Bush Made Same “Mistake” Eleven Times in the Last Three Months Alone

As reported here Republicans (and their minions in the Media) have been using a McCarthy Era Propagandistic term labeling the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.” President Bush did it again in his state of the union address the other night. He did it in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes the week before. Yesterday he was interviewed on NPR and the interviewer asked him about it. President Bush said that his calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party in his State of the Union Address was just an oversight. The problem is he’s made the same mistake at least eleven times in the last three months alone.

In the State of the Union Address he mentioned the “Democrat Majority.” He now says that was just an oversight. Although, the speech was written for him to say “Democratic Majority” and the official version on the White House web site was changed to say “Democrat Majority” later. Okay, it was one oversight. A one time mistake. Right? But wait…

President Bush, November 8, 2006:
Yesterday, the people went to the polls and they cast their vote for a new direction in the House of Representatives. And while the ballots are still being counted in the Senate, it is clear the Democrat Party had a good night last night, and I congratulate them on their victories. This morning I spoke with Republican and Democrat leadership in the House and Senate.

President Bush, November 5, 2006:
On these issues, the Democrat party has adopted a clear strategy of opposition and obstruction. Recently the House Democrat leader explained the advice she's been following since I was reelected in 2004. She said, you must take him down. That him would be me.

President Bush, October 30, 2006:
As a matter of fact, the top Democrat leader in the House made an interesting declaration. She said, we love tax cuts. But given her record, she must be a secret admirer. (Laughter and applause.)...Time and time again, when she and the Democrat Party had an opportunity to show their love for tax cuts, they voted no. If that's the Democrats' idea of love, I sure wouldn't want to see what hate looks like. (Laughter and applause.)

President Bush, October 20, 2006:
There is a difference of opinion between what we ought to be doing with your money, see. There are people in the Democrat Party who think they can spend your money far better than you can.

President Bush, October 19, 2006:
It's interesting, if you look at the history of tax cuts, the Democrat Party always -- didn't always feel the way they feel today. Back in the '60s, the Democrats understood that our economy grows when Americans keep more of what they earn, when Americans make their own decisions about how to save, spend, or invest.

President Bush, November 7, 2005:
And one area that we need to make progress on is with the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is a free -- for many sessions was a free trade party.

That’s eleven times just over the last three months. And those are just speeches. They don't include interviews where he used it. Either he’s just that stupid (which I don’t believe for a minute) or he’s lying to the American people.

We report. You decide.

Hat tip to the Horse’s Mouth for this.

Update: There’s a good discussion on the pros and cons of objecting to the misnaming of the Democratic Party. My favorite is calling the Republican Party the Repub Party (stress on the first syllable of the word Repub is important--as in REpub). If they want to shorten our party name we’ll shorten theirs. Which sounds worse to your ears the Democrat Party or the REpub Party? ‘Nuf said.

Iraqi Leaders and Iraqi People Prefer US Democratic Party to Republicans

Numerous recent polls in both the US and Iraq have shown that a majority of the people prefer the ideas of the Democratic Party regarding the war in Iraq to those coming out of the White House. Now, reports from Baghdad show that the Iraqi leaders themselves prefer the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in how to move forward in that country. This report from the Iraqi capital shows just that.

Many pointed out advantages to the Democrats' increased sway over Iraq policy. Government officials said they had generally found the Democratic position on handing over security to Iraqi forces sooner rather than later closer to theirs. Almost all agree on Democratic Party initiatives, squashed when Republicans controlled Congress, to prevent the building of permanent U.S. bases here. They note news reports of Democrats acknowledging the suffering of the Iraqi population.

"I see that the Democratic ideas are more related to reality," said Ammar Tuma, a lawmaker who serves in Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition. "They talk about the real problems that the Iraqis are facing every day."

To date, government officials said, they've also found Democratic visitors such as Pelosi, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois less parochial, more culturally sensitive and more willing to listen to Iraqi concerns than Republicans.

