Open Thread for Night Owls, Early Birds & Expats: Bush Legacy

"You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

                                       - President George W. Bush

^{Video by Orpheus Roy}

As this is being written, Mister Bush has 107 hours to finish supervising the packing of his bags and fly to Dallas. No more cutting brush for him. No more pretending on that score.  

Unfortunately, when he and Dick Cheney head out of Washington on Tuesday, their legacy will remain. The Smirk and the Snarl will fly away and take their audacious, minute-to-minute mendacity with them.  No longer will a lickspittle media have to find fresh ways to rescue them from their latest betrayal, faux pas, stupidity, outrage. But the destruction they leave behind is deep and wide – a shredded Constitution, a wrecked economy, a worsened environment, a shattered multilateralism, a strengthened plutocracy, a partisan legal system, an undermined scientific community, crippled national security, trashed diplomacy, battered checks and balances. These will not – cannot - be fixed in a few months or even a few years.

Which made the aggressive treacle of Mister Bush’s farewell address all the more insufferable Thursday night. That it was his last speech as President was its only saving grace. A man characterized by a chronic lack of leadership talent throughout his entire life, a man who showed a relentless inability to act until his handlers told him what to do dared  speak to us of trust, decisiveness, toughness. We know the truth of that. We saw it on that awful day which Mister Bush conjured up once again in his Thursday night goodbye. If we hadn’t known we were in trouble previously, we learned it watching him with The Pet Goat in his hands, doing nothing, waiting, as always, for someone to rescue him.

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The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade.