We’re close, my fellow citizens, so close. We’ve already made history. We’re up there in the 80^th percentile. Some polls have it at 81%, some 83% one even has it at 84%.

Which ever number you choose, less than two in ten are still holding out – we can turn the page America and make it unanimous.

With just a little common sense and a gentle nudge to those still unconvinced, we can get to the magic 100%, where every woman, man and child can all join hands and agree the country is going in the wrong direction under the leadership of George the Worst.

I’m not asking the impossible here.

Ol’ 43 has already shattered Nixon’s 64% disapproval rating with a 69% – that’s the biggest in Gallup Poll history. But I’m not asking 3 out of 10 folks to change their minds about Bush (put your obvious joke here).

Nothing of the sort.

I’m asking for a much simpler task; just getting those 1.6 people to actually turn off the Home Shopping Network, leave the house and take a look at the nation. They don’t even have to own a car, they can just stand in front of a gas station and watch the prices spin like a slot machine. They can even be on no-carb, gluten free diets, but ask them to go to the bread isle and watch the folks stocking it get ‘tennis elbow’ from using that pricing gun continually, hour after hour as the bread goes higher and higher.

We can do this America.

We can get to 100%.

And when we do, we can give George W. Bush the legacy he so richly deserves.

Floppin’ John McCain is working hard to scare everyone away from the gas pumps and back under their couches. He’s playing that good old Islamo-fascist rag again. Obviously, it’s not working because this morning he had to trot out legend in his own mind and owner of all things 9/11, presidential failure Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy was making the rounds on the chat shows going on about how Obama has no foreign policy experience. (Unlike the years Rudy spent immersed in international intrigue and foreign daring do – all in Brooklyn.)

Jeez, John, the last guy you want mucking up your campaign is Rudy. He’s almost as big an albatross as your new bbf, the President.

See, here’s what Giuliani brings to the table: zero credibility, indifference to the law, arrogance (not bushlike, but high quality none the less), opposition to the Constitution, (which he just calls a difference of opinion), and that tired cell phone schtick when things start to go south.

Is this really a guy you want out there on the stump?

You’ve already saddled yourself with millionaire Mormon playboy, Mitt Romney, (yes, he is Batman, but he only fights corporate injustice – where the corporations are being treated unjustly), and you and Dubya as twins separated at birth is starting to stick.

What’s next, choosing Cheney to find you a vice president, and surprise…

Get out now, John. Find yourself a nice condo in south Florida where you can walk along the beach with your lovely wife and gaze at the offshore oil wells.

SO MANY MORONS, SO LITTLE TIME

“Booming, China Faults U.S. Policy on the Economy” is a headline from today’s New York Times. Why this is of interest to anyone whose still listening is that it once again shows just how lame the duck in the White House is, and, quite frankly, always was.

A few years back, as is the Bubble-boy Bush way of doing things, the Administration was wagging its collective finger at China and telling its leadership you simply can’t run your economy this way: too many regulations, too many subsidies, too much control of your currency…you gotta be free, man, let all hang out there like we do in the good old U.S.A.

Hmm.

If you’ve been living in a cave and foraging then you probably don’t know the US economy is pretty much in the crapper. Housing bust, credit crunch, currency trouble, unemployment, blah, blah, blah. Things are bad, and we can lay the blame right at the feet of the Commander guy and his band of idiots.

The Chinese – who have a long memory – are remembering all the nasty things we said to them, and with their economy booming and the world looking in their direction for growth, they’ve pointed the finger back toward us.

“Chinese officials seem to be galled by the apparent hypocrisy of Americans telling them what to do while the American economy is at best stagnant. China, on the other hand, has maintained its feverish growth.”

“U.S. credibility and the credibility of U.S. financial markets is zero everywhere in the world,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University who has sharply criticized the Bush administration and praised China’s economic management in the past. “Anybody looking at this from the outside says, ‘There’s been a lot of hot air coming out of the U.S., so why should we listen to these guys when they didn’t know how to manage risk?’ ”(Stigltiz won a Noble Prize 2001, so he’s not a piker or some angry guy who can’t get a job at General Motors.)

