Yes – LI was hasty, yesterday, roundly condemning this administration. Today, we have to eat our words, because the Bush administration released a budget that is obviously a highly literate satire, on the order of Dead Souls or A Modest Proposal. Just as we were attacking Bush for boldness, he comes up with this truly postmodern classic, which can be enjoyed by the whole family.
There is, for instance, the halving of the deficit, which is achieved by pretending hundreds of billions of dollars just aren’t being spent. This in itself is a terrific satiric swipe at Enron’s accounting methods, which, by being adopted wholesale by the government, are exposed in all their ridiculousness.
Then there is the 6 percent increase for the military and the 3 percent decrease for education. Let’s see, the six percent raise is, what – 10 million per terrorist? 30? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anyway, as we all know that the war on terrorism is a wink wink job. The real battle is to get as much cash in the pockets of the defense industry as possible. And that education, so funny, so delicious. As somebody said, not long ago, we need to produce the best scientists and mathematicians to meet the challenges of the future – not! This made LI laugh until we had to change our clothes. It’s a bit of Lenny Bruce humor, a fuck you, America, but all in good fun.
Global warming? Addiction to oil? Future hurricanes? What me worry? There are priorities and then there are priorities. In the aftermath of Katrina, cutting the budget of the corps of engineers by some ten percent represents pure genius. The administration has always had a sharp eye for real time TV satire. Their version of it is to throw so much money at the wealthy that they go, literally, hog wild and do the darnedest, most unbelievable things – steal from poor Iraqis, cheat the government on defense ware for those laughable losers, the American soldier, and … and this is crème de la crème – load their own pockets as they ‘stabilize’ wages for their workers. Bye bye pensions is the motto of the kreative krewe known simply to the administration as the Pioneers. Sure, it isn’t pretty, but – just as in real tv – there are lessons to be learned among the laughs. Continuing this comedy feat and fiesta, the budget is loaded with tax breaks for the wealthy that will make your eyes water with laughter. An administration that has played one of the great practical jokes of all times – the medicare bill that forbids the government from dickering with the big pharma for lower prices, thus criminalizing efficiency – isn’t quite up to its old standard, but this budget tries in every way.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wonder how the locust became king! Like an alternate reality, like the confederacy winning the Civil war and rammng its small bore, pathological ideas down our throat, this budget season looks to be as spicy as anything we’ve ever seen.
The best part is coming up, as “earmarks are good” Boehner and his merry men dig in.
And the way the newspapers report this thing – pulling a face as serious as Buster Keaton’s as they report one lie after another – is also a tickle.
We loved this from the NYT:
“The plan includes $50 billion for covering the cost of military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan into the next fiscal year, although administration officials said last week that requests would be submitted soon for supplemental spending for the current year for the wars and for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The budget office released a new estimate saying that the deficit for the current fiscal year would be $423 billion, a record high, up from its midyear estimate of $341 billion. The new budget projects the deficit to fall to $354 billion in the 2007 fiscal year, and to $183 billion in 2010.”
What was it that the old Cold Warriors used to say about Pravda? I think they said something about it printing government lies, and being an example of totalitarianism, and yada yada yada. My how we used to laugh when the Soviet Union would say something one day and something totally contradictory the next day, and their official newspapers would just put it out there without blinking. My that Soviet Union was a corker.
Monday, February 6, 2006
Saturday, February 4, 2006
political advise (caution, totally useless)
This is a waste of time, another useless political fantasia. But what the hell. We look like we are going to plunge into a prolonged contest in all venues between the Dems defending our civil liberties (meaning that they want to pass laws to take them away before the president does it unilaterally) and the Republicans defending our national security (can you look into the video camera, Osama? What’s the message for America again?)
Forgive me, I need some release.
The President’s newest and funniest defense of the NSA wiretappings is this: if we had had those wiretappings before 9/11, everything would have been different.
Now why doesn’t a Dem, one Dem, one little Dem, ask: how would things have been different? Would Bush have pressed the FBI? Directed the secretary of transportation to contact the airports? Done the type of things that, say, you do when you are warned that a terrorist attack is imminent?
Gee. It turns out that we were warned – or at least Bush was – that the chance was extremely high of terrorist attack. I suppose he wanted more info. Mohammed Atta’s address book. A map of New York city. Three years to think about it. After all, this is what Bush actually said about the memo he received on August 6, 2001:
"I read it and obviously was discomforted by the fact that Osama bin Laden hated America," Bush said. "But as I mentioned yesterday, we already knew that."
The farcical image of Bush as a bold leader, propagated by the press ever since we saw the real Bush, on 9/11, freeze and act with characteristic indecisiveness, is not so much political as psychopathological. It seems that the 9/11 attack hurt the country’s narcissism so deeply that we collectively -- or at least the media, on our behalf - decided that we have a bold, maybe even a reckless leader.
We don’t. We have a man with a character flaw as a leader. It isn’t a bad character flaw if, say, you are a bank teller. If you swing on a trapeze or lead a country supplied with 15,000 ICBM missiles, however, it can be deadly.
The flaw is this: Bush freezes up when meeting a crisis. We saw this plainly on 9/11. We saw this plainly with Katrina. And, I think, we saw this in the summer of 2003, when it became evident that Rumsfeld’s Iraq plan had failed and we needed new leadership if even a fifth of what Bush wanted to happen in Iraq was going to happen.
People who freeze up in crises do two things. First they lie. We know about the Katrina lies, Bush’s claim that nobody saw that the levees would bust when he had been informed 48 hours before Katrina that the levees would bust. We know about the 9/11 lies, the fight the Bush administration put up not to release the fact that Bush was informed, basically, that Al Q was ready to go soon. We know all about the lies in Iraq, from Mission Accomplished to the news about the thousand points of light in Iraq, an area in which American power is now pretty much irrelevant.
You'll notice that with Katrina, as with 9/11, Bush specifically flew away from the target area. This is a sad indication of the kind of behavior you would expect from someone who fails in crises. To use the military lingo, he doesn't have the guts to face up to these things.
