Even Conservatives Should Hurl Shoes: Bush Is A Waste Of Skin

By now, I'm sure everyone who has a TV set has seen the Iraqi journalist throw his shoes at Il Doofus at the Baghdad news conference. I understand he also called Bush a dog. That seems insulting to canines, known in Western cultures for loyalty and unconditional love. But I also understand that in Arab culture, dogs are ill-regarded, considered unclean animals.

While thinking about what to post about the incident, it occurred to me that a former friend of mine, a staunch Texas-bred conservative, would lament about seeing an A-Rab insult our president. He would lament further about how liberal Democrats are set to take control of most of the federal government. How could this have happened?

I hate to sound like fellow Texan Ross Perot, of whom I am no fan. But to paraphrase him, it's this simple.

Conservatives: You folks blew it. It's that simple.

You blew it when you bet the farm on a man who is, arguably, the most pathetic waste of skin ever to sit in the Oval Office.

Let's forget Il Doofus' penchant for butchering English, his broken Spanish, his prodigal youth, his utter lack of intellectual curiosity, his smirking conceit, and on and on. One can't expect perfection of anyone, and some might even regard Bush's human idiosyncrasies as endearing.

Let's just stick to measurable results. It's hard to think of one sound decision Il Doofus has made in nearly eight years in office. This is a man who cut taxes deeply for the wealthy, threw a few scraps from the table to con the middle class into thinking they were getting something, then pursued a stunningly expensive elective war.

The result is an annual deficit that could approach $1 trillion for his final budget.

This is a "president" who doggedly stuck with the ideology of deregulation, even as a meltdown of subprime mortgages was imminent, and years after the chicanery of Enron and Arthur Andersen was evident. Now the taxpayers are stuck with a financial bailout of shocking proportions, and in the middle of a recession.

Back to the war: It's not hard to understand why millions of Iraqis would loathe Il Doofus. Those millions would not include the estimated million or so who have died as a direct result of Bush's unnecessary war. It's said that dictator Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of a million Iraqis. Some sources say that Bush, in his own bungling way, has got Saddam matched there.

"He (Bush) has ruined the Republican brand," lamented one conservative officeholder. Well, it's not completely Bush's fault, although largely. Conservative Republicans have long been known for economic ideologies that reward the wealthy and punish everyone from middle class on down. It's an approach that tends to work only as long as there is general prosperity, and as long as there is a powerful propaganda apparatus to persuade lots of people to vote against their own interests.

The right has also been characterized by a might-makes-right foreign policy that has made the U.S. a target of hate the world over. This went on all through the Cold War, but at least then there was arguably a reason for it, since even paranoids can have enemies. But the entire planet, at least the part that thinks, knows now that Saddam Hussein didn't have shit for WMDs and was being contained. Even the Bushies had to admit at some point that the "intelligence" was bad.

I'll speculate that the "intelligence" was irrelevant to Il Doofus, as any intelligence has generally been. He thought his elective war was going to be easy -- that Iraqis would not be throwing shoes, but rather rose petals at American feet. (And then, there would be all that wonderful oil!)

Even conservatives need to face it. This man has been King Midas in reverse. Everything he touches turns to feces. Even if one considers the limitations of conservative ideology, Bush has pursued some thoughtless sort of "conservatism" so artlessly that he makes the likes of Ronald Reagan look shrewd in comparison.

For those who want to see it again, here's YouTube video of the shoe-throwing incident:



Included is Il Doofus' moronic reaction, consisting mostly of snickering and smirking and stupid jokes.

I'll say it once more: Conservatives, you blew it. Now, from all sides, let the size 10s fly.

Postscript: That journalist is a pretty good pitcher. Too bad that back when Bush was frontman for the Texas Rangers, the team didn't have an extra dude with that much control and velocity.