Now, I’m not one to advocate violence…not even mild or cartoonish violence, really. But, that said, I can’t help but appreciate Muntadar al-Zeidi’s utterly non-lethal loafer lobbed at the lobotomite-in-chief in Iraq. Really, the only better metaphors I can come up with to accompany George W. Bush off the world stage would have been if al-Zeidi had thrown a rotten tomato or if a giant hook had come out from stage left and yanked him away. Maybe accompanied by Jamie Farr banging a gong.

I still reel with disbelief that it took the United States 8 years…8 !%*$(#@ing years!…to be rid of this bumbling clown and his wrecking crew despite the fact that he was never legitimately elected President in the first place. I hardly need to list the casualties of his administrations near-decade-long killing spree (which, of course, means I’m going to…at least a little). You all know the words and can sing along: tens of thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iraqi and Afghan lives, the Gulf Coast, who knows how many detainees in Gitmo and “black sites” around the world, our civil liberties,  the US economy, the US treasury, the moral and ethical standing of the US in the world, the American electoral process, science, reason, et cetera, and so on, ad nauseam.

All were either killed or at least savagely mauled by the man the late, great Molly Ivins famously called “Shrub” and his pandemonium of either minions or puppeteers, depending on who you believe. Me, I think it was a bit of both. And really, talk about putting the lie to Ralph Nader’s inane assertion back during the 2000 election that there was no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. There is simply no way that the swamp needing draining as we go into 2009 and an Obama administration would be quite so vast, deep, and virulent had the rightful winner of that 2000 election not been cheated out of his win by well-documented GOP dirty tricks, then an ethically-tainted and razor-thin Supreme Court majority, and then finally by Gore’s own pusillanimity.

But, digressions aside, we’re just over a month away from the final curtain call for this walking, living, breathing disaster of a Presidency, and the audience has rendered its verdict. 79% of Americans polled said they won’t miss Bush when he’s gone (which is odd because he still supposedly has a 29% job-approval rating…are 8% of us dumb, confused, or just willing to say whatever they think the pollster wants to hear?). No wonder Time magazine was so quick to anoint Barack Obama the Person of the Year…they’re as keen as the rest of us to put the Dubya years firmly behind us.

And one brave, foolhardy man who is now no doubt being sorely abused by US and/or Iraqi summed it all up for us brilliantly with some finely-flung footware and a choice epithet in Arabic. Who says performance art is dead?