The second thing people who freeze up in crises do is prolong. Having failed to address a situation at the crisis point, the person who freezes up can, by prolonging the situation, normalize it. A normalized bad situation melts the distinction between the moment of failure and all the failures that came afterward. So, for instance, it is normal for us to see Al Qaeda nesting in Pakistan, dabbling, according to the Bush people, in Iraq, blowing up a train station here, a synagogue there. It is so normal we don’t even think that Tora Bora was, uh, a fuckup, a massive fuckup, followed by the fuckup of not guarding the borders into Pakistan (lack of manpower being Rumsfeld’s m.o.), followed by the fuckup of allowing A.Q. and related Islamist groups to form a second power in Pakistan to the point where they are going to be that much harder to uproot. And of course the fuckup in Iraq, the prolongation of a pointless, pointless struggle. And the fuckup in New Orleans, the months of an emergency response that would have shamed Sri Lanka.
So, where’s the Dem to ask the simple question: okay, what would you have done with those wiretaps, Mr. President? Let’s hear it. Let’s hear the list. This ought to be good – a nice, big list of things that you do when you believe that you are in imminent danger of attack. Love to, love to hear it. Really. Take your time. Go on a vacation, perhaps, to get your bold thinking, freedom loving head around the idea.
Led by a contemptible putz who is opposed by a clueless bunch of political nitwits – America, circa 2006. Makes me feel all Walt Whitmanish inside.
ps -- surely someone will write LI to tell us that they had the famous San Diego apartment bugged -- that Bush's suggestion that they didn't is an error or a lie. Surely pursuing the minor fault relentlessly, dotting every i and beating the bushes for every bit of evidence, while letting the major fault -- the outstanding, public failures of leadership, intelligence, and responsibility -- go unquestioned, has been the whole sad pattern the past five years. I'll grant the President his buggings as a counterfactual. Again and again we swerve away from the obvious to forge our political weapons out of the esoteric. Since this has never, ever, worked, I guess the idea is: why not try the tactic one more time? Let me politely disagree, or more impolitely yell: fuck that. My idea is: hey, why don't we try to forge our weapons out of the obvious? Radical, eh?
Forgive me, I need some release.
The President’s newest and funniest defense of the NSA wiretappings is this: if we had had those wiretappings before 9/11, everything would have been different.
Now why doesn’t a Dem, one Dem, one little Dem, ask: how would things have been different? Would Bush have pressed the FBI? Directed the secretary of transportation to contact the airports? Done the type of things that, say, you do when you are warned that a terrorist attack is imminent?
Gee. It turns out that we were warned – or at least Bush was – that the chance was extremely high of terrorist attack. I suppose he wanted more info. Mohammed Atta’s address book. A map of New York city. Three years to think about it. After all, this is what Bush actually said about the memo he received on August 6, 2001:
"I read it and obviously was discomforted by the fact that Osama bin Laden hated America," Bush said. "But as I mentioned yesterday, we already knew that."
The farcical image of Bush as a bold leader, propagated by the press ever since we saw the real Bush, on 9/11, freeze and act with characteristic indecisiveness, is not so much political as psychopathological. It seems that the 9/11 attack hurt the country’s narcissism so deeply that we collectively -- or at least the media, on our behalf - decided that we have a bold, maybe even a reckless leader.
We don’t. We have a man with a character flaw as a leader. It isn’t a bad character flaw if, say, you are a bank teller. If you swing on a trapeze or lead a country supplied with 15,000 ICBM missiles, however, it can be deadly.
The flaw is this: Bush freezes up when meeting a crisis. We saw this plainly on 9/11. We saw this plainly with Katrina. And, I think, we saw this in the summer of 2003, when it became evident that Rumsfeld’s Iraq plan had failed and we needed new leadership if even a fifth of what Bush wanted to happen in Iraq was going to happen.
People who freeze up in crises do two things. First they lie. We know about the Katrina lies, Bush’s claim that nobody saw that the levees would bust when he had been informed 48 hours before Katrina that the levees would bust. We know about the 9/11 lies, the fight the Bush administration put up not to release the fact that Bush was informed, basically, that Al Q was ready to go soon. We know all about the lies in Iraq, from Mission Accomplished to the news about the thousand points of light in Iraq, an area in which American power is now pretty much irrelevant.
You'll notice that with Katrina, as with 9/11, Bush specifically flew away from the target area. This is a sad indication of the kind of behavior you would expect from someone who fails in crises. To use the military lingo, he doesn't have the guts to face up to these things.
The second thing people who freeze up in crises do is prolong. Having failed to address a situation at the crisis point, the person who freezes up can, by prolonging the situation, normalize it. A normalized bad situation melts the distinction between the moment of failure and all the failures that came afterward. So, for instance, it is normal for us to see Al Qaeda nesting in Pakistan, dabbling, according to the Bush people, in Iraq, blowing up a train station here, a synagogue there. It is so normal we don’t even think that Tora Bora was, uh, a fuckup, a massive fuckup, followed by the fuckup of not guarding the borders into Pakistan (lack of manpower being Rumsfeld’s m.o.), followed by the fuckup of allowing A.Q. and related Islamist groups to form a second power in Pakistan to the point where they are going to be that much harder to uproot. And of course the fuckup in Iraq, the prolongation of a pointless, pointless struggle. And the fuckup in New Orleans, the months of an emergency response that would have shamed Sri Lanka.
So, where’s the Dem to ask the simple question: okay, what would you have done with those wiretaps, Mr. President? Let’s hear it. Let’s hear the list. This ought to be good – a nice, big list of things that you do when you believe that you are in imminent danger of attack. Love to, love to hear it. Really. Take your time. Go on a vacation, perhaps, to get your bold thinking, freedom loving head around the idea.
Led by a contemptible putz who is opposed by a clueless bunch of political nitwits – America, circa 2006. Makes me feel all Walt Whitmanish inside.
ps -- surely someone will write LI to tell us that they had the famous San Diego apartment bugged -- that Bush's suggestion that they didn't is an error or a lie. Surely pursuing the minor fault relentlessly, dotting every i and beating the bushes for every bit of evidence, while letting the major fault -- the outstanding, public failures of leadership, intelligence, and responsibility -- go unquestioned, has been the whole sad pattern the past five years. I'll grant the President his buggings as a counterfactual. Again and again we swerve away from the obvious to forge our political weapons out of the esoteric. Since this has never, ever, worked, I guess the idea is: why not try the tactic one more time? Let me politely disagree, or more impolitely yell: fuck that. My idea is: hey, why don't we try to forge our weapons out of the obvious? Radical, eh?
