No one is listening to Bush or Rumsfeld or taking them seriously any more. But they keep trying the same old snake oil. Hey! It worked before!
David Frum in the National Review, of all places, had this to say about Bush’s speech to the DFW:
Again and again during the Bush presidency – and yesterday most recently – the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says … nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.
If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him – especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.
I guess what is important in Bush’s mind is that the public should hear from his cherry lips that they should improve their opinions to match those given him by God and his intuition. Who needs new facts? He is making his pronouncements, and he is “President” by God’s appointment!
Then there was the recent statement from Rumsfeld:
He rejected the idea that American troops risk being caught up in a civil war over the constitution. “Just the opposite’s been happening,” he said. “People have been moving together, talking, discussing things.”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” he said of the prospect of civil war. “It is not happening now. And, obviously, it is something that one has to be attentive to and be concerned about. But I haven’t seen anything to indicate that the risk is greater today than it was yesterday or the day before.”
These were both public statements designed to push Bush’s polls back up above 40%. They haven’t been working.
We know why Bush has nothing new to say. He lives in a bubble. He has never had an interest in governing, and doesn’t read himself. With no one on hand who dares tell him what is going on, his ignorance is sad but not a surprise. Even his fervant supporters are catching on. But what’s Rumsfeld’s excuse?
What we get from the entire administration is the “same-old same-old”, and the problems in Iraq don’t get any better. Nor are the Bushites presenting us with any reason to believe they have a strategy that will work.
It’s going to be a long time until November 2008.
Sometime since His Majesty has been on vacation I read somewhere besides biking and stuff he has a reading list he is working on while relaxing at the ranch. Any chance we can get a copy of the list of books he has read while on vacation. Then the press could ask him about those books.It would be great fun to see him try to critique something other THan My Pet Goat…lol.
Alohaleezy, after his bikefall during the 5/11 he was shown to have a book (who the fuck carries a book on a bike ride with a friend??) It’s like they are trying to propagandize that Dear Leader can actually read. 🙂
I’ll believe Bush reads for enjoyment, the day I can chew gum and blow bubbles out my ass. LOL
Great diary!
Jeez…I about wet my pants reading that one girl…too funny!
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24441/ Gives bush’s reading list(yeah right)..rather scathing and doesn’t believe for a minute that bush is really reading ‘Salt:World History’ or ‘The Great Influenza: Epic Story of Deadliest Plague in History’…
So we’re supposed to believe that bush who doesn’t read is now going to read some seriously heavy tomes while on vacation…again yeah right.
great find chocolate!! There is no way this idiot is reading Alexander the great unles Laura reads it to him before she tucks him in at night.
Read for Pleasure? I’d believe that of Bush. What he’ll never do is read for information that might tell him something he needs to ask one of his serfs.
That would be like, you know, reading for work. He’d get the question wrong, of course. It’s hard to intimidate something you read into not telling you stuff you don’t want to know.
Well I honestly think part of the reason bush says nothing new beyond the fact that he doesn’t really know what is going on is that he simply doesn’t want to be bothered to learn anything new…or maybe like any fundy he just simply ‘can’t’ learn anything new any more. He believes one or two things and that’s all he thinks he needs to know…besides learning new things is hard work and all his hard work goes into being the war preznit(and having to make that same speech over/over/over again) plus he simply has to get on with his life ya know so that’s just too busy a schedule to be ‘larnen’ anything new.
Well except for him apparently wanting to learn about the history of Salt…as per his vacation reading list.
asked the title of his first favorite book, Bush responded, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a book published after he graduated from college;
asked for the name of a political philosopher with whom he identified, his response, Jesus Christ, showed he wasn’t conversant either with political philosophy or the difference between philosophy and religion;
when quizzed in the 2000 debates, he was unable to say anything meaningful about a subject (Dean Acheson) on which he said he was reading;
Bush himself said in 2003 that he doesn’t read newspapers. Even his former speechwriter David Frum called him “uncurious and as a result ill-informed.”