Black Box Report

Watching Bush's press conference yesterday was like watching a floral-shirted / Bermuda-shorted tourist in a foreign nation, trying to speak to the locals, assuming that if they just repeat themselves LOUDER AND MORE EMPHATICALLY, people will understand them. In this case, while people heard and understood the individual words Bush was saying, their combined meaning was no more coherant or believable than it was the first time around. One such example was his claim that if we don't give them immunity, telecom companies will refuse to help the government in the future. This might be a concern, if it were true. But it's not:

When surveillance is conducted pursuant to the law, there is no question of whether telecom firms will "cooperate" or "participate", like children at day camp. They will comply, and they will do it because they are required to.

To review:

Lawful = FISA; government asking companies to assist in FISA surveillance.

Unlawful = surveillance outside of FISA; government asking companies to assist in surveillance outside of FISA.

If Bush is afraid that telecom companies won't help the government do illegal things in the future if they aren't given immunity for the illegal things they've done in the past, then the government shouldn't be asking them to do anything illegal.

President Bush also repeated his assertion that progress was being made in Iraq, wherein "progress" is apparently defined as "going backwards":

An Iraqi leader utilized his constitutional right to veto yesterday, which the president seemed quite pleased about today. The veto was proof, he said, of a “healthy” process, and a system in which Iraqis are “thinking through” legislation.

You’ll notice, of course, that the president was a little vague about what, exactly, was vetoed. There’s a very good reason for that.

The measure that was rejected was held up by the Bush administration as an example of political progress.

So much for what was to be just the second of 18 political benchmarks set by the U.S. that Iraq needed to reach; a political structure for Iraq’s provincial governments and establishing a basis for elections in October.
But, y'know...Progress!

Then the president repeated oft-cited criticisms of Obama for his willingness to talk to dictators who imprison their own people for their political beliefs.
Pot, meet kettle:

The idea that Bush - who regularly hangs out with…the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and Egypt - would ever try and take a strong, principled stand against meeting with, much less supporting, repressive autocrats…well, it's what my grandmother would call chutzpah, and what the rest of us would call "nonsense on stilts."

Dictator is as dictator does...

"He may be a son-of-a-b*tch..."



"...but he's OUR son-of-a-b*tch"

But my personal favorite was Bush demanding Turkey cease its invasion of northern Iraq, as it is a sovereign country, and to achieve their objective quickly and get out.

I don't have much to add to that. The comedy writes itself.

In an interesting follow-up, claiming their mission was accomplished, Turkey did, in fact, pull back out of Kurdish Iraq. The irony of all this was semingly lost on Bush, who appears to have all the self-awareness of a pet rock.

Case in point:

It's news to our President that analysts are predicting $4 a gallon gasoline - but he doesn't know the answer to a question about his Presidential library because he's been focused on other things, like - wait for it - gasoline prices.

To be fair, his claim to be focused on gas prices came a whole 15 minutes or so after being unaware of them. Perhaps the president defines "focused" as "something I heard someone say briefly in passing."

But being unaware of the conclusions of experts (or just not heeding them) is nothing new for this president; in his bubble, HE is the expert. And if he needs a second opinion, he just asks Cheney, or Rice, or one of his supporters, and they dutifully tell him what he wants to hear. For example, the president doesn't think we're heading for a recession, just a "slowdown," which is sort of like an economic coma - still alive, just doesn't move very fast.

Not that many people outside the bubble consider Bush's opinion on economic matters very valuable:

Too bad most of the nation's leading economists disagree with him. Given his track record on the economy and in business in general, I think I'll trust the experts instead of the man who bankrupted two different companies.

Those "experts" obviously never got inside the bubble. Recession? What recession? How can we be on the brink of a recession? All the people the president knows, their economies are doing just fine:

When you don't know what a gallon of gas, or a gallon of milk costs, you have no right talking about understanding what the American people want.

Obviously the American people are also not inside the bubble. But don't worry, says Bush, he is still "for a strong dollar" which, even without the recent bad news, is a dumb thing to say:

Nobody in America is for a WEAK dollar. The dollar is just WEAKENING because we've been growing our economy on false hope and borrowed money for the last four years and now we're waking up to that.

Right now the American dollar is the 98lb weakling of global currencies. We are still stronger than the Indian rupee, but thanks to outsourtcing, perhaps for not much longer:

He says the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is good for America. It will bring more jobs to our country. Tell the people of my hometown that. They've lost the two biggest companies in town. They moved overseas. And more are getting ready to. NAFTA hasn't been good for the people of this NC town. And we don't have any companies about to move in. No NAFTA is not good for this country.

And president Bush hasn't been good for this country either.

Well, that's never going to make it inside the bubble.

Maybe if you repeat it to him. Slowly. And louder.