What we deserve

[Gary Sisco]

What we deserve: The government we have.

George Speaks, Badly
By GAIL COLLINS
Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. Unfortunately, they were about his speech right after Hurricane Katrina, the one when he said: “America will be a stronger place for it.”

“You’ve helped make our country really in many ways the economic envy of the world,” he told the Economic Club of New York.

You could almost see the thought-bubble forming over the audience: Not this week, kiddo.

The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.

We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Suddenly, I recalled a day long ago when my husband worked for a struggling paper full of worried employees and the publisher walked into the newsroom wearing a gorilla suit.

The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.

This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.

O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

Bush pointed out — as if the entire economic world didn’t already know — that Congress has already passed an economic incentive package that will send tax rebate checks to more than 130 million households. “A lot of them are a little skeptical about this ‘checks in the mail’ stuff,” he jibed. Jokejoke. Winkwink.

Then, after a run through of “ideas I strongly reject,” Bush finally got around to announcing that he was going to “talk about what we’re for. We’re obviously for sending out over $150 billion into the marketplace in the form of checks that will be reaching the mailboxes by the second week of May.

“We’re for that,” he added.

Once the markets had that really, really clear, Bush felt free to go on to the other things he was for, which very much resembled that laundry list for Katrina (“400 trucks containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat — or M.R.E.’s ... 3.4 million pounds of ice ...”) This time the rundown included a six-month-old F.H.A. refinancing program, and an industry group called Hope Now that offers advice to people with mortgage problems.

And then, finally, the nub of the housing crisis: “Problem we have is, a lot of folks aren’t responding to over a million letters sent out to offer them assistance and mortgage counseling,” the president of the United States told the world.

But wait — more positive news! The secretary of Housing and Urban Development is proposing that lenders supply an easy-to-read summary with mortgage agreements. “You know, these mortgages can be pretty frightening to people. I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print,” the president said.

Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

PS -- Those notices you got in the mail? They added more than 40 million to the trillions of dollars of deficit borrowing, plus interest.

This is the second time Alfred E. Bush, Inc., has wasted tens of millions of dollars on a mailing. The first one was to announce his famous "tax breaks."

So, we're approaching 100 million dollars on mailings *not counting* the mailing of the checks.

What this is called is fiscal lunacy.

[patricia]

Those of you who have access to CBC Newsworld may be interested in seeing Charles Ferguson's 2003 "No End In Sight", even though the screwup that is Iraq is pretty well-known now.
The excellent documentary is being shown tomorrow night, at 9PM and again at 11PM, my time. Check the listings.

[hornplayer]

Don't look now... the Bushies are getting ready to invade Iran!

[Gary Sisco]

March 16, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Soft Shoe in Hard Times
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.

The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”

“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday. His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.

“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”

Dude, you’re already in the ditch.

Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon.

In on-the-record sessions with reporters — and more candid off-the-record ones — he has seemed goofily happy in recent weeks, prickly no more but strangely liberated and ebullient.

Even though he ordinarily hates being kept waiting, he made light of it while cooling his heels for John McCain, and did a soft shoe for the White House press. Wearing a cowboy hat, he warbled a comic Western ditty at the Gridiron Dinner a week ago — alluding to Scooter Libby’s conviction, Saudis getting richer from our oil-guzzling, Brownie’s dismal Katrina performance, and Dick Cheney’s winsome habit of withholding documents.

At a dinner on Wednesday, the man who is persona non grata on the campaign trail (except for closed fund-raisers) told morose Republican members of Congress that he was totally confident that “we can retake the House” and “hold the White House.”

“I think 2008 is going to be a fabulous year for the Republican Party!” he said, sounding like Rachel Ray sprinkling paprika on goulash. That must have been news to House Republicans, who have no money, just lost the seat held by their former speaker, and are hemorrhaging incumbents as they head into a campaign marked by an incipient recession and an unpopular war.

