The URL:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/05/bush.question/
So, is Bush really that much in control after all?
Are the anti-Bush libs really underestimating him? 
Um… it is just sort of a silly accounting issue.
If you have $5 and I give you $5 and you go and buy a $5 crack rock and a $5 sandwich, have I given you $5 to buy crack only if you use the exact same bill as I gave you? Or did I really give you the money that got you the sandwich? Or did I pay for $2.50 towards each?
Where can you get a crack rock for only $5?
Lots of places. Think of it as half the size of a dime rock.
Being from NYC, a more important question:
Where can you get a SANDWICH for $5?
Getting back to the point of the thread, I saw that earlier today and laughed. I can easily see Bush appearing “confused” about this – I mean, it’s so clear to him that funding groups providing abortions is wrong and that funding religious groups that do other things is right. I said in another thread that there is no way simple logic will make him re"think" this one. It appears I was right.
Of course, since we only have the Dems word that he was confused and the Repubs word that he wasn’t, I don’t see us getting an actual answer.
I’m confused about this. As best I can tell, Bush has only signed two executive orders, EO 13198 and EO 13199 (scroll down to “Presidential Documents”). Both of these Orders direct increased support for “faith-based community organizations.” I’d love to fulminate at length about the disgusting double-standard we have here, but I’ll let that lie temporarily.
EO 13197 was Bill Clinton’s last Order. There is no EO 13200 yet published in the Federal Register. So where is the January 22 Order that removes funding for charities that fund abortions? I haven’t seen it.
The press was also abuzz about Bush’s Executive Order that demanded that Clinton’s “midnight regulations” be witheld from publication for sixty days until the Bush Administration could figure out how to put the kibosh on most of them. There is no Executive Order. The “order,” such as it is, is a memorandum written by Bush’s Chief of Staff. It took me hours to figure that one out.
As best I can tell, this sort of thing is not unusual during a transition, and I don’t think the resulting confusion particularly casts any aspersions upon the new administration. I hope things tighten up soon, though.
It’s telling that W gets uncomfortable and blushy when confronted with the hypocrisy and lies that his ultraconservative puppet masters use him to propagate. A nation waits breathlessly for a sign that he’s worth a damn as President. Maybe if he keeps on sprinting frenetically to the right - something he hasn’t stopped doing since taking his hand of the Bible - , he’ll go all the way around, and end up on the left.
Kudos to Pelosi for putting him on the spot so publically, even though she’s kind of a fence-sitting hypocritical hack on so many issues, going back 'way back when - NAFTA, etc.
David B’s right, though. Compassionates will continue to insist that he’s an incompetent, bumbling, foolish loser who disgraces the office of the Presidency worse than any Clinton could ever imagine; Conservatives will continue to insist that he’s an intellectual titan, a man who hauled himself up by his own bootstraps, and who toils to unite the country under some convenient construct of the so-called “shared values” which have been decided are best for us. So the question is moot.
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle-a dolt, who would be harmless as your nextdoor neighbor. But not someone you want to have access to NUCLEAR WEAPONS! GAh!
Hold me!
Guin dives under the desk clutching her stuffed chameleon
Yeah, right, like Mr. Cheney lets him get near the nukes.
But what if he waits until Mr. Cheney’s asleep…and slips down in the middle of the night to touch them… because they’re so nice and shiny?
WAAAAHHH!!!
Don’t relax too much. Cheney’s had 4 heart attacks, including 1 last November, and his job as regent is the most stressful he’s ever had.
Now for the second pertinent question:
Where can you get a stuffed chameleon?!?
Hallmark. It’s a Beanie Buddy. His name is Rainbow!
My God! That website makes me want to kill!
I’m just curious: are any of you moderate Republicans out there starting to get nervous?
That Gov. Bush signed an order that he didn’t understand?
Reports are that he never reads, just asks for a verbal summary then makes a desision.
So Card or Cheney just has to punch his buttons in a 15 minute conversation and the decision goes the way he wants it to.
Since he never does his own reading or checks primary sources to see if he’s been handled, he’s at the mercy of whoever controls his ‘executive summaries’.
Lets hope no one person (or group of cooperating persons) ever gets to completely control his information supply…
tj
I note that the only three direct quotes in the article are from people paraphrasing the events in their own words.
When did this forum change from “Great Debates” to “The Latest Gossip”?
I think it’s a little late for hoping that doesn’t happen.
I’m no expert on American politics, but I can’t see that the decision making at the top level is so different. Thus I defy any leader of any country to read everything placed in of him or her and also have the time to check primary sources as well (isn’t this why civil servants and advisors are hired?). It would be an impossibility. Am I expected to believe that no American president to date has relied on anyone other than himself and has never asked for a precis of the material in front of him? And has spent hours and days away from his colleagues searching through primary sources? What a monumental task!!!
I suspect that people are choosing particular incidents and simply twisting them in order to show Bush in a light which they want to see, rather than get at the truth of the situation. But that’s just my feeling.
This was not an order to change a few light bulbs in the White House. This was not even a standard modest increase in funding for a minor social program.
This was an executive order, a typically heavy-handed method of governance that Americans take extremely seriously. Its subject governs $425 million of overseas funding. It’s subject: abortion, perhaps the most provocative issue in America.
Bullshit. An executive order comes from the desk of the President itself. If he reads nothing else, he should read his own writs in which he preempts the legislature, no?
Well, why hasn’t the White House released a transcript of the proceedings then? I am sure Pelosi wouldn’t mind. That would clear it all up.
MR