Well, today is George W. Bush’s 60th birthday. Joe at AmericaBLOG says it pefectly:

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. And, thanks for making the world a much more dangerous place. Your incompetence, lies and ineptitude have created a frightening legacy.

Both of the major national papers today analyzed the fact that Bush is likely to leave the world a far more dangerous place than when he took office in 2001. Bush already told us that the Iraq debacle will be left for the next President to solve, but that’s just one crisis.

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Happy birthday, Georgie…may your next 60 years be a dizzying as your first 60 years.

Those kids over at ThinkProgress seem to like reading the White House daily press briefing transcripts even more than we like reading Playboy. Check out today’s find:

QUESTION: As the President begins to do his homework leading up to the Russia trip, what are his current feelings about Putin? Does he remain a trustworthy friend, or has he evolved into something else?

MR. SNOW: First, he has not “begun” to do his homework.

President George W. Bush is soaring sky high in the polls. Oh wait, President Bush’s approval rating has increased by 1%, even after the U.S. Military dropped da bomb on Al-Zarqawi. He’s stuck at 37%.

This is not good news for the President. Good luck diggin’ out of this hole!

From Political Wire:

The poll showed 38% feeling more confident that the war will reach a successful conclusion, up from 33% in April. However, President Bush’s overall approval rating ticked up just one percentage point to 37% since April, “but so has the proportion disapproving his performance, which now stands at 58%.”

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Ok, let’s hear what you got…

To follow-up on Peter’s post from yesterday…

George W. Bush is a man who doesn’t have too many regrets. In fact, one of the classic lines from the second 2004 Presidential Debate was in response to a gentleman’s questions to the President asking him to detail three mistakes that he’s made as President. Here was his answer:

GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have made that decision. And I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I’ll stand by those decisions, because I think they’re right.

That’s really what you’re — when they ask about the mistakes, that’s what they’re talking about. They’re trying to say, “Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?” And the answer is, “Absolutely not.” It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he’d been — invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it’s a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on national TV.

But history will look back, and I’m fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.

But what’s that you say? Now, after over three years of a failed war in Iraq and more scandals and incompetence than any American can stand, President Bush finally admits that he’s made some mistakes.

Now granted, they are relatively minor mistakes. I mean, who cares that at the beginning of the Iraq war Bush told the terrorists to “bring it on?”

In a presser last night with British Prime Minister and cute lapdog Tony Blair, Bush finally admitted to some of the mistakes he’s made on Iraq.

From last night’s joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

Listen, I want our troops out, don’t get me wrong . . . but it’s vital that we do the job. A loss in Iraq would make this world an incredibly dangerous place.

The world is a dangerous place. Bush just doesn’t get it. The fight in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror or the hunt for Osama. Fighting in Iraq is not making America safer. We are making enemies in every region of the globe, we are alienating our strategic and diplomatic allies and we are losing thousands of brave American lives.

Bush also addressed his pompous missteps that directly led to the deaths of many innocent American troops. His answer:

President Bush admitted Thursday he regrets “tough talk” like telling Iraqi insurgents to “bring it on” and saying he wanted Osama Bin Laden “Dead or Alive.”

“I learned a lesson about expressing myself in a more sophisticated manner,” Bush said. “In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted, so I learned from that.”

Answering a question, Bush listed the “bring it on” comment from July 2003 and “Wanted Dead or Alive,” as well as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, as mistakes made along the way since the 2003 invasion.

The President has credited First Lady Laura Bush with urging him to lose the cowboy talk.

Earth to Bush!

What’s the deal with Dick? He used to be so lively. Full of vim and vigor. But these days he just doesn’t seem as excited about destroying the world as he used to be.

Or maybe it’s just like a cat after a big meal. He’s consumed a century or two of American pride and prestige in a few massive bites. Somebody needs a nap.

“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
- Gov. George W. Bush, Sep. 29, 2000, Saginaw, MI

George W. Bush is a very important man. He has a very important job. George makes important decisions. It’s hard work being president. While the lows can be low, the highs are so high.

“You know, I’ve experienced many great moments and it’s hard to name the best,” Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

“In such a situation it takes a while before one understands what is happening,” Bush said. “I would say that this was the hardest moment, once I had the real picture before my eyes.”

He’s such a regular guy. Wow…