Fantasy Dome 0

The Current Federal Administrator clearly does not see himself as a liar who makes up wars and destroys the fabric of the Constitution of the United States of America.

But, then, the White House has admitted that it makes up its own “reality.”

When I was much younger, I used to make up my own reality also.

But I knew it was made up and it usually wore off in four to six hours.

Not four to six years.

Which leads me to another musing: the phenomenally stupid idea of a politician’s (or anyone else) “looking to his or her ‘legacy.'”

What more does that mean than that someone is doing something because of how it looks, not because it is the right thing to do”?

We already have a perfectly good word for persons who do things because of how those things look, rather than because they are the right things to do:

“Hypocrites.”

A “legacy” (or, more properly, since no Last Will and Testament is involved, a reputation) grows from all the things someone has done, not some last, desperate, “Casey at the Bat” effort to salvage an already failed reputation.

Mr. Bush can look to his legacy all he wants.

But all of us are forced to look at his legacy: failed wars, wasted lives, failing economy (oh, yeah, Raymond Krauss says “Buy gold”), lies, deceipt, and (there’s that word again) hypocrisy.

And no amount of last-inning grandstanding can overcome the score of the first eight innings. All the pitchers pitches–sales pitches, that is–have been used up.

Sorry, in this game, Mighty Bushie has already struck out.

Anyhoo, back to the Fantasy Dome:

Dan Froomkin:

“I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions,” Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 2 News. Bush held several interviews with Middle Eastern journalists last week in anticipation of his trip to the region, which starts tomorrow.

“When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative,” Bush said of himself to Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: “I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human — human being, and believes in human dignity.”

The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation — “liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria.”

On a personal basis, Bush told Bilbassy-Charters that he hopes that people would know “that he hurts when he sees poverty and hopelessness” and “that he’s a realistic guy.”

Bush’s self-image contrasts sharply with his image among his fellow Americans. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the job is doing, and a CNN poll in November found that 58 percent of Americans rated Bush either a poor president, a very poor president, or the worst president ever.

Bush’s view of himself is particularly delusional as he heads to a region that remains traumatized, angry and distrustful on account of Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, his antagonism of Iran and his perceived crusade against Islam.