Truespeak

I know it's only July, 2005, but Bush is in full bullshit mode. He's spreading the shit like he's running for something. Today he spoke in Baltimore and the first 1,000 people to arrive received a free pair of Halliburton hipwaders. Good thing too, cause it was getting deep. Let's take a look, shall we?

Of course he started with the thank yous and the glad to be heres and the my good friends and all that other shit. But eventually he got to the bullshit.

I'm going to talk about securing the homeland. But I want you to remember, as we work to secure the homeland, we have to be right one hundred percent of the time, and the enemy only has to be right one time. And so, therefore, the best way to protect the homeland is to go on the offense, is to find these people in foreign lands and bring them to justice before they come here to hurt us.

Try telling that to the Londoners. Going on the offense sure protected them, didn't it George?

We're facing cold-blooded killers who have an ideology that is the opposite of ours. These people believe that there should be no dissent, no freedom, no rights for women, that there only ought to be one religion, which is a misinterpretation of the great religion of Islam. That's what they believe. And they have designs, they have goals. And what are those goals? Well, they want to topple nations. They want to drive the United States and freedom-loving countries out of parts of the world so their ideology can take hold. That's what they want. And they want to shake our will and weaken our determination.

Wait a minute! Who's he talking about? I didn't realize he was going to be discussing the Republican party today. Hmmm. Imagine that.

The only way to defeat an ideology of hatred is with an ideology of hope. And so our strategy is not only stay on the offense and to bring these people to justice; our strategy is to spread the ideology of hope found in democracy and freedom. History has proven that democracies are peaceful countries. History has proven that democracy and freedom have the capability of converting enemies into allies. The best way to secure the future for our children and grandchildren is to spread democracy and hope and freedom to parts of the world that simmer in resentment and anger and hatred.

Democracies are peaceful countries? Democracy converts allies to enemies? If that's the case, what the hell are we doing attacking other countries unprovoked. Why are we currently creating more terrorists than we're killing? I think George better have his fact checker fired. He's apparently not reading his memos.

I found an interesting contrast that when I was in Scotland a while ago, that we were there to talk about how to end poverty and disease, how to help women, how to educate young girls on the continent of Africa -- that's what we were there to discuss. We were there to discuss how nations that have been blessed with riches can do our part to save lives. I don't know if you know this or not, but the United States of America is, by far, the most generous nation in the world when it comes to feeding the hungry, or providing help for those who are suffering from HIV/AIDS. I believe that to whom much is given, much is required.

Wait a minute! That's not necessarily true. Yes, we give more money than any other nation, but as a percent of our wealth we give the least of all other industrialized nations. When we could afford to give so much more, why do we give so little? It's just like in George's favorite book, the Bible.

But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on."


-Mark 12:42-44

But I digress. Back to the bullshit, er, I mean speech.

We're developing innovative programs to defend this country against a biological, chemical, or nuclear attack. In other words, one of the biggest dangers we face is if a biological, chemical, or nuclear device gets in the hands of terrorists. Listen, they will use them. By the way, you can't negotiate with these people or reason with them. That's what you've got to understand. These are not the kind of people you sit down and send a counselor over and hope to convince them to change their ways. These are cold-blooded ideologues who will kill. And therefore, we've got to plan for the worst.

Really? Do you suppose this means that they're actually going to guard our nuclear facilities? Does this mean that they're going to secure our water facilities? Oh, wait, he's talking about something else. Never mind. We're just going to leave those things unguarded because they would never think of using anything of ours against us, right? Right?

We launched what we call the Container Security Initiative, to screen American-bound containers at more than 35 foreign ports so we can identify dangerous cargo before it reaches our shore. Doesn't that make sense? It seems like it does to me. In other words, we're stationing Custom folks overseas and we're working with places that ship goods to us, to inspect cargo there so we don't burden our ports. Since September the 11th, we've provided more than $700 million in federal grants to close off the vulnerabilities at individual ports, including $15 million for this port right here.

Hey! That was one of John Kerry's ideas. Georgeieboy stole that. Too bad they're not actually providing enough money to do the job.

Oh, you know how the rest of this goes. A lot of what I'm sayings and what I means and thank yous and all that. He put in the good word for his SCOTUS nominee but forgot to mention that he's really unexperienced. And ironically, he didn't even mention Karl Rove. Which I guess isn't that surprising because neither did NBC Nightly News.

So it was kind of like a time warp today. Georgie was in full campaign mode. The bullshit was deep, the lies were flying, and the rhetoric was as empty as ever. Oh, the good old days of 2004. Back when there was a hope that this douchebag would get kicked to the curb. Sigh. I sure miss optimism and hope.