"Before, Bush used to order Iraqi officials to do this and that," said one member of Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The Republicans were dictating the political process in Iraq. With the Democrats in control of Congress, the Republicans are now less influential than before. It helps us in a sense to breathe a bit more and to have more freedom."

Many of the Shiites around Maliki still harbor bitterness about the Bush administration's push to remove then-interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari from his post last year. They considered the pressure inappropriate interference in Iraq's domestic affairs. They were also angered by recent remarks by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice questioning whether Maliki was up to the job of leading Iraq.

Jafari as you will recall disagreed with the Bush Administration and the Bush Administration forced him out of office despite his being elected PM by the Iraqi people. After that, it took months for anyone else to accept the position until Maliki finally did. Then the Bush Administration leaked an internal memo that they didn’t have confidence in him. Meaning agree with us or you’ll be out of office like your predecessor. Some model of Democracy.


No wonder Iraqi people in general and Iraqi leaders in particular prefer the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

This quote courtessy of http://www.crooksandliars.com/.

Bush to Give State of Union Speech Tomorrow – Time to Raise the Threat Level Another Color

President Bush is set to deliver his State of the Union speech tomorrow. An overwhelming number of Americans disapprove of his handling the Iraq War, distrust him personally and disapprove of the escalation of US troops he has called for. Time to increase the Threat Level to RED ALERT. ABC News reports that the White House has just leaked that it has uncovered plans for al Qaeda in Iraq to send terrorists posing as students into the US to strike at us. The problem is that the documents were discovered over six months ago when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed and the plans were only in their “earliest stages” and there is no evidence of an imminent attack on the US. Suspiciously, this half a year old information is being leaked on the eve of the first State of the Union where a majority of the American people don’t trust President Bush.

Hmmmm.

I predict that Bush will cite this six month old news as a reason for his escalation in Iraq when he delivers the SoTU address tomorrow night and he may possibly use it later (some time after the SoTU) to bolster his case for declaring war on Iran. Even though Iran and al Qaeda are enemies.

I’d like to be proved wrong. But after the Terror Color Level being raised every time the Bush Administration dipped in the polls for so many years, I’m cynical now. As the President famously said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, uh, um, uh, you can’t get fooled again.”

You said it Mr. President! We won’t be!

You Can’t Criticize Condi Rice Because She’s Black!

A number of times in the last six years whenever Condi Rice has come under criticism Republicans bring up the point that she is black, and claim that Democrats shouldn’t criticize her because of this. They further say that to criticize her is racism. Rush called criticizing her a “lynching.” That’s the same term used to counter criticisms of Justice Clarence Thomas’s professional behavior during his Senate confirmation hearings. He used it to fend off criticism and the rest of the Republican world echoed his claim. This has become a familiar refrain. Countless time Republicans have made the claim that Democrats shouldn’t criticize Condi or other prominent black Republicans because they are black. Bullshit! That claim itself amounts to racism. Saying that you can’t criticize a person on the basis of their race is as racist as criticizing them because of their race. On this the week of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday it is important to remember his words that our American Dream is that one day people will be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. If someone in a prominent position of serving the American people is screwing up, that needs to be pointed out. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what their race is. If they are doing a good job again it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what their race is. Saying that we can’t point out the failures of Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas or any other person of color is itself racism. Calling criticizing of a person’s professional behavior a “lynching” is racism. You wouldn’t call criticizing a white person a lynching would you? No. It’s racism plain and simple.

This week Senator Barbara Boxer pointed out that she has no one in her immediate family at risk in Iraq since her children are too old and her grandchild is too young and Condi Rice has no close family member at risk in Iraq either. Republicans pounced on this saying that she was deriding Condi for not having children and besides…wait for it…Condi Rice is black! Listen to every Republican statement on this and you will hear them mention that Condi is black. Like that gives her carte blanche against any criticism. Does Condi’s race have anything to do with this? Of course not. It’s maddening. I’ve heard my Harvard educated brother-in-law make this lame claim. I don’t know whether these people are really that stupid or they think the rest of the American people are that stupid that we won’t see this as the racism it is.

