"I am Oz, the Great and Powerful" (Don't look at the man behind the curtain)

Marty Kaplan:

At his press conference today, President Bush rallied his remaining base -- those scattered cult members who can always be counted on to agree with whatever he says. To all other Americans, his message is: It's my way, or the die-way.

I'm the decider.

Except for deciding how many troops we have in Iraq, in which case, General Casey is the decider.

Except for deciding what benchmarks the Iraqis have to meet, in which case, Prime Minister al-Maliki is the decider.

Except for deciding what "getting the job done" in Iraq means, in which case, Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Laden are the deciders.

Except for deciding if it's "stay the course," or "strategy for victory," in which case Karl is the decider.

I'm looking forward to the Baker-Hamilton report. If it agrees with my strategy for victory and getting the job done, I will read it. I call this attitude "flexibility."

There's a big difference between timetables and "timetables." When I talk about them, they're good. When Democrats talk about them, what they're saying is, the terrorists should have a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia.

Some people in Washington say we're not at war. Those people are enabling cold-blooded killers. I do not question these people's patriotism, just their IQ. I will not say who they are.

If I personally did not believe that we will achieve victory in Iraq, then I would not keep your loved ones in Iraq. So the thing I want you to remember as you go to the polls is that whether American kids die in Iraq or come home to America depends totally and completely on what I, George W. Bush, personally believe.

One would think that the people feeding the clichés into Bush's earpiece would recognize how absurd this chain of inconsistencies sounds. But then, these are the people who think Ken Mehlman doesn't look ridiculous when he says he has no authority to ask that the ad telling Tennessee Republicans that Harold Ford and his Big Swinging Dick are going to take your lily-white women from you be pulled from the airwaves.