Is The Honeymoon Really Over?
It’s not even a week since his bold and sweeping Inaugural Address. And it’s only a week before another grand set-piece event: the State of the Union Message. Yet between these two great moments on the bully pulpit, President Bush felt an urgent need to do something he dislikes intensely: stage a full-blown press conference. For a president who loathes admitting mistakes, his press conference was as close as Bush is going to get to a concession that the first few weeks of the new year have not gone wholly according to plan.
Look at the subjects addressed by the president in his opening remarks. His top four areas of concern have all faced surprisingly tough challenges in this early period of his new term: his Inaugural Address, the loss of life in Iraq, his plans to overhaul Social Security and Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation. Those challenges don’t exactly reflect the kind of political capital the White House believes it earned in November’s presidential election.
First, the Inaugural Address. The most attention-grabbing notion set out by the president—one that certainly caught the eye of allies and enemies around the world—was this statement: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” Continued in link...
Apparently Dick didn't feel any obligation to dress formally when memorializing the Holocaust. That's right, I said "Dick."
‘Of course you're going to get torture' - "This is a disaster for U.S. policy," said Hartnett, who has spent 15 years teaching in prisons and authored numerous books and papers on the subject. "It's crippling our ability as a nation to talk about democracy ... We as a people are being seen as perpetrators of this brutality."
Hehe, almost forgot about this... KidBastard made a snarky comment on the day they memorialized the Holocaust when he wondered aloud if they would pause during the ceremonies to recall how President Bush's grandfather helped Hitler come into power. Do you think I am kidding? No no no, my darlings...
Aww, how sweet! Diebold's made a printer that can produce paper-trails for their e-voting machines just in time for...ummm....
Private Vs. Personal: Media's Social Security Semantics - Facing significant opposition to its plan to privatize part of the Social Security program, the White House is pushing reporters and lawmakers to use the expression "personal accounts," since polling data seems to indicate that "privatization" is an unpopular term with voters. While it's not unusual for politicians to try to spin the terminology used in debate, journalists should avoid changing word usage simply because some politicians think it will be to their advantage. There's little doubt that "privatization" is a more accurate description of the White House plan, especially considering that the current Social Security system is already based on what are essentially "personal accounts"-- your benefits depend on how much you personally have paid in, as the annual statements you get from the Social Security Administration indicate-- rendering the Bush administration's preferred terminology redundant and confusing. What is different about the accounts that Bush is proposing is not that they are personal, but that they will hold private-sector securities-- in other words, that they will be privatized.
Are we living inside "Wag The Dog"?
Look at the subjects addressed by the president in his opening remarks. His top four areas of concern have all faced surprisingly tough challenges in this early period of his new term: his Inaugural Address, the loss of life in Iraq, his plans to overhaul Social Security and Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation. Those challenges don’t exactly reflect the kind of political capital the White House believes it earned in November’s presidential election.
First, the Inaugural Address. The most attention-grabbing notion set out by the president—one that certainly caught the eye of allies and enemies around the world—was this statement: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” Continued in link...
Apparently Dick didn't feel any obligation to dress formally when memorializing the Holocaust. That's right, I said "Dick."
‘Of course you're going to get torture' - "This is a disaster for U.S. policy," said Hartnett, who has spent 15 years teaching in prisons and authored numerous books and papers on the subject. "It's crippling our ability as a nation to talk about democracy ... We as a people are being seen as perpetrators of this brutality."
Hehe, almost forgot about this... KidBastard made a snarky comment on the day they memorialized the Holocaust when he wondered aloud if they would pause during the ceremonies to recall how President Bush's grandfather helped Hitler come into power. Do you think I am kidding? No no no, my darlings...
Aww, how sweet! Diebold's made a printer that can produce paper-trails for their e-voting machines just in time for...ummm....
Private Vs. Personal: Media's Social Security Semantics - Facing significant opposition to its plan to privatize part of the Social Security program, the White House is pushing reporters and lawmakers to use the expression "personal accounts," since polling data seems to indicate that "privatization" is an unpopular term with voters. While it's not unusual for politicians to try to spin the terminology used in debate, journalists should avoid changing word usage simply because some politicians think it will be to their advantage. There's little doubt that "privatization" is a more accurate description of the White House plan, especially considering that the current Social Security system is already based on what are essentially "personal accounts"-- your benefits depend on how much you personally have paid in, as the annual statements you get from the Social Security Administration indicate-- rendering the Bush administration's preferred terminology redundant and confusing. What is different about the accounts that Bush is proposing is not that they are personal, but that they will hold private-sector securities-- in other words, that they will be privatized.
Are we living inside "Wag The Dog"?
by MG at 8:46 PM
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