Fruit Salad With the Prime Minister (The Neediest President in History, Part 2):
And so it was that James Baker III, oozing the kind of reptilian evil that we expect from the half-men, half-crocodiles that slither from the putrid pools of 41's inner circle, said to a Senate Committee regarding his Iraq Study Group's list of nearly four-score recommendations: "I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say, `I like this, but I don't like that, I like this, but I don't like that.'" Yes, Baker was there to save the nation from Iraq and 43 and 43 from himself, but no one gives a damn. When it's time for an empire to fall, it must fall. So when 41 became a weepy bitch over Jeb's imminent passage from public life, it was the pathetic whine of a fallen patrician, the end of the goddamn line.

For what was 43's press conference yesterday but a chance to hunch over in the ditch once more and toss dingleberries at the media, the degraded man, not so much a president anymore as a dalmatian, bred to be a proud-haunched firefighter mascot but merely capable of licking his own anus instead of actually saving anyone from an inferno.

Fruit salad? Hey, listening to Bush, Jr. yesterday one got the idea that we were watching a jiggly Jello mold with a coconut topping. It wasn't just the usual state-the-obvious-firmly lines: "[T]he Palestinian-Israeli conflict is important to have — is important to be solved." Or the bizarro dropped half-sentences that are more insulting than incoherent: "I talk to families who die." And it wasn't the moments where Bush demonstrated his ability to magically pull synonyms out of his ass: "I also believe we’re going to succeed. I believe we’ll prevail" (which was followed by a descent into Howard Hughes-like echolalia: "Not only do I know how important it is to prevail, I believe we will prevail. I understand how hard it is to prevail").

No, no, it was the nutzoid insistence on his ability to "understand" and "read" things that made Bush seem like he needed the approval of someone, anyone, at this point. From the ridiculous statement of "I understand what long deployments mean to wives and husbands, and mothers and fathers, particularly as we come into a holiday season" to the disturbing admission regarding the ISG report: "To show you how important this one is, I read it, and our guest read it. The Prime Minister read — read a report prepared by a commission. And this is important," it was part of a litany of demonstrating how great and wonderful he is, please love him.

But also how bugfuck insane. Said the President of the United States, once again, "And one of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home." Have we really, sadly, horribly not advanced in our thinking in the last five years past that?

Fruit salad? Hell, at this point, we'll be lucky to get out of the next two years without having all of our salads tossed.