Monkey chatter: Junior drools, nation yawns

It is a telling gauge of Junior's fallen fortunes that today's media coverage provides scarcely a word about his largely ignored State of the Union speech (praise God, the last he will ever give), delivered with his usual appalling mispronunciations, in favor of the faux-primary taking place today in the swirling, insane vortex of all-that-is-wrong-with-America, Florida.

Monkey make doo-doo

I didn't watch but a smattering of the speech. Informed commentary be damned, I just don't have the intestinal fortitude to watch while the monkey makes verbal doo-doo. The spectacle is made all the more nauseating by the puppy-dog ovations provided by Congressional bobbleheads that wet themselves whenever the monkey flings dung (in the form of meaningless placations or folksy, tear-soliciting anecdotes) this way or that. Sorry, seen it all before.

And besides, now that the scales have fallen from the eyes of all but the most stupid of Americans, what can he possibly say?

The big news, for me, anyway, is that, judging from the resounding yawn of a response, no one outside the Washington beltway is listening anymore. Junior Bush is now more-or-less openly acknowledged as an abject failure.

The Republican candidates criticize his many failures indirectly, without using his name. Anything too direct is sure to upset the war-gives-us-meaning crowd. But, John McCain, for example takes pains to state that the Iraq war was mishandled under the "Rumsfeld" policy. And --watch and see --Junior won't be around much this fall when the Republican nominee, whether it is furious John McCain, or robot-like Mitt Romney, is on the general election campaign trail. Far from embracing Junior, the GOP nominee will spend his time apologizing, equivocating, trying to convince voters that he won't be nearly as much of a fuck-up.

For his part, Junior seems to have accepted his fate. Apart from a half-assed, way-too-late stab at peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, his speech was warmed over claptrap that he has himself debunked over the years. Troop increases in Iraq, lip service to fiscal restraint, a demand for increased authority to spy on American citizens, blah, blah, blah.

In a telling remark recently, Junior said "I'm sure people view me as a war monger and I view myself as a peacemaker." This remark hints at a resignation, a wounded realization that is hitherto unknown in his public psyche. (And hey, nobody can say he's not quick on the uptake, eh?)

But, regardless of any revelations that may have penetrated his unfathomably thick skull, the American public seems to have turned away from the train wreck that is Junior Bush. It's dangerous to do so --akin to ignoring a cancer diagnosis --but people can only take so much.

And beyond Junior, himself, it is his policies, his neo-conservative "philosophy," that seems to be wasting away. The post-Junior neo-conservative candidate for President, Rudy Giuliani, who, more than any other of the GOP nobodies, has based his campaign on the Rove doctrine of fear and hatred, and who has surrounded himself with neo-conservative nabobs, is tanking. In fact, the coup d'grace may be administered on this very day when Florida rejects him. Giuliani has banked everything on winning in Florida, sacrificing his efforts in earlier primaries. If the Republicans snub him today, he is doomed.

And, with him dies the neo-conservative movement. Now thoroughly exposed as the political meddling of armchair generals and sons of privilege, this monstrous movement is thrashing feebly in the filthy wreckage it has created. Not a drop of pity from me, I'm afraid. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and all that.

This country is gravely weakened as a result of Junior and the people behind him. The cabal gained its unprecedented powers by manipulating a fearful post-911 American public. When the Twin Towers fell, they gave rise to a failure of a human being, a sorry puppet controlled by monsters of greed and power, who set about ravaging all that was good in America. Could Osama bin Laden have planned it any better?

Anyway, for better or worse, the historic chapter on Junior Bush is coming to an end. It remains to be seen if we, as a people, can recover.