And His Estimates Are Always Wrong Too...

[Note: 10:00: I'm gonna keep this on the top until tomorrow because I want all of our readers to catch it, instead of having it move down the page. - The F-man.]

Go look at this cartoon by Rex Babin of the Sacramento Bee. It's kinda small, so look real close.

What it appears to do, and does quite well I think, is to liken Bush to a really shitty mechanic with his eyes on the prize: a really expensive car (Social Security) to work on and "fix", with the flotsam and jetsam of his previous failures strewing the lot. The car doesn't look very screwed up, does it? Certainly not like it needs a lot of work, and certainly not by this obviously incompetent mechanic (Bush).

If your car needed work, and you had smarts enough to be concerned about your car and your wallet, you'd take one look at this guy's shop and get the Hell out of there and go to a more reputable wrench. If you were slightly less smart, and this clown managed to sweet talk you into letting him work on your car, with a low estimate and glowing promises, you might take leave of your senses and authorize him to do the work. If you ever managed to get the car back (or at least all the pieces of it), you'd certainly never take it back to him, right?

You'd probably have to take the car to a reputable shop with a good track record and pay more to un-fuck it up than you would have had to if you'd gone there first. Plus, you'd have to sue this guy in Small Claims Court to get the money back that you had to pay him to ransom your car out of his clutches. You'd get a judgment, but probably never see a dime. The expense and hassle would be incredible, but you'd have learned your lesson, right?

Wrong.

As we all know, Bush wasn't elected the first time. If we continue the automotive analogy, our system kinda broke down in front of his shop, and he got the job with some smooth moves and the Supremes, by default. Kinda like a mechanic with his own tow truck.

After four years of him wrenchin' on our rig (our country), it ran worse than ever but he was making promises about how fine it would be. We had a chance to get the car back and let someone else work on it, but he kept telling us how good the heater and wipers would work, when the real problem was a rod knock, caused by him not caring (or not knowing how) to put in some oil when we just wanted a tune-up in the first place.

And he conned the Retard Right into re-hiring him to continue doing a job that he has shown those of us in the Reality-Based Community he is either incompetent or unwilling to do, and unwilling to admit that any mistakes have been committed, let alone that he committed them. They gave him carte blanche to do what he will, just like telling a mechanic "Do whatever you want. Cost is no object. We don't care if you know what you're doing or not, we like you better than that other guy". You wouldn't ever give a mechanic that kind of leeway with your car and your money, but the sheep gave it to Bush with our country. Stupid bastards.

Fixer and I are mechanics and proud of our trade and our hard-won experience and skills. We try to treat people right. Maybe it has to do with our "moral values". If a mechanic pulled the kind of shit that Bush has pulled on the American people such as low-balling estimates, tacking on huge sums to the invoice, lied, cheated, and stole, just generally showed that level of incompetence, gave perfectly good parts off your car to his friends and then charged you exorbitant prices for substandard new ones you didn't need and then put them on wrong, padded the labor charge for the "hard work", maybe wrecked the car while driving drunk, that mechanic would be in jail so fast it would make his head spin. Which is where Bush belongs.

Mechanics like the one in the cartoon give regular, competent, hard-working mechanics like me an' Fixer a bad name that we sometimes have to try to overcome with people. We don't deserve it, but a few rotten apples make the whole barrel suspect.

Bush has managed to take a wonderful, respected country, our United States of America, and give it a bad name all over the world, even amongst our friends. I'm sure we can regain their trust and confidence, but it will take many years and a lot of hard work by the next several administrations. That is, if Bush doesn't totally fuck it up, and he just might. We've got a lot of bad apples to get rid of, and they leave a mighty sour taste.

I will close by saying the same thing about Bush that I would about the mechanic in the cartoon: That guy could fuck up a perfectly good junkyard with a rubber hammer.