Damp-fog of a marine layer this Monday afternoon, as bright, clear sunshine much earlier has been replaced by deep-gray, amplified in muffled tones.

Beyond ‘Fat Tony’ dying and the ensuing GOP cluster-crazy over President Obama’s constitutional rights, was a truth-chime from The Donald among the chaos of last Saturday night’s Republican debate:

“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?…They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none…George Bush made the mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty.”

Bizarre even by way-freaky standards…

(Illustration: George Jr. introspects himself, found here).

In a show of strange, The Donald was booed by the debate audience when he blubbered the above.
Politics is a shit-pie eaten at everyone’s peril. In a bleak irony, George W. is to campaign for brother Jeb! in South Carolina tonight, reportedly in an effort to get some traction for a stinkin-sinking presidential campaign.
GW Bush is supposedly looked upon favorably by 84 percent of South Carolina Republicans, so there’s that — and this reminder from the Guardian this afternoon:

Since leaving office, Bush has largely avoided politics and given only a handful of interviews.
The ex-president instead has devoted his time to writing his memoirs and taking up oil painting — his body of work including portraits of fellow world leaders, a picture of his dog Barney and a naked self-portrait in the shower.

A real wish is for him to ‘not‘ be a former president at all.
In an interview at The Daily Beast this morning with writer Stephen King about his new venture — starting today on Hulu — “11/23/63,” about time travel and preventing the JFK shooting, the author said this about going back and stopping bad shit from happening, like maybe the presidential election in 2000:

The Bush election is a pretty good one — I would put that in second place.
In fact, it’s even mentioned in 11/22/63 where Al says, “If you could go back in time to the year 2000 and spread around even $100,000 in Florida and promised it to people to vote for Gore instead of Bush or Nader, then in that case, Al Gore becomes president and there are big changes.”
But that’s only second place.
The big one is 9/11.
If someone could go back and make one phone call and say, “There are bad people getting on airplanes right now and here’s where it’s happening,” there would have been huge changes: the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the lives that have been lost, the amount of blood and treasure that’s been spent on those things, all because those guys went through the checkpoints with their box cutters and got on those planes.

Although King didn’t expand, and for the hindsight-looks of it, maybe officials in a Gore presidency would have listened to those CIA briefings way-more closer, and even if they couldn’t have prevented the actual events of Sept. 11, 2001, most-likely there would be nowhere near the nightmare-fearful world we inhabit nowadays.

Reality bites, however — via McClatchy in June 2008, and John D. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence,” Rockefeller said in a statement.
“But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”
“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced,” Rockefeller said.
“Unfortunately, our committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence.”

George W lied…