What's in a Bush?

Now that we have a lame duck congress and an even lamer duck president. How shall we talk about the incompetent who has been forced upon us? I pondered and wondered and thought about this question... and then I saw an email from the Word-A-Day folks and I believe they hit the nail right on that damn little silver head.

albatross (AL-buh-tros) noun, plural albatross or albatrosses

1. Any of the Diomedeidae family of large, web-footed seabirds.

2. A persistent wearisome burden, as of guilt, for example.

[Apparently an alteration of Portuguese or Spanish alcatraz, from Arabic al-gattas (the diver, name for a kind of sea eagle).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=albatross

The name of the Alcatraz Island near San Francisco, the site of a former maximum security prison, has the same origin.

The metaphorical second sense of the term goes back to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the poem, a mariner kills an albatross for no reason. His shooting down of the bird brings a curse to the ship, and his shipmates throw the carcass of the dead bird around his neck, thus giving a powerful idiom to the English language. As a penance, the wizened mariner wanders, recounting his tale.

Sure applies to ol Bush-leaguer, doesn't it?