These must be sad, lonely days for George W. Bush. As a lame-duck president with his lowest-ever approval ratings, his thoughts about a legacy must be grim. There’s the war in Iraq, there’s the dismal economy, and there’s nothing on TV anymore.
Plus, the release of Oliver Stone’s biopic W. this fall couldn’t have helped the president’s self-esteem. (Though, it is rumored that Bush said this of Stone’s work: “He did a heck of a job.”)
Obama has already declared dibs on closing Guantanamo Bay and (when not proving that Michelle has his balls in a jar) he reiterated his intent to dismantle Gitmo on 60 Minutes, which received its highest viewership in recent memory.
No matter how much we wish it weren’t so, America is split in two. The two sides—call them conservative vs. liberal, red vs. blue, or “real†vs. “eliteâ€â€”have very different dreams for America. And while, yes, at the end of the day we are all brothers, standing united with our fellow countrymen in times of turmoil, the two Americas have been playing a decades-long tug-of-war that has usually resulted in stalemate. The results of Tuesday’s election, however, will be a huge victory for one half of the country, and could finally steer America down a single decisive path.
Ever wish you could travel back in time to see how our presidential and vice-presidential candidates were represented online—before they became household names? Well, thanks to Google, your wish has come true.
In celebration of its tenth year, the quintessential search engine now allows users to surf the Web like it’s January 2001. Plug in the individual names and you get the results circa 01/01. If this were golf, guess who’d be the big winner in terms of hits? Give up? It’s Sarah Palin.
The results of the 2004 presidential election gave us, among other things, a potentially reverse-engineered acronym.
PEST, or post-election selection trauma, refers to an overwhelming dissatisfaction with and denial of election results that causes some to seek therapy. In 2004, the vitriol with which some regarded the re-election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had become unmanageably consuming. That’s the rumor, at least. An Internet search for the condition yields conflicting results. Among the legitimate-looking news reports of therapists seeing patients are sources that point to PEST’s dubious origins.
These must be sad, lonely days for George W. Bush. As a lame-duck president with his lowest-ever approval ratings, his thoughts about a legacy must be grim. There’s the war in Iraq, there’s the dismal economy, and there’s nothing on TV anymore.
