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Bush: as mentally bizarre as Blagojevich
Image by elycefeliz
Economic crisis in US, and instead of attempting to contribute to a solution, George W. Bush decides to fly to the Middle East for more grandstanding – which works out about as well as his other efforts . . . And he’s stubbornly oblivious that people – in this country as well as others – think he’s caused a great deal of harm . . . .
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5345331.ece
From Times Online
December 15, 2008
Transcript: Bush seeks new shoe jokes
Excerpts from President Bush’s impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One after Iraqi shoe attack
Mr Bush: Okay, my opening statement: I didn’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole….I’m pretty good at ducking, as most of you will know —
Reporter: You were quick.
Mr Bush: I’m talking about ducking your questions…I — look, I mean it was just a bizarre moment, but I’ve had other bizarre moments in the presidency. I remember when Hu Jintao was here. Remember we had the big event? He’s speaking, and all of a sudden I hear this noise — had no earthly idea what was taking place, but it was the Falun Gong woman screaming at the top of her lungs. It was kind of an odd moment.
Reporter: Well, not to belabour the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —
Mr Bush: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who —
Reporter: We had a translator who said he shouted about the widows and orphans.
Mr Bush: I don’t know. I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment.
Reproter: I wanted to ask something broader.
Mr Bush: I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate.
Reporter: Well, then, separately from him —
Mr Bush: That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did…
[A noise is heard aboard the aircraft]
Mr Bush: The other shoe just dropped. Look, I’m going to be thinking of shoe jokes for a long time. I haven’t heard any good ones yet.
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/middleeast/15prexy.html?em
Iraqi Journalist Hurls Shoes at Bush and Denounces Him on TV as a ‘Dog’
www.newsweek.com/id/174386?from=rss
Being Rod Blagojevich
There’s no way to know why he sees politics as he does. But few seem surprised.
www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSLF665578
BEIRUT, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The hurling of shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush on his farewell visit to Iraq strikes many in the Middle East as a fittingly furious comment on what they see as his calamitous legacy in the region. Arab and Iranian TV stations have gleefully replayed the clip, sometimes in slow motion, of an Iraqi reporter calling Bush a "dog" and throwing his shoes at him — the Middle East’s tastiest insults — at a Baghdad news conference on Sunday.
The affront was a twisted echo of the triumphal moment for Bush when joyous Iraqis used their footwear to beat a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by U.S. invading troops in 2003. . . . Bush had harmed America’s reputation and the friendship many had felt for it. . . . Khalid al-Dakhil, a Saudi university lecturer in social politics, said the incident summed up Bush’s impact on the Middle East, which "will haunt this region for a long time".
". . . Bush’s war in Iraq created a new source of anger and instability in the Middle East. . . . Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at Jordan University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, saw the vignette as iconic. "Arabs will always remember the shoes hurled at Bush as symbolising their deep frustration with his failed policies."
www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/12/bush_doe…
by Frank James
On the way to Afghanistan last night, President Bush joked with reporters aboard Air Force One about the shoes seen ’round the world. . . saying he didn’t know what the man shouted but that he "saw his sole." That was an obvious allusion to one of the strangest things an American president has ever said about another foreign leader when, after their first meeting, Bush said he saw Vladimir Putin’s soul.
Also odd was Bush’s complete refusal during his exchange with reporters on Air Force One to acknowledge any anger or unhappiness in Iraq or the Muslim Middle East with the invasion he ordered and its aftermath.
"I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq," Bush said in response to a question. "You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate."
The White House reporters didn’t follow up, perhaps knowing too well by now they weren’t going to get him to admit something if he didn’t want to since this president is well known by now for his stubbornness. But the president’s refusal to admit a reality fairly obvious to most observers, even in the 11th hour of his presidency, was clearly another bizarre Bush White House moment.
THE PRESIDENT: So, okay, I’m going to go take a nap.
www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/03/white_house_ornament/
Impeach Bush for Christmas
www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/fallows_victory/5
Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.
Bin Laden also hoped that such an entrapment would drain the United States financially. Many al-Qaeda documents refer to the importance of sapping American economic strength as a step toward reducing America’s ability to throw its weight around in the Middle East.
. . . Higher-priced oil has hurt America, but what has hurt more is the economic reaction bin Laden didn’t fully foresee. This is the systematic drag on public and private resources created by the undifferentiated need to be “secure.”
The effect is most obvious on the public level. “The economy as a whole took six months or so to recover from the effects of 9/11,” Richard Clarke told me. “The federal budget never recovered. The federal budget is in a permanent mess, to a large degree because of 9/11.” At the start of 2001, the federal budget was 5 billion in surplus. Now it is 0 billion in deficit.
. . . The final destructive response helping al-Qaeda has been America’s estrangement from its allies and diminution of its traditionally vast “soft power.” “America’s cause is doomed unless it regains the moral high ground,” Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of Britain’s secret intelligence agency, MI-6, told me. He pointed out that by the end of the Cold War there was no dispute worldwide about which side held the moral high ground—and that this made his work as a spymaster far easier. “Potential recruits would come to us because they believed in the cause,” he said. A senior army officer from a country whose forces are fighting alongside America’s in Iraq similarly told me that America “simply has to recapture its moral authority.”
. . . America’s glory has been its openness and idealism, internally and externally. Each has been constrained from time to time, but not for as long or in as open-ended a way as now. . . .
Succeeding in Business
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E5DD1E31F934A…
As Joshua Green says in The Washington Monthly, in a must-read article written just before the administration suddenly became such an exponent of corporate ethics: ”The ‘new tone’ that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn’t one of integrity, but of permissiveness. . . . In this administration, enriching oneself while one’s business goes bust isn’t necessarily frowned upon.”
45 of 365 (true blue)
Image by Lolie Smith
I may be politically difficult at times, but in recent years I seem to find myself leaning Conservative to an alarming degree. Is it the salesmanship of David Cameron? The foppish charm of Boris Johnson? Or leftover heroine worship of Mrs T (and trust me, I’ve heard it all before)?
I still have my lefty tendencies, I just believe in individualism and less state interference since the state is generally so incompetent. It’s a source of endless debate in my life, and while I have no affiliation to any party as such, my one and only campaign contribution has been to a Conservative candidate.
Maybe I just like the colour blue, since in the States I’d be a Democrat?
Anyway, tonight we schlepped to the beloved institution that is the National Theatre. I just wish it had been created in a more aesthetically pleasing age for architecture, but we have plenty of grand old playhouses in London to take up the mantle of grand and historic. It’s open-plan meshing of performances and media can be a little discombobulating at first, but the packed bars and filled auditoriums show that even in our little economic crunch, people are still going to the theatre. Or at least, going to the National which is still markedly cheaper than the big musicals across the river.
It’s history, it’s a chunk of our culture, some of the most important parts, lumped together in one concrete building. These walls have housed the great and the good, offered starts to promising newcomers and created productions that have gone on to thrill in bigger theatres in London and all over the world. On the frequent newsletters they send there’s always at least one show that provokes my interests, not that I go as often as I might like.
So when a new play, Never So Good, was announced I was instantly intrigued. A very British play, about a period in our history of which my own knowledge is shamefully sketchy. To top it all off, the delightful and delicious Anna Chancellor was included on the cast list and for the first time in ages, I was online to book tickets in the first moments of sale.
If you want to know if it was worth it, you’ll have to check out my blog
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