President Punchy
22 March 2006 11:01 am by Taylor Marsh
President Punchy
Re-selling Iraq is making Bush sound stupid.
… And he made a show of reading from his stage directions.
Rambling his way through a question about interest rates, Bush paused to confess,
“I'm kind of stalling for time here.” Checking his seating chart
before calling on a questioner, he confided, “They've told me what to
say.” After announcing that “there's going to be a P-5,” the
president translated his own jargon: “That's diplomatic sloganeering.”Whether it's the strain of the office, the weight of
international crises, or simply his old Delta Kappa Epsilon roots showing,
Bush has been President Punchy of late. In Cleveland on Monday, he said there
were 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions about Iraq, then called on an unsuspecting
Dick Keil, a Bloomberg News reporter. “I think 16 — is that right, Stretch,
16?” Bush inquired, using the nickname he assigned Keil. “I like
to, like, reverse roles sometimes,” the president explained. …(snip)
Bush took his revenge moments later, when, explaining
his immigration policy, he asserted that “Elisabeth was half asleep”
for his speech on Monday. When she protested, he insisted: “Well, the
person next to you was. They were dozing off. I could see them watching their
watches, kind of wondering how long he's going to blow on for. 'Let's get
him out of here so we can go get lunch' is what they were thinking.”Perhaps. Or perhaps Bush was projecting. Seconds later,
when he had finished his answer to the question, he added: “Listen, thank
you for your time. I've got lunch with the president of Liberia right now.”
It was not yet 11 a.m.
A
Punchy President Meets the Press
But if first you don't succeed, try, try again. MSNBC and Fox broadcast Bush's bloviating today, including the question and answer
period, in full. Only CNN offered other programming, which included the story
behind HeroBracelets.org.
The speech, the third public p.r. push this week, was laced throughout
with 9/11 references. Bush was in front of military families for today's re-selling
swing, with an audience of around 2,000.
The latest drum beat also includes attacks on the press, which
is currently being led by Laura Ingraham, recently returned from Iraq. But all
you have to do is listen to NBC's Richard
Engel to get the truth. John
F. Burns blows Ingraham's theories away as well.
What is it with the right-wing radio nut babes? They take one
tour of Iraq under close cover and come back experts. Right-wing
radio's Ann Coulter, Ms. Melanie Morgan, was the first to go to Iraq and
come back spewing it's all roses rhetoric.
The Republicans are on a major Iraq war p.r. swing, with Bush making sure to weave 9/11
into as many sentences as possible. But instead of sounding like they know what
they're talking about they just sound uninformed, while our president simply sounds punchy.