Friday, February 3, 2006
does it work?
From Suite venitienne
Sophie Calle is a French conceptual artist. There’s a good article on Sophie Calle in the winter Cultural Geographies (“Sophie Calle’s art of following and seduction” by Janet Hand).
Here are some of Calle’s pieces:
Hotel, 1981
“On Monday, February 16, 1981 I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6 the job came to an end.”
Hand adds this detail: “The hotel, then, takes the form of a photographic and diaristic series describing her intimate encounters with the business and personal possessions of guests whilst working in the hotel.”
In The sleepers (1979) she photographed sleeping people.
In The address book (1983), “Calle used a ‘found’ address book to follow ‘virtually’ the man to whom the book belonged and whom, we are led to believe, she didn’t ‘know’. She visited people whose details were contained in the book, and photographed objects in some way connected to the man she was profiling and with whom she otherwise had no relation. Calle then published her work as ‘an instalment piece’ in the French national newspaper Liberation. It was in this project that Calle came most closely into conflict
with issues of privacy and rights. The man demanded a right of reply in the newspaper, we are told.”
Finally, in “Suite venitienne … she determined to follow a man she hardly knew (Henri B.) to Venice.” This was connected to a set of following pieces, like Twenty years later (2001), in which she asked a gallery owner, Emmanuel
Perrotin, to hire a detective to follow her. In The Shadow, 1981, she’d done the same piece, asking her mother to hire a detective to follow her.
In S.V., she writes:
“For months I followed strangers on the street _/ for the pleasure of following them, not because they particularly interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took notes of their movements, then finally lost sight of them and forgot them.
At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of the conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice.”
Calle followed the man to Venice in a number of ways – for instance, she called all of the hotels in Venice until she found him. And she does eventually attract his attention. Henri B. probably knows about her reputation:
“When Calle encounters Henri B., when he recognizes her and prohibits her from taking his photograph in Venice, even when she follows him back to Paris by train, we are invited to ask what she wants from him. It is to the dramatized issues of consequence and judgement, and to the relation of judgement to aesthetics, that the chase demands our attention. Calle may conjure and preserve the idea of the work in the narrative of Suite ve´nitienne, but just as significantly, the narrative itself is irreducible to a self-referring statement in distinction from an authoring subject.”
Now, I love the descriptions of these pieces. I have immense respect for artists like Calle and Chris Burden, but I know that there is nothing so alienating and infuriating to even literary people than this kind of art. In fact, the first question (and least important) that is asked about such things is, is it art. This question was important in 1920, but just as certain currencies from the 20s have become mere curiosities (Mussolini’s lire, for instance), so, too, certain questions from that time have no exchange-value left. Much more interesting is: does this work? When Burden did a piece he called (as I recall) asshole, where he cuts his hair and buys a suit to look like an FBI agent, goes to a conference to which he has been invited, and answers all questions asked of him like an asshole, does that work?
The problem with conceptual art is the opening it gives to the critic. The art world suffers from the way in which critics have colonized the art world. Someone like Sophie Calle does her act, and collects the relics of it, and might even tell about it, but it is the critic that really conveys the work.
Art critics sometimes do a strange thing. Imagine going to your local club to listen to some band. Imagine a group of people getting out on the dance floor and announcing that you can only dance to this band in the following way, using the following gestures and steps. While that would not go over at a club, it often happens in the art world. Critics who are quite brilliant, like Rosalind Krauss, are also quite adept at doing this. If you read Art Forum, you will find article after article squeezing the work it talks about to death, as the critic fits himself into the art ‘space.’
I have an idea of the kind of demonic impulse to which Calle responds. One of her works is called The Wardrobe:
“I saw him for the first time in December 1985, at a lecture he was giving. I found him attractive, but one thing bothered me: he was wearing an ugly tie. The next day I anonymously sent him a thin brown tie. Later, I saw him at a restaurant and he was wearing it. Unfortunately, it clashed with his shirt. It was then that I decided to take on the task of dressing him from head to toe: I would send him one article of clothing
every year at Christmas.”
I once, as a joke, purchased several babilicous postcards in Florida, and then, as I was passing through a town in Mississippi, I looked up several names in the phonebook and wrote Missing you so much! heart, Candi, and sent them from New Orleans to those addresses. This might have been a cruel thing to do, I’ll grant you, but as a prank it worked extremely well. I strongly doubt I broke up anybody’s marriage, but surely I started a few dinner table conversations. Or perhaps these postcards never arrived, who knows?
Well, I have been pondering these things since my friend, D., sent me the invite to our mutual friend Thomas Glassford’s opening at the MUCA Campus of UNAM this spring. The opening is called Exquisite Corps, and the invite came with a critical epilogue that expounded in highly theoretical terms about the work without, actually, saying anything about the work whatsoever. The invite mentioned other of Thomas’ pieces, like Valley – “an upended ranch cot slit down the middle by a tin gutter” – the description of which I would bet the critical nabob got from Thomas himself. The shame of this is that the critical colonization of Thomas’ pieces really does nothing to help you see them. Quite the contrary. How many artists do I know who have to suffer being pimped out by a critic in order to be seen at all? It is a sad and inverted situation. And the worst of it is, nobody wants to talk about it. The artists can afford to alienate the critics if they are going to have any success – which depends on the critics. This is the sign of a rentier regime about to fall.
And the ones that do bitch are usually the most conservative -- they don't really give a fuck about colonization, they just want attention for another fatiguing go around about figuration a la Jed Perl.
This is the sign of a rentier regime about to fall. This isn't what Duchamp meant at all, at all...
house of cards, 4 br, 3 ba, 1/2 acre lot
Marty Feldstein is not an economist I particularly like – an old Reagan apparatchik – but he does have an interesting column in the Financial Times today. He poses a problem: why didn’t the oil increases spark an economic downturn?
He answers this by pointing to one unexpected benefit of Alan Greenspan’s bubble:
“The key to the economy's strength in 2004 and 2005 was that household saving declined dramatically while the price of oil rose. Household saving fell from 2.5 per cent of after-tax income in the third quarter of 2003 to a remarkable minus 1.8 per cent two years later. This 4.3 per cent shift of after-tax income was equal to a rise in consumer spending equal to 3 per cent of GDP.
