Resolved: Pay More Attention to the Radio

I heard some cranky radio dude while in a cab from the airport going on and on about how Bush's reaction to Gonzalez' testimony was the surest proof yet that he was a man of principle who didn't listen to the polls. Blah, blah, I thinks. Now, at last, I see the reaction:

President Bush said Monday that the Congressional testimony of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last week, roundly panned by members of both parties, had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.”

He's totally around the bend.

Comments

But Bush was 100% on the money -- Gonzales did his job, despite having to feign severe brain damage to do so. You must be mistaken about just what his job was, which was to offer no useful testimony at any cost.

You simply can't buy that level of loyalty.

Posted by idlemind | April 24, 2007 3:59 AM

glad to see i'm not the only one up at this hour.

Posted by right | April 24, 2007 5:15 AM

Tell us what the cabbie thought and you can further upgrade to a NYT gig.

Posted by matt | April 24, 2007 7:03 AM

There's a better expression. At this point, AG is a turd in the whole Decider/MBS President punchbowl. Even the bitter-enders at RedState can see that keeping him demonstrates that Bush sucks at the only role he actually plays in his theory of governance: selecting senior people to whom he can/must defer. Now the President is announcing that punch tastes better with a turd in it. Because he's too stubborn to do otherwise.

Some people think AG ought to go. I'm happy to just let the President keep drinking his punch, as everyone watches, too grossed out to look away.

Posted by CharleyCarp | April 24, 2007 7:19 AM

MBA President

Posted by CharleyCarp | April 24, 2007 7:20 AM

He did a perfect job, if loyalty is your only qualification. Which for W, it is. What evidence do we have that he's ever given a damn about competence?

Posted by 14All | April 24, 2007 7:58 AM

It's time for the Dems to say that Gonzo and his merry band at Justice were obviously not calling the shots and focus the investigation on the WH. Every time a Dem is on tv, they should point out that these USA's were fired with no real input from Gonzo, and we must get to the bottom of this. Karl Rove firing USA's is a much juicier scandal than Gonzo firing them.

Posted by Th | April 24, 2007 7:59 AM

$38.50?

Posted by cedichou | April 24, 2007 8:01 AM

Gonzales was doing his job perfectly - making a mockery of our Republic and its offices. This is yet another way that the far-out right-wing of this country is trying to "strangle the baby in the bathtub" or whatever Norquist's quote was.

I'm still banking on an attempt to install Gonzales on the Supreme Court before Bush leaves office.

Posted by NonyNony | April 24, 2007 8:33 AM

Bush has a very limited behavioral repertoire for dealing with unpleasant facts-- but that's not news. What's new is that Bush's version of 'true' is no longer being affirmed and repeated by the Congress and the media. The right-wing claque, on the other hand, is continuing to drift off into the gamma quadrant.

Posted by MattF | April 24, 2007 8:56 AM

Having a job which requires me to drive a lot, I frequently turn to AM Radio for the weird, the awful, and the fascistic Father Coughlin types (Rush, Michael Savage, Jay Severin, etc.); if you actually listen to these guys for more than a minute, it's amazing -- and enraging -- the kind of objectively despicable things they say routinely (e.g. liberals and Islamofascists ought to be put down like the mad dogs they are -- Savage), the kind of shameless sophistry employed. It's just astounding.

Posted by Ben Cronin | April 24, 2007 9:40 AM

Mick Huckabee said that Abu should resign.

But resigning is too good for them. I think they should all be taken to The Hague for trial. Everyone at the White House except the custodial staff. Cheney. All the neo-cons. Every man jack of them.

Hey, but what do I know? I just live here.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 24, 2007 10:01 AM

When are you getting your own radio show?

Posted by otto | April 24, 2007 10:06 AM

There's a simple way to get honest testimony out of Gonzales - waterboarding! And best of all, it doesn't involve any torture or illegal tactics.

Posted by Peter | April 24, 2007 10:16 AM

Remember, to Bush, AG AG's job is to tell Congress to go Cheney themselves.

Nice Polite Republicans called Arlen Specter the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee last night during All Things Considered. It's not the first time, and it's not as if they have the 'it's January, but I put the old year in the date' excuse to fall back upon.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 24, 2007 10:17 AM

After all, MSNBC has a free slot.

Posted by otto | April 24, 2007 10:22 AM

If Dems had any balls, they would charge Gonzales with lying to Congress. That's what drove me nuts about the recent hearings. As embarassing as the hearings were for Gonzales, one out of every two Democrats wasted at least half of their allotted time making speeches about Gonzo's dishonoring his office, letting the American people down, and blah blah blah. They didn't focus enough on the record. They didn't set enough perjury traps. They didn't meticulously rely on the record to prove the guy broke the law by lying to Congress. They're all lawyers; none of them acted like lawyers.

The Bush Administration has shown over and over again that the traditional political process of scandal, embarassment, and retirement doesn't apply. Dirty Bush Friends are only removed through direct legal action.

Charging Gonzales with lying to Congress might not force him to retire, but it would create a whole lot more pressure than what's there now.

Posted by owenz | April 24, 2007 10:33 AM

Remember Tucker Carlson on Karen Hughes:

Then I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane.

I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.

Hughes is just an appendage of the President. Fish rots from the head.

Posted by JP | April 24, 2007 10:37 AM

I think Bush is into Dennis Rodman territory. I don't remember the specifics, but supposedly once Rodman's then-wife came home and found Dennis in bed with another woman. She said "who's that in your bed?" Rodman said there wasn't anyone in his bed. "That girl right there!" "Oh, her? I don't know how she got there, maybe she fell through the ceiling!"

Posted by American Citizen | April 24, 2007 11:26 AM

I think Bush is protecting himself from prosecution. He has to have a toadie in that office or the consequences for him and Rove could be severe.

Posted by Mtukufu | April 24, 2007 1:24 PM

They played this bit of Bush's comments on the Daily Show last night, and it was a laugh line. People just laughed - no punchline needed.

Posted by jonnybutter | April 24, 2007 2:30 PM

I think what's really remarkable about all this is Bush' selfishness towards his own party. They followed him slavishly for 6 years, and their reward now is they're being sold down the river. The GOP leadership knows that Gonzales has become a major embarrassment, and that the longer this drags on, the worse for the party in 2008. They're begging Bush to get rid of him. But Bush doesn't care, which is just one more piece of evidence that loyalty is a one-way street for him. He isn't hanging on to Gonzales out of loyalty; he's trying to protect himself and Rove.

Posted by beckya57 | April 24, 2007 3:36 PM

weren't the initial press reports that bush didn't even bother to watch the testimony and was relying on the summary provided by his aides?

what a tool.

Posted by lyle | April 24, 2007 7:52 PM

The GOP leadership knows that Gonzales has become a major embarrassment, and that the longer this drags on, the worse for the party in 2008. They're begging Bush to get rid of him. But Bush doesn't care, which is just one more piece of evidence that loyalty is a one-way street for him.

on the bright side, all the more evidence that jeb isn't gonna run, right?

hate to say it, but he definitely has the best chance of any republican if he was to run, in my mind. not because he's the best possible candidate on policy (or anywhere near it, really), but simply because his name is bush and the knuckle draggers in the party will try (sight unseen) four times as hard to get him in office as they would with rudy, mccain or anybody else their party can regurgitate.

my opinion, of course.

Posted by lyle | April 24, 2007 7:56 PM

I think Bush is into Dennis Rodman territory. I don't remember the specifics, but supposedly once Rodman's then-wife came home and found Dennis in bed with another woman. She said "who's that in your bed?" Rodman said there wasn't anyone in his bed. "That girl right there!" "Oh, her? I don't know how she got there, maybe she fell through the ceiling!"



that's fucking hilarious. and rodman, to his benefit, can say he wasn't within 1000 miles of being sober at that precise moment. what's bush's excuse?

Posted by lyle | April 24, 2007 8:00 PM

For a while, they did a pretty good job of shielding the true character about Bush-- he was just merely incompetent, horrible judgment and surrounded himself with bad people.

It is now clear that truth, dignity and integrity are completely foreign to this man. He is indeed a very small, pathetic man.

Posted by erict | April 24, 2007 9:05 PM

"that's fucking hilarious. and rodman, to his benefit, can say he wasn't within 1000 miles of being sober at that precise moment. what's bush's excuse?"

I think, at this very moment in time, Dennis Rodman may well be more sober than Bush. I'm willing to cut Rodman a lot more slack than that other guy - at least he's entertaining.

Posted by burritoboy | April 25, 2007 7:50 PM