Another chimp bites the dust

The Bush Cabinet is one member lighter as its housing secretary looks for a new home

It’s difficult to decide what the best way in to this story is. Bush as a lame duck president? The subprime crisis takes down another major figure? The irony (I hope this is not an Alanis Morissette like misuse of the word) that the department that the Republicans wanted to abolish in the mid nineties is now kicking them in the ass?

Whatever, the fact is that the housing and urban development chief has packed his bags and is looking for a new home. One doubts that he will be left on the street like many Americans who have been shattered by the mis-selling (ok, perhaps over zealous selling) of mortgage products to those with bad credit histories and probably no realistic prospect of repaying them.

Alphonso Jackson has left the building. A video of him should be found here (if the link is more successful than his spell in the Cabinet)

According to the Post:

“Embattled Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced his resignation yesterday, leaving the Bush administration without a top housing official in the midst of a vast mortgage crisis that has shaken the global economy.

Jackson, a longtime friend and former neighbor of President Bush, departed after the White House concluded he had too many controversies swirling around him to be an effective Cabinet member, several HUD officials said privately.”

This is yet another nail in the coffin of the Bush presidency. John Updike once wrote something to the effect that history buries most men and exaggerates the height of those left standing. I wonder how Bush’s time in office will ever be positively reappraised by revisionist historians. Jackson is clearly an idiot who has managed to stumble out of a chimpanzee’s tea party. How can this be an advert for fixed terms? I wish Bush could be forced out of office by a motion of confidence.

Land of the free and homes for a lot fewer people than had been promised them.