Posted on 01/25/2007 9:11:38 AM PST by NorCoGOP
So there I was, lying in my bed in Malibu with my dogs, watching Mr. Bush's State of the Union speech. I thought it was darned good. Realistic, gracious, modest, sensible. I happen to think we should get out of Iraq yesterday, but I thought Mr Bush put forward his case well. And Congress responded graciously and generously on both sides of the aisle.
Then, whaam, as soon as the speech was over, ABC was bashing him, telling us how pathetic he was, how irrelevant he was, how weak he was, how unrealistic he was.
Right after that, Jim Webb gave a very short speech biting Bush's head off -- but not making any concrete proposals about anything. No network person mentioned how simple minded and unrealistic he was.
Then, tonight, the next night, I walked into the kitchen where my wife had left the radio going with NPR to amuse the cats. NPR was having a call-in show talking about the State of the Union. The first speaker I heard was a country music legend, Merle Haggard, who said he had never seen things so bad in this country. Then a legion of anonymous callers chimed in with similar thoughts.
And suddenly it hit me. The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn't done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he's just a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.
The media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him alive and well in the White House. It's a sort of neutron bomb of media that seeks to kill him while leaving the White House standing (for their favorite unknown, Barack Obama, to occupy).
How dare NPR ask a country singer who hates Bush to spew venom at Bush? Merle Haggard is a truly great singer and musician, but he's just one old guy. There are plenty of country singers who love Bush and would campaign for him right now. And in what sense is Mr Haggard an expert on the state of the union?
The truth is that we are in a huge economic boom. We are coming off a mammoth real estate explosion that put the most Americans in history in their own homes. We have totally full employment. After decades of stagnation, real wages are rising. Gasoline prices are way, way down. The nation is wealthier than it has ever been (although this is very unevenly distributed). Opportunities for subsidized higher education are better than they have ever been.
Most important of all, who would have ever been rash enough on September 12, 2001 to say there would not be one major or even minor successful terrorist incident against the U.S. homeland in over five years? Who would have thought we would escape without more massive terror? But we have, and it is a foolhardy person who would say that's an accident. Bush may not have done it by himself, but he had something to do with it.
True, we are mired in a war without end, costing us far too may great young and old Americans and too many limbs and wrecked families and vastly too much money. But we all know we're getting out soon. It was a huge mistake, but I'd like to see a President who did not make immense mistakes. Compared with the mistakes of Truman and FDR and Kennedy, Iraq is a mistake, but not worse than theirs.
True, we have virtually no federal oversight of corporate looting and executive suite misconduct, but we didn't have any under Clinton either. The rich get away with murder. That's what happens in the real world. Bush is to blame, but all politicians cater to the rich, and Hillary will and Barack Obama will, too. It's nauseating and I fight it constantly, but that's life.
My point: let's be aware that Bush has presided over a lot of success in addition to substantial failure. My second point: no one elected the media to anything. If we let them lynch the man we elected as President we are throwing out the Constitution with the war in Iraq. In the studios and newsrooms, there is a lynch mob at work. Let's see it for what it is. We have a good man who has made mistakes in the Oval Office. He's the only President we have, and I trust him a lot more than I trust unelected princes of the newsroom.
If Bush showed some balls, the media couldn't touch him. But he doesn't. And his pussy father shamed his family when he went ahead with a Bush Award for Public Service to Ted Kennedy TWO DAYS after Kennedy called his son--the President--a "liar" on the Senate floor. HE gave him the medal anyway! What absolute fools the Bushes are. They love their enemies and their enemies shit all over them. All they seem to care about is having people like them. Reagan couldn't give two shits about what the media and elites thought about him. All he cared about was the PEOPLE. Bush has made a huge error kowtowing to the evil elites for 5 years. He just seems weak, and Americans don't respect weakness, and the media viper feed on it like piranhas.
Invading Iraq was not a mistake. Acting like pussies once we got there was a huge mistake. Had we killed another 250,000 Iraqi civilians and eliminated Tikrit and Fallujah from this Earth, killed Al Sadr and hundreds of others (MacArthur hung 950 Japanese agitators in a relatively tame occupied Japan), stuffed ham into the mouths of every killed insurgent and burned their bodies, forgot about stupid elections until every ounce of resistance was brutally crushed, we would have no problems there right now whatsoever. Where the hell is the rage we all felt on 9/11? Who gives a shit about Arab democracy (as if there ever could be such a thing)? We wanted vengeance and we got Realpolitik instead.
I have decided that cats are social conservatives (individualists), but fiscal liberals (what's theirs is theirs and what's yours is theirs).
Agreed. Well put.
"It is class warfare rhetoric."
You have mistaken it for class warfare rhetoric, and then closed your mind on that error. If you knew Stein, you'd know better.
"You obviously don't have a clue about free market capitalism."
And you obviously don't have a clue about not being an obnoxious jerk. My initial reaction was to respond to each of your erroneous points. Upon reflection, I don't care to discuss this or anything else with someone who behaves as badly as you. You can post me again when you grow up and get some manners.
> When you throw a stone into a pack of wild dogs, the one that yelps loudest is the one you hit.
(HeeHeeHee!) Well said! And *that* saying's a Keeper!
I must confess I forgot to give credit for that. It is a statement made by a character in a Louis L'amour short story. The character was Chick Bowdrie, Texas Ranger.
Reminder bump - way past time to fix media's wagon. ;-)
I have to disagree! GW isn't trying to be liked by being nice to his enemies. He just isn't giving into the same hate that they are throwing at him. The man has class. I also don't see him as weak, but he is one of the strongest leaders I have every seen. A weak person would never have kept focused on the WOT but would have "cut and ran". All while he has been under constant assault, not just from liberals but also increasingly from the his own party.
To be hated as much as he is and to not hate back says alot about his character. Most people could not handle it.
I don't think there was any "class" in H.W. Bush going ahead with the "public service" award for Ted Kennedy two days after the creep called his son--the President--a "liar" on the floor of the Senate, something which had not been done in anyone's memory. Character involves courage. The courageous move would have been for H.W. to tell Ted not to bother making the trip.
Well, to me, the situation is a little more complicated than your solution would dictate.
We are?
It was a huge mistake,
Really Mr. Stein? Have you consulted the ordinary Iraqi about that? Have you asked any Kurds?
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