While President Bush continues to march to the beat of his own special drummer and Vice President Cheney continues to beat on any war drum he can get his claws on, the American public continues to hold its collective breath and count the days (606) until these imperious rogues just beat it. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post captures the mood quite well:

In the Rose Garden, It Was All Al-Qaeda

Is there no safe haven for President Bush?

It happened midway through his news conference in the Rose Garden yesterday morning, in between his 10th and 11th mentions of al-Qaeda: A bird flew over the president and deposited a wet, white dropping on the upper left sleeve of his jacket. Bush wiped the mess off with his bare hand.

There was no evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible for this particular attack, and — who knows? — maybe the terrorist leader believes the superstition that bird poop is good luck. But just about everything else that came up during the hour-long news conference was traced to bin Laden’s terrorist network.

The session was called to draw attention to the fact that Democratic leaders had just caved in to Bush’s demand that the Iraq spending bill have no withdrawal timeline. But as frequently happens at presidential events these days, it quickly became al-Qaeda, all the time. Bush invoked the terrorist group 19 times and even suggested it was going after individual reporters’ kids.

“They are a threat to your children, David,” he advised NBC’s David Gregory.

“It’s a danger to your children, Jim,” Bush informed the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg.

This last warning was perplexing, because Rutenberg has no children, only a brown chow chow named Little Bear. It was unclear whether Bush was referring to a specific and credible threat to Little Bear or merely indicating there was increased “chatter in the system” about chow chows in general. [full text]