Jules Carlysle's Dumbass

Possibly one of the easiest-to-write books of all time, Jules Carlysle's "Dumbass" consists of over 500 pages of the disturbing, idiotic and just plain unintelligible remarks of the Commander in Chief.

While those seeking sophisticated political commentary should look elsewhere, "Dumbass" does make a convenient reference guide, providing plenty of ammunition for countering the arguments of Bush-loving friends and neighbors.

Part of a whole new genre of writing devoted to "Bushisms," Carlysle doesn't bother with much analysis, choosing instead to allow Bush to indict himself with his own words and interspersing priceless Bush quotes with lines from the likes of Jay Leno, Thomas Jefferson and Winnie the Pooh. For instance, Bush's incoherent 2002 remark in Crawford, Texas, "I came away from that summit that the small business person feels constrained by tax policy and regulatory policy and I was really appreciated the people coming," is preceded by a piece of timeless advice from Winston Churchill that Bush would do well to heed, "Say what you have to say, and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending-sit down."

Carlysle, a Canadian, says on her Web site, www.julescarlysle.com, that she first became interested in the American political scene in 2004, after a traumatic brain injury rendered her unemployed and housebound. Although left with reading difficulty and memory loss and considered unemployable because of her new disabilities, Carlysle found that she was still, in her own estimation, significantly smarter than the President of the United States, prompting her to begin work on "Dumbass."

The book doesn't contain a great number of particularly insightful or original observations. Some of the commentary is, in fact, quite hackneyed, consisting of the sorts of dull and all-too-obvious observations found on Internet message boards.

Unlike George W. Bush, however, Carlysle has a good reason for her less than flawless presentation. As she says on her Web site, "I've got brain damage, what's the president's excuse?"