I was right. I AM right. Bush is a 13-year-old playground bully at heart.

QUESTION: Mr. President... You said that the increase in attacks is unsettling. That won't convince many people [who believe] that you're still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq...

PRESIDENT BUSH: It's bad in Iraq. Does that help?

The Washington Post actually reported a version that was one word terser: "That help?" In either case, NO, Mr. President, IT DOESN'T fucking help, you miserable, disgraceful child. I know it's a vain fantasy, that it would take a miracle for any judicial body we may see evolve in your lifetime to equate (a) your brutal, cavalier attitude toward U.S. participation in unwinnable combat with (b) premeditated murder, but I would like nothing more out of this life than to see you tried for war crimes and sent to a particularly rat-infested prison with a particularly mean-spirited head chef, there to hear your captors pronounce, every time you came up for parole, that it was important to the national interest to "stay the course" and keep you locked up.

What is the one great truth?

People suck. That is the one great truth. It's hard to believe how badly people suck. They suck and suck and suck, and just when you think there's no more suction in them, they go and suck some more. If I were a religious type, I'd swear everybody on the planet besides me dropped to their knees before bed every night and said, "Dear God, people don't suck nearly enough. Please make them suck more. Amen." And then, while they're down there, to convince God to appease them, they suck him off.

Case in point: Best Buy (as I have previously reported) has had my laptop (which is my primary computer) in the shop twice since 15 October on my 3-year Performance Service Plan. The first time I took it in because it stopped booting properly. They had it for 3 weeks and replaced the hard drive. That fixed the booting problem but the older, underlying problem—spontaneous, random hibernation—continued, so I took it back. This time they had it for 2 weeks, replaced the motherboard, and sent it back. They handed it back to me without the power cord that had accompanied it when I took it in. My bad, I didn't realize this until I had got home, and it was the day before Txgnbn, so it was the following Monday before I trudged back to the Best Buy (uphill 18 miles in the snow) and asked for my power cord. The Geek on duty looked around and found it not; so he initiated an order for a new one, free of charge. Eight days later—Tuesday of this week—my new cord shows up. Last night is the first bit of free time I have to set up my laptop anew; I quickly find out that, pursuant to the replacement of the motherboard, TWO OF MY THREE USB PORTS ARE NON-FUNCTIONAL. I spend an hour on the phone with Best Buy (53 minutes on hold; 7 in conversation with the brutally, cruelly named "Customer Care" department) only to learn that there is nothing I can do except take the laptop back to a Best Buy store for a third time and let them send it away for a third time to be repaired.