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QUOTE OF THE DAY

President Addresses National Governors Association Meeting
The State Dining Room
11:05 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Thanks for coming. I enjoyed it last night, I hope you did, too. It was a lot of fun. And thank you all for giving me a chance to come by. What I thought I'd do is say a few things and then answer some questions, if you have any.

We have got a chance to achieve some big things for the country, to lay the stage for peace and to keep America in the lead. And these are goals that both Republicans and Democrats should share. You know, there's a lot of politics here in Washington, so it's -- when you say, well, you know, it's a Republican goal to make America competitive, I just don't agree with that. It should be a national goal. It's a national goal to protect our people. And, therefore, it requires a lot of collaboration throughout all aspects of government. And no better collaborators to implement good policy than our governors. So thanks for giving me a chance to come and share some insights with you.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

President George W. Bush addresses a meeting of the National Governors Association, Monday, Feb. 27, 2006, in the State Dining Room of the White House. President Bush told the governors that by working together we have got a chance to achieve some big things for the country.

Hi

Good Evening

Dose going up please wait for the all clear before posting any photos or graphics

Thanks, snugs! How are you and your dad?

hey

Hi snugs!!

As always...thanks! Glad your cold is getting better. (Read that within today's comments.)

Hi snugs...

Evening everyone! Thought I'd stop in and say hi. Last week was so busy, I missed all the fun.

Thank you for the wonderful dose this evening.

Hi snugs. Thanks for today's Dose. I've gotten home from work a bit early, so am able to stop by for a few minutes to say hello and see the photos.

Thanks for the GREAT photos. Don't have time to read much, just to glance at the photos - have started a new sales job and we have a TEST tomorrow - intense training!!!

But the pics are divine - a tuxedo is a thing of beauty on our Hunk-In-Chief!!!!

From Drudge
FEB 28, 2006

BUSH CHEERS DECLINE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA, RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PRESS
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3wsb.htm
**Exclusive**

ROVE SLAMS DAN RATHER: NOT A 'SERIOUS' REPORTER

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

[STRATEGERY was ranked #5 on AMAZON.COM's sales chart early Tuesday morning.]

For example, journalist Dan Rather left the anchor chair at CBS News after Internet reporters revealed he had used forged documents to criticize Bush’s military record in September 2004. The forgeries, which Bush now calls a conspiracy, ended up helping his reelection campaign, he acknowledged in the Oval Office interview.

“It looks like somebody conspired to float false documents,” the president tells author Bill Sammon. “And I was amazed about it. I just couldn’t believe that would be happening [and] then it would become the basis of a fairly substantial series of news stories.”

He added: “Then there was a backlash to it. I mean, a lot of people were angry that this could have happened. A lot of Americans are fair people and they viewed this as patently unfair. So in a funny way, I guess it inured to our benefit, when it was all said and done.”

... Although Memogate was initially expected to harm the president, it ended up backfiring spectacularly on the press. “The guy that it hurt most was Dan Rather and the executives at CBS,” White House strategist Karl Rove said in an interview for STRATEGERY. “It further disgraced a network which is third in ratings and, if you look at the demographics of their consumers, it’s like 70 percent Democrat.”

Rove said Rather’s eagerness to broadcast obviously forged documents proves he is “no serious reporter.” As for Rather’s insistence, to this day, that the documents are real, Rove said: “That’s really bias.”

Memogate has helped accelerate the decline of the mainstream media, generally defined as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times and other establishment news outlets.

“I think what’s healthy is that there’s no monopoly on the news,” Bush said. “There’s competition. There’s competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.

“And the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there’s a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody’s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It’s a very interesting period.”

Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.

“It’s the beginning of the twenty-first century; it also happens to be the beginning of—or near the beginning—of a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination,” he said. “Not in newsmaking—that tends to be pretty consistent.”

Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.

“The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the 'blogosphere',” he said in his West Wing office. “Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,” he added.

Still, Rove cautioned that the Internet’s political potential has a darker side. “There is so much ugliness and viciousness and fundamental untruths that the blogosphere transmits,” he lamented. “It also is a vehicle for ugly rumors, for scurrilous personal attacks, an avenue for the creation of urban legends which are deeply corrosive of the political system and of people’s faith in it.”

Rove said Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, were gunning for the president and trying to help his challenger, Sen. John Kerry, by broadcasting the forged documents in the heat of the presidential campaign. “From her body language and his body language, their enthusiasm for this story was in large measure fed by the belief that they were playing a constructive and perhaps determinative role in the presidential campaign,” Rove said of Mapes and Rather.

“They made a decision in this instance – I think quite prematurely and quite unfairly – to pursue a story that attacked the president,” he added. “And I thought it was, to me, one of the most incredible examples of how fundamentally unfair it was.”

Rove expressed astonishment that CBS ignored the warnings of document experts hired by the network to authenticate the National Guard memos. “It goes back to the failure of the mainstream media, in this instance, to honor their own experts,” he said.

Rove is not the only senior Bush adviser who considers the mainstream media biased against the conservative president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was outraged that the TV networks refused to declare Bush the winner on Election Night, even after all the votes were counted in the pivotal state Ohio and it became obvious Kerry could not win. “Some of the talking heads,” Card said, “were rooting for a crisis in Ohio. It wasn’t just that they were afraid to admit we had won.” ...