The Workday Liberal

The President gave a news conference yesterday which Peggy Noonan (yes... I will now throw up a link to Peggy freaking Noonan!) saw fit to write a column about.

Noonan writes on the growing masses of people who get irritated at the sound of George Bush's voice. People who she knows were once Bush supporters, but now talk of not being able to believe a word that comes from the Presidents mouth. Taking the W stickers off the car and gritting their teeth until the end of this disastrous Presidency.

When it is Peggy Noonan preaching to the right wing choir that having this attitude can no longer be sloughed off as "Bush derangement syndrome" but that there are real issues with this Presidents style in public appearances which gall typical folk, someone HAS to start taking notice. I've been on that wagon for well over a year now (this will be my 5th post this year alone advising the Republican establishment and the White House to do themselves and the nation a huge favor by "muzzling" Bush) and having Peggy-right wing rah rah girl-Noonan take note may finally result in someone who can do something doing something.

As if to reinforce my perception that the right wing talking heads who are forced to justify this administration are lame brained, Ed Rogers was on Hardball last night spouting precisely the opposite message:

BARNICLE: The press conference this morning, president of the United States, how is he going to keep the Republicans in check here?

ROGERS: By having...

BARNICLE: I mean, people are walking away from...

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: By having press conferences, in effect, pleading, in effect, reminding people over and over there is a logic to his position.

How it is that Rogers thinks the President pleading and cajoling with press conferences is going to keep Republicans in line just mystifies me. The President has had an absolutely frenetic schedule recently. Everyday he is somewhere giving a speech and the feeling of the people that he is lying to us on a regular basis is destroying him. Rogers has it exactly backwards. The way for the President to try to hold Republicans is to muzzle himself. It is in his best interests that the American people not be reminded on a daily basis that the President is an out of touch, congenital liar.

Of course Rogers can't help but parrot administration talking points which makes the idiocy understandable. He talks about the tremendous recruiting tool that leaving Iraq would give to Al Qaeda. Hello?! What is the invasion and occupation of an Arab land if not THE ultimate recruitment tool for them? Duh! Fixing that error, one of the, if not the worst strategic blunder in this nations military history is not somehow wrong headed...

So anyway it's stuff like that which drives me and most of the rest of the nation batty. The obviously wrong headed delusions spouted by Bush and his apologists. The President assertively proclaims fantasy as reality, and mistaken policies as the correct course to pursue, making everybody who disagrees with him seem like we are somehow blind and wrong in our assumptions even as the entire world can see and understands that it is the President and his loud mouthed toadies who are deluded and mistaken.

At least Peggy Noonan appears to be reaching an understanding of this problem. If she see's it there is a very good chance that the truth of the matter will spread into the circles of power, and soon the President will be prevailed upon to do himself and the nation a favor by hushing himself.