In The Real World

There is much sadness and terror.

Distracter in Chief:Iraq has become a charnel house for the victims of escalating sectarian slaughter. On Saturday, a car bomb killed 28 people in Shiite-dominated Basra, and hours later gunmen killed nine Sunni worshipers in a mosque. On Sunday, on a road near Baghdad, assassins pulled travelers out of their minivans, sorted them by faith, killed nearly two dozen Shiites and let the Sunnis go. Yesterday, men wearing police uniforms grabbed at least 56 people from bus stations and travel agencies in Baghdad and took them away -- no one knows why, no one knows where.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new government remains toothless and ineffectual, despite his pledge to end the sectarian violence. On Sunday, he failed yet again to reach agreement on who will run the only two ministries that matter -- the ones in charge of the army and the police. The butcher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most prominent figure in the armed Sunni insurgency and the most hunted man in Iraq, remains at large and periodically manages to issue messages inspiring his followers to continue their jihad. (Just like his hero, Osama bin Laden.) Yet the president spent his weekend radio address pushing "a constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the United States as the union of a man and woman."

Immigration, the last artificial crisis, at least is a genuine issue. But the president and his allies did such a job of rabble-rousing that the best outcome, at this point, is probably for Congress to deadlock and end up doing nothing. The National Guard is headed for the frontier, apparently under orders not to do much of anything. Immigrants are still marching north, employers are still hiring them and self-appointed sentries are still patrolling the border, where something really bad is bound to happen sooner or later.

Yet the issue of "profound importance" the president urgently wants to highlight is "protecting the institution of marriage."

With a divorce rate as high as it is, why not focus on trying to lower that instead of preventing people who love each other and will never love us, alone? Maybe because it won't collar any votes? Why doesn't Bush get the fact that he was hired by the people and his responsibility is to ensure the health and welfare of all of us, not just a select few?

The more he tries to distract, the less America pays attention. Wonder what he will think of next. Not.

What a fiasco his second term is tuning into, or is it becoming a farce?

Tags: Bush, Iraq, marriage amendment, fiasco