Is He Gone Yet?

I know there's been a lot of effort to give praise where praise is due regarding the Blue Legacy of President George W Bush. After all, through his pen we now have the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. Whether through his own interests or through those of his personal advisers, we now have paper protection (a start) of these biologically significant waters.

But the scales don't balance well for me when considering our national response to 9-11, our illegal war based on alleged and unfounded weapons of mass destruction, treating the US Constitution as an obstacle to national defense, shock and awe, warrantless surveillance and searches, Abu Ghraib, the Katrina response, Brownie, you're doin' a helluva job, Mission Accomplished, eight years of Cheney's smug arrogance, Valerie Plame, John Yoo's twisting of the Geneva Convention to allow for torture, all of this under the watch of one of the most anti-intellectual buffoons who debased the office practically at every turn.

Enough with the fanfare and tradition. Pull-up the U-Haul to the West Wing doors and let's have done with it. And as far as Presidential encomium's are concerned, I say all we need do is perform a selective search-and-replace on the closing lines from Hunter S Thompson's now classing eulogy to Richard Nixon.

He has poisoned our water forever. Bush will be remembered as a classic case of a man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Bush broke the heart of the American Dream.