The goodwill has not yet been returned

Bush’s Veterans Day proclamation says that veterans “ensured that America remained what our founders meant her to be: a light to the nations, spreading the good news of human freedom to the darkest corners of the earth.” He does know that America is not the same thing as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, just more heavily armed, right?

This morning, Bush attended the 2007 Grocery Manufacturers Association/Food Products Association Fall Conference. Since it’s Halloween, he went as a vegetable.


He had a very important reason to be there, indeed so important that he felt obligated to impart that reason not once, but twice, using, if you will, alternative phraseology: “One of the reasons I’ve come by is to remind you how important you are to our economy. In other words, I’m the kind of person who believes that it’s important for those of us in government to encourage people to take risk and to take investment.”

He introduced Bill Cyr: “I asked Billy where he works. He said, well, I run Sunny Delight beverage company. I said, well, Billy, I quit drinking. (Laughter.) He said, that’s not that kind of alcohol.” A little fixated, are we, George?

A VERY CHIMPY HALLOWEEN: “This morning I was with the Vice President. I was asking him what costume he was planning. He said, well, I’m already wearing it. (Laughter.) Then he mumbled something about the dark side of the force.” Do they really think they can soften Cheney’s image by joking about how evil he is?

WHAT GEORGE LOVES: “I love the fact that people say, I own a business. Ownership is a central part of making sure this country is a helpful -- hopeful country.”


GEORGE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEMORIALIZED MEANS: “We’re making some progress in convincing people in Washington that low taxes ought to be memorialized in permanent policy.”

WHAT KIND OF PERSON GEORGE ISN’T: “In order to get out of a recession and recover from an attack on the United States, we cut taxes on everybody who pays taxes, because I’m not the kind of person that says, we’re going to cut taxes on you because of your political affiliation and not because of you -- on you because of yours.” I’m glad he’s not the kind of person that says that.


WHEN VEGETABLES TALK: “I think it’s good for agriculture to say, let’s trade.”

EMPOWERMENT! “And one way to become less dependent on oil is to be able to grow products that empower our automobiles.”

PHILOSOPHER IN CHIEF: “Here’s my philosophy -- that government ought to trust private medicine; that we’ve got a fabulous health care system.”

IN OTHER... OH, YOU KNOW: “Under the [S-CHIP] proposal that came to my desk, more than half the children in America could be eligible for government health care. In other words, by expanding eligibility, it means that more than half the children in America would become eligible for this federal program.”

I’D LIKE TO RETURN THIS GOODWILL, PLEASE; IT SEEMS TO BE BROKEN. “I vetoed it. And my veto was sustained. And then I put out the word to Congress, I’d like to work with you on a better bill. And unfortunately, the goodwill has not yet been returned.”


GEORGE BECAME TO ANALYZE: “When I first came to Washington, I said, well, maybe this isn’t the proper federal role; we’ll let the states handle it. And then when I became to analyze the cost to the federal government of these junk lawsuits I determined it was a federal role to do something about them.”

GEORGE HAS A DREAM: “The dream is, is that all of us will have a -- our medical records on a little disk, a little chip that we can carry with us, that will be secure from prying eyes, but nevertheless, will be a part of wringing out cost inefficiencies in a industry that needs to have cost inefficiencies wrung out.” Maybe he should cut down on the nachos before bedtime.

WHAT GEORGE LIKES: “I like it when the after-tax revenues -- income are up.”

WHAT GEORGE KNOWS: “I know it’s necessary to do the hard work now so the first chapters of the 21st century will be positive chapters.” 9/11, the Iraq War, you know, positive chapters.

Happy Veterans Veterans’ Veteran’s Day

This may be a stupid question, but why was Bush celebrating Veterans Day at Arlington? Veterans Day is about living former service members; the dead ones have Memorial Day.



Possibly he went to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Punctuation Mark in which America buried the apostrophe that belongs in “Veterans Day.”

In Britain it’s called Armistice Day, and this is how the Queen spent it.

I read Bush’s Veteran’s Day speech so you don’t have to

But I didn’t watch it on tv. Some things are too much to ask. As reported in advance, the speech began a “campaign-style” attack on those accusing him of lying about intelligence when arguing for the invasion of Iraq. And he chose to launch this partisan attack on Veteran’s Day, which is not a little despicable. Characteristic, but despicable.

Most of the speech you’ve heard or read before, word for word, since he first gave it at the National Endowment for Democracy a month ago. (Update: Sadly, No! does a side-by-side comparison.) So let’s concentrate on the new material:

Various threats against Syria. “The government of Syria must stop exporting violence and start importing democracy.” Remember when democracy and freedom rested in the souls of every human, bestowed by god and blah blah blah? Well, evidently not so much in Syria, where they have to be imported, like DVD players and Britney Spears videos.

Veiled threats against Al-Jazeera: “The militants are aided as well by elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories, and speak of a so-called American ‘war on Islam’”.

Scolding the D’s and anti-war types. “I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn’t support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it.” Isn’t that sweet of him? Or would be, except for the fact that his respect lasted for precisely two sentences, at which point he accused those people (hey, that’s me!) of rewriting history, of false charges, and says, “These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will.” Not in front of the c-h-i-l-d-r-e-n.

His argument that Democrats saw exactly the same intelligence he had and came to the same conclusions has been adequately demolished by Atrios, Daily Kos and others. (Update: the WaPo also does a good fact-checking job). By the way, in this speech in which he denies having manipulated intelligence, he again quotes the Zinoviev Zawahiri letter, which isn’t so much manipulated as faked.

The biggest lie of all

Cheney celebrated the day in Arlington, evidently believing it was Memorial Day.

“What’s with the flowers? This better not be some gay thing.”

Words of wisdom from Mahatma Wolfowitz

A must-read Molly Ivins, on the Medicare drug plan, 61% of which will go straight into drug company profits, and pork in the energy bill. Turning coal into coal?

A tidbit in the Post says the Bushies are proposing letting drug companies destroy Medicaid records after 3 years, and with them any evidence of Medicaid fraud.

How did I miss this? War-Monger Extraordinaire Paul Wolfowitz said that “If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, they could, in fact, make an enormous change very, very quickly. I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous.” Wolfowitz then announced that he would retreat to an ashram after he had started 3 more wars.

Speaking of individuals demonstrating peacefully, Bush is visiting the UK soon, and his security people would like it if the entire West End was shut down for a couple of days. Oh, and they want demonstrations banned, and they especially don’t want demonstrations where Bush might actually see them. And they want immunity for Secret Service agents who might shoot somebody; they want to bring 250 armed agents. When Nixon visited in 1969, the Secret Service brought water.

Because he does need completely subservient audiences, doesn’t he? Does anyone else think that his giving a speech today at the Heritage Foundation was an insult to Veterans’ Day, which is supposed to be a national and not a partisan day? Bush also laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because god forbid he should come face to face with one of the known soldiers stuck at the sharp end of Bushian foreign policy. The fact that he never goes to a funeral of one of the soldiers is well known, and the ban on coverage of the arrival of coffins, but have you noticed that no one from the administration ever visits the wounded either?

A blogger goes looking for the schools in Iraq the Bushies keep claiming they’ve “rebuilt.” Incidentally, this blog, which I haven’t seen before, isn’t bad.

Several German states are working to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves. The story says that Christian and Jewish symbols won’t be banned. In fact...

Just kidding.

This link looks kind of generic, so it may reach a different story by the time you click on it, but it’s got some really heart-warming pictures of US soldiers interacting with Iraqis, frisking a 4-year old, and I like how one kneels down to tie up the 6-year old girl. (If the link doesn’t link, the story title is “Shocking images shame US forces”.)

Of course, that’s nothing like what we do in our own schools.

Daily Telegraph: Iraqi police officers have been offered the use of a pink Rolls-Royce belonging to the former dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday, as a wedding car. The deputy interior minister, Gen Ibrahim Ahmad, has authorised the vehicle's use by police officers and ministry officials when they marry. A spokesman said he wanted to honour their work.

After a radical reinterpretation of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was booed in Brazil, the director mooned the audience.