The Nadir Administration

Every time I think that BushCo & Cronies, Inc., has reached the lowest point possible, has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the worst in terms of arrogance, hubris and outright contempt for the Constitution and the American people, has taken one more step with impunity in the direction of theocratic fascism and police-state rule, I am shocked back to reality by yet another administrative slap in the face like this one: Preznit Absolute Power acknowledges that yes, he did repeatedly authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans, and, hey, tough titty, what are you going to do about it? Advised by the likes of John "Screw" Yoo and Alberto VO5 Gonzales that he can essentially do anything he wants simply because he's the president (at least, he is unless Darth Cheney is talking), Dimwit Dubya honestly believes that he can flout convention and ignore the law and the Constitution whenever he feels like it. He has so far, and he's gotten away with it, so why shouldn't he feel that way now?

Before I started blogging, I used to send out personal email rants to a number of people on my various distribution lists about what a terrible president Bush was, citing sources, providing links and just generally trying to drum up some righteous indignation for what I saw as demonstrated evil, rank incompetence and the setting of dangerous precedents. One of my right-wing correspondents, after getting a barrage of these emails, replied, with typical winger condescension (I'm paraphrasing here; I don't have the actual email on hand to quote), "You keep sending these things out, saying how bad Bush is. You must think that if you finally find an example of something he's done that's bad enough, that people like me will change my mind about him."

Well, yes, I did think that. And though it took much longer than I had thought or hoped it would, it would appear that I was right all along. Though I can't say for that one particular person (he cut off all correspondence with me during the early stages of the Iraq war, when, in one of his last messages, he said, "If they don't find any WMD in a year's time, maybe then I'll consider that I was wrong about this war."), a reading of any poll over the past several months would show that quite a few people have changed their minds about Flightsuit AWOL.

Not that there wasn't plenty of evidence before, but the events of the recent past have been especially damning for the Cheney Bush maladminstration: The Downing Street memos; Cindy Sheehan's vigil in Crawford; the bungled response to hurricane Katrina; the Harriet Miers nomination; Plamegate and Scooter Libby's indictment (with Karl Rove all but certain to be the next one called into the principal's office); the support of torture and the revelation of the European gulag; the continuing bloody debacle in Iraq. And that's not even mentioning the peripheral scandals involving Tom DeLay, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Bill Frist, Duke Cunningham and others. All of this, and now, on top of it, the revelation that our Commander in Thief thinks it's okay -- a swell idea, even! -- for the government to spy on its own citizens. Lovely.

So maybe it wasn't any one thing in particular that turned the tide, but an accumulation of events and actions and revelations in the press. It's been the death of a thousand cuts. The one bright spot in this most recent story has been the immediate call for hearings -- by some Republicans, even -- into whether the president violated the law or not (here's a hint: he did), and it could very well lead to the misguided and malicious Patriot Act finally being quashed. Shrub is not just a lame duck these days, he's dead in the water. His wall of invulnerability has been breached, his teflon scratched, his new clothes revealed to be a most embarrassing nudity. It's no wonder he's now listed by many historians as the Worst President Ever™, elbowing aside such old favorites for that position as Nixon, James Buchanan and Warren Harding.

As it said in an old email joke that made the rounds a few years ago, purportedly quotes from various employee evaluations made public, "He has hit rock bottom and started to dig."