President Bush is sitting in the Oval Office when an aide comes in to give the morning briefing.
"Let's see," the aide says, "The price of oil's skyrocketing, you've got a call with the Swedish ambassador later today, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq yesterday..."
"Oh my God," Bush wails, burying his face in his hands. "This is awful!" It takes him a second to notice that no one else seems particularly shocked by the news.
"Wait a second," he says, "Is a Brazilian more or less than a million?"
That Bush isn't very smart is pretty much a given. Americans' first clue was in his 2000 campaign, when he denied putting "subliminable" messages in a campaign ad. Bush himself admitted that he wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box, but assured everyone that he'd surround himself with America's finest minds. The media, for the most part, treated this news with a big "Yay!" and I was left as pretty much the only person I knew who was asking why this was good news. After all, the dope would be the one deciding which skulls America's finest minds resided in.
Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of confidence. Turns out my lack of confidence was not misplaced. "The Decider" turned out to be really lousy at deciding.
America's finest minds turned out to be Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice. About the only pick he got close to right was Colin Powell -- and he didn't last long.
Later, of course, we found out that it was Dick Cheney who was doing all the deciding, with his first decision being that the perfect Vice Presidential candidate would be some fella named Dick Cheney.
In the years following, none of these guys' decisionating has gotten any better. As I've noted before, Dick's supposed to be the evil genius behind the Bush administration. As geniuses go, Dick can best be described as "not one." In fact, I've called him dumber than a sack of onions. The dope choosing America's finest minds chose pretty much the way everyone should've expected.
Which brings us to FOX News and a story about the Big Dick.
WASHIGNTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney is suggesting that House Democrats who rubber stamp Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wrongheaded agenda are lacking a spine.
Cheney expressed incredulity with the majority leadership during an interview published in The Politico newspaper on Wednesday. The White House later released a full transcript of the interview.
Senior Democrats "march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to the extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker. I'm trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn't have happened," he said.
Normally, I cut the dateline from the stories I quote, but I wanted you to note "WASHIGNTON." Seriously, there's something wrong with right winger's heads -- lead paint in their childhood homes or something. Politico, by the way, is not a newspaper.
Dick should consider himself damned lucky that Pelosi's calling the shots and Democrats are spineless. If they weren't, he'd be giving his big internet interview from a prison cell, where he belongs.
And we're supposed to believe that this congress follows Nancy Pelosi to the same extent that a previous one followed Tom Delay? I don't suppose the term "marching in lockstep" is familiar to Dick. I've got as much criticism for this congress as anyone, but at least they're not as crooked.
Maybe Dick's constitutionally incapable of saying anything that's true. Maybe there's some sort of liar OCD that demands he spit out nothing but bullshit. When he introduces himself with, "Hi. I'm Dick Cheney," there's a damned good chance that that's the last true thing he'll tell you.
In fact, the entire interview is a bunch of crap. He's a big fan of Joe Lieberman and thinks that Reid and Pelosi don't have "big sticks" -- which kind of makes that whole "rubber stamp" thing hard to figure. The Global War on Terror's a tremendous success, Iran's a big, scary nuclear menace, and people who want to withdraw from Iraq are "goofy."
The whole thing is bass-ackward. Dick, it appears, lives in some alternate reality where the Bush administration's been a stellar triumph. Since everything he says in the interview is wrong, we can take comfort in his political prediction.
" I think the Republicans are going to do well next year."
Let's hope his streak holds out.
--Wisco
Technorati tags: politics; neocon; Bush; White House; Republican; elections; 2000; 2008; Dick Cheney's a dope
