At least have the decency to admit you were wrong. At this point, you are just making yourself look like more of a idiot, and you certainly don’t need that.
Hi Brutus. Guess I’m joining the fray a little late here but I beleive you “set us up” with your clever postings.
You posted the Dec 26th press release and waited for the “Dopers” to trash it.
Then, after getting the appropriate amount of Bush-Bashing you “miraculously” discover a genuine heartfelt expression of sympathy from the Bush family. (the Dec 29th press release).
I find it extremely coincidental that your second Bush press release was entered by you a “whopping” 21 minutes later. Also, it seems a little too convenient that both of the links you posted are from the same website. Too bad you didn’t ‘discover’ those on the same websearch.
Uh, sure thing Gollum. I am tricksy and false, but you still need to work on ‘reading comprehension’.
Cut Bush some slack – it’s not as if (most of) those victims were Americans.
</right-wing apologist>
What exactly did four days to investigate what happened after a tidal wave accomplish? Did somebody have to sit George down and explain to him that all those sleeping people he saw on the teevee weren’t going to wake up?
Hmmmm…I believe we have been sucked into a world where proclamations by leaders are somehow seen as the end all/be all culmination of a tragedy.
It’s a tragedy, but until someone important gets in front of the camera and tells us how bad it is, we will never know!
I see numerous posts here decrying GW because he didn’t make a statement, hold a news conference, etc. until days after the tsunami. In addition, criticism is leveled at the amount of dollars pledged by the US.
Does anyone here honestly think the President was doing nothing during this time? Who ordered a carrier group to abandon it’s tasking and aid the tsunami victims?
I am loathe to enter into dollars=compassion comparisons, because they are inherently unfair. There is NO objective way to measure compassion, yet some people insist on foisting numbers on us so that countries (or people) can be ranked. When you get into a race based on “I can give more than you” you have lost the spirit of compassion: you give because you WANT to, not because you HAVE to.
Back to the OP (or an attempt): I see things throughout the media attempting to minimize/trivialize the Bush administration’s reaction to this tragedy.
I go back to an old adage: actions speak louder than words. Would the people in Bander Aceh rather have a news conference proclaiming our sympathy or a US Navy helicopter overhead delivering clean drinking water? I know that the two are not mutually exclusive, but when presented with these two options I’d rather spend my time planning the re-deployment of naval forces than planning a news conference.
And for those absolutely hung up on numbers, how much does it cost to run a carrier battle group per day? I have no idea, but I expect that it’s a lot, and I also expect that it’s not being included in the US “aid contribution dollar” numbers.
The bottom line for me is that the world experienced a terrible tragedy, and countries and individuals are responding with everything they can offer.
Does nothing these days supersede partisan bitterness? (Actually this might, as I see that Reeder and Bricker have both posted and refrained from anything political. Bravo.)
Brutus
Your postings #51 and #63 were a mere 21 minutes apart. As I stated, you waited for the appropriate amount of “Bush-bashing” and then posted #63.
And your quote:
Uh, sure thing Gollum. I am tricksy and false, but you still need to work on ‘reading comprehension’.
My apes brain cannot comprehend that so I guess I’ll need some additional explanation from you.
pilot141 - great posting there.
(Yes, I’ll admit I was just taking yet another opportunity to dump on Dubya. I dislike our current President for a great many reasons beyond partisan politics, but no sense getting into those now.)
Seriously, your posting is well-written and makes some very convincing points. So I’ll say ‘Bravo’ to you.
Didn’t I read somewhere that he went back to clearing brush? Besides, is it really a strain on the man to say a few words impromptu? He didn’t have to plan a news conference! That’s for people who can’t think off of the top of their heads.
I don’t think anyone can criticize us for what we are doing now, but his original silence was deafening. He is awkward and bumbling and graceless.
What possible harm could it have done to express immediately his compassion and concern for the victims of this disaster? It was known immediately that thousands were dead and missing. He represented us!
I think the answer to this Zoe, might lie in the fact that his opponents and the press are just faunching at the bit to find things they can assail him for, as this very thread exemplifies. He and his advisors have quite possibly come to feel that a “planned” statement, vetted as fully as possible, is necessary to try to ensure that his words convey exactly what they are intended to convey, lest they be misconstrued, intentionally or not, to portray what he says in a negative or harmful way.
Hey, being President is a hard job, remember? If he can’t handle the heat, he shouldn’t be in the kitchen…
jungie, jungie, jungie…you just don’t understand, do you? He can indeed handle the heat, and this is how. He’s taking care that he doesn’t say something hastily that can be picked up, misconstrued and run with by an overwhelmingly liberal news media just faunching at the bit to try to try make him look bad. Pretty smart, if you ask me. 
Pretty smart? The scientific name of Gallus gallus comes to mind when I see the president being so protected from his own mouth.
