[[img46422]] Eleven months ago, Bushco trotted out First Lady Laura Bush to try to improve the President 's approval level, see http://indymedia.us/en/2005/05/7237.shtml . I noted at the time that the problem for this administration is that fewer and fewer of us continue to look the other way (re: the administration 's failures) after a well-timed line. It was already more than insulting to our intelligence THEN.

Here we are almost a year later, more Americans think the President is doing a bad job, and again he is out there playing Bill Cosby. Mr. Bush, tradition or no tradition, six years into the job with around two thirds of Americans believing that you are failing at it, you do not have time to be spending an evening doing standup. Yours is the most important job in the world and we expect you to take it seriously. Think about it, all over this country, people take pride in their work and put in many extra hours to try to be successful at what they do. Then we turn on the TV and our President is there at a black tie dinner with a look-a-like playing the fool and hoping the laughs will distract us from the fact that we think he is awful.

Mr. President, while you were yucking it up with the glitterati, did you think about the fact that this month has been a particularly deadly one in Iraq, both for our soldiers and for Iraqi civilians? Seventy of our best and brightest young people died in Iraq this month in the war to protect us from non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Did you think about the fact that the Taliban are re-exerting control in Afghanistan? Yes, the Taliban, the folks who we should have been concentrating on defeating after they aided and abetted Al-Qaeda after 9/11 are making a comeback in Afghanistan while the bulk of our available conventional forces are bogged down in Iraq. NATO is concerned enough about the increasing threat that they are about to nearly double the amount of troops they have deployed there.

The wars, foreign policy, gas prices, economic uncertainty, leak-gate, wiretaps, investigations, all of this is going on but it is all fun and games for this President. Is there any wonder why we think he is in some kind of bubble, self-insulated from the realities of the country? Is there any wonder why his approval rating is threatening to dip into the 20s? Could the transparent attempt to make us forget his many failures with humor be any more insulting? The entire administration richly deserves the indictments and impeachment proceedings heading their way.