In dollar terms, saving fell from a Dollars 205bn (Pounds 115bn) annual rate in the third quarter of 2003 to dissaving at a rate of Dollars 159bn two years later. This shift of Dollars 364bn in the annual rate of saving far outstripped the fall in income caused by the higher cost of oil. This fall in saving allowed households to raise consumption spending on non-oil goods and services while paying for the higher cost of imported oil.
The primary cause of this dramatic shift was the fall in interest rates and the resulting rise in mortgage refinancing. Homeowners who refinanced their mortgages took out cash and reduced their monthly payments at the same time. Much of the cash obtained by refinancing was spent on consumer durables, home improvements and the like. The lower monthly payments permitted a higher level of sustained spending on all non-durable categories.”
In spite of his randy Randian beginnings, Greenspan couldn’t have been more Keynesian in his policy over the last three years. One can argue that here, if anywhere, Keynes’ jibe that in the long term, we are all dead is justified. For really, those who point to the long term are in as much ignorance as anybody else as to the features of the long term. Who would have predicted, in 2001, that Exxon of all companies would make the greatest quarterly profit in corporate history five years down the road? The energy sector looked dead in the water back in those dear days when the afterglow of the New Economy powered by the Hi Tech Industry that was going to take everyone to Cisconian heights was the line still being pushed in the biz rags and newspaper columns.
There is a problem with turning savings into (oh glorious, English averse word) dissavings. Creditors have a bad habit of getting impatient with dissavings. Ask my landlord. The macro facts of the economy do show, pretty beautifully, how features emerge via turbulence in larger systems that are not caught in the causal net presupposed by linear thinking. That the American householder can both afford the Christmas presents and the SUV to truck them away from the mall she got them in is a piece of the jugglery of everyday life that should confound the petty prophets among us (among whom, of course, I include LI).
Feldstein points out that mortgages grew by 3 trillion dollars, to 7 percent of the GDP, from 2001 to 2004. His idea is that we are reaching a limit. And that as the limit is reached, further money for oil price increases is going to have to come from ceasing spending elsewhere. And that sounds logical.
“The powerful effect of mortgage refinancing on consumer spending was a very happy coincidence for the American economy at a time when oil prices were depressing consumers' real incomes. If oil prices were to rise again in 2006 or 2007, the adverse effect on consumers' real incomes would not be offset by increased mortgage refinancing. Mortgage refinancing has now peaked and is declining. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates again to counter the inflationary pressures that remain from the rise in energy costs. And individuals no longer have the large amounts of household equity against which to borrow.
A rise in the oil price could happen again at any time. There is little spare capacity in global oil production and oil demand is rising rapidly in China and other Asian countries. A shock that reduced the production or shipping of oil could drive its price sharply higher. Speculative forces could compound this problem. The US was lucky after 2003 to escape the contractionary effect of an oil price rise even without an explicit change in monetary or fiscal policy. It would not be so lucky if a big oil price increase happened again now.”
The only country that benefits more from that happy coincidence than the U.S. is, perhaps, Iran. While the hawks would love nothing better than to sink their talons into the hide of that country, Bush – not the world’s brightest bulb, but a man who sucked oil from his mother’s breast, so to speak – has, we imagine, an intuition that the dogs of war would definitely knock over the jugglery of peace. And that would knock down – to continue this riot of journalistic metaphors – the whole house of cards. A house that can definitely be resold next year for more than it was bought for last year!
He answers this by pointing to one unexpected benefit of Alan Greenspan’s bubble:
“The key to the economy's strength in 2004 and 2005 was that household saving declined dramatically while the price of oil rose. Household saving fell from 2.5 per cent of after-tax income in the third quarter of 2003 to a remarkable minus 1.8 per cent two years later. This 4.3 per cent shift of after-tax income was equal to a rise in consumer spending equal to 3 per cent of GDP.
In dollar terms, saving fell from a Dollars 205bn (Pounds 115bn) annual rate in the third quarter of 2003 to dissaving at a rate of Dollars 159bn two years later. This shift of Dollars 364bn in the annual rate of saving far outstripped the fall in income caused by the higher cost of oil. This fall in saving allowed households to raise consumption spending on non-oil goods and services while paying for the higher cost of imported oil.
The primary cause of this dramatic shift was the fall in interest rates and the resulting rise in mortgage refinancing. Homeowners who refinanced their mortgages took out cash and reduced their monthly payments at the same time. Much of the cash obtained by refinancing was spent on consumer durables, home improvements and the like. The lower monthly payments permitted a higher level of sustained spending on all non-durable categories.”
In spite of his randy Randian beginnings, Greenspan couldn’t have been more Keynesian in his policy over the last three years. One can argue that here, if anywhere, Keynes’ jibe that in the long term, we are all dead is justified. For really, those who point to the long term are in as much ignorance as anybody else as to the features of the long term. Who would have predicted, in 2001, that Exxon of all companies would make the greatest quarterly profit in corporate history five years down the road? The energy sector looked dead in the water back in those dear days when the afterglow of the New Economy powered by the Hi Tech Industry that was going to take everyone to Cisconian heights was the line still being pushed in the biz rags and newspaper columns.
There is a problem with turning savings into (oh glorious, English averse word) dissavings. Creditors have a bad habit of getting impatient with dissavings. Ask my landlord. The macro facts of the economy do show, pretty beautifully, how features emerge via turbulence in larger systems that are not caught in the causal net presupposed by linear thinking. That the American householder can both afford the Christmas presents and the SUV to truck them away from the mall she got them in is a piece of the jugglery of everyday life that should confound the petty prophets among us (among whom, of course, I include LI).
Feldstein points out that mortgages grew by 3 trillion dollars, to 7 percent of the GDP, from 2001 to 2004. His idea is that we are reaching a limit. And that as the limit is reached, further money for oil price increases is going to have to come from ceasing spending elsewhere. And that sounds logical.
“The powerful effect of mortgage refinancing on consumer spending was a very happy coincidence for the American economy at a time when oil prices were depressing consumers' real incomes. If oil prices were to rise again in 2006 or 2007, the adverse effect on consumers' real incomes would not be offset by increased mortgage refinancing. Mortgage refinancing has now peaked and is declining. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates again to counter the inflationary pressures that remain from the rise in energy costs. And individuals no longer have the large amounts of household equity against which to borrow.