And by the way, you can't criticize me for this, because for all you know I may be black.

Think the Mainstream Media is “Liberal”? Why Do They Use McCarthy Era Republican Propaganda Terms?

This is something that has been bugging me for many years. Republican Party Propagandists have since the 1990s been calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.” The name of the party is the Democratic Party. They only use this bullshit name, Democrat Party, because Newt Gingrich and his fellow Spin Meister and Republican pollster Frank Luntz determined that it could get them more votes to misname the Democratic Party. That’s because the word democratic is good. Everyone wants to be democratic. So they decided to change the name of the Democratic Party to something else to mislead the America people. Before Newt, Senator Joseph McCarthy who took our country into the dark days of McCarthyism used it repeatedly. The Republicans thought it worked then, so they misnamed the Democratic Party anew and kept repeating the mistake getting more and more Republican Propagandists to join in. Including the Mainstream Media itself. The so called liberal media uses the term even though they know it’s wrong.

The President uses this incorrect term. But he is by his own admission not very good with words. So maybe we could give him a pass. But the Mainstream media continues to use this McCarthyism propagandist term even though it is NOT the name of the party and the word democrat isn’t an adjective at all. It’s a noun. Anyone who studied journalism would know that. Should know that. Must know that if they are to inform and not help mislead the American People.

Fox News Channel (which isn’t a true news outlet – jut a propaganda mill) started using it as soon as they went on the air. But it is heard on ABC (which aired a propaganda film on 9-11 before the election), NBC, MS-NBC (both owned by defense contractor GE), CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press and even on the most watched news program on CBS the other night. Media Matters has a good post on how CBS used this propagandistic term instead of the correct name of the Democratic Party while interviewing the President on 60 Minutes. Media Matters had an earlier post on the propagandistic use of “Democrat Party” back in August. Here is a New Yorker article on this as well.

I propose we call the Republican Party the Rethuglican Party. If they start using the correct term so will we.

US War with Iran to Begin Soon If Not Already

Conservative Reagan Republican, former Reagan Administration Official and former Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts, explained in an article published before President Bush’s speech last night that Bush and his Administration were gearing up to start a war with Iran and soon. They have moved aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf and set up Patriot Missile batteries inside Iraq. The insurgents don’t have scuds or other missiles to warrant Patriot Missiles. Fighting the insurgents doesn’t require aircraft carriers. They have no airforce. Bush’s recent appointment of a Navy Admiral to be in charge of the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan (despite their both being desert wars) seems to support the conclusion that a war with Iran is in the works. An Admiral would know just how to launch an air and sea war with Iran. And those Patriot Missiles would be useful in one.

Israel is gearing up for this war, too. And they’re ready to go nuclear. Bush’s appointed US Ambassador to Israel says that the US will support such a move.

Last night in his speech announcing his plans to escalate the War in Iraq by sending 21,500 more US troops into combat situations, he also threatened Iran and Syria with military action.

Today US troops broke into an Iranian Consulate in Iraq and took documents, computes and took six Iranian Consulate employees (possibly with diplomatic credentials) as prisoners. This is internationally considered an act of war and was considered as such when Iranian students invaded the US Embassy in Iran in 1979. So I guess technically we are already at war with Iran or rather they are at war with us as Constitutionally it would require the US Congress to declare a war on Iran.

I Learn Something New Every Day

I just learned that conservatives predilection to invoking comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis when attempting to rescue argumentative positions which have long since lost their logical basis is actually called Godwin's Law it is closely related to reductio ad Hitlerum, a term ironically enough coined by father of Neo-Con Ideology, Leo Strauss.

Seriously it’s more likely due to Cognitive Dissonance (if I remember from Psych classes in college) which requires them to demonize all who disagree with them the more they discover the holes in their own arguments. Or perhaps what we are witnessing Benford's Law of Controversy which is newer, but possibly more apt: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

I learn something new every day. I love the Internet!