Print
Email Friend
Add to Favorites
del.icio.us
Digg It!
Slashdot It!
I read about Bush's address yesterday to an audience at Central Piedmont Community College that I'd like to share with you.
The event was sponsored by the conservative Charlotte World Affairs Council but attendance wasn't restricted to rehearsed Bush supporters. However, there still were plenty of folks who said they were "praying for the President".
Now, Bush's job rating has sunk in North Carolina, a state he twice carried by wide margins. But, his 46 percent job approval there is head and shoulders above the nationwide 36 percent approval rate - an all-time low - just announced by the AP-Ipsos Poll.
In Charlotte, Bush stuck to his forefinger-selfrighteously-on-high rhetoric, "War came to our shores on September the 11th - it's a war we did not ask for. It's a war we did not want. But it's a war that I intend to deal with."
The Charlotte Observer reports:
"They applauded when Bush said "removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing for world peace and the security of our country."
"But the president got a different reaction when he took a question from Harry Taylor, a Charlotte real estate broker.
"While I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food," said Taylor, 61.
"If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice ... about whether I can abort a pregnancy."
"I'm not your favorite guy," Bush interrupted to laughter and applause. "Go on, what's your question?"
"What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened, by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency," Taylor continued. "And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself. ... I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak. ... That is part of what this country is about."
"It is, yes," Bush replied.
"He went on to defend what he calls the terrorist surveillance program. "Would I apologize for that?" he said. "The answer -- answer is, absolutely not."
"Bush made no mention of Thursday's reports that he authorized the release of portions of a classified prewar intelligence report on Iraq. The allegation was made in grand jury testimony by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former vice presidential aide charged with perjury and obstruction in a CIA leak case.
"Instead, Bush focused on the war and his intention to see it through. "You defeat an ideology of darkness with an ideology of hope and light," he said. "And freedom and liberty are part of an ideology of light."
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/14284402.htm
For once I agree with the President -- we need to "defeat the ideology of darkness with an ideology of hope and light". Let it begin with a Democratic Congress in 2007!
Harry Taylor is now on my Hero list. That takes guts. He came across on television as a well-spoken very rational individual. Maybe if Dubaiya had listened to people like him, and us, five years ago we would be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt today.
But he didn’t, and we won’t. The same old bull-headedness still shows through this new-found “willingness” to face the vast majority of American’s that couldn’t get past “our(?) president’s” screeners heretofore. Listen to him? To take a bull-headed and way too often used phrase from his mouth, "Absolutely not!"
Sorry, George. It’s way too late. We won’t listen to your obfuscations and Dubya talk any more. You might as well go back into your bubble, hide in front of a wall of troops as you speak to your enthusiastic screened crowd of selected supporters. You have nothing to say to most Americans.
Report Abuse