What else do they want? More tax breaks. There’s always room for more tax cuts in their view. Clamping down on individual bankruptcy. Less environmental restrictions. He wasn’t able to bust Social Security yet but he’s working on it.
In other news, Bush gives India a pass on signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not before extracting important concessions from the world’s largest democracy
Because I know we’re all so dedicated to the truth rather than circle-jerking around our agendas, we should at least consider this story from the NO Times-Picayune:
Around this time we have (if what that blog site reports is correct):
“He remains very, very interested in this situation,” Brown said. “He’s obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he’s asking questions about reports of breaches. He’s asking about hospitals. He’s very engaged, and he’s asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask.”
Well, how engaged he was?
How telling it was that at the time he was supposed to protect America he was more engaged in telling America to support the highway robbery the Medicare medicine plan was.
But next day he will show how engaged he is, no?
I will say it again: the Timeline Avoidance System (TAS) works great for right wingnuts, accept no substitutes!
Suppose it is granted that GW asked “How are things going?” after the storm made landfall. This is entirely different from asking questions in order to assure yourself that the planners knew what they were doing during the prestorm planning/briefing sessions.
In the former case it’s merely finding out if the plans worked. In the latter case it’s exposing gaps in the planning while there is still some time do do something about them.
Since we’re all so dedicated to the truth rather than circle-jerking around our agendas, we should at least consider whether the President’s defenders have been able to produce any of these transcripts where Bush asks these “really good questions.”
Because this is one of those recurrent talking points of the White House insiders: that Bush asks all these great questions. But no outsiders have ever been able to catch him in the act, AFAICT.
Kevin Drum asks, “In any case, how about releasing all the transcripts of White House conversations regarding Katrina during the first few days of the disaster? Or does executive privilege only count for stuff that makes the president look bad?”
I for one would like to see some evidence for all these penetrating questions that the President’s aides keep telling us about.
Bush has delivered plenty for his base. The economic fundamentalists have gotten budget-busting tax cuts and the religious fundamentalists have received jaw-jaw. Which at bottom is what they really want.
Also, Bush has been careful to play a strong leader on TV to the maximum extent possible. Witness his Hollywood cowboy act. Note his reluctance to admit mistakes: it polls poorly, confuses his base and may cause a certain share of the generally disengaged swing voters to peel off. (Though in cases of telegenically transparent incompetence --such as Katrina-- admitting error was mandatory. Still, W deserves credit for holding off on this task for ~5 years.)
Remember, the modern conservative is in it for the emotions and feelings of ideology, and not substantive policy discussion. Hence the emphasis on personal attacks, moral umbrage at miscreants (and sometimes minorities, depending upon the individual), flag- waving nationalism and obtuse word games.
Business conservatives and the professional class are another kettle of fish, but they’re trending Democratic anyway (witness the state of NJ).
Before W, politicians pursued the base during the primaries and the swing vote during the main election. Bush/Rove had the insight, fortitude, discipline and moral cowardice to carry off an entirely different strategy. They deserve our qualified admiration.
Upcoming penetrating Presidential questions:
“Why do we have police?”
“What are roads for?”
“This thing called a ‘fork’ to the left of my plate - what am I supposed to do with that?”
I finally saw the video. There is no doubt in my mind, that Bush was being warned that Katraina would be bad -real bad. His comment after the storm hit, regardless of how we hear it - “nobody anticipated” vs. “nobody could have anticipated” - tells me that he was trying to cover his ass, while also telling us all that we are stupid. I don’t care what the exact wording was, Bush was telling us that nobody had any idea what was happening - that’s a lie in my book. Likewise I don’t care about the fine semantic shadings of overtopping, overflowing, and breaching. That sort of quibble makes no difference to me.
Amongst others. I think that friend Johm would largely agree with our assessment of GeeDub as a shit-witted nincompoop with delusions of competence. He simply disapproves of Bush-bashing.
He is entitled to his opinion, but I find it almost impossible not to play “Gotcha” almost every time Bush does (or doesn’t do) something. I can’t stand our pres. It’s that simple.
Amusing, but I always am a little wary of the “Bush is dumb” line of attack. It’s inaccurate and it doesn’t swing any votes, since most can distinguish between decision-making skills and mild dyslexia.
Bush isn’t dumb: he’s a political hack with a short attention span. A more comprehensive description would be a Bad CEO.
When the empirical world is treated as irrelevant all that remains is ideology and loyalty.
I agree that Bush isn’t dumb. And though I really don’t expect his supporters to come up with any examples of his asking penetrating questions that they’d want to see on the front pages of the newspapers, the true target of my lampooning there was Dickerson, and what his standards seem to have been. (And I’m going to hope and pray that Bush didn’t actually ask the question he cites.)
Well, that too. But I’m willing to give him his due in this: he’s a very bright and perceptive political hack. He’s still won just about every political fight of any importance to him. He lost on Social Security Deform, but it took a maximum Dem effort to make that happen; he lost on Harriet Miers, but turned around and won on Alito, so overall, even that was a W. But he’s gotten piles of tax cuts through; he finally got the massive energy subsidy bill he wanted, and so on. He even got the war he wanted, unfortunately.
I’m of the belief that Bush is somewhere in between not caring whether government works, and not sorry to see it fail, and I think how the Executive Branch has (not) worked under him reflects this.
I probably wouldn’t put it exactly that way, but it’s close enough for government work.
I do?
What I disaprove of is deliberately misquoting someone, in this case Bush. I’m surprised it isn’t against the board rules, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. In fact, I don’t see why it’s not considered posting “material that you know or should know is false”, which is against the rules.
