Old Fogey's Quotes for Wednesday

"Does Bush not understand that the American military is seen as an occupying force by many Iraqis? Does he not understand that publicly expressing support for America would be a huge political liability for [Iraqi] government officials?"
Dan Froomkin, in his WaPo column
Bush Bubble Alive and Well
[I have one more question: Has there ever been anyone so willfully ignorant in the White House?]

"A lawyer plans to use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband."
Gina Keating, writing for Reuters
Plame lawyer plans to force Cheney, Rove testimony
[Republican disregard for the historical consequences of their actions may come back to bite them in other cases as well. Gore v. Bush is being cited in voting rights cases, including unequal opportunities to vote with the same vote tallying devices. Any increases in executive power could also be used by future Democratic presidents. Do Republicans really believe they have a lock on power?]

"Rick Santorum has voted with George W. Bush 98 percent of the time. When two politicians agree 98 percent of the time, one of them is not necessary."
Bob Casey, the state treasurer and the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Rick Santorum
A Democrat for Main Street
[If we have to eliminate one of the two, I vote for Bush--but only if there is no way for Cheney to become president]

“He is the human face of government intrusion.”
Angie Paccione, Democrat running for Congress from Colorado, regarding a joint press conference with the husband of Terri Schiavo
Husband Takes Schiavo Fight Back to Politicians
[Conservatives rail against government intrusion, but I guess that applies only to boardrooms, not bedrooms or death beds]

"We must do something Americans have never imagined: Give up on economic growth. We must abandon the long-held idea that we can grow our way out of every problem, that growth is the path to achieve every national goal. "
Nicholas von Hoffman, in an editorial in The Nation
Life in a Post-Carbon World
[I have long questioned the logic that to be successful one must always expand. If you are making a good product for a good and steady profit, are you a failure?]

[PS from Agen] To follow up on Old Fogey's "willfull ignorance" comment from above, Joe Scarborough on his MSNBC show last night actually had a debate with Lawrence O'Donnell (former producer of The West Wing and current occasional blogger at the HuffPo) and the Wall Street Journal's John Fund about whether George Bush is an idiot (or just completely inarticulate and occasionally innappropriate).

Here's the full segment from YouTube; you can also view it in another Flash video viewer over at RawStory or download WMV/QuickTime files at Crooks and Liars:



And here's a short summary of highlights from RawStory:

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund admitted that President Bush may be "inarticulate" but that didn't necessarily mean that he was "stupid."

"Voltaire once said that common sense is both rare and a lot more important to successful leadership than intelligence," said Fund. "And I agree."

The segment included a clip from Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart which focused on Bush's joint press conference with Germany Chancellor Merkel during his recent visit. Bush repeatedly joked about the feast planned in his honor which featured pig as the main course, even when asked about the war in Lebanon which had just recently erupted at the time.

Political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell said that Bush was "possibly" the easiest president to make fun of, and that he didn't understand how anyone could defend him as being especially smart, unless they worked "very closely with him," since he hardly ever displays a "public exhibition of a dazzling intelligence."

"It's almost like the more he stumbles over his tongue, the more he realizes that he may be overmatched by the english language," said former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough.