One [sic] puppy

Being a poor web lackey myself, I often wonder about the poor White House transcript lackey who has the unenviable job of parsing his boss's good ol' boy verbal folksiness into actual, readable English. Many White House transcripts of Bush speeches contain a plethora of [sic] edits whereas other times they "scrub" what the President actually said and published what he perhaps meant to have said (but didn't have the intellectual capacity for his brain to properly synapse it) in their official transcript. Without a hint of Orwellian irony of course. We all know how fun it is to use The Google on The Internets, so let's search for the usage of [sic] in White House transcripts. We then find some good ones from the past year:

This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th.* [sic]

10/11/2006
Ah he meant September 30th. To be fair "Februrary" does sound a lot like "September".

Through your love of family and community you help unite us as a people. Through entrepreneurship and innovation you have strengthened our economy, creating jobs for other [sic] and thereby contributing to the opportunity of this nation.

5/12/2006

And this is a very important mission for our country. It's a public/private partnership. Our federal government has committed $250 million [sic]*

9/25/2006
so it's actually $230 million, what's $20 million worth anyway? About 1.5 hours of War in Iraq.

And I will also be able to welcome Dave Erbe, who is a youth volunteer. He volunteers to help the wounded and injury [sic] military personnel at Walter Reed. David, thank you in advance for doing what you're doing.

6/23/2006

You know, the call can come when it's least expected, as it did for Officer Larry Cox of Chillocothe, Ohio. A 19-year-old [sic] veteran of the police force, Officer Cox was off-duty when he stepped up to help fellow officers in pursuit of a suspect.

5/15/2006

So, welcome to Washington, D.C. [sic] I think this is our fifth visit. Every time, I've left our visits inspired by your vision.

9/20/2006
you can't blame the poor lackey for just assuming there's something wrong with that one

"It is interesting what's happened to the Democrat [sic] Party," said Bush. "You know, I'm reading a lot of history these days."

10/20/2006 well we're all glad you've decided to read books other than My Pet Goat, but it's the Democratic Party. He makes the same mistake so many times that after the fourth time, they just stop noting it...

Cosa Nostra Gestione

How is the Bush administration like the Mafia? Let us count the ways -

1. Bully: In the last season of the Sopranos, boss Tony is shot by his uncle Junior who is confused by Altzheimers. After a lengthy recovery, Tony regains his empire, but questions remain among the ranks as to whether he is still the toughest. To dispel any doubt, he picks a fight with the new Vin Diesel'd rookie and proceeds to beat the holy heck out of him. All who bear witness conclude that while the provocation may have been completely irrational, it would be best not to mess with the man. While that effect was intended, it was a facade as moments later, in the solitude of the bathroom, Tony coughs up blood and nearly passes out.

Consider this act a metaphor for how a bully deals with a surprise attack. Terrorists attack the great, sleeping giant. The giant awakens and begins swinging it's fists at anything that moves, if only to prove that he is still a big, tough giant. The energy required to indiscriminately attack without rest exhausts the giant who eventually collapses.

I had an argument recently with a conservative friend who maintains that the current justification for invading Iraq was that we had been attacked by Middle Eastern actors and thus we needed to "slap the Middle East around" to show that "we weren't gonna take it anymore" as if it would simply convince the rest of the geographic region that we were still the big, tough giant. Deterrence may have been the goal, but the opposite effect has been achieved.

2. Loyalty over accountability: While it had been reported even before he was inaugurated that Bush prized loyalty above all else, it took actual national crises to prove it. According to Woodward's new book, there were many in the administration (including the SecDef himself) who felt Rumsfeld had screwed up the Iraq situation beyond comprehension and should be relieved of his duties. To fire Rumsfeld would require at least a tacit suggestion that these guys didn't quite have the plan all figured out and maybe, just maybe a mistake or two had been made. Any such admission would be considered a sign of weakness in the Soprano world and since Cheney owes his whole career to Rumsfeld, the SecDef remained on the job.

The Federal response to Katrina showed the same detrimental logic. This time, the administration couldn't blame Clinton, since FEMA was a pretty efficient organization under the Bubba. Perhaps it was Bush's ultimate goal as a conservative to render the entire government obsolete, but the Federal Emergency response apparatus seemed like a dern good enough place to start the dismantling. Fill the executive positions with loyal cronies who previously ran equestrian clubs, let them completely hobble the recovery effort while your mom makes some "Let them eat cake" comments and you have a recipe for massive animosity to government. But, much like pressure on Iran only strengthens the popular support for the crazy mullahs, dismantling government from the inside causes the populace to support their local Genericrat instead of their Republican incumbent. Bush may be ready to discard the Constitution, but the citizens are not.

3. By any means necessary: Whether the goal is regime change, corporate extortion, illegal wiretaps or simply maintaining power, the Administration uses the same heavy-handed, unilateral approach. According to the Frontline on "The Lost Year in Iraq", the original plan was to invade, decapitate and evacuate. Not only was it incredibly naive to think that somehow a friendly regime would fill the power vacuum, it quickly became criminal negligence to ignore that an insurgency was instead doing the job and gaining control of entire cities.

As Kennyboy has now been absolved of his crimes (dang activist judges!), it's unlikely that anger at Enron will play any role in the upcoming election. There was a time, however, when Houston's favorite hustler and W were best buddies as the Prez saw to it that things were as deregulated as possible and was then handsomely reimbursed for his efforts.

When a Federal judge determined that The NSA's domestic wiretapping program violated existing FISA laws, Bush had his Republican congress change the law. When CIA interrogation techniques were determined to be torture, Bush had his Republican congress revise the definition of torture. When any district in Texas faced the possibly of a Democratic challenge, Bush just had the ol' Hammer illegally redistrict the whole state. The cops bring no charges against the mob if they're on Tony's payroll.

4. Ignore reality: Just like a mobster going to the gallows with a defiant "you got nothing on me", this Administration attempts to create it's own reality. You say 600,000+ Iraqis have been killed? Well that just can't be accurate. You say the situation is getting worse? Cheney says nope - and even over a year later, it's going "remarkably well" actually. Can't tough out four years at the University? Just buy a fake degree on The Internets.

In fact anytime anyone criticizes anything you do, just fire up the discrediting machine. Of course Tony would just have them whacked, but that may still be too much for Bush to attempt. For now anyway...