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SPECIAL POST-ELECTION EDITION


Being the first casualty of the post 2006 midterm world we now find ourselves in, Donald Rumsfeld gets a mention this week. After seeming dodging yet another bullet as Bush gave him his highest support, Rummy was subsequently fired less than a week later. And that move sure did piss off more than a few on the right, who felt (perhaps correctly) that firing him earlier might have helped their chances of holding at least the Senate this past Tuesday. Though by no means the key cog of all that is wrong with the Bush team's foreign policy, he is certainly deserving of much of the blame. He will not be missed and I expect that we have not seen the last of Rumsfeld, whether he's appearing before congressional hearings or being charged with war crimes in Germany. So much the better.

Two of our favorite targets here at America's Least Wanted were removed from office this past week, so I think they should share a special mention here. I speak of course of George Felix Allen Jr. and Rick "Man-Dog-Sex" Santorum. They have combined for something like a dozen posts here at ALW and have provided me endless material, running the spectrum from calling a dark-skinned American "macaca" to suggesting that gay sex is akin to bestiality. While I am certainly pleased that they can no longer subject the country to their particular brand of morality and angry partisanship in the Senate, I will definitely miss their charming shooting-fish-in-a-barrel-ness quality that made them such easy targets around here.

The master of all things spin is apparently another casualty of last Tuesday's elections, Mr. Ken Mehlman. Yes, I understand that it's his job to spin his party's candidates in the best possible light, but to do so to the point of absurdity strains any credibility one may still have, which, in Mehlman's case, isn't all that much. Case in point was election night, Mehlman continued to spin that Senate nominee Michael Steele was going to make history by being elected. This after the race had already been called hours before and the vote tallies were solidly backing up the early call. Oh, and there was that little bit about him being outed on Larry King's show by Bill Maher. Being a citizen of the blogosphere for years, this was no big surprise as rumors had floated around for some time, but I'm certain that somewhere in this country, an ignorant conservative voter felt betrayed as one of them sissy homo-sexuals had sabotaged the GOP from within.

Of course, no election day top five would be complete without a special George W. Bush mention. To say that the guy has had a bad week would be an enormous understatement. First he loses the House, has to fire his Secretary of Defense, loses the Senate, has to go to his old man to bail him out of yet another failed business, this time in the form of James Baker and Robert Gates, and finally, disgrace of all disgraces, has to use nasty words like bipartisanship while sitting next to that "San Francisco Liberal" Nancy Pelosi. Of course, one of those first acts of bipartisanship is to again nominate the highly divisive John Bolton after recess-appointing him last year because Dems refused to accept him back then. Methinks someone should get his Highness a dictionary.

Now, I turn to one final group, the biggest losers this past week - the Conservate Noise Machine. After a string of electoral wins over the last several years, they firmly believed they had entered into a world where Republicans would hold a permanent majority. In doing so, they failed to follow the Boy Scouts' most basic tenet - be prepared. And prepared they certainly were not as they now find themselves running around muttering any and all sorts of nonsense in a vain attempt to make sense of the strange new world they now find themselves occupying. Whether it's Rush Limbaugh lying to his listeners by claiming that though their team had lost, he didn't really care all that much because they were losers anyway; or Hugh Hewitt, who categorically refuses to accept certain aspects of reality as they do not fit into his odd worldview. In his addled brain, Bush has never been more powerful and should continue pursuing his radical (though not to Hugh) agenda. And of course, no mention of Bush's deluded minions would be complete without a special nod to Jonah Goldberg. His ramblings about Bush spending 24 hours in a sweat lodge then hunting a bear with a knife and eating its still-beating heart and throwing the bloody carcass onto Helen Thomas is the stuff of legend. Actually, I would wholeheartedly support Bush doing something like Jonah described, as there would never be a better case made in regards to Bush's mental incapacitation. A quick impeachment of DICK Cheney and we have ourselves President Nancy Pelosi. And if you think the righties are nuts about losing Congress, imagine their reaction to that!