work on lots of peoples lincolns that run into the thousands on suspension systems…and i went outside… Sounds like the compressor is bad or blown fuse but it could also be some other…

The faux flag wavers tried to use the terrorist threat to enrich wealthy donors, award huge no-bid contracts and keep the defense contractors in business. The troops were used when they were of use politically, then abandoned as soon as they became veterans.

– he or she wrongly says, stepping deliberately around Bill Clinton

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Cruelty is one of the biggest hallmarks of NPD. Really readers, take a minute and read up on the disorder. Just google “Narcissistic personality disorder” and read the descriptions of George Dubya Bush.

Which is not a criticism of Shaun's piece. It's just to say that he was a great deal less harsh in his assessment than he could, with justification, have been.

Whatever comes out of their mouth doesn't even remotely have to reflect observable facts. The truth is concocted soley within the mind of the sufferer and the rest of the world had better go along with that…or else… (hence, Iraq).

They often aspire to positions of power since they believe that the rest of the entire world exists soley for their amusement or benefit. Other people have no real value, only ephemeral as it serves the narcissist's current agenda. Once that agenda has been served and the person no longer fits the current scheme, they are discarded like used tissue (Colin Powell. and a host of others).

I urge anyone who strains to understand the Dubya phenomenon to study up on NPD. And while you do, you might want to tie your jaw shut because I guarantee you it will be falling on the ground.

I believe you'll get it with Obama, and by extension, the Dems, next year. If not in the media, among those of us who are awake, because they're not only in power, but _firmly_ so, and they no longer have bogus GOP-related excuses on hand for _their_, the Democrats', failures.

Obama's “accountability” specifically begins with some equivocation about that word and concept — the UAW, the “greens,” the wackier activists on the “progressive” fringes, who did their job as foot soldiers for Obama, will hold him “accountable,” to their dreams and demands, right from the beginning. (No telling what the reaction will be when the dreams are replaced by reality.)

* * *

Marlowe: The odd end-zone and rest-of-field misbehavior extends to other sports and other forms of entertainment (including “news”), that now commonly features gimmicky graphics and stupid sound effects. (Not just Fox, but CNN's political shows, for example. Arrgh.)

* * *

As for Shaun's degeneracy, well, eight years is a stretch, but this last several weeks, we can understand, and in my case, he warned me yesterday (at least that's when I managed to see it).

Though it is fun to ask –

How much worse would people like Shaun have been had George W. Bush succeeded that other object of degeneracy, none other than Ronald Reagan?

I think we need to apply the “Ronald-Reagan, Official Olympic” naming nonsense to the case of George W. Bush just to deal justice to the Shauns of this world. It's the George Bush Washington Monument on George Bush Constitution Avenue by which you might go on a sightseeing journey before going to George Bush Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. (The latter is certainly more acceptable and tolerable to normal people than “Barack Obama – Hillary Rodham Washington, DC, Global Transportation Center and Complex.”)

My hope: accountability. President Bush, and moreover our elected Congress, have cooperatively destroyed the processes of government that assure accountability and checks and balances.

Yes, hold Obama's administration to the accountability fire. Fair enough.

History will be kinder? I couldn't care less. I'll be dead. Additionally, though, I find it more constructive to use recent relevant reality to learn from our mistakes, and to create solutions here and now.

Another hope: the end to “anti-American,” “un-patriotic,” “with us or against us” mentality that comfortably wraps the Republican party in it's element of security. I don't think the memory of Rove will die a peaceful death. As long as I live I'll fight against that political-speak, and will never support any candidate that uses it as a political tool, either party. As big as the failings of a Bush legacy might be, I consider the dividing of America and his constant campaigning (versus governing) his biggest fallacy.

You make a huge and widely overlooked point in noting that we Yanks have been uneasy about our “empire.” I would argue that is historic and can be traced at least to the Great White Fleet.

I count myself among the ambivalent. Being powerful and using that power discretely and wisely is perhaps the greatest non-domestic challenge for a president and commander in chief since WW2, and I claim no special insight, only unease.

The signal failing of neoconservatism, which as you imply translated neatly into the greatest failure of the Bush administration, is that its foreign policy was based on a misreading of history, which combined with decades of accumulated grudges and most especially Bush 41's failure to march all the way to Baghdad, was a recipe for disaster.

This is going to be a singular challenge for Obama because he cannot shrink from the real possibility that there will have to be further U.S. military intervention abroad. Congo comes to mind, no?

Hahaha…DLS, I am not totally ignorant of the strange rituals of you natives.

(Though, anthropologically speaking, I find what you call “football's” continual bum-patting, and the peculiar dances in the end zone, very odd

Hahahaha…Rove will be forgotten to history. We all know that.

When the last Kossack dies in his retirement village . . . his BDS ravaged lobes unable to process anything . . . his nurses will likely wonder who was this “Rove” he was muttering of with his last drooling breath.

Like “Rosebud” it will be a forgotten footnote (”Do you think it was a favorite pet? Was he trying to say “Rover”?”)

