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Politics : ANTI-PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (167)	12/14/2005 9:35:55 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 194

December 14, 2005 Op-Ed Columnist W. Won't Read This By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON Never ask a guy who's in a bubble if he's in a bubble. He can't answer. 'Cause he's in a bubble. But the NBC anchor Brian Williams gamely gave it a shot, showing the president the Newsweek cover picturing him trapped in a bubble. "This says you're in a bubble," Brian told W. "You have a very small circle of advisers now. Is that true? Do you feel in a bubble?" "No, I don't feel in a bubble," Bubble Boy replied, unable to see the bubble because he's in it. "I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me." He added, "I'm very aware of what's going on." He swiftly contradicted himself by admitting that "this is the first time I'm seeing this magazine" - his version of his dad's Newsweek "Wimp Factor" cover - and that he doesn't read newsmagazines. The anchor and the anchorite spent a few anodyne moments probing the depths of what it's like to be president. "I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras," W. said. "A lot of my job is foreign policy, and I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries." Brian struggled to learn whether W. read anything except one-page memos. Talking about his mom, Bubble Boy returned to the idea of the bubble: "If I'm in a bubble, well, if there is such thing as a bubble, she's the one who can penetrate it." "I'll tell the guys at Newsweek," the anchor said impishly. "Is that who put the bubble story?" W. asked. First he didn't know about it, and now he's forgotten it already? That's the alluring, memory-cleansing beauty of the bubble. The idea that W. is getting good advice from very capable people is silly - administration officials have blown it on everything from the occupation and natural disasters to torture. In the bubble, they can torture while saying they don't. They can pretend that Iraqi forces are stronger than they are. They can try to frighten people with talk of Al Qaeda's dream of a new Islamic caliphate - their latest attempt to scare Americans into supporting the war they ginned up. "Whether or not it needed to happen," the president told the anchor, "I'm still convinced it needed to happen." The Bubble Boy can even contradict himself and not notice. W.'s contention that he's informed by people from all walks of life is a joke, as is his wacky assertion that he can "reach out" to the public more than Abraham Lincoln because he has Air Force One. Lincoln actually went to the front in his war, with Minié balls whizzing by. No phony turkey for him. The president may fly over all walks of life in Air Force One or drive by them and hide behind dark-tinted windows. In his bubble, he floats through a comforting world of doting women, respectful military audiences, loyal Republican donors and screened partisan groups - with protesters, Democrats, journalists, critics and coffins of dead soldiers kept at bay. (He has probably even been shielded from the outrage of John and Stacey Holley, both Army veterans, who were shocked to learn that their only child, Matthew, killed in Iraq, would be arriving in San Diego as freight on a commercial airliner.) Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat close to the Pentagon who supported both wars against Iraq waged by the Bushes, has been braying against the Bush isolation. He told Newsweek that a letter he wrote to the president making suggestions about how to fight the Iraq war was ignored for seven months, then brushed off by a deputy under secretary of defense. Even after he went public, he still did not get a call from the White House. "If they talked to people," he said, "they wouldn't get these outbursts." Mr. Murtha told Rolling Stone that the administration's deafness had doomed Iraq: "Everything we did was mishandled. Plans that the military and the State Department had in place - they ignored 'em. The military tells me that when they were planning the invasion, the administration wouldn't let one of the primary three-star generals in the room." The president's bubble requires constant care. It's not easy to keep out huge tragedies like Katrina, or flawed policies like Iraq. As Newsweek noted, a foreign diplomat "was startled when Secretary of State Rice warned him not to lay bad news on the president. 'Don't upset him,' she said." Heaven forbid. Don't burst his bubble. Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.