Not when you have, as I said, a rabid liberal-biased press out to try to make you look bad. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen or heard Bush or some other Republican make some innocuous comment that every human on the planet would take the way it was meant, only to see the press and a few left-wing rabble-rousers misconstrue (deliberately in my view, though I’ll admit it might be inadvertant) his words and/or intent and launch into a virtually non-stop attack intended to inaccurately portray their intent and/or motives.
This kind of thing is going on right now here in this thread. All the hand-wringing and criticism over Bush’s not saying enough, or not soon enough, or whatever. These are not legitimate criticisms; virtually everyone knows that a certain amount of time is necessary to learn the full scope and measure of what happened and to develop estimates of what can be done, and when and how.
The criticism Bush is coming in for is coming from people for whom he can do no right. As I said earlier, he could have rushed out five minutes after hearing a tsunami had hit Indonesia and pledged billions in aid and these same people would be criticizing him for being hasty and trying to transparently use the tragedy to make himself appear more humanitarian. He would be assailed as well, I’m sure, for being a loose cannon and promising all this money without having first made sure how much was needed and how much would be available to address those needs.
Newsweek used to promote itself as “The Newsmagazine That Separates Fact From Opinion”.
Really.
It hasn’t been that way for a long time. For another example, try this *lead news section article* when the Rush Limbaugh drug scandal broke. Beyond the general tenor of the piece (even as someone long disgusted with Limbaugh and his brand of narcissistic bull, it seems over the top), I found the sneering tone of the following hard to believe:
“Granted, Limbaugh’s act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people. With his heartland pieties and scorn for “feminazis” and “commie-symps” like “West Wing” president Martin Sheen (“Martin Sheenski” to Limbaugh), he is the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America.”
Reminder: this was in the “news” section. Way to go, Newsweek, alienate a huge chunk of voters while reminding everyone that you just can’t resist the opportunity to indoctrinate the clueless Red State, Fly-Over Americans via your “news reporting”.
Granted, Newsweek is not the only newsmagazine to have abandoned journalistic standards (U.S. News and World Report, which I haven’t read in awhile, was known for at least a mild right-wing slant in its “news” sections). But threads like this one are a good reminder of why a lot of people have turned to right-wing radio, blogs, and similar unreliable, non-mainstream sources for their “news”.
The comfort of knowing that reporters share one’s views must be very powerful.
Is this why? Good to be reminded again. Seems like there are so many things that have pushed poor forlorn conservatives to extremes like right-wing radio, etc etc. Perhaps us good liberals should be even more more careful about what we say.
It’s funny how it doesn’t seem to work in the other direction. I don’t see droves of people being repulsed by Hannity, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Coulter… Never any call for them to watch their step, or else! No masses flocking from CNN or Time or Newsweek or Fox the New York Times or PBS when they failed to be critical enough of pre-war planning and justification, or failed to be critical of much else of the presidents agenda, for that matter.
The comfort of getting one’s views directly from the reporters must be very powerful.
Haven’t spent much time here, eh?
This again demonstrates the inability of many to distinguish between commentary and news reporting. Analysis, when clearly labeled as such, will piss off a lot of folks with opposing views, but not remotely as much as editorializing in the guise of news.
Funny, I read the N.Y. Times and listen to PBS regularly, and I don’t recall any shortage of pre-war questioning of the Bush agenda via news reporting or op-editorializing (of course, PBS does not formally editorialize, which it really should).
So, Hentor, are you comfortable with Newsweek stooping to the level of Coulter in its lead news story with that sneering crack about “Red State, Fly-Over America”? Think that helps at election time?
Just out of interest, perhaps you’d care to enlighten us as to which parts of the quoted Newsweek paragraph are not factual.
Has Rush Limbaugh won over a lot of people?
Has he also fooled a lot of people?
Does he use heartland pieties?
Does he, in fact, display scorn for those he calls “feminazis” and “commie symps” and “Martin Sheenski”?
And is he most popular is “Red State, Fly-Over America,” or is it the coastal blue states that constitute his main fan-base?
Does nothing about “fooled a lot of people”, “heartland pieties” or “the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America” strike you as flagrant, contemptuous editorializing in the middle of what’s supposed to be a news piece?
Nothing at all? :rolleyes:
Why is it so hard for everyone to comprehend that there are different news sources, and that each source has it’s own potential slant to it?
Who cares if Newsweek takes W to task once in a while for his limp-wristed response to this catastrophy. He deserves it. He also needs to be attacked from time to time, to ensure that he remembers his role as the People’s Servant, rather than a King with a faultless Mission from God.
But guess what - when Rush Limbaugh makes Liberals cringe from time to time with his accurate representations of Liberal idiocies, I don’t mind that either. They’re both doing their jobs.
The crux of the issue is that I believe that in the modern age, both sides are adequately represented.
The above is a response from the WhiteHouse, and presumeably the Pres. on Dec 26.
It states on Dec 26 that help is on the way, and more is to come.
You guys realise that the US props up (monetarily) most of the organisations that are over there right now? I bet on paper we’ll have directly and indirectly spent Billions on relief. Probably ten times more than any other country.