Media: Bush Is The ‘Picture Of A Beaten Dog’
Media: Bush Is The ‘Picture Of A Beaten Dog’
In the wake of yesterday’s congressional meltdown over the bailout bill, President Bush gave a speech this morning, meant to reassure the public and the volatile financial markets. Just four minutes long, the address expressed disappointment in Congress and warned that “the consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act.”
Bush’s speech is unlikely to have much of an effect. Immediately following the address, MSNBC turned to New York Magazine’s John Heilemann, who commented:
I don’t think that comforts anybody. I don’t think that moves a single vote. With due respect and sympathy for the man, that was the picture of a beaten dog. That was the picture of presidential impotence right there. He looked terrible like his bell had been rung. He looked drawn to me.
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan added, “It strikes me lately, when the President talks about the economic crisis, that he seems like a commentator upon the crisis as opposed to the leader in the crisis. There is the sense that he is watching it saying we need to do something, as opposed to we will do something.” Watch Bush’s speech, followed by MSNBC’s commentary (view YouTube version here):
As the Washington Post writes today, yesterday’s failed bailout vote “marked the biggest legislative defeat of Bush’s tenure and underscored the vanishing influence of a president who could once bend a pliant Congress to his will on wars, taxes, surveillance and a host of other high-profile initiatives.”
Coinciding with these developments, Gallup has released a new poll today showing that Bush’s approval rating has dropped to the lowest point in his tenure:
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Does that say 27% still approve? This country has so many dim witted people there’s no way we can remain a super power.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:34 amThe thing that amazes me most is that there are 27% of those polled who STILL APPROVE of Bush.
That is a lot of people living under rocks.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:35 amBeaten dog? How about a rabid dog who should have been put down long ago?
September 30th, 2008 at 9:37 amCheney-Bush have seemed to believe, throughout their presidency, that anything and everything can be spun into “good.” Sounds like there may have been a moment of unblissful epiphany/satori for Dubya as the spin machine broke.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:40 amWith due respect and sympathy for the man
Why?
September 30th, 2008 at 9:43 amWill Dubya’s popularity reach single digits before he leaves office [after all the end of term pardons come out]? Of course, once pardoned they wouldn’t have Fifth Amemndment protections for testimony in re those crimes would they?
September 30th, 2008 at 9:44 amWhat struck me about Bush this morning were his eyes. Skittering all around like he kept expecting something to be thrown at him. It was startling.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:45 amThe proper allusion, I believe is “whipped cur.”
Possibly our SCUM cannot spell–or do not know–the word “cur.”
But it fits:cur /k?r/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[kur] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
September 30th, 2008 at 9:51 am–noun 1. a mongrel dog, esp. a worthless or unfriendly one.
2. a mean, cowardly person.
Who cares what he says? No one is listening. He brought ruin down on the country with his stupidity and arrogance, and he has NO solutions to correct his mistakes. It seems to me that there are no real leaders around right now, instead everyone is running around saying, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.”
September 30th, 2008 at 9:52 am“Picture of a beaten dog’, eh?
Was he in an orange jump suit? … No?
I’m afraid I don’t feel a bit sorry for him. He may be getting the idea that he’s a failure. He needs to get the idea that he’s a criminal.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:52 amLooked more like a rumpled guy with a bad hangover to me.
Don’t think W enjoys playing preznit no more.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:57 amHmmmm, that chart of Bush’s popularity could just as easily be a chart of the NYSE.
‘Wall St. worries while W wrangles’
Not even Darth Cheney could hold this financial fury down until after the election.
The Republican ‘brand’ has become toxic. If it were dog food, it would be pulled off the shelf, said Tom Davis – R/VA
Now, our predatory financial futures markets look a lot like the Republican ‘brand’; toxic, stinky & out of slick promises and ‘gotcha’ lending opportunities.
President Fox, meet Henhouse, you egg sucking varmint.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:04 amThat is a lifetime, especially the last eight horrific years of failure weighing on a small, small “man” totally unfit for the presidency.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:06 amWhat is totally mind boggling is that 27% of the people in this country still think he’s doing a good job. They must all be brain dead.
