BUSH TOURS GULF STATES

[mburbank]

Yeah, it amazes me he doesn't have any idea how that shit sounds, but look at his Mom. She said her thing about the underprivilidged to NPR, for God's sake. How tone deaf is that?

Mostly these comments are made in front of pretty carefully screened audiences, so you don't get people yelling in the background.

Did you see the tape of Chenney, where he's talking about how the response he's gotten from victimes has been %100 positive, and someone starts yelling at him "Hey, Dick Chenney! Go fuck yourself!". The reporter asks if he's been getting a lot of that, and Chenney says no, this is the first time.

Now do you think that's a gutless, deiberate lie, or do you think these folks are so protected from anything but praise they simply no longer know the world they live in?

I recall an interview with Reagan shortly after he left office on the subject of the Brady Bill. He said if he'd known any of the stuff he knew on the subject now that he was no longer president, he'd have supported it. Bush actualy makes it a point of pride that his knowledge of the world is utterly filtered through his staff.

PS. Kev, I'm aware that you are often trying to keep the conversation honest and strain some of the polemics out of it. I appreciatte that. Personally, though, I have become very leery of the benefit of the doubt. I think the tendency of the center left to give the benefit of the doubt has been exploited by the far right and the center right has remianed silent. I think the folks currently running the country count on and abuse the benefit of the doubt given to them by the American people and the press just as Strauss advised.