(This is today).
Posted on 08/21/2006 3:30:36 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
No doubt, President Bush has one knee on the canvas. What is in doubt is whether he's buying time or simply cannot get back up.
Just look at the serious body blows he has taken lately:
His bold Bush Doctrine of striking down terror before it shatters us is in disarray in Afghanistan, Iraq, even here at home.
His magnificent ambition to plant the seeds of liberty and spread freedom throughout the enslaved world is unraveling.
His sworn obligation to protect Israel, one of America's few authentic allies, at all costs, and never to accept a peace in Lebanon that resurrects the status quo ante is down the drain.
His stern warnings to Syria and its master Iran to keep their filthy hands off Israel are derided.
His pronouncement that the Free World cannot abide a nuclear North Korea is shrugged off.
His warning, through a United Nations resolution, to Iran that it must by the end of this month abandon its nuclear-weapons program is answered by sneers, insults and invective from Tehran, followed by a salvo of serious Iranian rockets to show it means business even if he doesn't.
His enemies from the left in Congress grow bolder and nastier by the day in what they say of him, threatening impeachment if they regain control of the House of Representatives this November.
Opportunists like a second-term senator from Nebraska within his own party are warming up to walk across his face in quest of the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Opinion polls, of dubious veracity themselves, are allowed to go unchallenged, thus becoming their own self-fulfilling prophesies that the president is going down the pipes.
The leftist "mainstream" media have abandoned all pretext of accuracy and objectivity, now daily making up bogus anti-Bush stories, trying to outdo one another in venality. While all that's been going on, what counterpunches has the president landed? None that come to mind.
Something quite alarming is going on, and it's showing increasingly in the president's public appearances.
His body language of late has been ... well ... just awful.
Gone are the televised events in which he leans across a podium, full of energy and believability, sharing his convictions and enthusiasm with responsive audiences.
Is This Our President?
Now, his TV-appearance arrangers have him standing awkwardly alone, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other. In the background sit or stand a few unknowns, all scowling as if in disbelief or suffering acute indigestion.
The president's own visage is scarcely recognizable. Disappeared is the buoyant smile, the twinkling eyes.
His syntax, usually a problem (actually not, since its candid openness was a big plus with most Americans, who speak the same way he does) has been all right. But he now seems unable to articulate anything.
Here is a man who is either grievously sleep-deprived, physically and emotionally drained, or weighted down, in honest despair, by realities that would terrify any mortal.
It Must Be Tempting
Is he on the verge of saying to himself, "To hell with it. I did my best. And all anyone wants from me now is my head on a pike. They can take this job and shove it. I'm heading home to Crawford."?
Or does he know something the rest of us don't know – and probably wouldn't want to know? Does he see apocalypse just over the horizon? Is global nuclear winter nearly upon us, and there's not a blessed thing he can do about it?
Or does he know what has to be done to save this nation, and the rest of civilization? Is it crushing his very soul? Is it like looking straight down the throat of doomsday?
Is he buying time – letting Enemy win all the little battles – so he can furiously regroup, retrain, rearm in order to make the dreadful preemptive move that only can win the ultimate war?
Totally Out of Character
Everything we've come to know about this remarkable, decent man from Texas tells us he has steel inside, not flab, that he is not afraid to do what's right regardless of political consequences. It is impossible to think of him in terms of capitulation to anything.
Yet what is the alternative? Is he about to confide in us, his people, that, like it or not, we are all – including him – going to have to face, and make, a life-or-death decision unprecedented in history?
That's enough to wipe the smile off any man's face.
No one who admires and wishes him well wants to think he is down on one knee, having to take the full count because he has been cruelly beaten, defeated, humiliated, immobilized.
Now Let Us Pray
No one of sane mind wants to believe he is kneeling there, having to take the count up just short of 10 in order to buy every split-second of precious time to get us ready for the indescribable.
Yet, that may well be the lesser of two intolerable possibilities.
This good man, our 43rd president, needs – deserves – the nation's prayers. Even more than did our 16th president.
Abraham Lincoln had to wage a war he hated to save the union he loved. George W. Bush has to agonize about saving civilization.
Those who believe in prayer had better get busy.
I think they're making a huge mistake. Look, they're going to lose on the defense issue, but put that aside. The reason, IMO, Clinton was never removed from office was that people didn't want him removed. They didn't WANT Algore in the hot seat. They didn't WANT the national turmoil we went through with the Nixon resignation. They didn't WANT to rock the boat and screw up the boom times.
I didn't like Clinton, but I didn't want him impeached. I wanted him to quietly serve out his last two years in office. People feel the same way now. Whatever real or imagined crimes W may have committed, we can't afford to have the goovernment tied up in knots right now.
Impeachments are a peacetime pastime, historically. The rats are going to find to their chagrin, that the American People can be very single minded in war. That saying "People vote their pocketbooks" has an essential corollary -- "except in times of war."