Back to my idea of a “think tank” of economists to work on the problem…I think that would go a long way towards calming Wall Street if they knew that knowledgeable people were working on the problem. I know I would feel better if I knew that economists rather than politicians were working on a solution.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am“…that was the picture of a beaten dog.”
I can relate to that! The only time my dog gets beaten is when he craps in the house. Chicken George WTF has been crapping in our White House for eight years. It is about time he got his beating and kicked out the back door.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:08 amMy favorite expression is “he looks like he was rode hard and put up wet”. I can’t believe how much the last 8 years have aged him.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:09 amas randi said yesterday, our president failed to EXPLAIN the situation and any remedy to the citizens… he is no leader…
September 30th, 2008 at 10:12 amI can understand Bush’s appearance. He just bet his last chip on the bailout and he lost. His legacy is toast.
Richard Nixon will always be remembered for his failures and his corruption, but at least he signed the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and established detente with Russia and China.
Harry Truman left office with his popularity in the dumpster, but he desegregated our military, presided over post-war recovery, and saw both Israel and the U.N. established on his watch.
Jimmy Carter wasn’t terribly popular when he left office, either. But he can proudly look at the Camp David agreement, which still holds up today, 30 years later.
What has eight years of Dubya brought us? Even Bush must realize how much worse he’s leaving the country than when he found it. At this point, he’s probably just going to try to hang on until he can escape to Paraguay.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:12 amLike all the other lie’s we have been fed for 8 miserable year’s starting before bull shit bush stole the election I don’t believe that poll….My guess he is down to 2 vote’s in favor not even 2% and my guess is built on the fact Barney can’t vote…Blessings
September 30th, 2008 at 10:14 amIt’s all an act, as it always is with him… He moved about $300 billion into Wall Street yesterday, without Congressional approval or oversight. While everyone was looking the other way at the bailout proceedings, he went ahead and bailed out his buddies.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:20 amCongratulations, America! You have been Bushed again!
How to make the ‘bailout’ work..
1. Pay for it…
Tell the American people that those who have benefited the most from this catastrophe, are going to pony up. The top 2% of earners in this country have received $680 billion in tax cuts from the current administration. That sounds eerily close to the $700 billion dollar price tag that the bailout is coming with. So Democrats ought to tell the President that we have a deal as long as he agrees to roll back the tax cut that he gave his ‘base’. Why put this on the backs of Joe and Jane Sixpack?
2. Tax all financial transactions…
Thom Hartmann discusses this idea in detail over at commondreams.org. Here’s the short of it. In the United Kingdom, for example, whenever you buy or sell a share of stock (or a credit swap or a derivative, or any other activity of that sort) you pay a small tax on the transaction. We did the same thing here in the US from 1914 to 1966 (and, before that, we did it to finance the Spanish American War and the Civil War).
For us, this Securities Turnover Excise Tax (STET) was a revenue source. For example, if we were to instate a .25 percent STET (tax) on every stock, swap, derivitive, or other trade today, it would produce – in its first year – around $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generating the money to fund its own bailout. (For comparison, as best I can determine, the UK’s STET is .25 percent, and Taiwan just dropped theirs from .60 to .30 percent.)
As John Maynard Keynes pointed out in his seminal economics tome, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936, such a securities transaction tax would have the effect of “mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise.”
3. Demand accountability…
The American people are not going to get behind any deal that allows those at the helm of this shakedown to make one red cent off of it. The ‘golden parachute’ provision in the current bill is totally toothless. Cap CEO salaries immediately and launch investigations to make sure that there wasn’t Enron style accounting practices at work.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:22 amBilbo Hussein Baggins Says: What is totally mind boggling is that 27% of the people in this country still think he’s doing a good job. They must all be brain dead.
And avoiding taxes with loopholes or offshore accounts.
Plus there are those who are so willfully ignorant that they have no clue how bad of a President he really is (I know a few). They truly avoid all forms of reality that suggest anything close to reality.