A rise in the oil price could happen again at any time. There is little spare capacity in global oil production and oil demand is rising rapidly in China and other Asian countries. A shock that reduced the production or shipping of oil could drive its price sharply higher. Speculative forces could compound this problem. The US was lucky after 2003 to escape the contractionary effect of an oil price rise even without an explicit change in monetary or fiscal policy. It would not be so lucky if a big oil price increase happened again now.”
The only country that benefits more from that happy coincidence than the U.S. is, perhaps, Iran. While the hawks would love nothing better than to sink their talons into the hide of that country, Bush – not the world’s brightest bulb, but a man who sucked oil from his mother’s breast, so to speak – has, we imagine, an intuition that the dogs of war would definitely knock over the jugglery of peace. And that would knock down – to continue this riot of journalistic metaphors – the whole house of cards. A house that can definitely be resold next year for more than it was bought for last year!
Thursday, February 2, 2006
the new civil libertarians
Chris Bertram has a very good take on the controversy about the Muhammed cartoons It nicely breaks down the hypocrisy involved in this sudden overflow of support for civil liberties. Myself, I am astounded by the sudden enthusiasm for freedom of speech by a crowd that has just been busily arguing that the Executive branch in the U.S. has a perfect right to listen to all our telephone conversations and read all of our email – but it turns out there is one right that is precious, and that is to show funny pics of Muhammed. All very well, too, to condemn those ultra-violent Islamists who murdered Theo Van Gogh. We are so with you, brothers and sisters!
B.. but how about the U.S. Military murder of Tariq Ayoub? Somehow, this topic seems not to launch a thousand impassioned blogs. And certainly the U.S. military, who investigated the U.S. military and found to its satisfaction that the U.S. military was doing a damn fine job, doesn’t figure on anybody’s list of terrorist threats to freedom of the press. Funny, Taras Protsyuk didn’t know that. Neither did Jose Couso.
One does get sick of the under the surface pretence that Muslims everywhere are the horrid murderers of innocent white Christians. Anybody who does the death counts know that the opposite is the case.
So, for those of us who support the provocations of a Theo Van Gogh, I’d suggest going to this site dedicated to getting the U.S. Military to conduct a real investigation, leading to a trial, about the murder of Jose Couso.
This is what Couso’s Mother has to say on that site, in part:
“My son was good at his job. He was no kamikaze, nor was he reckless. That is why he decided to stay in Baghdad; and because he was a careful person, starting on April 7 he stayed inside the Hotel Palestine, which was the headquarters for the international media, as your commanders knew full well.
There you murdered him, in cold blood. There was no fighting, so there is no excuse. But you, Philip Decamp, authorized it; you, Philip Wolford, gave the order, and you, Thomas Gibson, pulled the trigger. And the three of you knew you were killing innocent people, But you did it anyway. Damn you.”
As for Dima Tahboub, wife of Tariq Ayoub, well, what can you expect from a Muslim? A lot of them think their lives are as good as Christian lives. The nerve. Doesn’t understand the least thing about the world.
“Dima Tahboub, wife of the 35-year-old journalist, says she may take legal action, because "The report proves the cold-blooded murder of my husband.""America always claimed it was an accident. But I believe the new revelations prove that claim was false or at least trustworthy," the Daily Mirror reported her as saying. "I will seek legal advice in light of this new information to achieve justice," she added.
Ayyoub died on 8 April 2003, when his office on the west bank of the Tigris river in Baghdad was hit by at least two American missiles as he reported from the roof. That same morning US tanks fired at the Palestine Hotel, which was used by scores of journalists, killing two of them. The offices of Abu Dhabi TV, some 300 metres away from the Al Jazeera office, were also hit that day. Following the attacks the Pentagon said it would never intentionally target journalists.
Ayyoub was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family who later moved to Jordan as refugees as a result of the Gulf War. Before joining Al Jazeera he worked as a producer for the APTN news agency and wrote for the English language newspaper The Jordan Times. While working as a journalist he was arrested so many times his family said they had lost count, but he was never charged and was always released soon afterwards. He had one daughter, Fatmeh, who was just one-year-old when he died.”
The CPA, when in power in Iraq, showed the might and idealism of the Western Civil liberties standard by paying to put lies in Iraqi newspapers while at the same time raiding and shutting down Muqtada al-Sadr ‘s Al Hawza newspaper because it printed, well, lies. But I am sure the pro-war contingent, who are bleeding profusely at the threats being faced by poor, poor Danish cartoonists, can see that there are two sides of everything, and you can’t exactly have a newspaper criticize an occupying force, can you? That stirs up violence.
Or go to Al Jazeera’s blog, Don’t bomb us. And search for it on Google, too. Give the NSA something to look at.
B.. but how about the U.S. Military murder of Tariq Ayoub? Somehow, this topic seems not to launch a thousand impassioned blogs. And certainly the U.S. military, who investigated the U.S. military and found to its satisfaction that the U.S. military was doing a damn fine job, doesn’t figure on anybody’s list of terrorist threats to freedom of the press. Funny, Taras Protsyuk didn’t know that. Neither did Jose Couso.
One does get sick of the under the surface pretence that Muslims everywhere are the horrid murderers of innocent white Christians. Anybody who does the death counts know that the opposite is the case.
So, for those of us who support the provocations of a Theo Van Gogh, I’d suggest going to this site dedicated to getting the U.S. Military to conduct a real investigation, leading to a trial, about the murder of Jose Couso.
This is what Couso’s Mother has to say on that site, in part:
“My son was good at his job. He was no kamikaze, nor was he reckless. That is why he decided to stay in Baghdad; and because he was a careful person, starting on April 7 he stayed inside the Hotel Palestine, which was the headquarters for the international media, as your commanders knew full well.
There you murdered him, in cold blood. There was no fighting, so there is no excuse. But you, Philip Decamp, authorized it; you, Philip Wolford, gave the order, and you, Thomas Gibson, pulled the trigger. And the three of you knew you were killing innocent people, But you did it anyway. Damn you.”
As for Dima Tahboub, wife of Tariq Ayoub, well, what can you expect from a Muslim? A lot of them think their lives are as good as Christian lives. The nerve. Doesn’t understand the least thing about the world.
