The answer to a thousand questions

The man pictured here vetoed legislation yesterday that would have provided funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and would have set a non-binding -- repeat: non-binding -- timetable for orderly withdrawal of those troops.

That was just the latest of this man's blunders.

Indeed, the attitude symbolized by the man's gesture in this photo is the answer to a thousand questions, including these:

• Why are even such venerable conservatives as William F. Buckley worried about the very survival of the Republican Party?



• Why are so many retired generals rushing to disown this man and his ill-conceived, badly-managed, disastrous war?



• Why is this man's presidential administration, which came to office on vaunted claims of business-like professionalism, widely viewed as the most incompetent (the war, Katrina, the environment, Walter Reed, the Justice Department, etc.) since Herbert Hoover's?



• Why has this man hired 150 graduates from Pat Robertson's clown college, Regent University, to work in his administration?



• Why do even some Republicans, including this U.S. senator, speak publicly of the possibility that this man (and perhaps his vice president, as well) will be impeached?



• Why have this man's cronies from the business community (Haliburton, et al) reaped such obscene profits from the war in Iraq?



• Why did a crook like Jack Abramoff have such entree at the White House under this man?



• Why were oil-company executives secretly allowed to write this man's energy policy?



• Why was a right-wing talk-show host paid taxpayers' money to promote this man's policies?



• Why was this man's General Services Administration (which has yet to grant final approval of a new federal courthouse in Rockford) instructed to use its resources for the benefit of Republican congressional candidates?

The questions go on and on and on. The man's answers to all of them are represented by his gesture in the photo.

But he's a man of God. That's what the TV preachers tell us.