Fortunately 27% isn’t anywhere close to a majority…
September 30th, 2008 at 10:24 amAll his life he’s screwed up and gotten bailed out, again and again. He’s repeated that behaviour again, oddly enough, and now realizes that there’s nobody to bail him out this time. He’s faced with the inescapeable reality that his legacy is to be remembered as the Worst President Ever. No achievements, no “Legacy”, just that. I, however, still hope that, somehow Congress will still…
September 30th, 2008 at 10:24 amImpeach Pelosi, Cheney and Bush and Save the Constitution!
He has clearly started drinking again (if he ever really stopped). Listen to his ’s’s. Every one of them is slurred. He’s just a pathetic drunk. He’d be homeless if it weren’t for his daddy.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:29 ammisshusseinmolly Says: I can understand Bush’s appearance. He just bet his last chip on the bailout and he lost. His legacy is toast.
But always seemed to care what the rich and influential Americans thought of him. Even now they hate him too.
The chickens finally came home to roost. About damn time.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:31 amSheesh… I’m not sensing much… empathy… would be the word… not feeling much empathy here this morning fer our beloved El Pretzeldente… ***sniff***
I also noticed just how closely that chart depicting Botch’s ever-falling approval ratings over the last seven years also mirrors almost perfectly the steady, non-stop drop in the value of the dollar since Dumbdumb was installed in the WH…
September 30th, 2008 at 10:33 amJohn Heilemann, who commented:
…that was the picture of a beaten dog. That was the picture of presidential impotence right there.
Kind of describes the last 7+ years, eh?
September 30th, 2008 at 10:33 amOnly one response necessary to this excellent post:
ha ha
September 30th, 2008 at 10:36 amDoesn’t matter what his approval rating is. He accomplished what his conservative base set out to do. That is, make an America and a world that which only conservatives would want to live in.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:41 amThey thrive on war, an in your face disposition and pushing worthless paper to create a market for their Chinese friends. All this at the expense of his own countrymen(especailly his military).
Bush is working still further to cheapen his approval rating even further by using his partisan ways to sell Americans one last package of pork that his wall street budddies can gloat over for years to come.
He amy turn out to be the doorman at his own presidential library.
he is drinking again.
time for an intervention.
who can we get who will
convince him?
*
sarah palin.
krusty the klown.
billy mays.
dita von teese.
dennis prager.
#
compassionate
conservatives.
^
September 30th, 2008 at 10:47 amI’ll be very happy to see that beaten dog tuck his tail between his legs and head on home to Crawford.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:54 amI believe it was not that many days ago that Ms. Klein was on someone’s program saying that the upcoming crisis on wall street would be handed down to main street.
Bingo.
(a) major financial crisis that they helped create.
(b) george stands in front of a camera and tells everyone that they had this great plan to straighten things out that only included 700 billion tax payer dollars that he’s sure would have gotten get paid back, and that it’s too bad that it failed but they’ll be on track with a different plan real soon because that’s what the people of this country deserve.
This shit is getting too obvious.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:00 amgaryb50 Says: What struck me about Bush this morning were his eyes. Skittering all around like he kept expecting something to be thrown at him. It was startling.
I say good deal. It’s long past time he started worrying about who’s behind him.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:04 amMr.Bungle Says:
“3. Demand accountability…
The American people are not going to get behind any deal that allows those at the helm of this shakedown to make one red cent off of it. The ‘golden parachute’ provision in the current bill is totally toothless. Cap CEO salaries immediately and launch investigations to make sure that there wasn’t Enron style accounting practices at work.”
I would add that ALL ceo assets be held in escrow and if found to be criminally negligent all funds from escrow s/b turned over to stockholders. Enron style practices were most definitely deployed (thank you Phil Gramm/Grampy McCranky) and stolen assets should be seized asap before they dissapear into off shore accounts (UBS-thank you again Gramm)
September 30th, 2008 at 11:05 amBush’s remaining supporters seem like beaten dogs, too.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:12 amBad Bushie!! Bad Boy!!