“Dima Tahboub, wife of the 35-year-old journalist, says she may take legal action, because "The report proves the cold-blooded murder of my husband.""America always claimed it was an accident. But I believe the new revelations prove that claim was false or at least trustworthy," the Daily Mirror reported her as saying. "I will seek legal advice in light of this new information to achieve justice," she added.
Ayyoub died on 8 April 2003, when his office on the west bank of the Tigris river in Baghdad was hit by at least two American missiles as he reported from the roof. That same morning US tanks fired at the Palestine Hotel, which was used by scores of journalists, killing two of them. The offices of Abu Dhabi TV, some 300 metres away from the Al Jazeera office, were also hit that day. Following the attacks the Pentagon said it would never intentionally target journalists.
Ayyoub was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family who later moved to Jordan as refugees as a result of the Gulf War. Before joining Al Jazeera he worked as a producer for the APTN news agency and wrote for the English language newspaper The Jordan Times. While working as a journalist he was arrested so many times his family said they had lost count, but he was never charged and was always released soon afterwards. He had one daughter, Fatmeh, who was just one-year-old when he died.”
The CPA, when in power in Iraq, showed the might and idealism of the Western Civil liberties standard by paying to put lies in Iraqi newspapers while at the same time raiding and shutting down Muqtada al-Sadr ‘s Al Hawza newspaper because it printed, well, lies. But I am sure the pro-war contingent, who are bleeding profusely at the threats being faced by poor, poor Danish cartoonists, can see that there are two sides of everything, and you can’t exactly have a newspaper criticize an occupying force, can you? That stirs up violence.
Or go to Al Jazeera’s blog, Don’t bomb us. And search for it on Google, too. Give the NSA something to look at.
this I believe... oh yeah
Notes
Still more about the SOTU. LI stands for very little positive legislation, but we do believe strongly in one law. It should certainly be mandated that before every State of the Union Speech, the opening montage from Seven Beauties should be shown. No commentary from the commentariat, just the montage, those wonderful bombings, the destroyed cities, Hitler and Mussolini shaking hands, the fleeing masses escaping strafing of fighter planes, and that jazzy score, and the Italian chant with the English tag, oh yeah, on the end of every line ("The ones who don't enjoy themselves, even when they laugh. Oh yeah./ The ones who worship the corporate image, not knowing that they work for someone else. Oh yeah. /The ones who should have been shot in the cradle... Pow! Oh yeah. The ones who say 'Follow me to success, but kill me if I fail... so to speak.' Oh yeah.)
It would add a bit of reality to the theatre, blood to the abstract threats of blood. And we would know what it means when a country proclaims itself a force for good.
We hadn’t seen the film in years, and suddenly felt like seeing it again last night. It still has the old death magic, like a joke that gives you a heart attack. Oh yeah.
…
We did not celebrate Blair’s failure to revive the ye olde practice of the Auto de fe in LI the other day. Belated congratulations to the British for lighting that bill with a match and then stuffing it down the front of the odious P.M.’s pants.
Blair is a curious compound of the worst elements of the two ur-P.M.s, Gladstone and D’Israeli. He possesses Gladstone’s moral unctuousness, and D’Israeli’s unhinged adventurism. The morally vain rogue is not a common figure in literature, but Moliere pretty much patented the type with Tartuffe.
Here’s Lytton Strachey on the D’Israeli, Gladstone and Queen Vic:
Mr. Gladstone had been the disciple of her revered Peel, and had won the approval of Albert; Mr. Disraeli had hounded Sir Robert to his fall with hideous virulence, and the Prince had pronounced that he "had not one single element of a gentleman in his composition." Yet she regarded Mr. Gladstone with a distrust and dislike which steadily deepened, while upon his rival she lavished an abundance of confidence, esteem, and affection such as Lord Melbourne himself had hardly known.
Her attitude towards the Tory Minister had suddenly changed when she found that he alone among public men had divined her feelings at Albert's death. Of the others she might have said "they pity me and not my grief;" but Mr. Disraeli had understood; and all his condolences had taken the form of reverential eulogies of the departed. The Queen declared that he was "the only person who appreciated the Prince." She began to show him special favour; gave him and his wife two of the coveted seats in St. George's Chapel at the Prince of Wales's wedding, and invited him to stay a night at Windsor. When the grant for the Albert Memorial came before the House of Commons, Disraeli, as leader of the Opposition, eloquently supported the project. He was rewarded by a copy of the Prince's speeches, bound in white morocco, with an inscription in the royal hand. In his letter of thanks he "ventured to touch upon a sacred theme," and, in a strain which re-echoed with masterly fidelity the sentiments of his correspondent, dwelt at length upon the absolute perfection of Albert. "The Prince," he said, "is the only person whom Mr. Disraeli has ever known who realised the Ideal. None with whom he is acquainted have ever approached it. There was in him a union of the manly grace and sublime simplicity, of chivalry with the intellectual splendour of the Attic Academe. The only character in English history that would, in some respects, draw near to him is Sir Philip Sidney: the same high tone, the same universal accomplishments, the same blended tenderness and vigour, the same rare combination of romantic energy and classic repose." As for his own acquaintance with the Prince, it had been, he said, "one of the most satisfactory incidents of his life: full of refined and beautiful memories, and exercising, as he hopes, over his remaining existence, a soothing and exalting influence." Victoria was much affected by "the depth and delicacy of these touches," and henceforward Disraeli's place in her affections was assured. When, in 1866, the Conservatives came into office, Disraeli's position as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House necessarily brought him into a closer relation with the Sovereign. Two years later Lord Derby resigned, and Victoria, with intense delight and peculiar graciousness, welcomed Disraeli as her First Minister.”
This is Gladstone’s response upon hearing that the Conservative government had fallen, and Queen had sent for him to form a new government:
“Mr. Gladstone was in his shirt-sleeves at Hawarden, cutting down a tree, when the royal message was brought to him. "Very significant," he remarked, when he had read the letter, and went on cutting down his tree. His secret thoughts on the occasion were more explicit, and were committed to his diary. "The Almighty," he wrote, "seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His own, deeply unworthy as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name."
The Victorian vernacular, which slid easily between laissez faire and the Almighty’s designs, is easy to make fun of, but at least in Victorian times it was not frivolous. Tony Blair is, however, deeply frivolous, a sort of cuckoo conservative in Labour’s nest, singing a song of Thatcher. We look forward to his further humiliating defeats in Parliament.
