The intellect necessary to bring a lot of class to that Court

Today Bush visited a school to commemorate the 4th anniversary of No Child Left Behind, trumpeting the death of the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” where “It’s more important that somebody be shuffled through than it is to determine whether or not they’re capable of meeting certain standards”. Speaking of standards, earlier in the day he said that Samuel Alito should be confirmed because “Sam’s got the intellect necessary to bring a lot of class to that Court.” It’s all about standards, folks. Speaking of standards, back to the NCLB photo op: Chimpy commented that Laura often read to the twins, for all the good it did; “Occasionally, I did, too, but stumbled over a few of the words and might have confused them.” That was at the start of a speech about how important education is.


Hell, even the transcript guy is marking Bush down:

And the best place to start is to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract. And so that was the spirit behind proposing the No Child Left Behind Act. And as I mentioned, there was a lot of non-partisan cooperation -- kind of a rare thing in Washington. But it made sense when it come [sic] to public schools.

That’s transcript guy’s sic. And later, “Laura and I’s [sic] spirits are uplifted any time we go to a school that’s working”.

Naturally, because he was in a public school, he ended his speech, “God bless the teachers here, and the principal. God bless the parents. And may God bless the students, as well.”


As for ScAlito, as far as Bush is concerned, it’s all about surface appearance dignity:

And my hope, of course, is that the American people will be impressed by the process. It’s very important that members of the Senate conduct a dignified hearing. The Supreme Court is a dignified body; Sam is a dignified person. And my hope, of course, is that the Senate bring dignity to the process and give this man a fair hearing and an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Followed by a dignified funeral for the Constitution as we knew it. He made the same call for a dignified confirmation process for Roberts, when I wrote,

I can’t even imagine how he defines dignity in this context (but then, I can’t imagine him spelling dignity). Possibly for him, nothing says dignity and gravitas like abject capitulation and subservience, like that butler he always calls Jeeves (but whose name is not actually Jeeves), who always says Yes sir, at once sir, in that fruity accent.