Yet more evidence that right wing punditry causes brain damage.

Ed Brayton, over at "Dispatches from the Culture War," posted "Hinderaker's Delusions" which had this quote (from "The Importance of Being Careful"):

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed.

Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly?

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
-- George W. Bush

He chooses his words with care and precision?

We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.
-- George W. Bush

In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed?


There are books full of Bush's gaffes.

“The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done.” – George W. Bush, regarding Iraq, ,Greeley, Colo., Nov. 4, 2006

Why do these right wing pundits always say things contrary to reality? Probably because they want to alter your perception of that reality so you don't see the mess they've made. Alas, this can only be done by writing in such a way that it causes brain damage. Recall, if you will, this passage from the Ron Suskind article, "Without a Doubt":

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

How true that has been. We are living in the nightmare world they created.

Like Palin, Bush was a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity. Perhaps we have misunderestimated him? One of the hardest parts of his job was to connect Iraq to the war on terror and he had us all fooled for years. There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again... or something like that. The point is that this is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses and we can ill afford a brain damaged decider. And rarely was the question asked, 'Is our decider learning?' He wasn't.

I think we all agree, the past is over and you never know what your history is going to be like until long after you’re gone, and probably not even then unless you believe you have an immortal soul, but then you'd never really be gone. You're just not allowed to play the game any more.