Ari Fleischer

I saw your performance Wednesday night on Hardball. At first I was going to say that segment made me want to throw up in my mouth, but that would be wong. It made me want to throw up in yours.

Mr. Fleischer, it truly boggled my mind that you could sit there smiling and utter the words “Bush recovery” together, until I remembered your previous employment as a paid liar. I’m not sure there can be a bigger straw man than an oxymoron, but for the sake of argument let’s assume you believe at least a tiny bit of what you said.

Let me offer the photograph above into evidence. I took it two days ago in downtown Portland, Oregon. You’re reading that correctly, it says eighty percent. That’s how sadly fucked this store owner is. Its a brutal time to be in retail, period, but this person happens to own a luggage store. It turns out that people don’t need a new suitcase for their staycation.

I’m not saying the Bush administration was bad for everyone. If you’re Erik Prince, for example, you probably spent much of the last eight years laying in bathtubs full of benjamins sipping dirty martinis. Prince was born into money, though, so he probably would have been doing that without Blackwater, just with smaller bills. Meanwhile the other ninety-five percent of us were staring at our blood running down the bathtub drain.

As disgusted as I was to hear your rationalizations, I’m very glad you’re out there talking up GW. Chris Matthews didn’t invite you on his show out of generosity. It’s a big help to President Obama to have a bunch of Bush cronies trotted out in front of the cameras right now. Try as you might, you can’t spin your way out of responsibility for this financial mess. The American people know better.

So, Ari Fleisher, please try harder.