Is This Thing On??

So not only does GWB have fewer press conferences than any modern president, but he doesn’t want to answer follow-up questions? Of all the presidents of modern times, he’s the one that most needs to have follow-up questions asked, as he evades and obfuscates so many of his answers.

And all the while during these castrated media events, Dubya is smirking and (even while standing still) strutting for the cameras, enjoying his dominance over all the reporters, most of whom he resents as intellectuals.

But don’t forget how high on his horse Nixon was riding at the beginning of his second term, and he actually had a landslide victory under his belt. Like Bush now, he was bending the government to his personal will, perverting traditionally independent agencies to his partisan ends, making in-your-face appointments and conducting petty wars with his perceived enemies in the press and Congress.



Faced with the threat of overthrow from radical Islamists, Saudi Arabia made a "deal with the devil," funding the Wahabi schools (which teach extreme fundamentalism and anti-Americanism) in exchange for these radicals not inciting terrorism or revolution in Saudi Arabia. This is how 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers happened to be Saudis; they were the products of these fanatical schools.

A second deal with the devil, one that was made decades ago but reaffirmed by the current Bush administration, is our "eternal friendship" and military assistance to the House of Saud, in exchange for them continuing to feed our addiction to their petroleum.



How is it possible that during the 2004 presidential campaign, so little was said about Social Security reform, and here it is the crown jewel of the administration’s New Deal overhaul. Shouldn’t that have been front-and-center in the 2004 campaign? A few weeks before the election, the Kerry campaign claimed – correctly as it turned out – that the Bushies were planning a "January Surprise" of private accounts, which was roundly denied. Why didn’t the mainstream media jump all over this 3-Card Monte game of prevarication?

Speaking of that election, Bush is acting like he has this LBJ-sized or Reaganesque mandate to significantly alter the social and economic fabric of the country when in fact he only just squeaked by in Ohio to tip the election in his favor.