Today I want to be more hopeful

And at some point, I will have to simply turn away from our President and focus on something positive. It is hard. Yesterday, I felt more ashamed to be American than ever before. Today, I feel only marginally better.

What can I say about our President? Besides the fact that he is a complete ass. Yesterday, our thoughtless leader admitted that the CIA secret prisons actually exist and went on to defend our treatment of detainees:

"Bush insisted that the detainees were not tortured.

'I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture,' Bush said. 'It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it.'"

Yeah, I don't believe that for an instance. He has authorized it in the past and has worked with his thuggish AG to redefine the terms to allow more torture. His VP fought tooth and nail against a bill banning torture. As Andrew Sullivan notes, approved procedures for the CIA do include "waterboarding" and "induced hypothermia" or other such techniques once used by the USSR against people like Solzhenitsyn.

Bush then went on to push for fast approval of his military mock trials tribunals where inmates could be convicted on secret evidence. You know, like they do in China and other repressive countries. Where they come out and say, "you are guilty and we have the evidence. We won't tell you what the evidence is, or show it to you, but we know you are guilty and we are going to kill you."

I have some hopes that there are still sane Republicans in the congress, but their numbers are few. Lindsey Graham at least recognizes that our treatement of detainees will come back to haunt us, and challenged Americans to consider how they would feel if their sons or daughters were tried using such methods.

It isn't easy, however. The American people continue to be skeptical of the Prez, but also slowly incorporating his lies. Some 65% of Republicans believe that Saddam was involved in 9-11. Why? Because the President and his people have lied about it continually. Even this week: "Bush to Katie Couric today: 'One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.'

Todd Gitlin is incredulous:

I am not making this up.

Then the President of the United States hesitated for a fraction of a second--perhaps he half-realized what had just come out of his mouth--and so he went on: 'I believe it, but the American people have got to understand that a defeat in Iraq, in other words if this government there fails, the terrorists will be emboldened, the radicals will topple moderate governments. I truly believe that this is the ideological struggle of the 21st century. And the consequences for not achieving success are dire.'

The truth came first. Spontaneously.

As the man said: It's a hard job, being president of the United States."

Never fear, though. Our President will continue to push for his unconstitutional and immoral policies, and he will accuse those of us who disagree of being more like the Nazi sympathizers.

He is clearly the worst President this country has ever seen. I can't even think of anyone close.