Slink yourself off to your doghouse in Crawford until we send you to the war crimes tribunal. I know I’d like to give him a kick in the tail.
But we shouldn’t be comparing him to a dog–MY DOGS ARE LOYAL AND DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS THEM
September 30th, 2008 at 11:18 amBush has left the building….
September 30th, 2008 at 11:22 amAnother theory…this man is so clueless, has such low self esteem that he pretends to have a “cowboy swagger,” and is so surrounded by “yes” people who pump him up that he is NOT a beaten, lame duck dog. In this man’s head he is still THE KING. He has no idea that he is a complete fool. He truly believes that he has made all the right moves and that 100 years from now when the economy is perfect and the Middle East is a peaceful democracy he is sure that historians will be looking back and declaring “that the world is a much better place because of George Bush.” He probably is looking into what it will take for future generations to carve his head on Mt. Rushmore because he believes that they will be clamoring to do just that. He has no earthly idea how bad he has screwed everything up.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:35 amOh, I disagree. There are certainly some elements of Reagan in BushCo, but to me, it’s mostly a reanimation of the Nixon era, with this single adaptation; they learned to destroy the evidence. Those damn White House tapes caused all the trouble back then, and they weren’t about to let something like that happen again.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:44 amBringing a whole new level of resonance to the phrase, “Bush League”…
September 30th, 2008 at 11:55 amI’d like to kick the sh*t out of that stupid barstid – for real.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:07 pmThe chymp has transformed the bully pulpit into a lectern for bullies.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pmHe must have taken a fistful of Zanax and washed it down with booze. The distant thunder of failure and thousands of souls of innocent people that have died because of him has been keeping him up at night.
His overstretched overloaded conscience is making him sucicidal, I bet.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pmsuicidal sorry folks
September 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pmThe slow slide of his approval ratings is the same slope of people waking up and realizing what this administration is all about.
But the thing I STILL to this day don’t understand is this: the worst terrorist attacks in American history happen on HIS WATCH, and we gave him HIGH approval ratings right after that?
I don’t understand this.
If I miss a bunch of payments on my house, they FORECLOSE on it. They don’t give me HIGHER CREDIT RATINGS.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:42 pmI guess the MSM finally realised their “former” king George is what most of us have known all along…a miserable failure, worst president in history.
The MSM backed this guy for nearly 7 1/2 years. Things are so bad now that they can’t cover for him anymore, even though they would like to.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:22 pmWe’ve seen this “presidential impotence in a crisis” before – as the president sat there reading “My Pet Goat” with schoolchildren after learning that the second World Trade Center tower had been hit and America was attack on September 11, 2001. The emperor has no clothes.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:23 pmI wish I could be there to give him a good kick now that he’s down..that ignorant, arrogant, swaggering little prick..ruined this country..ruined the greatest country in the world, ruined democracy with his bull-headed extreme right-wing idea of dictatorial government, his “dumb as a rock and proud of it” governing has led to total disaster…economically, politically, nationally and globally..but still there are those who are so eager to finally bury this country and all it stands (for by voting in even more of the same people who voted for and destroyed this country in the first place)..more GOP and McNuts…its a bona-fide mystery…they can only be the Fascists, Nazis and Neo-Cons..the true treasonous enemies of state…
September 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pmBush: Like a beaten dog except dumber.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:36 pmBush and his entire imoral family should be in jail!
September 30th, 2008 at 2:41 pm“My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.” –George W. Bush, The Decider, Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007
“So long as I’m the president, my measure of success is victory — and success.” –George W. Bush, on Iraq, Washington, D.C., April 17, 2008
September 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm“Beaten?” HE’S the victim? What talent. (Boo-effing-hoo.)
When he says “we”, who is he talking about? If we could find out just exactly who populates the monkeysphere of his “we”, we’d probably know who to indict.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:48 pmI have some problems with #29…
September 30th, 2008 at 5:22 pmI would be sad for Bush if I didn’t want to kick him.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:35 pm