Monday was a banner day for George W. Bush's former mouthpiece. Dana "Pig Missile" Perino took to Twitter yesterday gleefully anticipating millions of people losing their health insurance, and later, she was parroting Stormfront talking points on "The Five."

The "controversy" that was being discussed on "The Five" was a diversity awareness campaign in Minnesota. Of course, to Republicans, such efforts are terribly divisive and unnecessary, because as we all know, the real victims of racism in America are conservative white people. But check out Dana's contribution to this ugly exchange.

But co-host Bob Beckel approved of the campaign: “I think the message is the right one. And I also think it is true that if you’re white in America, you have advantages.”

“If you’re black in America, you also have advantages,” Gutfeld remarked.

“And if you are at a university and you happen to be non-white then you have advantages, all the advantages, right?” Perino agreed.

Yep, the real problem with this country is that the brown people get all the breaks.

No matter how you feel about the Affordable Care Act, there's something rather unseemly about gleefully anticipating the fact that 30 million people won't get the health care they need, that college grads who can't find a job and are burdened with student loan payments will get booted off their parents' policies -- and that sick children will be denied coverage because they've got a pre-existing condition.

Not that you'd expect civility from the former mouthpiece of the Bush administration.

But still, awful people.

Fox News hires as many ex-Bushies as they can get and there's a good reason for that. They all play a role. Like when they need someone to slam the UN, you can practically hear Roger Ailes scream, "Come on down, John Bolton!" Dana Perino went to bat for her ex-boss, George Bush, who under his watch damaged our society and economy so badly that you're lucky if you can get a cup of tap water and bag of chips on four hour plane ride. Eric Bolling is not an ex-Bushie, but is trying to get more face time on Fox. He's a very boring flame-thrower type if that makes sense to you. He says the most outrageous things - trying to be the next Beck, but lacks the delivery necessary to give it that Tabasco kick. Instead you get soggy Fritos. Anyway, the S&P downgrade has Bolling, Fox and Perino getting mad that George Bush's name still gets mentioned since the markets and our economy collapsed under his leadership.

Bolling:...A lot of finger pointing is going on in the Obama White House at your former boss, George Bush saying 'we inherited that recession, we inherited that debt, that malaise,' guess what they also inherited from you and your boss? An AAA credit rating. Weigh in on the first ever downgrade on American debt.

OK, I'll stop right there and say that Bolling is so stupid he made our points for us. While trying to find something positive to give Bush credit for in his eight year destructive career, he backed up the truth that Shrub screwed America's financial markets and our budget surpluses, but by the time Wall Street collapsed, he was leaving office so we still had an AAA rating by S&P. Thanks for the help, Eric.

Perino; The blaming Bush stuff is kinda expected, kind of annoying. If they think they're going to go into the next election year and they could win...

It was annoying that we had to live through the Bush years, Dana. Watching what we saw his administration do to America and all. It's kind of annoying listening to you complain about the mention of Bush's name, but I can always change the channel. By the way, where is Bush these days? He's been excommunicated by the GOP from the political scene since the day he left office since the GOP worries when his face does pop up on a TV screen. His mug does tend to remind Americans about his presidency which is not a good thing for Republicans. That's just a fact.

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You could tell, watching Sean Hannity this past week, that he has been chafing. His normal schtick is to take whatever's in the news and then figure out an angle for attacking President Obama over it and off he goes. But that's been really, really hard this week: All the news that he's had to talk about has been about the Japan earthquake. It's just been killing him.

Finally, last night he figured out a way: Obama filled out his NCAA pool! He's been shooting some hoops and playing some golf! Ohmigod!

Best of all, who did he bring on to help him slag Obama for all his relaxation time? In addition to Useless Tool Stephen Moore, the segment featured Dana Perino.

That's right, the former press secretary for the president who took more vacation time than any president in history.

You'll recall that Bush was notorious for vacationing in the middle of major crises -- the most notorious being his long break during Hurricane Katrina. He also notably went on vacation for an entire month after receiving that Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing warning, "Bin Laden determined to strike in US".

All told Bush spent 1,020 days of his presidency on vacation. Bush spent 487 days at Camp David, and made 77 visits to his ranch in Crawford during his presidency, and spent all or part of 490 days there.

But Obama's disengaged from global affairs because he filled out his NCAA bracket? Really?

One suspects that Obama could have walked across the Pacific, single-handedly repaired those nukes and restored those coastal towns and raised the dead, and these clowns would find a reason to blame him for letting the disaster happen in the first place.

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The Gulf oil spill is such a disaster of monstrous proportions -- one that makes the right-wing "drill baby drill" chants look, you know, ugly and moronic and short-sighted -- that you knew that somehow, the right-wing talkers would find a way to blame it on liberals. Because they always do.

