Bush thinks he lands a zinger; world tastes a little bit of its own vomit

As I remarked (in a comment) yesterday, I actually got a little queasy thinking about the discussion among the Bush speechwriters that hit on this idea of having the grandson of a Nazi sympathizer/financier/profiteer (you choose which) invoke the Holocaust to make a US domestic political point. . . while standing before the Israeli Knesset.

Bad enough that the president abandoned the “all politics stop at the water’s edge” axiom. Bad enough that he (or the speechwriter) was dumb enough to quote a Republican Senator’s wish of talking to Hitler. Bad enough that Bush would mar what was supposed to be a celebration of Israel’s founding with a nakedly political speech. Bad enough that he would cheapen the Holocaust and dishonor its victims by invoking it just to serve his partisan goals. And certainly bad enough that a sitting president would sink so low as to liken the Democrat running against Bush’s third term to a Nazi appeaser. . . but. . .

As bad as all of this is—and it is very, very bad—I didn’t know how high my disgust could rise until later in the day when I watched the Bush speech a few times on TV.




It’s not as easy to see on this YouTube, but look closely at Bush’s face when he finishes the quote from Senator Borah. Right after Bush says, “All of this might have been avoided,” but before he engages his over-rehearsed headshake, you will see a little smile break across the president’s face. It’s just a flash, almost a micro-expression of a smile, but it is, to me, clearly macro-filled with self-satisfaction.

Watch again—Bush thinks he got in a good one! He thinks he’s landed a zinger! You almost expect to hear a rim-shot or a “bang! zoom!” You know the president hears it in his own hollow head. (It takes him back to the days when he would towel-snap his naked classmates in the locker room.) I will go out on a limb and bet that the guy is basically congratulating himself for working in a Hitler reference for a room full of Jews.

“Aced it!” he’s thinking. “These Israelites [sic] know there’s nothin’ worse than makin’ nice with Hitler. They’ll eat this up like a pastrami sandwich!”

So, yes, I not only think that Bush is a vain, indecorous moron—I think he’s an anti-Semite.

Like (grand)father, like (grand)son.

And the president’s speechwriters—the guys that turned Bush’s thumbnail stereotype into a full-bleed portrait—what to make of them?

Idiots? Anti-Semites? Apple-polishers? Pigs?

Appeasers?


(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

Happy “Law Day”

I know, you thought it was May Day, but, as a New York Times editorial reminds us:

President Dwight Eisenhower established May 1 as Law Day to co-opt the biggest day on the socialist calendar. While much of the world marked May Day with critiques of capitalism and parades celebrating working men and women, the United States would honor, President Eisenhower declared, the “national dedication to the principle of government under laws.”

A dumb beginning, true, but as the Times points out, in the age of King George 43, “not a bad idea.” And they add this interesting fact:

Law Day proved to be a boon to international law, which was seen during the cold war as a check on communism. In his proclamation creating the holiday, Eisenhower emphasized law’s role “in the settlement of international disputes.” On Law Day 1959, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, grandfather of the current president, urged, remarkably, that international conflicts be settled by the World Court.

Which makes it all the more ridiculous and sad that while the editorial staff was acknowledging that

. . . for six years now, the rule of law has been under attack. An array of doctrines has emerged to undermine it, like the enemy combatant doctrine, which says people can be held indefinitely without trial. . .

Times reporter Linda Greenhouse and her editors on the news pages could barely be bothered to note the latest developments in the enemy combatant saga and the continued trampling of our Constitution by the Bush Administration and its puppet-dominated Supreme Court:

In another action, the court turned, without comment, down the latest appeals by two Guantánamo detainees, Salim A. Hamdan and Omar Khadr. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, and Stephen G. Breyer dissented, as they had earlier this month. The case was Hamdan v. Gates, No. 06-1169.

Those three sentences are the last paragraph—and the only mention of this—in a long article about Monday’s Supreme Court business that mostly concerns itself with the (also horrible) decision to find for the police in reckless car chases.

While I’m happy to see that case covered, the unfathomably short shrift that Greenhouse and the Times give this latest turn in the Hamdan case and the challenges to the US Constitution raised by the Military Commissions Act show that while some at the paper have come to praise the rule of law, the news czars still choose to bury it.

Shame—on the Supreme Court. . . and the New York Times.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)