….
And now a little self advertisement for our editing, ghostwriting, and translating service. If you or someone you know is looking for a writing service, please tell them about us. Our link is RWG Communications, Thanks.
Still more about the SOTU. LI stands for very little positive legislation, but we do believe strongly in one law. It should certainly be mandated that before every State of the Union Speech, the opening montage from Seven Beauties should be shown. No commentary from the commentariat, just the montage, those wonderful bombings, the destroyed cities, Hitler and Mussolini shaking hands, the fleeing masses escaping strafing of fighter planes, and that jazzy score, and the Italian chant with the English tag, oh yeah, on the end of every line ("The ones who don't enjoy themselves, even when they laugh. Oh yeah./ The ones who worship the corporate image, not knowing that they work for someone else. Oh yeah. /The ones who should have been shot in the cradle... Pow! Oh yeah. The ones who say 'Follow me to success, but kill me if I fail... so to speak.' Oh yeah.)
It would add a bit of reality to the theatre, blood to the abstract threats of blood. And we would know what it means when a country proclaims itself a force for good.
We hadn’t seen the film in years, and suddenly felt like seeing it again last night. It still has the old death magic, like a joke that gives you a heart attack. Oh yeah.
…
We did not celebrate Blair’s failure to revive the ye olde practice of the Auto de fe in LI the other day. Belated congratulations to the British for lighting that bill with a match and then stuffing it down the front of the odious P.M.’s pants.
Blair is a curious compound of the worst elements of the two ur-P.M.s, Gladstone and D’Israeli. He possesses Gladstone’s moral unctuousness, and D’Israeli’s unhinged adventurism. The morally vain rogue is not a common figure in literature, but Moliere pretty much patented the type with Tartuffe.
Here’s Lytton Strachey on the D’Israeli, Gladstone and Queen Vic:
Mr. Gladstone had been the disciple of her revered Peel, and had won the approval of Albert; Mr. Disraeli had hounded Sir Robert to his fall with hideous virulence, and the Prince had pronounced that he "had not one single element of a gentleman in his composition." Yet she regarded Mr. Gladstone with a distrust and dislike which steadily deepened, while upon his rival she lavished an abundance of confidence, esteem, and affection such as Lord Melbourne himself had hardly known.
Her attitude towards the Tory Minister had suddenly changed when she found that he alone among public men had divined her feelings at Albert's death. Of the others she might have said "they pity me and not my grief;" but Mr. Disraeli had understood; and all his condolences had taken the form of reverential eulogies of the departed. The Queen declared that he was "the only person who appreciated the Prince." She began to show him special favour; gave him and his wife two of the coveted seats in St. George's Chapel at the Prince of Wales's wedding, and invited him to stay a night at Windsor. When the grant for the Albert Memorial came before the House of Commons, Disraeli, as leader of the Opposition, eloquently supported the project. He was rewarded by a copy of the Prince's speeches, bound in white morocco, with an inscription in the royal hand. In his letter of thanks he "ventured to touch upon a sacred theme," and, in a strain which re-echoed with masterly fidelity the sentiments of his correspondent, dwelt at length upon the absolute perfection of Albert. "The Prince," he said, "is the only person whom Mr. Disraeli has ever known who realised the Ideal. None with whom he is acquainted have ever approached it. There was in him a union of the manly grace and sublime simplicity, of chivalry with the intellectual splendour of the Attic Academe. The only character in English history that would, in some respects, draw near to him is Sir Philip Sidney: the same high tone, the same universal accomplishments, the same blended tenderness and vigour, the same rare combination of romantic energy and classic repose." As for his own acquaintance with the Prince, it had been, he said, "one of the most satisfactory incidents of his life: full of refined and beautiful memories, and exercising, as he hopes, over his remaining existence, a soothing and exalting influence." Victoria was much affected by "the depth and delicacy of these touches," and henceforward Disraeli's place in her affections was assured. When, in 1866, the Conservatives came into office, Disraeli's position as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House necessarily brought him into a closer relation with the Sovereign. Two years later Lord Derby resigned, and Victoria, with intense delight and peculiar graciousness, welcomed Disraeli as her First Minister.”
This is Gladstone’s response upon hearing that the Conservative government had fallen, and Queen had sent for him to form a new government:
“Mr. Gladstone was in his shirt-sleeves at Hawarden, cutting down a tree, when the royal message was brought to him. "Very significant," he remarked, when he had read the letter, and went on cutting down his tree. His secret thoughts on the occasion were more explicit, and were committed to his diary. "The Almighty," he wrote, "seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His own, deeply unworthy as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name."
The Victorian vernacular, which slid easily between laissez faire and the Almighty’s designs, is easy to make fun of, but at least in Victorian times it was not frivolous. Tony Blair is, however, deeply frivolous, a sort of cuckoo conservative in Labour’s nest, singing a song of Thatcher. We look forward to his further humiliating defeats in Parliament.
….
And now a little self advertisement for our editing, ghostwriting, and translating service. If you or someone you know is looking for a writing service, please tell them about us. Our link is RWG Communications, Thanks.
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Fluff and Circumstances
So the president followed his bliss last night. I missed it. I no longer have the stomach to watch Bush go the nine rounds with the English language. The English language has the odds, the weight, and the experience, while the President takes the body blows and collapses at the end. What was once funny is now the kind of thing that some society to prevent cruelty to the animals should surely look into. I imagine he was heavily applauded for making the usual adolescent tough remarks about the rest of the world. I imagine he did not refer to Pioneer Jack Abramoff as a close and important friend. Was it last year, or the year before that the axis of evil shifted to steroids being used by switch hitters? Well, I imagine the steroid references were dropped. At least this year he has laid off proposing doing away with other New Deal and Great Society programs. Although proposing doing away with his own pill company entitlement program would actually garner a blip in the polls.
Instead of watching fluff, I did my liberal duty and went out to see Good Night and Good Luck, finally. Nice film. LI shares Clooney’s nostalgia for a world that did its business in Manichean black and white, a world in which young men tried to look like middle aged men instead of the reverse. As I wrote to my friend, T., the barbering in this movie awed me. Clooney is a sport of political nature – our last remaining Rod Serling liberal. It is a liberalism born of a horror of sci fi totalitarianism, one that dreams Egyptian dreams of huge underground headquarters in which generals fondle the buttons that would send up the missiles. No casting department could have found a better face for the phobic ultima than was borne by McCarthy. The actual footage was pretty amazing – by the end, as we know, McCarthy was simply plastered most of the time, but to listen to the permanent sneer in his voice, and to know that, like the music Josephine sang to the Mouse folk, this sound entranced the millions – this is Twilight Zone America.
