Maikimo.net taxonomy tags

“[We have] a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in.”

Newsweek: Eleanor Clift: ‘A record voter turnout is expected, and that signals change, not four more years of the status quo.’

Talking Points Memo: Josh Marshall: ‘The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.’

WaPo: David Broder: ‘Bush is dragging two huge weights — and he has no one to blame but himself.’

Slate: William Saletan: ‘Kerry is that close to making a Bush victory mathematically impossible.’

Esquire: Sept 2004: Ron Reagan: ‘[This summer] a fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people’s eyes.’

WaPo: Richard Cohen: ‘The British prime minister can acknowledge an awkward fact, even a mistake, and keep on going. Bush can only insist that he is right.’

Time: John F. Dickerson: ‘A book about Treasury’s Paul O’Neill paints a presidency where ideology and politics rule the day.’

A recipe for leadership disaster:

Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.

“I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

Mr. Bush, the people on your staff are likely to be the least objective sources you have. Many have a vested interest in telling you exactly what you want to hear. Or, perhaps more to the point, in telling you exactly what they want you to think, since they know you don’t do any cross-checking against other sources.

I have long maintained that anyone with a decent computer and a fast Internet connection (and maybe an ability to read quickly) can be better informed about world events — and the reasons and motivations behind them — than the president of the United States is.

As extremely unlikely as this sounds — and it sounded impossible to many of my conservative friends whose early-on argument(s) for war rested on the belief that “the president knows things we don’t know, so we just have to trust him” — empirical evidence supports my hypothesis: The words and actions from Mr. Bush and his administration again and again reveal a startling lack of awareness of world facts/figures/feelings, an awareness that’s attainable for anyone who reads far and wide.

Here, I am left to infer, is one child who was left behind.

[via Daily Kos]

2003-09-24 update: No sooner than I imagined Mr. Bush as a grown-up child who’s been left behind, I’m referred to this astonishing psychological assessment that compares George to Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Big. Fascinating reading.

Later … OTOH, after just watching the long-since TiVo’d closing episodes of last season’s The West Wing, I’m reminded I’m not willing to take on a presidential level of responsibility (assuming there’s any significant correlation between drama and reality on that score). So now my hardwired INFP empathy’s kicking in and I’m willing to cut the White House folks some slack.

I’ll still be proceeding full tilt toward getting Dr. Dean elected next year, though.

Still later … OTTH, given the extent of these White House occupants’ lies and malfeasance, I should probably take the more forcible stance of James Carville who said, “When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil.”

There are enough tough guys and gals around to hurl anvils at deserving SOBs that maybe I can weave into empathetic mode from time to time and still succeed at pushing the fight forward. :-)

Like many people, I’m trying to figure out why, after so many months of successfully misleading the U.S. public into believing there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11 (such that 7 of 10 Americans still gullibly think that connection exists), Bush & Co. would suddenly admit “there has been no evidence that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

Refer to yesterday’s Bush Disavows Hussein-Sept. 11 Link (WaPo) or Bush: No Proof of Saddam Role in 9-11 (AP).

Surely this ongoing 9/11→Saddam Hussein→”Let’s roll” popular opinion redirect has been one of the most successful applications ever of Huxley’s Brave New World hypnopaedic maxim, “62,400 repetitions make one truth.”

And now they’re pulling the plug? Now that’s news.

Billmon, Kos, and others are putting forth their ideas as to why they’re admitting this now.

My idealist side wants to think they’re finally coming ‘round to some honesty. But my skeptical side wins out; I think they’re simply continuing their habit of lying big on the front page and then retracting the lie in small print on an inside page so as not to upset their internal sense of “moral” weight and balance. “See? No lie — all canceled out.” Meanwhile, all most people see and remember is the front-page headline.

But why “spin different” now, precisely? This is interesting to watch.

Read this: A Nation of Victims (Renana Brooks, The Nation). Don’t be one:

President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. …

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush’s political agenda is out of step with most Americans’ core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush’s most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. … Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener’s head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower. …

People do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won’t respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism.

Absolutely fascinating.