I protest.

A couple of observations.

I'm incredibly busy preparing for a demo to no fewer than four DARPA project managers next week, dead tired and my back hurts so I must keep this short. I haven't written in a while, though, and there are a couple of observations I've been wanting to make.

First, it seems that while Bush can quite cheerfully pose for pictures with babies, he has somewhat more difficulty attending funerals. He as attended not one of the funerals for the men and women whom he sent to die in Iraq. Not one. And people are still dying, every single god-damned day, because Bush was obsessed with "getting Saddam." Worse yet, the dead are probably the lucky ones. The wounded are coming home with missing legs and arms, wounds in their bodies and in their minds. When they arrive, though, rather than receiving the lifelong care they expect from the country for which they sacrificed so much, they find that Bush and his buddies have cut their benefits and left them without resources or choices.

Of course, to Bush, their suffering, or, really, any suffering, is simply not real. It is not part of his experience and he can't imagine it. He was born to privilege and as a man of below-average intelligence he cannot conceive of a life that is different from his. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that it would never even occur to him that he should care, because the poor and the suffering simply don't exist for him. And as for the mess that he has made of Iraq, of Afghanistan and of the United States, I'm sure that he's completely confident that someone will come along and magically bail him out, as has happened with every other mess he has made.

Finally, though, I have the distinct impression that the days of the Bush administration are numbered. While there is still a long time until November and much can happen in those few months, I have the feeling that the messes have simply grown out of control. Even conservatives are abandoning Bush. I'm beginning to think that the Mayberry Machiavellis, as Billmon terms them, have lied for so long about so much that the lies are beginning to catch up with them. These people are just not smart enough to stay consistent and they aren't competent enough to do the things that need to be done. (Like, say, capture bin Laden. For example.) The shakey edifice of lies they have built over the last three years is beginning to fall apart. It is crumbling on all sides.

It is possible that the bastards in the White House might pull it together by November, that they might manage to once more hoodwink enough of the American people to gain reelection. It's possible. But I'm beginning to doubt that they will be able to manage it. I'm beginning to suspect that even another terrorist attack would have more the effect of turning people against Bush than it would have of increasing his support.

So while it's certainly not time to stop fighting, at least we can feel that we might actually win this fight. And it is about time. Those bastards have rigged the game for too long. It's time, and past time, to turn them out and bring someone more competent and more honest in.

You certainly can't get less honest than the Bush bunch.