Sure enough. Of course, they had to scrape down to X-Files Conspiracy Land to get there, but yesterday on Fox & Friends, ex-White House secretary Dana Perino and Fox talker Eric Bolling took turns at promoting a conspiracy theory that, somehow, the Obama administration had delayed attacking the leak because they wanted it to, as a way to shut down the offshore drilling that Obama had just announced the month before.

Or something like that.

Perino: But we don't know what happened. And it will be interesting to me -- I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You know, you have to wonder -- yeah, if there was sabotage involved.

Bolling: The question is -- and I saw Dana Perino earlier on the show saying, you know, why the delay in the response. You guys were pointing out, nine days before it was even addressed, 12 days before he made a formal comment. The question is: Did they let this thing leak? I mean, BP said maybe a thousand barrels a day, it went to five thousand. Did they let it leak a little bit and say, boy I don't know. The conspiracy theorists would say, 'maybe they'd let it leak for a while, and then they addressed the issue. ...

That would be a humongous accusation and probably the net result would be no different, but if they're going to try and pull drilling, that may be the way they do it.

The weren't alone. Limbaugh the Hutt was saying the same thing, only more explicitly:

Yep, El Rushbo believes "environmentalist whackos" may have blown up the oil rig to "head off more oil drilling".

Just wait till that slick hits. These people should need places to hide then. Because really, this is going to transcend dumbass partisan gotcha games. Yes, it's a product of conservative governance, and we know who to look for when it comes time to assess blame. But there will plenty of time for that later.

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Ex-White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told Greta Van Susteren last night on Fox that she wished President Obama would stop making those unpleasant allusions to her old boss, George W. Bush. Because, you know, Bush has not been taking shots at Obama.

Oddly, nary a mention of Dick Cheney was heard.

Perino was upset that Obama, in his interview for 60 Minutes, referenced Bush's military triumphalism:

Obama: And one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war.

There was a tendency to say, "We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise." When in fact, this is a tough business.

But Van Susteren at least pointed out that when George W. Bush was president, there was no shortage of blaming the previous administration:

Van Susteren: When President Bush 43 took office, was he critical in a similar way of President Clinton, his predecessor? Because one of the things I think we all want to think about, is we want our presidents having greatness about them and not getting petty.

Perino: I wasn't there at the beginning, and I think there is a certain amount of comparison that has to go on at the beginning. But almost everyone -- the left, right, and center -- columnists, even late-night talk-show hosts, are suggesting to President Obama that he lay off.

Well, no, Dana, you weren't around in the early years of the Bush administration. So maybe you weren't there for the endless list of things that Bush blamed Clinton for -- some of which included the following:

In 2002, he blamed Clinton for the recession.

Also in 2002, for the mess in the Middle East.

In 2004, for manufacturing job losses.

Also in 2004, for a shortage of flu vaccine.

In 2005, for "running from terrorists" and generally causing 9/11.

In 2006, for Bush's own failures in containing North Korea.

In 2008, for the soaring deficit.

But the best part came when she suggested Obama should not blame Bush for anything because Bush has been nice and quiet since the election and not criticized Obama:

Perino: Look, I think the other thing that you've seen is that President Bush has been an incredibly gracious post-president during the transition, and he said, 'President Obama deserves my silence.' and I would daresay that he deserves a lot more respect than he's getting right now.

Sure, Bush has been "gracious" because all Republicans have to do is send out Bush's surrogate thug, Vice President Cheney -- who in fact probably had at least as much to do with the direction of policy matters in the Bush administration as Bush himself did -- to do the dirty work for him.

Just last week, Cheney told the nation that the Obama administration was committing treason.

Before that, Cheney accused Obama of "dithering" on Afghanistan. He attacked Obama's decision to investigate torture policies under the Bush/Cheney regime. And he criticized Obama's Iraq withdrawal plans.

Yeah, pretty freaking gracious, those Republicans.

It's important to remind the public just how we got in this mess, and to remind them that the people who got us here want us to forget that fact. Their only hope is to cover their tracks, and Dana Perino is in the business of doing that.

Yep, I did a double take too.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has tapped a former top aide of his predecessor George W. Bush to a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting.

Dana Perino, the first Republican woman to serve as White House press secretary, was appointed late Wednesday to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

Created in 1994, the BBG oversees all of the US government's non-military international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America, Alhurra television, Radio Sawa, TV Marti, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe. Read on...

