Interlocutor

I’ve just been reading the transcript of Bush’s interview on Fox. Now do you think it’s a psychological thing when he says how he never consults his father about anything, or have his handlers told him to distance himself from old One-Term Bush? And which of those puts Junior in the worse light?

His new word of the day: interlocutor. Although he doesn’t seem to know what it means.

He says the slogan of the D. presidential candidates is Vote For Me, I Don’t Like George Bush.

And then he says the thing about Ted Kennedy and uncivil people who use words they shouldn’t be using. Like interlocutor.

Says he never reads the paper or watches the news, and is paying no attention at all to the D. candidates and hasn’t watched any of the debates. Basically, all his news is filtered by people he considers “objective”, like Condi Rice and Andrew Card. Bush: “the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.” He does enjoy living in that bubble.

Funnily enough, since writing that, I’ve received the American Historical Association’s newsletter, with a piece by the AHA president on Bush’s use of the term “revisionist historians,” which ends:

“The judgmental tone of Rice's derogatory reference to "revisionist historians" brings to mind a review of her book The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983, in the December 1985 issue of the American Historical Review (p. 1236) when she was an assistant professor at Stanford. The reviewer claimed that Rice "frequently does not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation." In addition, according to the reviewer, she "passes judgments and expresses opinions without adequate knowledge of the facts" and her "writing abounds with meaningless phrases."”

I just looked up that review, which is actually even more devastating than those quotes indicate, and suggest just how ignorant of her subject she was. I’m pretty sure its comments about Rice were not personal, since Rice is throughout referred to as “he”--you’ll notice the paragraph I quoted crops its quotes from the review so as to avoid pronouns, which I suppose is another example of revisionist history.

http://www.theonion.com/3937/top_story.html.

Yesterday I commented on the British papers (excluding the Times and the Telegraph) using the word “fuck.” The Guardian’s media reporter notes that the first British newspaper to use the word on its front page, 3 years ago, was of all things the Financial Times.

The Iraqi puppet government not only banned reporters from Al Jazeera and the other one I mentioned yesterday, but has banned any quoting of Baathists of any kind, including those Saddam tapes. The rules were drawn up in consultation with the Americans.

Russia has made a deal with Kyrgyzstan allowing it to establish a small military base there. The US also has a base in the country. Could be interesting.

Jamaica’s PM says that under his administration, “more people have electricity and telephones and more men have girls.”

Speaking of more men having girls, Bush’s speech to the UN today--universally considered a failure--ended with a long bit about sex slaves. And now for a change of pace, we’re invading Thailand.

Haven’t read the 9th Circuit decision on the recall yet, but the eleven were unanimous, which smells like a closed-door deal to me.