Not Just No But F*ck No, George!

George W. Bush today chose the Wall Street Journal - beloved of uber-right, warmongering, fighting-keyboardists everywhere - to run an op-ed wot he writed.

(Well, his name is on it - but the style suggests the real author was a certain foot-in-mouth White House hackess.)

The column begins:

Tomorrow, members of the 110th Congress will take their oaths of office here in Washington. I will have the privilege of working with them for the next two years--one quarter of my presidency, plenty of time to accomplish important things for the American people.

Together, we have a chance to serve the American people by solving the complex problems that many don't expect us to tackle, let alone solve, in the partisan environment of today's Washington. To do that, however, we can't play politics as usual. Democrats will control the House and Senate, and therefore we share the responsibility for what we achieve.

That's got to be one of the most twisted and calculated bits of spin ever to grace the WSJ's pages. The last six years have been a long litany of The Decider and the Republican's pursuing their Leviathan version of "politics as usual" and now suddenly he wants the Dems sharing equal responsibility "for what we achieve"? Translated, that means he is going to blame the Dems for everything that isn't achieved.

John in CD over at AmericaBlog counts the ways in which Bush is spinning the truth:

1. Bush refers to "the partisan environment of today's Washington." There is nothing of the sort. Today's Washington has been Republican, 100%, for six years now. Republican Supreme Court. Republican Congress. Republican White House. Republican governors. 100% Republican. So spare us the "partisan environment" crap. It wasn't partisan at all, it was uni-partisan. The Republicans controlled everything - the budget, the war, the economy - and screwed it all up.

2. Bush touts his accomplishments - tax cuts, education legislation, and the Patriot Act. He doesn't bother telling you that all of these things happened in the first 20 months or so of his presidency. He doesn't brag about a single accomplishment since that date, because he doesn't have one.

3. Bush apparently thinks his presidency started in August 2003, rather than January 2001.
"...since August 2003, America's employers have added more than seven million new jobs."
That's nice. How many more jobs does the country have since you actually took office from the Clinton administration?

4. Bush reminds us as to how badly he and the Republican have damaged our national security.

5. Bush thinks that what America needs right now is yet another tax cut. Why? Because Republicans no longer have any ideas. All they can do is bash gays, try to outlaw abortion, and cut taxes (oh yeah, and attack countries based on a lie, then screw it up).

6. Bush says that the lesson he learned from the 2006 election repudiation of his disaster in Iraq is that the public doesn't like earmarks. Someone needs to tell him that they don't like 3,000 dead soldiers either.

7. Bush wants us to believe that suddenly he, and the Republicans, actually believe in the values our nation is based on.

While Brendan Nyhan points out that even Bush's own economists don't believe his lies about tax cuts increasing revenue.

Matt Yglesias wonders where Bush's promised balanced budget is going to come from:

I'm dying to know where the cuts are going to be in this budget. Not, presumably, in defense, Social Security, Medicare, homeland security, or Medicaid. But to balance the budget while keeping the Bush tax cuts permanent without cutting those programs would require really, really steep cuts elsewhere. Certainly I wouldn't advise working together in a bipartisan manner with the White House on this. Either there are going to be some really egregious accounting gimmicks, or else there are going to be some proposed cuts that should be wielded as a mighty political bludgeon against those Republicans who, unlike Bush, need to run for re-election. Realistically, the best thing that can be done for the budget short-term is to allow the bulk of the Bush tax cuts to expire.

While The Heretik highlights Bush's domestic theme:

Bush’s focus on the future is the same as his focus in the past. Permanent tax cuts now will solve everything The next time they change the batteries on this endless looping and loopy message, do you think there is a chance maybe his handlers could change the content slightly?

Bush is setting the stage for painting Dems as obstructive if they try to change the course in any way, if they act in any way as if the GOP weren't still the majority, or if they begin to hold hearings into the multitude of ways in which he and his party have messed up America and the world in the last six years.

Not just "No", but "F*ck No", George.