The ultimate argument of the left seems to be over whether we're really at war or not. I sure hope we answer the question correctly in November. I think we will.
It takes a long time to turn the Ship of State. I think we forget this, and at our peril.
You are missing the point. The ones who "borrowed into" the Civil Service were protected by the law. That's why they glommed onto those jobs during the last months of the CLinton Administration. Had he tried to fire them, there would have been a public outcry from the Rats, possible impeachment, and they still would have remained.
Well, I'm sure the numbers would back me up so it's not really an opinion......and I thought that part of the discussion was the truth about his commitment to fighting terrorism, so I believe it's just as critical to fight terrorism even if it's one person at a time being murdered or robbed because of his failure to deal with the border or those victimized by 9-11.
By comparison, he's done a good job dealing with the fallout of 9-11 but he's failed miserably on dealing with border terrorism.
You border-only folks really reach sometimes, you know?
It's off topic, spirit.
But I understand, for a one issue border only guy like you, it's OK to bring up your topic even when discussing the weather in Alaska.
I just know better than to engage in the discussion where it doesn't apply.
Good day, spirit.
btw, you can get 'the numbers' to back up anything you want. It's still an opinion.
I don't believe W will back down. I do read burden in his face though. Thank you for catching the need to pray for him.
(This is today).
What do you call getting held up at gunpoint?.....a chance encounter?.....even you should be able to figure out that anyone that has been held up, beaten or raped would have no problem using the term "terrorized" to describe the experience ......but I'm sure for bushbots like you unless you hear it from Tony Snow or el Rushbo it's probably a little tough to figure it out for yourself.
I know that the Lord is carrying GW. No doubts about that, and I agree that the "defeated Bush" stance taken in parts of the article is wrong. He's not about to give up, and the Lord does have him.
I just sense, and have sensed for a few weeks that he has something rather heavy on his mind. This article brought that out. It is more than the war. It is more than polls. I don't think it is fear either. But there is a solemnity about him and deep awareness that something very serious is going on . Even in today's presser (which I saw snippets on on Fox News and agree, he is strong) his eyes are sternly serious http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060821/capt.118ecd73afe3489281800024afc41c0f.bush_whhg104.jpg?x=380&y=264&sig=PdwiJUZmuVoMSBGVxqwUBA-- it hasn't gone away. I think maybe that a couple of weeks ago, around the time of those pictures of him leaving church, whatever has burdened him was discovered. I had never seen him arrive at and leave church with that kind of expression. It disturbed me at the time and I commented on it in my prayer that Sunday.
He stands today that it is the Lord and him for it (which he also knows is enough). The media wants to bury him. He doesn't care about that. The Dems are like parasites wanting to drain him. That's play-time for this seasoned politician - so I really don't think that they are the reason. I think it is something more serious, such as the scenario of survival mentioned in the article, that he is facing and in all likelihood this nation is facing.
GWB is not defeated, but it is the call for even more fervent prayer at this time that I sense to be true. These are perilous times and the world is in quite a disarray. Scary if you didn't have the Lord, which we do, and W does. So, we look to the Lord in confident expectation; and lift up our "Moses" whom God raised up - asking the Lord to strengthen, guide, and protect him as he faces up to these challenges that the treasonous media and Dems refuse to acknowledge.
I've never lost my faith in President Bush.
Sad but true, this saying has been going around in my family for years, and we are 99% Republican..... "Democrats will go to the ends of the earth to cover each other's sorry butt's, but Republican's sometime eat their own".
I still believe that after the dust settles, and a few years go by GW will go down in history as one of the greats.
FYI....."A country that can't control it's borders is NOT a country any longer".....words of wisdom from another "border guy".... a real conservative by the name of Ronald Reagan .....so I guess I'm in good company.
And the gratuitous insults about those who disagree with you not being able to think independently is old and stale........to say the least.
I especially find it hilarious that you use Rush as an example. I'm smiling as I type this at your complete ignorance of who I am or how I think....
Smart move.....
Now.... since I refuse to participate in your hijacking of this thread Mr Borderbot, I shall bid you a fond farewell, before you say anything less educated or informed than you already have.....
That's why I also agree that we must pray without ceasing for wisdom and divine guidance for the President.
Few have ever been asked to carry such a great load as this man has. I consider it a kind of 'divine compliment'.........for such a time as this.
May God hide him under the shelter of His wing.
David took 5 stones with him b/c Goliath had 4 brothers...
What a terrific post!
Thanks for the ping... which I just now found!
No, it's called sarcasm.
Should have been obvious.
I didn't miss the point at all, Miss Marple. And I know what the law says. HST, Dubya should have hired a good lawyer to figure out a legal way around the law and fired every damn one of them -- whatever it took!
The "Clinton holdovers" have done the Bush Presidency and the country a world of harm!
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