"Under Gregory's assertive examination, Bush repeatedly rejected the notion that his dismal approval ratings actually reflect disapproval -- calling them simply the result of an "unsettled" public."
* tristero found this at the nyt:
"If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage..."
* glenn:
"This notion that FISA is unconstitutional never emerged until the Bush administration wanted to eavesdrop on Americans with no oversight. And it was not publicly articulated until George Bush got caught violating that law and needed a defense. Criminal defendants frequently claim that the law they are accused of violating is unconstitutional. That is a common tactic among people who get caught breaking the law.
That the AUMF defense did not even exist when the President ordered warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is extremely significant because it means that the administration did not even purport to beleive that the eavesdropping they were ordering was consistent with any statute. They knew that FISA criminalized that eavesdropping, and the sole justification for engaging in it was that President Bush could order the law violated because he has that power, and FISA is invalid to the extent it regulates that power. But the circumstances under which this claim arose, by itself, demonstrate how frivolous this theory is."
7 comments:
Information Clearing House has a great piece by Paul Levy, "Bush is Certifiable", a great Jungian analysis of why the Great Deceiver cannot compute this reality. And of course if We, the Peeps continue to be "unsettled' he and Halliburton have these nice detention centers they're getting ready where we can all be "resettled".
capisce.
i'd really love some of what laura has...
the scary thing with bush is that he doesnt seem sufficiently stable to be able to keep pulling off the 'they really love me' thing unless he actually believed it. i keep expecting him to collapse into a puddle of self-loathing - but he doesnt.
Hanna Arendt defined evil as a lack of empathy - the inability, or unwillingness, to stand in another's shoes and identify with their feelings. Bush won't "collapse into a puddle of self-loathing" because it would genuinely appear to him as equivalent to suicide. He grew up in a barbarous household where feelings were trampled on and the values were cheap, money-driven, people-using and nasty. It's a culture that you catch, like a cold, and Bushie has internalised it completely. If you notice people who tell lots of lies after a while actually start to believe those lies. The brain simply loses track of when it's lying or telling the truth. The death of feelings for others, for oneself and habitual lying are all part of the same sociopathic mechanism. It is no small accident that genuinely holy people such as Buddha and Christ are hallmarks of emotional sanity.
Bush is somewhat of a pathetic character when you look at him. Cheap and tawdry, lacking in education, reliant on evangelical garbage for a miserable sense of worth. All he's got going for him is bluster and bullshit. Like a heat seeking missile Bush will find the 1 person in 100 that likes him and ignore the other 99. He can't do otherwise. It's tragic that there's so much damage he can do to others along the way. And with his nuclear keys, his pathology frighteningly 'slouches towards Bethlehem to be born'.
Keep in mind the answer to life the universe and everything has always been 42. We just don't understand the question.
"Like a heat seeking missile Bush will find the 1 person in 100 that likes him and ignore the other 99. He can't do otherwise. It's tragic that there's so much damage he can do to others along the way."
its difficult to do that in real life - it must almost be impossible as POTUS
damien: "it would genuinely appear to him as equivalent to suicide."
indeed. the breaking of the man from which he'd never recover. but i still keep expecting it...
Damien, you would love the book "Bush on the Couch" Dr. Franks makes his case for calling Bush a sadist. I carry it around with me and read passages to people. My friends tease me and say, "Oh No, here comes the Bush Mobile". I have other tomes I keep in the trunk of my car, in case I need a quote, quick.
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