Extra Boomer: You’d have thought anyone still took him seriously

• In George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech Monday night, the president performed a decent impersonation of a man who commanded the respect of the people he was talking to. It was more than a little surreal.

Here was the sanctimonious incompetent who lied our nation into a completely unnecessary war that is costing us thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars; who presided over the “privatization,” i.e. looting, of essential services such as many of those once performed by FEMA; and who has seriously, even dangerously, weakened America’s moral and economic standing in the world — here was that same guy, mustering the gall to tell Congress that its pet projects were undermining “the people’s trust in their government.” This isn’t a case of the pot calling the kettle black; it’s more like the entire stove getting into the act.

• Also, this just in from Satan. The Evil One announced today that a special place in hell is being reserved for one Kaye McGarry, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board member. Beelzebub noted that McGarry had earned her new honor when, at the recent school board retreat, she opposed a new CMS policy which aims to protect students from being bullied. The policy, said McGarry, could lead to an “aggressive, pro-homosexual agenda in classrooms.”

This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2008.