Where to begin? I understand that President Obama campaigned on the idea of bipartisanship, but this is truly an insult. Forget that he is appointing an intellectual lightweight who ran cover for, and spread propaganda for the worst president in American history. Dana Perino stood before reporters and routinely lied to them and the world -- even defending the use of torture, calling it "effective, safe and legal."

And now President Obama believes that she has the integrity to hold a key position in an agency that oversees government-sponsored, international broadcasting?

Perino's appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, so it's not a done deal, but we have to make our voices heard. Contact your Senators and let them know your thoughts on the matter.

As Digby sez -- Perino is just a member of the club, playing the game.

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Always willing to milk every possible drop out of an Obama scandal, even one of their own imagination, Fox News host Martha McCallum asks Bush's former Press Secretary Dana Perino--a highly impartial source, to be sure--if sending out "unsolicited" emails is a problem for the Obama White House.

Of course, the ever-so-concerned Perino thinks it is, and of course, thinks the Obama White House is getting a free ride on it:

PERINO: Imagine this: imagine if it was three years ago, and all of the sudden, people across the country who, unsolicited, started getting emails from Karl Rove. The media would have gone ballistic. They would have demanded answers, and I would have felt obligated to give some. And I think that standard should be….that the Obama administration should be held to the same standard. I know that if I all of the sudden started getting emails, I would wonder how did they get my email address. People get your email address through various ways, but when it’s the White House Political Advisor, it’s a little bit different and kind of creepy.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the big deal is. I got an email from David Axelrod myself. It was hardly unsolicited, as I know that the Obama administration kept their campaign email list, of which I was also a part. In fact, I was on McCain's email list as well, so I could keep tabs of what he was sending out to supporters. Methinks Fox News would not be so up in arms if President McCain had sent out an email to his supporters list.

But the attempt to claim that the mean ol' media would have beaten up on poor, persecuted Karl Rove for a similar infraction is laughable on its face. Karl Rove LOST FOURTEEN MILLION EMAILS which could potentially have implicated him in a whole host of infractions and the media yawned. Rove was improperly using his RNC email address to avoid the oversight law demands, and the media shrugged. Karl Rove had his stubby, sticky little paws in sandbagging Don Siegelman, the fired US Attorneys and the media didn't say boo. In fact, the media was so deep in the pocket of the Bush administration that they were part of the reason that the Valerie Plame investigation didn't go further than Scooter Libby.

So, yeah, Dana, let's try to draw an equivalency over Axelrod sending emails to a list culled from passionate supporters over a two year campaign and all manners of impropriety and illegality that Rove committed. It's so fair and balanced of you.

Everyone's talking about the Georgia/Russia hostilities, and the big question for the Sunday Shows is, will Condoleeza be upstaged by the neverending evening gown competition of potential Vice-Presidential nominees? They all SAY they're for "world peace" during the interview portion, but...

Face the Nation Georgia and Russia: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Politics: Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.); Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.).

Meet the Press Georgia and Russia: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Politics: Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.); Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). Panel: Joshua Green, the Atlantic; Andrea Mitchell; Chuck Todd.

This Week With George Stephanopoulos Georgia and Russia: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. Politics: McCain supporter former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.); Obama supporter former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Panel: E.J. Dionne, the Brookings Institution; Michael Gerson, Council n Foreign Relations; Jan Crawford; George Will.

Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace Georgia and Russia: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Politics: McCain supporter former Gov. Tom Ridge, (R-Pa.); Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. Panel: Jill Zuckman, Chicago Tribune; Bill Sammon; William Kristol; Juan Williams.

Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer Georgia and Russia: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. Politics: McCain supporter Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.); Obama supporter Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Georgia and Russia: Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.); Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). Panel: Candy Crowley; William Schneider; John King.

Dress image [click for larger] found at Princess Sparkle Pony, of course.

President Bush is counting the minutes until he leaves office and as he goes, he's leaving a trail of huge messes he's made during his disastrous reign. He's leaving behind two failing military conflicts and a broken military, a tanking economy and housing market, more Americans on food stamps, without health care and his feckless environmental policies have set us back decades in the fight against global warming.

Bush is scheduled to give a Rose Garden speech on global warming Wednesday in which he's expected to lay out his plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the surface, this seems like a step in the right direction, right? Not so much:

Treehugger:

Could it be? Could the Bush administration, as the Associated Press and many other news outlets have now reported, really be turning over a new leaf and contemplating taking up "new climate change proposals" to avoid a coming "train wreck" of new regulations? Here's how the AP reported on a news conference held by White House press secretary Dana Perino in which the tentative discussions were addressed:

"At the meeting, White House officials outlined a range of options that were being considered, from simply proposing a set of "principles" to proposing to cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to two individuals familiar with the discussions. Read on...