Thanks Robinson. I needed a laugh.

I heard it too... He said "I'm *a* commander guy"... not, "I'm the commander guy".

Despite the fact that right-wing spokesmen often mis-speak and mis-pronounce to convey ridicule or intentionally confuse one issue with another... We should not. They have no qualms about criticizing us for what they themselve do regularly.

The important concept here is that Shrub attempted to create another false either-or choice. "Either the military is run by the Congress, or it is run by it's commanders".

Actually the military is run by THE GOVERNMENT! ...which is composed of a legislative, an Executive, and a Judicial branch.

What's dizguzting it the way our Commander in Chief has painted himself out of the picture... AWOL again.

I like the movie analogies. The problem in my mind is that people who write and read these threads are of like-mind. To us it is so frigging obvious that Bush is either a lunatic, a pawn of international business, a man who is controlled by his addictive personality or all of the above. Yes I believe the elections were hijacked but if you think about it why were they even close enough to be hijacked? The reason is that roughly half the people in the United States think that having someone in the White House that speaks dysfunctional English like themselves is as it should be, a man they can relate to, a man who curses when he thinks the microphone is dead. I think that the Public, in general is ignorant and lazy when it comes to politics. I think we will just keep getting morally corrupt people in office until we have some collapse of the financial system and chaos-even ignorant and lazy people understand that situation and will be quick to blame the politicians-but until then it looks bleak to me.

the word "IDIOT" comes to mind....

"I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I'm going to be the president of everybody." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 2001

"Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words." --George W. Bush, interview with Rush Limbaugh, Nov. 1, 2006

It is white." —George W. Bush, asked by a child in Britain what the White House was like, July 19, 2001

"I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically." —George W. Bush, speaking at the Radio & Television Correspondents dinner, March 29, 2001

You can't make this stuff up.........

richsmith2 - ... and we can be certain that Mr. Bush is conversant with all the nuanced differences between those two articles.

According to a PBS news item yesterday, the Administration spokeswoman made it very clear in a statement from a few days ago that the president didn't say he was "the" commander guy, he said he was "a" commander guy. I don't understand why this is being reported inaccurately in the media and on the blogs. There is a big difference between "the" and "a".

No wonder WhiteHouse declined a televised public debate between Ahmedinejad and Bush. Bush would've guffawed and choked on his own words and that too in his own native language. Good thing, otherwise Ahmedinejad would have skinned Bush alive.

Bush says he hasn't had a drink since he was 40 (over 20 years ago). I'm highly skeptical of this. He lied about going to war; lying about his drinking would be a piece of cake.

But even if he hasn't had a drink in 20 years, Bush continues to display the telltale characteristics and behavior of an alcoholic: grandiose behavior, rigid & judgmental outlook, impatience, irritability in the face of disagreement, irrational rationalization, projection, overreaction, and denial.

Many well-known and knowledgeable people in the field of alcohol and substance abuse treatment have speculated that Bush is an untreated alcoholic.

Granted, these people haven't had the opportunity to examine him first hand but there is a wealth of medical evidence available about the mental and physical debilitation caused by alcoholism. It doesn't really take a degree to see that - as the old saying goes - if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

This along with age and the stress of the Oval Office are rapidly catching up with him. I'm not making excuses for him at all. He has Rove to do that. But the man is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually bankrupt. Now more than ever, he must be removed from office and tried for his crimes.

"It's worth noting that the US is not really a democracy. Your presidents are selected from a small group of families, all of whom are related by blood to european aristocracy."

I guess the inbreeding is starting to show... sigh.

Dumb as a shrub.
But I remember Swami Beyondananda saying "I'm not worried about the bush, but what is behind the bush."
Dumb shrub, Smart Gardners

"She cozied up to the diablo himself and she now reeks of sulphur."

Then the devil trampled her rose bushes as thanks.

It's worth noting that the US is not really a democracy. Your presidents are selected from a small group of families, all of whom are related by blood to european aristocracy.

It's scary that the "decider" has control over the deployment of "nucular" weapons. If you haven't done so, call your representatives in Washington and demand impeachment for Bush and Cheney. They lied to get us into an illegal, immoral, and very costly war for oil; they need to be impeached and indicted. Remember, the people are the decision makers. Decide to take action.

"Is George W. Bush even trying to make sense anymore?"

It never occurred to me he was ever trying. I thought he was taking lessons from Alan Greenspan all along, but perhaps that's giving him too much credit.

