I’ve often theorized that President George W. Bush lived in some parallel universe that allowed him to believe that everything in the world was actually fine when it was actually crumbling around him. Kind of like opposite world. This helps me to understand how he can continue to send U.S. troops into Iraq, where they face life threatening situations each and every day. It also helps to explain why he and his Vice President and their band of supporters continue to proclaim that things in Iraq are getting better you just can’t tell because the media just wants to talk about all those massive explosions in the market places and those hundreds of civilians being killed every day. Even hard statistical data including the ever increasing civilian and military causality rates don’t deter their fantatisical beliefs and their stubborn mind set.

Bush’s mind bending refusal to face reality is helped along by his insulation from news coverage and the media in general. He is spoon fed information and is surrounded by people who tell him only what he wants to hear, filtering out anything that might serve to distract him from his version of events. Nearly every adult in America who owns a television knows that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been under the gun recently for selectively firing a group of U.S. Attorney’s allegedly for political reasons. Gonzales was asked to appear before Congress to explain the firings and his many mis-statements and contradictions with former staff members who have basically said that Gonzales knew about the dismissals and was involved in the firings. By all accounts, both Republican and Democratic, Gonzales testimony was dismal. He said he couldn’t recall or didn’t remember conversations or meetings that others had testified about more than 70 times. This is called covering your ass to avoid being charged with perjury. He didn’t take the Fifth but he came very close! Some of the testimony was so lame it was laughable and even some Republicans were calling for his head when it was over. But not President Bush…no, this is what our President had to say about his Attorney General…

President Bush said Alberto Gonzales answered questions from the U.S. Senate, “in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.” How in the world did the President reach this conclusion? Not by actually watching Gonzales’s testimony. No, that would take too much time and energy. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters that, “He got regular updates from us while we were on the road. We were on the road that day on the way to Ohio.”

Now you might be thinking to yourself, well maybe President Bush was too busy working on his speech to be delivered to the good folks in Ohio to actually watch his Attorney General defend himself before the U.S. Senate. That makes sense. After all, our President has lots of pressing business. But based on a transcript of President Bush’s remarks at a high school in Tipp City, Ohio, he didn’t spend enough time on his speech or preparation in general. I took these remarks verbatim from Tim Grieve’s column, The War Room, which appears on Salon.com and I am assuming these are direct quotes which makes them all the more frightening because I liken them to the ramblings of a madman, but you be the judge.

“My job is a job to make decisions. I’m a decision—if the job description were, ‘What do you do?’—-it’s decision-maker. And I make a lot of big ones, and I make a lot of little ones. Interestingly enough, the first decision I made happened right before I got sworn in as president. I was at the Blaire House, which is right across the street from the White House, getting ready to give my inaugural address. And the phone rang, and the head usher at the White House said, ‘President-elect Bush.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘What color rug do you want in the Oval Office?’ I said, ‘this is going to be a decision-making experience.’

“The first lesson about decision-making is, if you’re short on a subject, ask for help. So if you’re a student listening and you’re not very good at math, ask for help. Don’t be afraid to admit that you need help when it comes to life. I wasn’t afraid to admit I wasn’t sure how to design a rug, so I called Laura. I said, ‘They’ve asked me to design a rug in the Oval Office; I don’t know anything about rug designing; will you help me?’ she said, ‘Of course.’ But I said, ‘I want it to say something’—-the president has got to be a strategic thinker—-and I said to her, ‘Make sure the rug says ‘optimistic person comes to work.’ Because you can’t make decisions unless you’re optimistic that the decisions you make will lead to a better tomorrow.”

On the problems at Walter Reed: “I’m watching our military very carefully. I love our military, for starters. And I want to make sure that during these difficult times that we help them on their needs. One of my concerns is that the health care not be as good as it can possibly be.”

Well…if his goal was to make sure that the military’s health care is not as good as it can possibly be…I’d say mission accomplished!

As for his stated advice about reaching out to others for help when you are “short on a subject,” Earth to Bush…you are extremely short on the subject of Iraq. Check out that Iraq study group report. Get Laura the librarian to read it and give you the Readers Digest Condensed version as soon as possible. YOU NEED HELP and you need it now. Laura gave you great advice on the rug and trust me; she can really help out on this Iraq deal too. Take your own advice buddy, ask for help.

Does it bother anyone else that the leader of the free world, the President of the United States of America finds it difficult, if not impossible to string three consecutive coherent sentences together? Is he melting down or has he always been this incomprehensable? Remember during the election and then re-election cycles when George W’s big winning characteristic was that he was plain spoken and easy to understand. I can’t understand anything he says anymore. It’s getting worse every day. It’s like he speaks an entirely different language than English and he’s trying to translate it each and every time he opens his mouth. Couple his inability to communicate with the fact that he’s disconnected from reality and surrounded by sycophants and you have the recipe for a national disaster. Welcome to our long national nightmare….the Bush years.