That Was a Real Good Thing You Done, George.

At first when I heard that the Republicans were finally standing up to Bush, I was thrilled. That was before Tony, the irritable handyman, a guy who I hired to build me some bookshelves, detailed for me a different way to look at it.

But first let me backtrack for a second. Having come to political consciousness during the Nixon/Johnson/Ford debacle, I have never really gotten over how the things I initially didn't believe about the secret workings of the U.S. government all turned out to be true. Come on; Enemies lists? Wiretapping the phones of protesters? CIA assassins? Yeah, right.

Once I made that leap, I have never been able to completely discount bizarre theories. And I worked in talk radio for a while so I have heard some very creative ones. Still, when people send me little movies to download about how the Bush administration was behind 9/11, while the sensible part of me files this with the rantings of the troglodytes who think we staged the moon landing, a more paranoid part of me puts the details on hold for reviewing at a later date. A wry little voice asks me why we had all those red and orange alerts right around the time of the election, and not since?

And of course the events of late have been completely surreal.

Which brings me back to Tony the irritable handyman's theory.

He keeps referencing the episode of The Twilight Zone starring Billy Mumy as the freakish twisted six-year-old Anthony Fremont, a grade school kid with the ability to terrorize the people of his town if they don't think happy thoughts or act according to his wishes -- Just by using his mind. In case you never saw the episode, when any of the adults in the once happy town of Peaksville tried to defy or discipline him, young Anthony would disfigure or kill them by wishing them into "the cornfield" or transforming them into a jack-in-the-box. And thus did six year old Anthony Fremont obtain complete control over all of the remaining adults, who discover that the only way to assure their own safety is to keep saying "That's a very good thing you done, Anthony." For example, in one memorable sequence, when one man is alarmed to see that Anthony has mutilated a gopher, rather than grab him and punish him instead he recites, "You done good, Anthony. That's a real good thing you done to the gopher."

Following this plot line, perhaps we now need to worry about what the increasingly desperate Bush/Cheney are going to do to win back the love? George Bush is after all a rich dry drunk with sociopathic tendencies. What a guy with those kinds of chili fixins thinks of as a reasonable response is anybody's guess. So if he feels like everyone is turning against him, and, like Anthony Fremont, he begins to feel unloved, will he start to remember back to how everyone loved him after 9/11? And what scary conclusions is he going to draw from that?

As Tony the irritable handyman says "For our own safety and the safety of our cities, maybe its time we all start saying 'That's a real good thing you done George. That Iraq war, that was a real good thing. And all that wiretapping? And Katrina, the way you knew all about that hurricane? And the deal with Dubai Ports? You done real good, George. That was a real real good thing you done.