Sock and Awe: Need to Release Some Pent-up Aggression as the Bush Administration Limps to a Finish?

President George W. Bush likes to say that his administration is "sprinting to the finish." Well, I suppose if you count the continued trampling of our civil rights -- right up until Jan. 20th -- a form of sprinting, than he'd be right. Bush and his cronies are wasting no time in pushing through horrible new regulations -- as a lovely parting gift to the nation, including the President-elect who will have to clean up this mess.

From a horrible narrowing of the Family and Medical Leave rules, to the disastrous expansion of so-called "conscious exemptions" related to workers providing reproductive healthcare (simple stuff like birth control and referrals, not just abortion), to new permissible -- and scarily intrusive -- techniques for collecting information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing, to new environmental regs that create significant exceptions to rules requiring scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered species or impact climate change. These rushed through regulations are a case of so little time, so much damage. Actually, here's a great chart of all the midnight regs coming down the pike.

So, if you're feeling a little additional antipathy towards W. and company in light of about 100 new regulatory missles aimed our way in these last weeks, I have a great suggestion for you to work out that aggression. Inspired by the now infamous Iraqi shoe hurler, some creative folks have created the Internet game, Sock and Awe. It's kinda like whack-a-mole, only you get to launch shoes at the president himself. At the time of this blogging, 33673756 shoes have successfully found the mark -- and presumably left one. The site also lists the top 25 "Bush Shoeing Countries;" not surprisingly, the United States tops the list, with France a close second. But you might be interested in the other 23 countries making up the list. Even the peace-loving Swiss are getting into the act.

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