Of course, the horror now is Cheney’s face, McCarthy as an android CEO. McCarthy’s most fervid followers, and the ones who supported him financially, were the Texas oil millionaires. The Hunts, the Murchisons. The line between Lincoln and Bush, so often pushed by the Weekly Standard crowd, is faint and almost invisible, but the line between McCarthy and Bush is a living thing, a culture that grew around fear of nationalized oil fields abroad (Buckley’s dad, of course, suffered from the nationalization of his oil fields in Mexico), and the fear, at home, that the oil depletion tax would somehow be attacked provided almost all the money to make conservatism a political force in this country.
PS -- after writing the above, I looked at the NYT coverage of the speech. Surely the Times has never had a worse D.C. bureau. The funniest report was by David Sanger, which contains such ludicrous Timesman's gems as this, from the second graf:
"The Texan who swept onto the national political scene six years ago talking about drilling for new energy supplies and preserving the American way of life vowed on Tuesday night to wean the nation from its reliance on oil." Which, of course, is not at all true -- Bush made some inane remarks about lessening U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, as if petroleum were not a fungible product. And of course Bush has made the hydrogen engine pledge before, and it has gone to that magic place where all the toothfairies deposit all the babyteeth.
Or this: "It was, in short, a speech rooted in some harsh global and political realities, and one unlikely to rank among Mr. Bush's most memorable. Instead of evoking the grand ambitions that have suffused his presidency since the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush emphasized the familiar and the modest."
I wonder how Sanger ranks the most memorable. No doubt they will be carved in stone on some stelae after Bush retires from office to a job he is actually qualified for: brush-cutting. The NYT decision that Bush will invariably be described as bold, or some synonym, creaks and moans with irreality. Meanwhile, we boldly never actually won the war we started out to win, as Osama bin Laden turns himself into an independent video producer. What a sad and shameful spectacle "swept in" six years ago, and what complete putzes report on it.
PPS h
Just so you know how the D.C. correspondents work, Froomkin’s column is about how the Bush white house chews up the speech and spits it into each little journalistic maw, so it can be re-spit into the pages of the newspaper. I say, cut out the middleman and have the White House press secretary write those analyses of the speech in the NYT:
Journalists are not exactly transparent about how much advance knowledge they have of the president's speech before he gives it.
As usual, the press yesterday got the full text of the speech an hour before delivery. Bush himself hosted an off-the-record lunch for network anchors.
And some six-and-a-half-hours before delivery, White House counselor Dan Bartlett spoke to the press in great detail about the speech for almost an hour.
Instead of watching fluff, I did my liberal duty and went out to see Good Night and Good Luck, finally. Nice film. LI shares Clooney’s nostalgia for a world that did its business in Manichean black and white, a world in which young men tried to look like middle aged men instead of the reverse. As I wrote to my friend, T., the barbering in this movie awed me. Clooney is a sport of political nature – our last remaining Rod Serling liberal. It is a liberalism born of a horror of sci fi totalitarianism, one that dreams Egyptian dreams of huge underground headquarters in which generals fondle the buttons that would send up the missiles. No casting department could have found a better face for the phobic ultima than was borne by McCarthy. The actual footage was pretty amazing – by the end, as we know, McCarthy was simply plastered most of the time, but to listen to the permanent sneer in his voice, and to know that, like the music Josephine sang to the Mouse folk, this sound entranced the millions – this is Twilight Zone America.
Of course, the horror now is Cheney’s face, McCarthy as an android CEO. McCarthy’s most fervid followers, and the ones who supported him financially, were the Texas oil millionaires. The Hunts, the Murchisons. The line between Lincoln and Bush, so often pushed by the Weekly Standard crowd, is faint and almost invisible, but the line between McCarthy and Bush is a living thing, a culture that grew around fear of nationalized oil fields abroad (Buckley’s dad, of course, suffered from the nationalization of his oil fields in Mexico), and the fear, at home, that the oil depletion tax would somehow be attacked provided almost all the money to make conservatism a political force in this country.
PS -- after writing the above, I looked at the NYT coverage of the speech. Surely the Times has never had a worse D.C. bureau. The funniest report was by David Sanger, which contains such ludicrous Timesman's gems as this, from the second graf:
"The Texan who swept onto the national political scene six years ago talking about drilling for new energy supplies and preserving the American way of life vowed on Tuesday night to wean the nation from its reliance on oil." Which, of course, is not at all true -- Bush made some inane remarks about lessening U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, as if petroleum were not a fungible product. And of course Bush has made the hydrogen engine pledge before, and it has gone to that magic place where all the toothfairies deposit all the babyteeth.
Or this: "It was, in short, a speech rooted in some harsh global and political realities, and one unlikely to rank among Mr. Bush's most memorable. Instead of evoking the grand ambitions that have suffused his presidency since the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush emphasized the familiar and the modest."
I wonder how Sanger ranks the most memorable. No doubt they will be carved in stone on some stelae after Bush retires from office to a job he is actually qualified for: brush-cutting. The NYT decision that Bush will invariably be described as bold, or some synonym, creaks and moans with irreality. Meanwhile, we boldly never actually won the war we started out to win, as Osama bin Laden turns himself into an independent video producer. What a sad and shameful spectacle "swept in" six years ago, and what complete putzes report on it.
PPS h
Just so you know how the D.C. correspondents work, Froomkin’s column is about how the Bush white house chews up the speech and spits it into each little journalistic maw, so it can be re-spit into the pages of the newspaper. I say, cut out the middleman and have the White House press secretary write those analyses of the speech in the NYT:
Journalists are not exactly transparent about how much advance knowledge they have of the president's speech before he gives it.
As usual, the press yesterday got the full text of the speech an hour before delivery. Bush himself hosted an off-the-record lunch for network anchors.
And some six-and-a-half-hours before delivery, White House counselor Dan Bartlett spoke to the press in great detail about the speech for almost an hour.
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