Reposted in its hilarious entirity, “Fair is Fair” by Michael O’Hare at RBC:

The “worst president ever?” meme has floated from bitter-liberal whining lounges to mainstream venues and plutocrats like Donald Trump, who should know which side their bread is buttered on. This piling-on in the face of the clear facts has to stop if Democrats want to keep a shred of intellectual respectability.
History simply will not support this level of condemnation. Never mind presidents from decades back, here are five contemporary presidents who completely refute the idea that
Bush is the worst:
None of the antiwar protesters arrested in Washington Friday night were
beaten in captivity. Not a single fractured skull or broken jaw. Bush is much more protective of civil rights and free speech than Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe.
Bush has never, ever, claimed to have an herbal AIDS cure revealed by ancestors in a dream, nor touted it to replace anti-retroviral drugs. Bush is much less anti-scientific than
Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia.
The number of US dissidents killed overseas by plutonium poisoning is zero, and the number
of US businessmen ruined and imprisoned for opposing the government is also zero. Bush is much more respectful of law and property than Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.
Bush hasn’t tried to fire even one Supreme Court justice, much less a chief justice. He’s much more respectful of separation of powers than Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan.
Bush hasn’t named a single city, river, month, or day of the week after himself, and aggressive research has turned up no gold-plated colossal statues of him, not even silver-plated. Bush is much less egotistical and narcissistic than Sapurmurat Niyazov, the late president of Turkmenistan.
George W. Bush, better than many presidents; let’s give credit where credit is due.

Today’s Washington Post may be a weather map to the perfect storm that has hit America.

Upper left: A story about how the government been robbing Peter (in this case climate research) to pay Paul (Mars, bitches!, etc.). I mean screw figuring out what’s wrong with the house we live in, let’s daydream about a trip to Australia by car!

Upper middle: A digital day in the life. I’m always amazed at how amazed professional, top-tier reporters can be amazed by things I’ve known about for months if not years. I’ve ceased to be amazed at their inability to make the leap necessary to take the story from the obvious (e.g., the phone company has tracked phone calls ever since it began charging money for it, i.e., forever) to deeper understanding (it’s the low cost of storage, the consolidation of data, the mining of data, the “national security” backdoors that are so ineptly constructed that they leave portals into people’s lives that a script kiddie could drive a black ice Hummer through that really matter, not that suddenly that we notice how much of our lives occur in public).

Upper right: Bush says after years of running the budget into the ground with a compliant, Republican-run (but I repeat myself) Congress, it’s now up to the new Democratic-run (barely in one house, lest we forget) Congress to change his diaper, clean his backside, exchange any clothing soiled by his excesses, and, for good measure, prevent any further blowouts–all while letting him run amok in Iraq and at home. He needs the Hannibal Lecter handtruck treatment.

Right side, second story: It seems the Iraqi “government” still can’t hold a lynching without screwing something up. Here’s a first step to not embarrassing yourself while hanging people: Stop hanging people. At least bring back the hooded, muscled man with the scimitar and give the beheadings a bit more grandeur, people. Or maybe something more civilized, like not rushing headlong to kill anyone and making sure not only that you have had a fair trial, but fair punishment as well.

Right side, third story: Yes, folks, it’s been five years since the first person was hauled to Gitmo from far off lands, possibly never to return, face anything resembling a fair trial, or otherwise leave the hell on earth America has built next to the Communist Paradise of the West.

And at the lower left: Ladies and gentlemen, one of the things the Post does pretty well, packing a lot of localish crap into a single story on A1. If you’ve driven around here and had to stop for anything other than gas, chances are you got a parking ticket. Along with specious moving violations and other draconian non-moving offenses, this has got to be one of the top revenue sources for local governments in the region.

Metro: Martin Luther King? Look in Metro. He’s not A1 material anymore. Yesterday’s news. Beyond that, today’s Metro section is a prime example of the Post’s attitudes of “eff local, we don’t need no stinkin’ suburbs” and “Virginia uber alles” (the second prevails if there’s a conflict). Would it have killed them to put a Maryland story on A1 in the Maryland Edition instead of the Virginia parking ticket pastiche? Maybe the big school construction thing? But of course, anyone reading a newspaper is too old to have kids, or too smart to live in Maryland or D.C.

Business: Golly gee, a mirror that has a Web cam and can display IMs. Alert Steve Jobs. (See earlier snark about journalists and technology.) Why the hell, other than the huge monetary impact it has on Big Pharma, is the BioShield (government preparedness for bio-attack) story here? There isn’t even a business mentioned on the section front. Look honey, a navel-gazing newspaper business story (tip to readers: stick to Editor and Publisher, they have a clue about the business without being mired in it), and something about a hotel magnate blogging. Business sections after holidays suck even worse than usual, because that’s when the reporters pretend they’re with the Style section and (usually–there are some fine business writers around, including some at the Post) show why they aren’t.

