When are they going to tell us just to "lie back and enjoy it?"

"Let's see, how can we still make me the Dictatorer?"

Let's put those "signing statements" into effect.

As Digby says:

The 58% of the country who just want the Bush presidency to be over with are in for a rude awakening. Bush and Cheney are racing to rape and pillage the country as much as they can until they are term limited out. They just don't give a damn what the people want, never have, and they know full well that nothing will happen to them. In fact, performance in office is now completely irrelevant.

I made a crack about this yesterday at the Crack Den in comments, but I think it has a bit of legitimacy.

I'm no professional historian, but I've stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, and if I was to think of past historical figures that Bush and Cheney ultimately remind me of, it isn't the easy, intellectually shallow, and easy to discredit Hitler. Bush is pretty damn bad, especially by American historical standards, but Hitler was in a class all his own, with Stalin, Mao some distance behind, and a whole host of murderous thugs like Tamerlane somewhere in the rear view mirror.

No, Bush and Cheney remind me of the last of the Romanovs.

Bush has the shallow, unintellectual stubbornness of Nicholas II. He distrusts and even mocks people who are intellectually on a higher plane or actually make an effort to be intellectually curious. Like Nicolas II, he believes he has been ordained by God to be "the Decider" and therefore any decision is God's decision.

Cheney, on the other hand, has the narrow-minded haughtiness of the Empress Alexandra, along with the refusal to tolerate those who don't bow down to his small-focused ideals of good and evil -- and inability to consider any decision or statement he makes is not correct by that fact alone.

They also, have managed to create a militaristic Administration that goes looking for Tsushimas and Tannenbergs, only in slow motion.

And if you look at the Richard Perles, Paul Wolfowitz's, Laurie Myolries, and every blowhard at FoxNews, you have no shortage of Rasputins.

The one telling difference between our two autocrats and the two Russian ones, seems to be the latter at least possessed some degree of authentic personal warmth. Oh, and BushCo manages not to be anti-semitic, but rather have their minions take every possible opportunity to baselessly accuse their opponents of possessing that quality.

Say what you want, but that Cheney is the face that could launch a thousand ships...of people fleeing the country.

UPDATE: Stu brings us more confirmation of this analogy:

Nicholas's intellectual limitations and restricted social outlook might not have mattered so much had he relied on some of the talented and far-sighted nobles and bureaucrats who gained prominence during the last decades of the Russian Empire. But as often happens with weak leaders, Nicholas distrusted individuals brighter and abler than himself. Instead he dependended on relatively incompetent advisers and officials who mirrored his own conservative opinions.

Although occasionally charming and by nature gentle and kindly, [okay, it isn't an exact fit, but keep reading] Nicholas was weak-willed and stubborn. He often acted from instinct and intuition and then stuck to his position even when proven wrong, a trait that resulted in erratic decision making.