We elected, then re-elected this confederacy of dunces, and we’re going to have live with that mistake for long, long, time.

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” (Mario Savo, December 3 1964.)

Ah, the old days. Mario Savo was speaking to the Free Speech Movement at a sit-in in front of Sproul Hall on the Berkeley campus in 1964. This was one of the flashpoints of the Student Movement that led to all kinds of fear and loathing back in the ‘60’s.

The kind we don’t have anymore.

Now all our fear and loathing is government sponsored, heavily edited, and doled out when politicians need a bump in the polls.

In the unmitigated disaster that is known as the Bush Administration, the one thing they got right was convincing waves of business majors and finance students that speaking out is bad for your resume.

Welcome to the world – you generation of wimps.

Go look at what your contemporaries are doing in England:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/13/activists.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

The short version: they’re environmental extremists who hijacked a coal train in broad daylight and shut down the entire line.

Now that’s putting your “bodies upon the gears.”

Most of you wimps think being radical is having one more shot of Jäger.

I’m not talking about going all Eugene Debs here (go look it up) but, come on, get off your asses and do something. You sat by while the Idiot and Chief rode roughshod over your nation, your rights and, the way things look, your future.

What’s it going to take to get you people into the street…college credit?

I never met Tim Russert.

Never talked to him.

Never picked his savvy brain for some insight into this Democrat or that Republican.

Never got to see him live as he read a quote from whomever he was interviewing – a quote that contradicted what was just said.

Never got to have a beer with him or watch a ball game.

Like I said, I never met Tim Russert.

Never really knew him.

What I did know was this:

I knew him because of the little blackboard he held in his lap, on which he did electoral calculus on those certain November nights.

I knew him because of what he did on Sunday mornings, and, as the news cycle changed and politics became full-time television, what he said when something needed to be said.

I knew him because of his good humor.

I knew him because of the way he talked about his father.

I’ll miss Tim Russert.

It seems Iowa wants to enlarge the idea of miles per gallon. And as gas prices go up every day, (can someone tell me why I paid a nickel more for gas today than I did yesterday, and it’s the same gas because no one delivered new, ‘higher priced’ gas to the gas station), it’s a solid idea.

The state is proposing to put mileage stickers on food.

No, you’re not going to be able to pull your cart next to someone in line and brag that your cantaloupe gets better mileage than their turkey sausage. But you will be able to tell from just how far away your food has come. So if you buy local tomatoes from a farm thirty miles from the grocery story, you should see some savings over those that come from New Zealand.

I like this idea, and I don’t think it should stop with just fruit and cars – what about people?

Wouldn’t you like to see just how much experience a politician really has? Throw a mileage sticker on them. That way we can see if they’re not broken in, are running well, or they need a major overhaul.

How about finding a date…or a mate? We all lie, and even though these sexist barriers are slowly breaking down, men still want to appear experienced and women chaste. Ladies, if you come across Mr. Perfect, but he’s got very low mileage – and with the busy schedules we all have these days – maybe the fine tuning you’re going to have to do in the sack may not be worth the effort.

The one place this won’t work in Hollywood…high mileage there is a one way ticket to basic cable.

James Johnson got the boot yesterday. Obama’s going to need another vetter.

Tom Loeffler got the heave-ho from the McCain campaign about a month ago – he was the finance co-chair.

Both these men – and a bunch more in everyone’s campaign group from Hillary Clinton to probably Ron Paul – had ties to businesses or lobbying groups that in the squeaky clean world of national politics just didn’t present the right image.

Are you people freakin’ crazy?

Is this what you want to spend your time worrying about?

We have criminals in the White House, corrupt cowards (save a few, and McCain ain’t one of them) in Congress, more draconian laws then when the first George was king – not Daddy B, I’m talking about the guy who was boss in 1776 – and we’re still fighting a war that even the blunt-brained base now knows was invented. And the best you can do is nitpick about some volunteers, who, if their candidate wins, has no say in whether we stay in Iraq or continue to torture or allow illegal wiretaps?

