Our Sociopathic President

I read about this in MoDo's column today, but had to see it in a straight news article for it to really sink in. This is just another example of the appalling lack of empathy that Smirkboy has -- the kind of lack of empathy that's indicative of a sociopathic personality.

This guy goes to visit wounded soldiers in a military medical center -- many of them amputees. And just as he equates his cushy no-show National Guard gig with the men who fought in Vietnam, now he's equating clearing brush on his Texas "ranch" (just how much fucking brush is on that place, anyway?) with the wounds of the soldiers he sent to Iraq:

Brooke is also home to an amputee care center, which opened in January 2005. In September, ground was broken here on a $40-million rehabilitation center. The first such center, which opened in early 2004, is at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Bush said that while on vacation at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, during which he cleared brush for exercise, he had received a two-inch scratch on his forehead "in combat with a cedar."

"I eventually won," he quipped, adding that he had dissuaded hospital staff from providing first aid for the cut.

How on earth must a 21-year-old kid, perhaps one who has played sports all his life, perhaps one with a new wife and a baby, who wonders how he's going to manage the rest of his life minus one or more limbs, feel when this guy makes jokes about "combat with a cedar"?

Yes, the Bush apologists are going to make excuses for him joking to prove what a "regular guy" he is -- the kind of guy that people voted for because they think that a beer buddy would make a great president. But the fact of the matter is that these kids are maimed for life -- maimed in a war that was started on lies and bullshit; maimed in a war that this president has botched. Legislators from this president's party have voted to cut veterans' health care, and he has done nothing to stop them. And then, in an effort to pretend he's one of them, he cracks jokes.

This man, this president is scum. He is a foul, vile excuse for a human being, and we should all be ashamed that he represents us to the world -- and to the increasing number of young Americans who are coming home in pieces from his fuckup.