As I have already established in previous Blogs, I am not a fan of our current president. In fact, if someone were to ask me who I thought was the absolute worst president in this nation’s history, my answer, without even a moment’s hesitation, would be “George W. Bush.”

Thanks to my cousin, Terry, another anti-Bush liberal (perhaps the sentiment runs in the family) I have one of those Bush Countdown Clocks, and on its digital display the clock shows the days, hours, minutes, and seconds left “Until our national nightmare ends.” However, the only problem, as my cousin warned in the note accompanying his gift, is how the clock is “both strangely comforting and reassuring at the same time.” Of course, I soon realized this was indeed the case, mainly because when one looks at the seconds flying by, one thinks, “Ah, yes, just look at those seconds flash past. Yippee, he’ll soon be out of office.” Then one looks at the number of days Bush has remaining in office and thinks, “Uh, oh, the man still has a heck of a lot of time left in which to create even more havoc and ruin even more lives.”

Each day when I look at that clock and then read or hear of yet another brilliant “Executive Decision” or harebrained machination attributed to George W. Bush, I am often tempted to write the man a letter, and in this letter I would say, 

Dear Mr. President.

Since you will soon be leaving the Oval Office and returning to Crawford to clear brush and pen your memoirs, I felt compelled to write and say, “Thank you, Mr. President.” Thank you for embroiling this country in a senseless quagmire of a war that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers and those of far more innocent Iraqi citizens. Thank you for plunging this country into a recession that may soon become a full-blown depression and, based upon all economic indicators, will. Thank you for making it a major expenditure for Americans to fill their vehicles’ gas tanks in order to drive back and forth to jobs that may no longer exist next week. Thank you for the astronomical increase in the price of the barest of necessities, for example, milk, bread, and eggs. Thank you for allowing big corporations to become even bigger at the average American’s expense. Thank you for providing even more tax breaks for the wealthy and increasing the tax burden upon the working class. Thank you for encumbering this country with a national debt from which it will probably never recover. Thank you for looking the other way when the cost of healthcare and insurance kept escalating to the point where most Americans could no longer afford to have either one. Thank you for threatening to nuke Iran at the risk of beginning World War III. Thank you for everything, but most of all, I want to thank you for posturing and preening and strutting about on the world’s stage like Shakespeare’s poor player “filled with sound and fury and signifying nothing,” while all around you lives were being destroyed. Oh, yes, and thank you as well for the rebate checks. They came in handy at the gas pumps. 

And that’s it for tonight.