To: PartyTime who wrote (167)	4/30/2006 8:38:54 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 194

Ronald Brownstein: Washington Outlook All Revved Up, Going Nowhere on Energy Policy April 30, 2006 Everyone in Washington expressed the requisite outrage last week about spiraling gas prices. But no one seemed outraged enough to seriously reassess any of the tired and rigid thinking that has paralyzed America's energy policy for years. The energy debate stands as a prime example of Washington's deteriorating capacity to meaningfully confront problems. ADVERTISEMENT There's little mystery about the available options for reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and its vulnerability to the sort of price rise now battering drivers at the pump. The list would include producing more oil and gas at home, encouraging more conservation, and promoting greater use of clean, renewable energy. But for years, Washington hasn't accomplished much on any of those fronts. Each party has repeatedly derailed the most ambitious proposals of the other. Republicans have blocked Democratic efforts to mandate more conservation and jump-start renewable sources; Democrats have sidelined Republican efforts to allow more domestic production. The energy bill President Bush signed last summer is a dreary monument to this politics of subtraction: Though the legislation contained some modestly beneficial provisions (mostly tax breaks to encourage conservation), no one imagined that it represented a response proportionate to the problem. The latest long-term Department of Energy projections, released after Bush signed the bill, forecast that in 20 years, America's reliance on foreign oil will be slightly greater than today. The same discouraging tendencies were evident in last week's eruption of Washington speeches about the pain at the pump. Congressional Democrats lined up like kids whacking a pinata to swing at the oil industry. Some of their complaints seemed overwrought. Others landed more powerfully: It is absurd to shower the oil companies with billions in tax breaks, as last year's energy bill did, while they are swimming in record profits. But it's hardly a profile in courage for Democrats to point fingers at oil executives. In each of the last six elections, oil and gas companies directed at least three-fourths of their federal campaign contributions to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Democrats seemed much less enthusiastic about confronting a constituency more important in their coalition: the millions of unionized workers employed by the Big Three domestic auto companies. Conspicuously absent in the proposals Democrats released for responding to soaring prices was the most effective step Washington could take to protect Americans from rising fuel costs and reduce dependence on foreign oil: mandating that the auto companies significantly improve the fuel economy of their cars and trucks. The federal government hasn't required the auto companies to improve the fuel economy of passenger cars since 1989, when the current 27.5 miles-per-gallon standard went into effect. Since then, Washington has modestly increased the requirements for light trucks and sport utility vehicles (most recently earlier this year). But mileage standards for trucks and SUVs remain much lower than the requirements for cars. And with more Americans buying those behemoths, the average fuel economy of the vehicles on America's roads hasn't improved since the mid-1980s. Most Republicans, constrained by an ideological resistance to federal regulation, have always opposed tougher mandates. But achieving better fuel economy was once a passion of Democrats. In 1990, 42 of the Senate's 55 Democrats — about three-fourths — voted to require automakers to reach 40 mpg by 2001. That bill drew 57 votes overall, but failed amid opposition from President George H.W. Bush and a Republican-led filibuster. Under pressure from the auto companies and auto workers, Democrats have retreated ever since. President Clinton didn't seriously try to raise fuel economy standards. Last year, a proposal from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) to require a 40-mpg average for cars by 2016 drew just 28 votes; only about half of the Senate's 44 Democrats voted yes. Those voting no included every Senate Democrat considering a 2008 presidential bid. The collapse of the fuel economy movement captures the real problem in the energy debate. It isn't a shortage of good ideas; it's a refusal to accept the political risks that could advance those ideas. After initially emphasizing drilling, even Bush is edging toward a broader strategy. He's proposed more funding for alternative fuels, and last week he asked for administrative authority to raise fuel economy standards. "This country must … diversify away from the hydrocarbon economy," he now insists. But Bush still rejects the steps that could most accelerate such a transformation, such as statutory increases in fuel economy, requirements for utilities to generate more electricity from renewable energy, and mandated limits on the emissions of carbon dioxide — which would benefit cleaner alternatives to coal and oil. Small-government ideology and Big Energy loyalties still cramp his thinking. For all the howling from Washington, energy policy will remain stuck in neutral until both parties confront their supporters to construct a grand bargain of more domestic production, greater conservation and more focus on alternative energy. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has proposed one step toward such an agreement: a deal in which auto makers would accept higher fuel economy standards in return for public help with their crushing pension and healthcare costs. A comprehensive response might also tie a short-term increase in domestic oil and gas production to steps (such as carbon-emission limits) aimed at speeding a long-term shift toward cleaner energy sources. There's not much politicians can do about the current price shock. Their job is to think in fresh and flexible ways about reducing America's vulnerability to the next one.