I don't think "robust" means what Bush thinks it means
From the people who brought us such hits as "Uraniam Tubes from Africa" and "Saddam Hussein blah blah blah 9/11" comes a new classic: "This economy sure kicks ass."
Apparently the White House feels its policies have created a more robust economy than existed during the late '90s. We all must have just imagined we were better off. Sure, the amount of people living in poverty has skyrocketed, but what does that matter?
If you keep in mind an early quote about the Bush administration's governing philosophy, allegedly from a White House aide, it all makes perfect sense:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Another quote that may be helpful when listening to the White House tell you why it's technically not such a bad thing that you've gone from working on a Ford assembly line to working at a Wal-Mart checkout line:
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-Mark Twain (or possibly Benjamin Disraeli)
7 comments:
When I read the NY Times article you 'quote', I see:
Your quoted 'Bush administration aide' is from the first Bush administration, not the current one.
He is 'quoting' imaginary, internal beliefs of the current government, apparently by reading the minds of people he's likely never met.
You quote those beliefs as direct quotes.
If that is what counts as 'reality based', you live in a different reality than many, probably most, people.
"Your quoted 'Bush administration aide' is from the first Bush administration, not the current one."
Really? So you're saying George Herbert Walker Bush was President in 2002, when the senior adviser allegedly said that to the journalist Ron Suskind? Was there a temporal anomaly and nobody told me?
You might try reading the paragraph before the quote. Slowly.
"He is 'quoting' imaginary, internal beliefs of the current government, apparently by reading the minds of people he's likely never met."
Is that what you deduced from "In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency."?
What an interesting interpretation you arrived at.
"You quote those beliefs as direct quotes."
No, I quoted Ron Suskind, who presented those beliefs as direct quotes because they were told directly to him. I even threw in an "allegedly" since Ron Suskind apparently met with this aid alone.
"If that is what counts as 'reality based', you live in a different reality than many, probably most, people."
I don't think you're giving "most people" enough credit. I think most people are able to comprehend what they read.
When you look at it from a certain point of view (the point of view of the White House's constituents - the wealthiest Americans who earn the majority of their income from dividends), this economy is a hell of a lot better than Clinton's. When you look at it from the perspective of the rest of us, the picture's very different.
As for "seybernetx," the fact that he totally misread both your post and the NY Times article is proof that the reality-distortion field does exist.
YOU SUCK
Your comics are mean
I know you're probably not used to doing this, but care to rationally explain what you mean?
Eric said...
YOU SUCK
May 15, 2007 3:35 PM
john said...
Your comics are mean
May 15, 2007 3:36 PM
Don't Be TOO Concerned about these Guys, Darrin. I suspect they've been sitting on their brains for too long.
Unless, of course, they define "Suck" as "Draw you in", and "mean" as used by some people as "A mean Momma"...(EG, Fantastic woman)
I'm still a GOP member. But I STILL find this funny. What can I say, maybe I've got a strange sense of humor.
Keep up the good work.
Post a Comment