bush

The Bush Economic Development Plan

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Buy ribs.
This interchange is much better then the State of the Union reading:

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin’ Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico
11:25 A.M. MST
THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.
Q Mr. President, how are you?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m hungry and I’m going to order some ribs.
Q What would you like?
THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I’d like.
Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven’t spent enough to keep the country secure.
THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But I’m here to take somebody’s order. That would be you, Stretch — what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It’s part of how the economy grows. You’ve got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?
Q Right behind you, whatever you order.
THE PRESIDENT: I’m ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?
Q But Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady’s business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?
Q Ribs.
THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let’s order up some ribs.
Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I’m here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?
Q An answer.
Q Can we buy some questions?
THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people — they make a lot of money and they’re not going to spend much. I’m not saying they’re overpaid, they’re just not spending any money.
Q Do you think it’s all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?
THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they’re good, generally.
END 11:29 A.M. MST

I agree with Eugene Volokh that bush is actually handling this interchange well. We should not discount the possibility that Stretch is not a member of the press corps but rather a local alien. Perhaps bush should retire now to Roswell.

What else to do at 9:00 PM EST

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Hesiod has some recommendations for those who might want different television programming during w’s performance.
There is also: turn the damn thing off and read a book, hug your spouse, talk to your kids, etc.
Being a bit of a masochist I’ll probably have it on the radio as background to whatever else I might be doing then.

Conspiracy Theories

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On Saturday nights ABC replays episodes of Monk, the entertaining USA series. Tonight’s is a repeat but my wife has not seen it so it is on while she falls asleep reading and I browse a few blogs (I should have done some links for you…there is, as usual a lot of good stuff out there).
A key clue that Monk has focused on the right person as the culprit is that the guy sat quietly at his desk (he was proctoring a Saturday morning SAT exam) as all the students jumped up an ran to the windows when a car alarm went off. This was unnatural behavior and would be for you and I in similar circumstances.
At the same time this was playing on Monk I was reading the following?:

…while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat at various desks, inert.

Well, my reaction each time I have read about this has been incredulity. That is not how I would expect them to behave. Is this proof that they knew in advance about the attacks? No. But, please then, explain their behavior.
Susan at Suburban Guerilla asks whether Michael Hasty’s call to paranoia in the above article is persuasive. He certainly lines up a long series of allegations and evidence and but the lack of citations, while perhaps not appropriate to the medium in which the article appeared, would make his arguments hard to accept by someone not familiar with all the items.
Especially when some of his arguments include things like:

…the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was “probably” the result of “a conspiracy,”

and then fails to tell us that the committee was referring to a conspiracy involving Oswald and a few others and that:

In terms of its implications for government and society, an assassination as a consequence of a conspiracy composed solely of Oswald and a small number of persons, possibly only one, and possibly a person akin to Oswald in temperament and ideology, would not have been fundamentally different from an assassination by Oswald alone.

So, he doesn’t appear to have everything just right and he would have been much more persuasive if he had ended with a bold Wake Up People before he takes his argument over the edge by rolling out the Bush as Hitler meme.

So You Want to be Secretrary of the Treasury

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Brad Delong details, and I mean in great detail, what O’neill or any future candidate for this position should do to establish their role and notes that with regard to O’neill:

O’Neill did none of the things that he needed to do in order to get Robert Rubin’s job. Why not is unclear. He did suffer from CEO disease–that is, after a decade of everyone who works for ALCOA telling him that he is a genius and that every one of his words is pure gold, he did believe it and could not readjust. He sent his deputy to ask if O’Neill could attend the 7:30 White House senior staff meeting, but apparently thought it beneath his dignity to ask himself (or to just show up).

Pretty good stuff.
NB: I note, though, that given the reality of the bush administration O’neill could have followed Brad’s guidelines to the T and it likely would not have made an iota of difference.