Oh Arbeit,
"The problem, of course, is that our society only worships Money and Power. Money and Power are Truth. Obsession and absolute obedience are the tickets to success."

Bravo.

I am surprise that someone is actually familiar with
Arbeit macht frei
Americans don't know about this detail - they might see some
similarities between their labor camps, and some past labor (NOT extermination) camps.

The problem, of course, is that our society only worships Money and Power. Money and Power are Truth. Obsession and absolute obedience are the tickets to success. Bush's "success", like Reagan's, will be the "successful" example that future leaders will model themselves after. Thus, stupidity will become the norm of leadership in the US, and the US will eventually be destroyed....

Speaking of the Queen, now we know she lacks moral integrity. She cozied up to the diablo himself and she now reeks of sulphur.

moonraven,

Higher-level or abstract thought normally involves the manipulation of symbols, including words, in a logical or consistent manner. And Bush has demonstrated repeatedly great difficulty with such a task.

And, as you wrote, Bush's lack of ability to articulate clearly did help him connect with voters as common ignorant Americans felt comfortable with someone whose abilities and knowledge were as limited as theirs. It was a dangerous and ill-advised connection on the part of the voters however, as Bush always had the goals and interests of the economic elite in mind, and he would use the acceptance of the hoi polloi to pick their pockets and steal their future.

It is beneficial that people are focusing closer on the "how" of Bush. The same behavior character challenges that must be overcome on the national stage for freedom are in the local arena.

In human development when one capacity is restricted a counter balancing talent is expanded. In Bush's case yes his elocution of the English language is restricted, to counter this his use of humor is developed to an almost genius stage, I would say genius but it is compulsive with Bush and not entirely within his cortical control.

During his speeches (and with the people you observe in the local field) Bush's head starts to bob and the seemingly insane statements come out of his mouth when two or more conflicting opitions are still present within cortical command. This is a behavior pattern that Bush has "apprenticed" since at least the crawling stage of development.

To overcome the uneasy and uncomfortable (from a structural viewpoint life threatening) anxiety sensations and the social embarrassement of continually saying seemingly insane statements and making physical "mistakes", yes, Bush has had to endure falling down while running, riding his bike, and eating pretzels since infancy, again Bush has compensated for this through the development of humor.

A compulsive facetious humor that the Rovian media spinners use very effectively for filling the required sound bite that thus enables Team Bush another day in office. Hopefully with Gonzales' and Rice's current mantras of "I can't recall" that sound bite ability is coming to an end.

But it is still effective - review the confusion presented above from Eugene Robinson. To effectively stay on topic one needs to move through the chaos with some manitenance of clarity. To help with this it is beneficial to realize that the situation is not that Bush (or the person in your local field) "could care less" or "could not care less": all humans care, but what happens to the caring? In Bush's case the energy of caring is directed to a vast field of delusion and disassociation. As Bush states he dosen't listen to classical music in the evening but baseball: I would place a large wager that he still fervently fantasizes about hitting the game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. The unfortunate thing here of course is that the use of energy for that home run precludes the ability to use the energy to compassionately recognize and reconcile organically the babies being born without eye and arm due to activated depleted uranium.

With Gandhi's displayed ability to allow someone to choke him until a human connection was developed we have a model for withstanding the chaos of Bush's facetiousness or the local field's delusion while staying on topic.

(And right on cue as I type and listen to PBS news Bush says to the Queen that she was there with us when we celebrated our bicentenial in 1776...pause...ha, ha...1976...ha, ha,...she gave me a look only a mother could give a child...ha, ha...self depreciating humor, giggles, and the Bush White House has a warm fuzzy spin for a few more days of survival)

Peace Be With You and All.

The situation is like two alien species trying to communicate, when one species is chlorine-breathing and made of natural plastic, and the other is sulfur-breathing and made of glass. They're too different to be able to touch bases in even the simplest way. So it is with Bush. He's so immersed and bound up in his personal, irrational fantasy world that what makes perfect sense to him is nonsense and gibberish to listeners in the universe of reality. The communication breakdown works in both directions. Say something to Bush, and he either doesn't react at all or he says something isolated and schizoid.

Bush is not capable of what we would normally call THINKING. If you can't think, which usually involves words, you obviously cannot speak a language.

I believe that most of the folks who voted for Bush did so precisely BECAUSE he cannot think or speak.

