TIME.

[kimmerspixelated]

2. This is the way the world ends,

"Not with a bang but a whimper"

Ahh, the end of the error!

[gratuitous]

3. So now it is finally safe to notice that his audiences are hand-picked

Thanks very much, O stalwarts of the Fourth Estate. Finally, at the bitter end of this bitter administration, you have at last slipped the shackles to tell us what we've known all along about this mean little man and his mean little band. His time could have been cut in half or curtailed entirely if you media sycophants weren't preoccupied with Commander Bunnypants' cute little nicknames for you all, his brush clearing, his bicycle ridin', and all the rest of the props, gimmicks and diversions.

Any and all of you are welcome to journey into exile with this toothache of a man. The country will be much better for it.

[wryter2000]

4. I didn't watch

But I did wander through the room where the TV was on. It appeared to me that there was one lady in the front row -- a young African American woman -- whose body language was extremely negative. She had her arms crossed tightly over her mid-section, and her legs were crossed. She did NOT look happy to be there.

Did anyone else see her?

[Wednesdays]

5. The press, notice it?

This is just a lone op-ed in a single paper. If the cable TV news whores had reported it, too, then perhaps it would have made some sort of difference.