Three more weeks

We're almost there. We've almost reached the end of the worst U.S. presidency ever, at least in my lifetime.

As of this writing, we have only three more weeks to go with the smirking George W. Bush and the snarling Dick Cheney in charge of this country.

On their watch, we've seen the 9/11 attacks, the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, torture as U.S. policy, the systematic dismantling of the U.S. Constitution, the outing of a covert CIA agent for political revenge, the collapse of the economy, and the deaths of more than 4,200 U.S. troops in Iraq. Each of these things was preventable.

Good riddance, you two.

It can only get better from here.

As Ruth Conniff points out in her column in the December issue of The Progressive:

There will be much to hash out and much, no doubt, to criticize [in the Obama administration]. But the huge change -- from Dick Cheney to Joe Biden, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, from good ol’ boy heckuva job cronyism to brilliance and competence -- is worth savoring. So, too, is the hoped for change from cowboy unilateralism to internationalism, from torture and illegal wars to a more humane and sane future.

Amen.