You sure that’s the basket you want to put your eggs in?

How about we focus on issues this time around, seeing as how we neglected to do so the last two times…and that worked out real well…

Apparently it isn’t enough to make the worst foreign policy blunder in American history for Democratizin’ Dubya…let me amend that: it is enough, it’s just much bigger than his screwing up our country.

This link will take you to a story in today’s NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/asia/12skorea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

It describes yet another world leader – President Lee Myung-bak – who backed Bush policies and buddied up to the man who wants to do to the world what he let Katrina do to New Orleans. Now President Lee is fighting for his political life – and you can bet Bush and friends are no where to be seen.

Let’s go to the scoreboard and see just how many governments bumblin’ Bush and his Iraq fixation have brought down.

Spain – Bush pal Jose Maria Aznar lost to the Socialists

Great Britain – Bush poodle Tony Blair was forced out due to his unflagging support of you know who, you know where.

Australia – Prime Minister John Howard got the boot for his manlove for Dubya

Now South Korean, an important strategic ally, is shaky.

And let’s not forget how Bush policies have empowered both Hezbollah and Hamas and weakened  Israel.

You’d think with all those folks dumping their wrongheaded rulers we’d have picked up a tip or two…

IT’S THE FIST-BUMP, EVERYBODY DUCK!

Here we go; the general election is less than a week old and those stalwarts of “fair and balanced” news have started the campaign off with an homage to 9/11 and cunningly tied it to Barack Obama.

The simple-witted E.D. Hill, one of Fox’s faux-news twinkies and Ann Coulter wannabes (who, like Ms. Coulter, probably lights a candle on Eva Braun’s birthday) runs away with moron honors this week with her description of Barack Obama’s fist-bump as “a terrorist jab.”

The woman who is doing her best to give blondes a bad name, has inadvertently claimed everyone from NBA M.V.P Kobe Bryant to former Nixon speech writer and conservative stalwart Pat Buchanan is in league Osama Bin Laden.

We’ve all seen the video footage of Bin Laden, huddling in a cave in Tora Bora, surrounded by his evil henchmen, who cackle with glee, then ‘Dap’ one another. (Dap is the street – no doubt a street in Kabul – name for the fist-bump.)

To be fair, the vacant Hill did reference our never embarrassing president’s chest bump at the Air Force Academy. Apparently Dubya was reliving his days as a cheerleader at Andover.

And the idiot-host’s tease as “a terrorist fist jab” never made it into the segment…she is a little slow, maybe she forgot.

Now you know why “stupid is as stupid does.”

Look, I’ve been wrong plenty of times over the last…well, I’ve been wrong plenty of times.

Like most people commenting on the current election cycle – right and left – I’ve been guessing. McCain’s out, McCain wins, African Americans and Women have no chance, then again…see, no one knows.

But there is something I do know: if the best the Republican Party can do the day after Hillary Clinton endorses Barack Obama is trot out Lindsey Graham, the Grand Old Party is screwed.

This morning, on the ABC wonk hour, Lindsey Graham was there to beat the drum for John McBush.

Is there no one of substance left in the Republican Party?

The best they could do is this lightweight.

Might as well get Ann Coulter to knock off early at Hooters and make an appearance on behalf of Long (in the tooth) John. She has just as much credibility as Graham, but she could she bring wings.

Lindsey Graham proudly sits in raping-racist Strom Thurmond’s old seat in the Senate – in and of itself not a distinction anyone would want (ask Trent Lott) – and like his predecessor, he’s generally on the wrong side of everything. He was a Bush cheerleader throughout the war, until McCain won the nomination, then he decided that McCain was right and that bad old President was wrong about the war they still all agree on.

The high point of his senatorial career was going to Iraq and buying  cheap rugs.

Looks like it’s going to be a long, hot summer for elephants.