Bush: "There’s one terrible pilot"

* emptywheel:

"All of which at least suggests the possibility that someone either set up Novak to ask Armitage about why Wilson got sent (and suggested the weird intro for Novak's question, "Wilson never worked for the CIA"), or told him the most important details of the leak--Plame's name and classified status.

But now that I'm reading Hubris, I'm wondering if someone didn't prompt Woodward to ask Armitage as well."

* flashback:

"(9:01 a.m.): Bush Claims to See First WTC Crash on Television While at Elementary School

President Bush later makes the following statement: “And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower—the television was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, ‘There’s one terrible pilot.’ And I said, ‘It must have been a horrible accident.’ But I was whisked off there—I didn’t have much time to think about it.”"

mind you, at this point, he knew that osama was planning to use planes as weapons again skyscrapers.

* billmon:

"So we would appear to be set for a classic showdown this fall: The Rovian propaganda-based reality versus the rest of the world's reality-based reality, with the voters as the judges and the corporate media elites as the referees-on-the-take. The last few rounds should be bloody, and most likely downright vicious, in the Mike Tyson, bite-off-your-opponent's-ear sense of the word.
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Personally, I tend to believe it will take a rather massive eruption of reality -- and probably a catastrophic one -- to produce fundamental political change in America, of the kind that might allow a progressive left-wing movement to smash the Rovian machine, break the political stranglehold of private wealth and bring the corporations, including the corporate media, back under some kind of check and balance.
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We're obviously not looking at a realignment election yet. We're probably not even close (although I wouldn't put money on that proposition.) But it's getting hard to see how an economic and/or foreign policy train wreck can be avoided, one that will eventually force large numbers of voters to fundamentally reassess their existing political loyalties.

Until it happens, though, it's probably best if the corporate dreamweavers and the Rovian propaganda technicians keep their bosses in the power. I still believe (call it an article of faith) that a majority of the voters will eventually figure out they've been had -- sold not just a bill of goods but a counterfeit reality, one that is crumbling in front of their eyes. When that happens, they're going to be enraged, in a way that makes this year's discontent look like the passing tantrum of a grumpy two-year old. We can only pray they'll be angry at the right people."