And that's really scary.

Those of us may remember an English or comp paper, handed in to some irritating professor (well actually an _ethics_ professor in my own case) who sent the paper back to us with the phrase "Not sure what you mean here" or "Needs further explication" or "This idea comes too late in your paper; needed further development" scrawled on it. If we were lucky, there was a re-write and we could further--because we were forced to--parse out, clarify in our own thinking, figure out in our own mind what we meant and therefore better convey it.

Some would say that it is this critical dialectic process that our teachers were actually trying to inspire, force or coerce.

And it was exactly this process that was short-circuited by this president and his administration. Not just in the run up to the war but in so many other ways.

And I agree that the language deficit is sometimes just a painfully funny situation but all too often it is a true indicator of the thinking and analysis that _never_ occurred.

Speaking of movie analogies, don't miss this article published in Common Dreams a few months before the Iraq war started. It compares Bush and his war advisors to the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup:
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1219-08.htm

Key89:

The expression is "he could NOT care less"

Think about it. It is like the error "fell through the slats" instead of "fell between..."

Chimps seem to walk with their arms out too. I wonder if they like the feeling or that's their mechanics. I don't know if they ever hang them straight down but they're smart enough not to give press conferences. But that's how chimps roll...

While we're providing motion picture analogies to George Dubya, might I suggest "Multiplicity", in which the idea of cloning the main character, Doug Kinney, who might be analogized to Ronald Reagan, is followed by a succession of clones one after another, all of whom possess some type of defect. "Two", who could be Bush Senior, is an easily irritated and macho copy of the main character. Then, "Four" is cloned from the "Two" clone. As a clone of a clone, his IQ is lower than those before him. The difference between "Four" and George Bush is that the former, although childish, is overly curious, whereas Dubya could care less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplicity_(film)

Bush's insecurity as measured by his mangling of English, can also me measured by the angle of his arms to his shoulders as he walks and struts. When extended out, and swinging, he feels pretty good. When hanging straight down, you know he is not too sure of himself.

Let's remember, instead, the movie "Being There" (1979, starring Peter Sellers as a retarded gardener who becomes an adviser to the president).

Note that Sellers' gardener did NOT become the president. It was another 21 years before Bush managed to install--with the help of his sibling Jeb and the Supreme Court--a retarded person in the Oval Office. (That's taking Equal Opportunity Employment for a ride--at the planet's expense.)

Great rug, though!

This is to job your memories about the movie in question:

Ron Steigler: Mr. Gardner, uh, my editors and I have been wondering if you would consider writing a book for us, something about your um, political philosophy, what do you say?
Chance the Gardener: I can't write.
Ron Steigler: Heh, heh, of course not, who can nowadays? Listen, I have trouble writing a postcard to my children. Look uhh, we can give you a six figure advance, I'll provide you with the very best ghost-writer, proof-readers...
Chance the Gardener: I can't read.
Ron Steigler: Of course you can't! No one has the time! We, we glance at things, we watch television...
Chance the Gardener: I like to watch TV.
Ron Steigler: Oh, oh, oh sure you do. No one reads!

Remember the movie, 2001?

Let's imagine that Bush is a pea-brain version of HAL 9000, the computer in charge of a spaceship on a mission to Jupiter. A scientist, named Rove, created him. Like HAL, Bush seems almost human.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are like the astronauts who have discovered that HAL has a screw loose. They are shutting down Bush's circuits, but they do so at great risk. HAL, after all, started murdering astronauts when he realized they were trying to interfere with his role as the Decider. Bush, like HAL, may lash back. How about a nuclear war with Iran?

Bush has always had a software problem with his language-generating capabilities, but his speech at Tippecanoe High School clearly indicates that failures in Iraq as well as pressure from the American people are starting to get to him. And the Democrats keep sabotaging his hard drive.

We must all hold our collective breaths until Bush starts singing "Daisy Bell." Then we will know we are in the clear.

'What "parts of our own country" experience violence even remotely comparable to that in Iraq?'

Uh, freeways.

In't it terrifying to think that this man heads up the world's most powerful military? As we watch the various disasters unfold before us I constantly remember the comments of the British Press after Bush won his second term.......'How can 59 million Americans be so dumb'.Unfortunately for all of us the recent polls indicate that there is still 28% of Americans that think Bush is doing a good job!Maybe after Bush completes his long list of disasters by bombing Iran we will be able to get that number down!