The Cretin of Crawford.

WHO SAID?: "The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

ANSWER: Adolph Hitler, "My New World Order", Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933

In 2000, my Harvard-educated, WASP uncle in Connecticut said, "I'm not voting for that idiot, I'm voting for his team". Perhaps the shared sentiments of some 40 million Republicans who surely couldn't, with a straight face, exclaim greatness in then-candidate Bush. As one who's recently fled the GOP, I've never been unclear that sheer buffoonery, laziness, intellectual silly putty, and a torn cowboy hat cannot be the hallmarks of presidential greatness. Indeed, this "DUI President"-rendered unconscious at the hand of a mere unsalted pretzel-daily dangles the keys to 10,000 thermonuclear warheads. His VP, "Swingin'" Dick Cheney, also boasts not 1… but 2 DUIs.

What is perhaps most shocking is the level of mean-spirited machismo that would make even Machiavelli's eyeliner run. The front cover of mad cow investigator John Stauber's latest book, Banana Republicans, boasts the prescient slogan: "You're either with the Republican Party or you're with the Terrorists! There's no middle ground!"

Eeeeek! It's BushCo.-captained by a hairy-backed simian; our own Commander-in-Chimp knuckle-walking the world stage. The spectacle makes even the homeless guffaw, third graders shriek of cooties, and garbage men yearn for a similar Yale diploma.

At any given conference, world leaders cringe when the lips of our Presi-dunce part in preparation for a thought to escape. Commander Dubya then leans forward only to splutter saliva bubbles and a meaningless glottal noise. With crinkled brow, our War President strains to recalibrate his mind for speech. Then, suddenly, out comes a gurgle, then a wheeze-sounding surprisingly like the last throws of a diesel air compressor. Many an experienced neurosurgeon would drool at the opportunity to observe, under microscope, the president's fine brain. Imagine the barely visible blips on the spectroscope screen as they observe real-time synaptic misfires in which that dormant organ betwixt his hair-sprouting earholes fizzles and hiccups in semi-connected chain reaction.

Poor POTUS (President of the United States). POTUS reportedly is unable even to maneuver through the daily newspaper unassisted. His staffers are charged with reducing complex and often highly nuanced issues down to several lines on an index card then to be handed over to Him. A quick glance and our man in DC says he then draws instructions "from above". Could it be? Imagine if the much maligned Clinton were publicly channeling Jesus through "conduits" like Pat Robertson's 700 Club?

Dubya's dramatic, yet humble pipeline to the "Lord" (Jesus/God? Both?) surpasses even the infallible talents of the mystical Pope, who, himself, must feel spiritually dwarfed by this Chosen One. In truth, the only other globally-known despot gifted with direct cell service to God happens to be the furry-faced Bin Laden.

Let us be fair about fundamentalism, though. To the more tasteful, it is certainly an off-putting obsession since word fundamentalism comes from the root, fun·da·ment (f n d -m nt) n., which means ass. Therefore, fundamentalists think through their ass.

Meanwhile, the more earthbound of Team W are comprised of the most sinister collection of scallywags any cracked-out Shakespeare could imagine. Macbeth? Ha! Hamlet? Dog doo! Even the nocturnal stupors of the late Richard Nixon, in his most bug-eyed power-hungry state (while vomiting bourbon-soaked emesis over the White House piano like a gargoyle Ed Sullivan) could never envision slipping into a catch-me-if-you-can bullet-proof negligee like the Patriot Act. In it, Mr. Bush has sovereign immunity. To wit: "The King can do no wrong". Through the so-called liberal mass media, He beseeches His viewership to keep a watchful eye on their nitwit neighbors-all potential terrorists. Not one of the Republic's vaunted TV anchors dares practice journalism and challenge the nasal proclamations of the Commanding Orangutan. Is the great menace really the hundreds of millions of Homer Simpsons, endlessly grunting at the trough of feckless consumerism while their King's mighty peek-a-boo proctoscope is applied enthusiastically by Attorney General Strangelove?

Of whom do we speak? Of the Lord's Eunuch-the statue-draping, nipple-covering, self-castrating flesh-pudding not only delights in phone-tapping 24/7, but also spying on every chatroom, email, fax, Cell, PDA, credit card purchase, library checkout, and magazine subscription. Let's not leave out each person's digital cable and satellite viewing habits. All this zealously executed with the full capabilities of the supercharged Rumsfeld Pentagon delivering nonstop freedom at the end of an electrified cattle prod.

Leading BushCo, as Grand Dragon, is none other than Richard "Dick" Cheney, who as CEO of the overfed Halliburton Corporation, cunningly sold Iraq $73 million in oilfield services between 1997 and 2000, then tactically planned for Halliburton to receive a billion dollars (that's $1,000,000,000.00) a month (right now!) in government contracts for the Iraq invasion.

Had Thomas Jefferson foreseen what sort of monkeyshines would be twisted around our Founding Fathers' sacrifices after November 2000, he could have characterized the presidential title, in advance, as "His Excellency, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd degree and Supreme Military Pontiff of Petropolis and Evangelical Executioner of Universal Liberation through the Lord's Army.

The seemingly "virtual" and sweaty-palmed Mr. Bush, when surrounded by his team does make for a delightful show, though; rather like a lithium-sedated Chihuahua in the midst a dozen Pit Bulls. The whole bunch of freakish zealots furiously keeping the world whipped up in an unstable frenzy in order to see pals profit off of 150 year-old combustion engine technology. It's the Coalition of the Drilling (or is it the Killing?) endlessly sucking gooey black liquid dinosaur shit out of a 168,927 square mile sandbox.