Sports: Apparently the Sports section’s recipe for survival is 1 part game recap and stats anyone with an Internet connection could have read for 8-16 hours + 2 parts columnists, half panderers and half shockers, + some graphics and agate, most of which has again been available, free, online to anyone interested enough to look for it, plus lots of TV time for Tony “I’ll make you miss Dennis Miller” Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon. I sometimes think the only people who read agate are non-stats freaks following out of town teams.

Health: Decent article on warm-winter caused allergies inside aside, the rest is middling to poor.

Style: Finally, something I’m at an absolute loss for explaining: Yet again, the Style section is far more relevant and important, e.g. today’s coverage of the Appeal for Redress movement, than the “news” sections of the newspaper. Hell, it even does a good job with congressional representation for D.C. But it’s the Style section. The writers, while one of the finest Style section stables in the land, are constrained by the section itself: snappy, scrappy writing in the space allowed by all the Kids Post, funnies, puzzles (not that, heaven forfend, I am advocating a reduction in those three; they are probably the best parts of the paper day in and day out), celebrity trash, television, music, theater, quirky crap and all the other things that help the Style section speak to people with too much free time, free money or both (those latter could be abolished without much crying from me).

So there you have it: Passing of the buck on a monumental scale, not that the story would lead you to any such conclusion; a story far too clueless for consumption in what may be one of the best informed, technologically adept metro areas in the nation; national embarrassment; MLK relegated to Metro because that was yesterday, just like your civil rights; traffic tickets! (please ignore our paltry Metro coverage); well, we have the dysfunctional, blame-everyone-else CEO president, why not cover government in the Business pages; Marriott blogs!; sports is life, Sports section is irrelevant; Style’s got at least two stories that should be on the front page of the paper, much less given the Leeza-Gibbons-in-print treatment. And it’s still a top ten American newspaper, no doubt.

Mahablog says:

What are we to do? Let’s think about this.
Although I support impeachment, I’m not sure that’s the way to go. We’d have to impeach Bush and Cheney — a tall order — and if they’re removed from office we’d end up with Dennis Hastert in the White House. I’m not sure the 33 months are lookin’ any smoother under that scenario, although perhaps Hastert will be enough of a wuss to not do much. That may be the best we can hope for. At least he would probably work with Congress to run the country.
Same thing if Bush and Cheney were forced to resign, as Nixon and Agnew were.
If Dems get control of at least one house of Congress next year the subpoenas can begin. Perhaps if Bush is under incessant investigation for his last two years he will be slowed down some. On the other hand, he might start another war just to wag the dog.
And if Republicans keep control of both houses of Congress I don’t see an alternative to limping along as we are.
Thoughts?

Read the rest at Mahablog.

My two cents
Cent one: the midterms are probably our last chance to grind this to a halt. We’re going to have to get subpoena power in congress and a set of juevos for pushing the subpoenas in the face of withering fire from the VRWC and corporate media. And don’t doubt this: even if Bush’s numbers drop to the single digits, it’s going to be a fight to win those seats, thanks to the trifecta of gerrymandered safe seats, years of GOP institutionalized leftist voter repression and the VWRC working the refs and corporate media bending over and taking it.

Cent two: I’m sorry, but start thinking about what we should do to halt this maladministration from hell? The unwillingness of most of the left, not to mention the DLC, centrist weenies currently keeping almost all of the Dems out of the pool in re Iran, warrantless wiretapping, etc., is exactly why we’re in this situation. The unwillingness to discuss impeachment, censure, threatening armed rebellion, hell, any substantive action in response to the rape of America, her ideals and her reputation has done, I think, more harm than the Bush administration. This is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, but the unwillingness to call them on it, to hound them into the impotence of the above-mentioned failed administrations has allowed them to shoot again and again and again. Why should they change tactics? No one has forced their hand. If we get congress, we’re going to have to beat on this administration like it’s a turtle we’ve mistaken for a steel drum while in the midst of a Jamaican revelry on speed, or they’ll come out and screw something up. It’s like fluorescence or something.

Bonus third cent: Some have made mention of the populace’s (notice I didn’t say “voters’”) disaffection with politics. Part of that is the constant refrain from ethically challenged politicians and their allies that “everyone’s doing it”; part is the parties’ unwillingness to purge their ranks of these people; part is the VRWC’s insistence that “real people” lie outside of the political process–all fine and true. But I hold that a large part is the lack of any pushback. What does it avail a person to become disenchanted with crooked politicians if all that is ever offered to them is another politician with a different letter by his or her name on the ballot. Dems have got to stop cutting off the Paul Hacketts of the world in favor of career politicians. Make the slogan “We’re going to change more than the names on the office door; we’re going to change more than the ‘culture’; we’re going to change more than the window dressing. Politics as usual, meet politics for the people.” Throw some (verbal) bombs, hoist some petards, burn some effigies, relentlessly call out the transgressions of the powerful and, for the sake of all that is good about this country, offer a real alternative.