If only Bush had watched What's Happenin'

If this sort of thing had happened in 2000, it might not have cost me nearly $40 the other day to fill up the tank on my tiny Ford Focus, two towers might still be standing in New York, and the name "Greenland" might remain an oxymoron a little bit longer:

I don't think "robust" means what Bush thinks it means

From the people who brought us such hits as "Uraniam Tubes from Africa" and "Saddam Hussein blah blah blah 9/11" comes a new classic: "This economy sure kicks ass."

Apparently the White House feels its policies have created a more robust economy than existed during the late '90s. We all must have just imagined we were better off. Sure, the amount of people living in poverty has skyrocketed, but what does that matter?

If you keep in mind an early quote about the Bush administration's governing philosophy, allegedly from a White House aide, it all makes perfect sense:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Another quote that may be helpful when listening to the White House tell you why it's technically not such a bad thing that you've gone from working on a Ford assembly line to working at a Wal-Mart checkout line:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-Mark Twain (or possibly Benjamin Disraeli)

George Washington's Mojo

Having lied, invaded, occupied and vacationed away his honor in the eyes of about 70% of Americans, George W. Bush tried to borrow a little bit from George Washington yesterday.

That reminded me of this cartoon I published back in '06, when the Congressional leadership first tried (and failed) to use the nifty "cut and run" slogan to tar and feather those who opposed the ongoing occupation.