If only they could see things as the president does. Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

Afghanistan is still roiling, as is Iraq, but W. is serene. “Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever,” he said, echoing that great American philosopher Dan Quayle, who once told Samoans, “Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”

W. bragged to Republicans about his “considered judgment” in sending more troops to Iraq and again presented himself as an untroubled instrument of divine will. “I believe there’s an Almighty,” he said, “and I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child is freedom.”

Although the president belittled the Democrats for their policy of “retreat,” his surge has been a temporary and expensive place-holder for what Americans want: a policy to get us out of Iraq.

“Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started?” Michael Kinsley wrote recently. “The answer is no.” Gen. David Petraeus told The Washington Post last week that no one in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.”

Maybe the president is just putting on a good face to keep up American morale, the way Herbert Hoover did after the crash of ’29, when he continued to dress in a tuxedo for dinner.

Or maybe the old Andover cheerleader really believes his own cheers, and that prosperity will turn up any time now, just like the W.M.D. in Iraq.

Or perhaps it’s a Freudian trip. Now that he’s mucked up the world and the country, he can finally stop rebelling against his dad and relax in the certainty that the Bush name will forever be associated with crash-and-burn presidencies.

Whatever the explanation, it’s plumb loco.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by hornplayer

Don't look now... the Bushies are getting ready to invade Iran!

Thanks for the insight!!

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burns. I guess George feels he rich enough to ride this one out. Plus he has a wedding to plan!

[Gary Sisco]

He is rich enough to ride it out, no matter what happens.

Cheney, too. I've seen printed rumors that he may move to Dubai or Bahrain after the term's up. My hope is that he will and that someone there will hand him the fate he ought to have had handed to him, already, and which he's richly earned.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Dick is building this huge McMansion right next to CIA headquarters (how approriate) in McLean, VA. That's to go along with his multi-million dollar estate on the Maryland Eastern Shore (right next to Rumsfeld's smaller digs).

All of Dick and Lynnne's new neighbors are pissed be cause the McLean crib is out of character with the rest of the mansions in the area.

Cheney's net worth is way higher than Bush's by the way. Which is probably why he doesn't give a damn what Bush says or does.

[Gary Sisco]

And his loot is the result of, what? That's another thing hardly talked about. He made his pile by sucking up to Arab satraps and police state honchos.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Haliburton loot. He really got paid when he was the CEO. And they really got paid when he became VP and we went into Iraq.

Dick's done very well for a boy from Wyoming.

[Gary Sisco]

The most fortunate thing about him is the padded layers of protection we get to pay for, in addition to his larded white ass.

Just think, if it weren't for socialized medicine, he'd have been dead years ago.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

He'll outlive the both of us.

[Gary Sisco]

Man, I hope not. I hope to piss on his grave, one day.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

All the cats we've been pissing blood over the last few years, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, (and my favorite) Richard Perle are all going to have happy endings. No one's going to go directly to jail. They're all going to collect their two hundred dollars.

Further proof that there is no God and that if he or she exists, she's got a fucked up sense of humor.

Cheney exemplifies the incestuous cluster fuck we have here between the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry.

[Gentle Giant]

What we really need right now is a coup. Bush is a lame duck and counting the days along with everyone else until he vacates and enjoys his pension. He has absolutely no incentive to do anything (not to mention little capacity to know what to do). It's a really bad time to have someone in the Oval Office who's too far gone to care how much lower his popularity ratings can go.

And anyone who voted for him, even once, and is surprised that so much shit has hit the fan is as fucking stupid as he is.

[Bluebrew]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

What we really need right now is a coup. Bush is a lame duck and counting the days along with everyone else until he vacates and enjoys his pension. He has absolutely no incentive to do anything (not to mention little capacity to know what to do). It's a really bad time to have someone in the Oval Office who's too far gone to care how much lower his popularity ratings can go.

And anyone who voted for him, even once, and is surprised that so much shit has hit the fan is as fucking stupid as he is.

GG - I don't think he's had any incentive to do anything since 2000. I think Cheney wakes him up every morning and tells him what to do.