This isn’t a very serious or substantial diary. It’s basically an excuse to post a photoshop I did. Sorry. Also, it’s a bit slapdash cause I’ve got to go pay a ticket at court and then go to work (at some point). So, you’ve been warned and you’d be best off to just scroll down to the image and know that I want to call the Bush Administration the “Ostrich Gang” every time they refuse to face reality. This is an illustrated “meme idea” diary, basically. Ok:
The Bush Administration has problems. Armando has shown, via his front page post, that one of these problems is electoral. The American people no longer trust Bush and certainly don’t agree with his pollyanna projections of success in Iraq. But this is merely a symptom, and not the actual problem in itself. No, the real problem is, of course, that the Bush administration steadfastly refuses to face reality.
Noam Chomsky has said that upper-level business news offers the most accurate take on events because businessmen can’t afford to be mistaken or misled about the true nature of current events. I think that’s a little simplistic, but it has a ring of truth. So what’s up with BushCo? This was supposed to be the CEO president! The era of unquestioned business interference in governance! If Bush was successful in Iraq I’d assume that he and his buddies knew what they were doing and were playing dumb for the cameras. But they continually screw up! The really don’t get it! This is astounding.
Most people know of dogs who stick their heads under furniture and assume that they can’t be seen. And most people know of the myth about ostriches sticking their head underground to “avoid” predators. Well, here’s Dan Froomkin’s Washington Post article, “The Ostrich Approach”:
Briefly addressing Monday’s bipartisan compromise in the Senate, Bush yesterday hailed the part of the agreement that granted him votes on three of his stalled judicial nominees — and simply ignored the part that keeps four others in limbo.
Even as the Republican-controlled House was voting to defy his veto threat and expand federal research on stem cells, Bush yesterday held a photo-op with babies and toddlers born of leftover embryos — and refused to address how unpopular his views are even within some in his own party.
And as polls show that his Social Security proposals are bombing with the public, Bush insisted again yesterday that politicians who don’t join him in talking about Social Security are the ones who will be punished by the voters.
Can the strategy of denial work? Perhaps. Bush has done well in the past by defining his own reality and setting his own agenda, rather than letting others do so.
Or, as he put it in a revealing ad-lib yesterday while talking about Social Security: “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
Yes, they’re ostriches and we all know that new evidence for this Linnaean classification comes down the pike every single day. They refuse to deal with reality. Iraq is going great! The insurgency is in it’s last throes! What civil war? Afghanistan, what’s that? The national debt will pay itself off! Freedom, freedom, freedom!
So, I say we start calling them the “Ostrich Gang.” That we invoke the allusion of ostriches every chance we get. Americans know that BushCo has botched the mission, and I think they’d be receptive to the sobriquet.
Anyway, at long last here’s the raison d’etre for this diary, the Bush cabinet transformed into ostriches, which was surprisingly easy to do with Photoshop’s hue/saturation adjustment and “smudge” tool:
