“Disabled, I only have the power of my words to protest against the rape of our heritage.”
***************************

You seem more than adequate for the job at hand.

Gino,
I hope my “overly serious” mind has misinterpreted your clever use of irony. Bush really is a war criminal. You write with some intelligence, so if you comment as if you do not recognize this simple fact then either you’re being facetious, or you’re blithely missing the problem with this administration. They have gotten us into an unjustified and illegal war, murdered hundreds of thousands of people for oil, given sanction to torture and shredded our Constitution. I may not be a lawyer, but I’m pretty “wonky” when it comes to policy and I love this country’s constitution. Disabled, I only have the power of my words to protest against the rape of our heritage. I’m just an older guy who wants his children to have the same chances I’ve had. I know more than enough history to state that America has never lived up to its’ founding principles. However, we are on the cusp of our country descending beyond the point of redemption and it sickens me.

Your list of past transgressions does not equal malice in the speech incident, no matter how hard you try. Sorry. The overreactions to some of the posts on this blog make some of you sound nutty. I’ve actually spent some time wondering why that is. Professor Turley is a smart guy. He writes a lot of good, insightful commentaries. Many of his blog posts raise interesting legal issues. I would have guessed … and this may be where I’ve gone amiss … that the audience would be lawyers, or at least legal/policy wonks. Judging by the tone of the comments, though, it looks like … I dunno … overflow from the Daily Kos, Code Pink, and MoveOn.org. It’s as if every post on this blog is a Rorschach test where every answer is “Bush is a war criminal.”

I don’t mean to rain on yall’s picnic or anything, I’m just saying …

Gino

Well said!

Again, welcome back!

Jill

“What I don’t understand is why some of you equate the omission with an evil motive, like destroying the Constitution.”
*****************************

Let me count the ways that other “innocent” little things led us to overreact in our sinister beliefs:

1. Going around FISA
2. Having the telecoms go around FISA
3. Refusing to answer subpoenas of Congress
4. Ordering others to refuse to answer subpoenas of Congress
5. Faith based Initiatives where taxpayer money just happens to end up in the hands of faiths Bush likes despite the principle of separation of Church and State
6. Politicizing the hiring of career employees at Justice Department
7. Denial of Habeas Corpus
8. Guantanamo
9. Abu Ghraib
10. A concerted effort to politicize the Katrina disaster when things went terribly wrong
11. Subverting legitimate criminal investigations
12. Initiating bogus criminal investigations
13. “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

There’s a bakers dozen off the top of my head. And by all means stay at the adult table, and review a primer on intent from the Romans who knew a thing or two about political intrigue and motivation:

“In traditionibus scriptorum non quod dictum est, sed quod gestum est, inspicitur”*
____________

*In the delivery of writings, not what is said but what is done is to be considered.

I took what people were saying this way–In many of Bush’s actions he has tried to remove an important founding prinicple of our nation-separation of church and state. This is a fact that one of his own, David Kyo, former head of faith based initatives has acknowledged.

I think it is a big deal to try to destroy that founding principle. I think many of us are offended that a person who has done so much to subvert the Constitution, and just considers it a worthless piece of paper, would try to associate himself with Jefferson by using Jefferson’s writings.

I’m guessing that the speech writer did leave the part about religion out for political purposes as this group does not want to offend fundamentalists (and they would be offended). And even though Bush doesn’t write his speeches he is still responsible for what he says.

That’s how I took it. I did think you made some disparaging remarks about my and other’s posts. I don’t think that was fair. For my part no hard feelings.

Jill

Jill

My gripe isn’t with the accuracy of the quote. I’m taking it for granted that the quote was stated as described in the original post. What I don’t understand is why some of you equate the omission with an evil motive, like destroying the Constitution. Chances are, Bush didn’t write the speech. Chances are, he didn’t know about the omission. Assuming he did know about the omission, it was a politically calculated move to sidestep and idea that he didn’t quite agree with. That’s about it.

I’m no fan of Bush, Jill. My list of things he’s done right would be small indeed. But I have a hard time reading the original post as support for Bush’s malicious contempt for the Constitution.

I’ll save mespo some time and just go sit at the kiddie table right now. Oh, and I’m stupid, too.

Gino

I apologize, I thought you were asking a “gotcha” question and was being defensive. I forget that people actually do sometimes want intelligent discussions.

I’m not entirely sure I can think of anything Bush got right. I’m not going to go reading through his speeches to find an example because I can’t stand the style of his orations, and I don’t really have time in any event. I’m sure that he’s gotten at least one or two things right simply because I’ve yet to find someone that I disagree with 100% of the time.

Et al,

I honestly don’t understand why my posts are getting the somewhat aggressive response that they are, I meant them in a constructive way. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive. It’s the week before a show I’m playing in the pit orchestra for opens and all the rehearsals (not to mention the annoying songs that get stuck in my head) always make me a little grumpy. I’m NOT saying that Bush isn’t manipulating the English Language for political means; I’m just saying you have to choose your battles.

Jill

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

-Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
16th president of US (1809 – 1865)

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”
George W. Bush quotes (American 43rd US President since 2001. b.1946)

I don’t see how they weren’t proportional but I’ll agree with the two things you mentioned above.

Jill

I was asking that you list those things, important ones, that Bush got right. I’m agnostic about this slip up and agree with you that in the scheme of things it’s not a big deal. Will you please tell me the important things you believe Bush got right?

Thank you,

Jill

I think he probably said the correct words for his Oath of Office. I also have a suspicion he used to be pretty good at Keg Stands.

I’m not defending Bush, I just think the response should be proportional to issue.

George W. Bush 43rd US president since 2001 (1946 – )said:

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on…”

* -’bout sums it up, wouldn’t y’all agree?

Bush: I need a speech for the 4th about ___ minutes long. I should probably quote Jefferson or one of those other dead guys.
Speech writer: O.k. I’ve got just the quote, but I may have to drop a line or so.
Bush: Sure, sounds good to me.

Look I agree that what he did was misleading and misused Jefferson’s words. I’m glad that somebody caught the misquote and published the correction. I think the person that needs to take the blame is the probably the speech writer. That however is all the attention I think this speech deserves.

Let us please get back to complaining about stuff he said that really matters. How about how he lied to get us to go to war, or how he lied about McCain supporting the new G.I. Bill. Maybe we should bring up the whole Mission Accomplished speech. Let’s even make fun of that absurd statement a couple years ago about outlawing Human\non human hybrids.

I stand by my thesis that nitpicking everything Bush does only desensitizes people to complaints about REALLY important stuff, like his administration’s ignoring and deliberate misreading of the Constitution.

I would like to know the things you believe Bush got right. I’m not bullshitting. If you will post your lists I will, with an open mind and heart, listen to what either of you have to say.

Thank you,

Jill

You’ll forgive me for not according the benefit of the doubt to one who has never deserved it in the past when it WAS accorded. From this day onward, I’ll also assume that the fox is merely paying a social call on the hen house, and that, with a little work, Britney Spears will one day be “Mother of the Year.”

I think the problem is that we get so used to saying certain things that it becomes habit. That only serves to weaken these arguments the times they ARE appropriate (which are pretty numerous). We could rewrite the old fable as “The Liberal who cried Bush.”

To be fair it seems to me that with a few exceptions the more conservative people on the blog seem to be more interested in shouting slogans than having a discussion. Rebutting their slogans is what tends to leads to the repetition of “Bush is wrong about _____.”

You haven’t been paying attention. *Everything* Bush does is an evil plot to further erode our rule of law. Did you see the Scientology post comments? “[T]he whole thing has striking parallels to the [C]heney administration.” Scientology nonsense = Cheney administration. Religion is given a regular spanking, too, whether the original post justifies it or not. That’s the way it goes around here.

Gino

“Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone.”

Nice to be back. First let’s set the record straight, Jefferson never said any such thing as has been portrayed above. Some like Adams and Washington supported lifetime tenure for Senators, but never for Presidents, and Jefferson, a supporter of the French revolution, would never have advocated a king in President’s or Senator’s clothing. More importantly and with respect to Orwell, it was evident to him that authoritarians never change very much in their tactics and they are likewise never original thinkers. We can see it in our posters here too as they contort language, employ euphemisms, argue off point or just plain spam us to convince us the Bush is some kind of great leader. Try as they might, they just can’t get around his transparently foolish actions and words. In this Country and for the time being, all animals are equal, including the ones who think and sound like pigs despite their yearning to be “more equal than others.”

“…political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

from “Politics and the English Language.” (1946)