History obscures the spear-carriers. . .and elevates the princes.

What's most noteworthy right now is Obama's disappearance (fleeing) from the Senate. He has chosen to exploit his emotional and political “capital” nation-wide (there likely are many people in this country who didn't just vote religiously for Obama, but also who actually believed his “OFFICE of the PRESIDENT-ELECT” lecturn advertising on the lectern recently, for example) and devote his time mainly to forming his Cabinet and the rest of his team to start work next year. (Actually, he is currently in the process of learning how to do this; what has been revealed to the media is awfully clumsy or ham-handed. What does gun ownership have to do with qualification for office in his administration, for example?)

Obama is choosing to “punt” (Marlowe: US-style-football expression — cede possession of the football to the other team, kicking it downfield to hopefully force the other team to begin in poor field position) and leave the current, present bailout and economic problems in the hands of the current Congress and the Bush administration. I would not be surprised if Obama in fact discussed just this action with President Bush during their private meeting. Obama may have been alerted early as well as to the unlikelihood of good UAW-payoff bailout prospects this year for Detroit, and may choose to wait and to “do something better” early next year after taking office. (Worse for us, of course.) Note that the more stupid and scummy and sinister things being sought by the Dems (bailout with no serious conditions; targeting only management, not the overpaid UAW; no demand for business change, no management sacrifices, no immediate end to the JOBS bank and other UAW parasitic idiocies that merit no public money whatsoever, and viability plans before being given handouts worse than what is sought for Wall Street; idiotic sappy “green” political demands being made of the companies; fascistic state ownership stakes in the companies*, et cetera) can be floated publicly and tested for public approval or disapproval without tainting an absent Obama.

In addition, it allows Obama's successor in the Senate (likely, Jesse Jackson, Jr. from the House) to be emplaced there before Obama begins in office next year. Go ahead and do the change now, the logic indicates.

I suspect that many of my fellow GOP-leaning voters (lesser of two evils) accept the logic of the Obama “disappearance” and this is where Shaun's latest complaints comes in, though he didn't see it as well as some other users here. The nonsense with the Wall Street bailout (which if we view it most negatively, is to date first one, and now a second, way of misdirecting public money to Wall Street insiders) is simply something that is directly associated with the Bush administration, and Obama need not touch it in any way. He can let the current Dems test public opinion for many different candidate loser-vote-buying actions that are contemplated, both with banks and mortgages, and with the Detroit dinosaurs (the healthy US auto industry has been deliberately ignored and avoided in discussions except from a few GOP critics of the stupid Detroit bailout). Then he can exploit those that get the most approval or show the most appeal (or that benefit his special interests like the unions the most) and make “more progress” more quickly next year.

In the meantime, the sickening bailout of Wall Street is indeed a sad final part of the Bush legacy.

* The Dems made an ambiguous statement recently that is _scary_ to decent, normal people: they referred to “new” directors of the Detroit companies. That can mean replacing the worthless boards of directors the companies have now; nobody objects to that, because the companies, under their directorship as well as management, have failed. But “new” can also mean the installation of “new” as in _additional_ directors, namely federal officials or agents. This is sinister as well as fascistic. Idiotic political demands such as “green vehicles” that we've heard of are far from the worst that can be conceived of, with direct federal-government ownership and _control_.

Equity shares are bad enough! NO AMERICAN LEYLAND. (”AmCars” [gag])

What? Nothing about Rove?

“I would much prefer that my boss's 401(k) plan not taken a $100,000 crap.”

Most folks have lost money in the financial collapse. However, will Bush be blamed by history for this?
Some losses were paper losses that will be recovered when the market upswings.
Also, it is a global crisis . . . and nationally the Democrats (e.g., Barney Frank, Rahm Emanuel) have their fingerprints all over the corpses of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.

I suspect that . . . as with the recession of the 1980s, which Reagan got a pass on as it ended the plague of stagflation . . . Bush will get a pass on the economy as well.
Similarly, social problems tend to be ignored down the road.

The KEY problem of Bush in American history, I would argue, is Iraq.

I have always been amazed . . . as a non-American conservative with a very left American partner . . . how ambivalent ALL you Americans tend to be about your empire.
Of course, you have an empire.
The United States has maintained an imperium over most of the world for a half-century now.
Echoing the Roman empire, the US military has even divided the globe into what are effectively proconsular regions. It does not matter that there are sovereign states in those regions.

But most Americans seem to be reluctant imperialists. You want the Middle East to be a certain way . . . and you want low-priced oil . . . but you are reluctant to exert the force to attain those ends.

Were Bush a British or a French imperialist, there is little doubt history would have judged his Iraq adventure positively. Consider how fondly the British look back on the Raj.

But Shaun may be right . . . American historians may likely to be more critical of Bush as a neo-imperialist.

I think that TMV has already how an article about what a great manager Obama already is. So it is hard to say that he is ont running anything. If the first few days of the transition are any indications, the media will have to get used to a large number of trial balloons. How many names have already been link about cabinet posts?