Eight years of presidential press conferences, and this clown still hasn’t learned how to get through one without embarrassing himself over and over again.

Since this is apparently (see, I don’t trust him about anything at all) the last time I get to poke fun at a Bush presidential press conference, I’m going to go over the whole darn thing, and underline every last statement that anyone with any sense would still be cringing about a week from now.

I’ve thought long and hard about Katrina — you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge.

After hours of introspective soul-searching, George W. Bush — the compassionate conservative, if you remember, who only on Sunday exhorted his party “We’ve got to be compassionate conservatives.” — can come up with only one thing he might have done differently in responding to Katrina, and that is to land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge? This man has a real talent for vividly evoking the same word over and over again in fresh and forceful ways: asinine.

Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don’t know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were — things didn’t go according to plan, let’s put it that way.

Dear George, nobody but you would even think of calling “not having weapons of mass destruction” a mistake. Not even “not finding weapons of mass destruction”. Invading Iraq, now that was a mistake. Insisting on cherry-picking and distorting the intelligence to convince America that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that was a mistake. But finding that Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction was just inevitable. Not only was it not a mistake, dear George, it shouldn’t even have been a surprise. And, you know, you really can’t call something you knew in your heart to be true all along a significant disappointment. Not without doing significant violence to both the English language and the truth. But you, of course, have always had a real talent for doing significant violence to both at the same time.

I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged. … And I understand that Gitmo has created controversies. But when it came time for those countries that were criticizing America to take some of those — some of those detainees, they weren’t willing to help out. And so, you know, I just disagree with the assessment, Mike.

Priceless, vintage George Bush. Because countries that criticize Gitmo are not willing to take some of the detainees, that proves our moral standing in the world has not been damaged. Another of his real talents on display right there: trampling on logic with hobnailed boots

I’ll remind — listen, I tell people, yes, you can try to be popular. In certain quarters in Europe, you can be popular by blaming every Middle Eastern problem on Israel.

Why, in certain states in America, you can be popular by blindly supporting Israel no matter what it does, by letting the Prime Minister of Israel order you around, by letting him tell you to tell your Secretary of State what to do. Only a colossally mega-dumbass American politician would invoke Israel as an example when trying to argue that he doesn’t go for cheap popularity.

And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn’t worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States…

My sentiments exactly, Mr. President!

And some of them doesn’t like me, I understand that …

Grammatically consistent till the very end of his presidential tenure. But let the man finish:

And some of them doesn’t like me, I understand that — some of the writers and the, you know, opiners and all that. That’s fine, that’s part of the deal.

It’s not just the writers and opiners. Maybe you haven’t heard, but some 70% of us doesn’t like you, Mr. President, or care for what you did to the country.

And I built a team of really capable people who were there not to serve me, or there to serve the Republicans, they were there to serve the country.

A little verbal typo, there. He really meant to say “who were there not to serve me, or there to serve the country, they were there to serve Dick Cheney.”

Mr. President, on New Orleans, you basically talked about a moment ago about the photo opportunity. But let’s talk about what you could have done to change the situation for the city of New Orleans to be further along in reconstruction than where it is now. …

THE PRESIDENT: Sure, thanks. First of all, we did get the $121 billion, more or less, passed, and it’s now being spent. Secondly, the school system is improving dramatically. Thirdly, people are beginning to move back into homes. This storm was a devastating storm, April, that required a lot of energy, a lot of focus and a lot of resources to get New Orleans up and running.

This is surrealistic even for a Bush press conference. The question was what he could have done to speed up reconstruction in New Orleans. In misdirected response, Bush proudly points to the fact that people are beginning to move back into homes, almost 40 months after Katrina hit.

But Bush was nowhere near done spouting garbage about Katrina, and showing how deeply he has thought about Katrina over the years:

People said, well, the federal response was slow. Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It’s a pretty quick response.

Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely. But when I hear people say, the federal response was slow, then what are they going to say to those chopper drivers, or the 30,000 that got pulled off the roofs?

No wonder he thought Brownie did a heckuva job. As far he’s concerned, the only role the federal government was called upon to play in response to Katrina was pulling people off roofs. (And shouldn’t the brave and fearless National Guard pilot know not to call the guys who fly helicopters drivers?)

Funny how he remembers only the helicopter drivers pulling people off roofs, and he forgets everything else about Katrina, forgets especially all the unforgettable images from the Superdome that made all of America cringe in shame for days on end.

But that’s George Bush for you. In his presidency, it was always “opposites day”. And he was, after all, the compassionate conservative who came to unite, not to divide us.