Golf?

[ReillyT]

Whether you like or dislike President Bush, this is a weird form of sacrifice.

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html

The rest of the story actually has real news about Iraqi intelligence and attempts to bring down gas prices, but this is what caught my eye.

 

[jillian]

You know, I think that's actually interesting. He gets a thumbs up on it.

 

[ReillyT]

You know, I think that's actually interesting. He gets a thumbs up on it.

I am of two minds. On the one hand, choosing to sacrifice something is comendable. I have always respected that Catholics generally sacrifice something during Lent. Even if it is small it has meaning.

On the other hand (and in contradiction to what I just wrote above), sacrificing a leisure activity like golf as a means of solidarity with a mother who just lost her child seems... inappropriate. Not quite demeaning, but just... inappropriate as a demonstration of sacrifice.

 

[jillian]

I am of two minds. On the one hand, choosing to sacrifice something is comendable. I have always respected that Catholics generally sacrifice something during Lent. Even if it is small it has meaning.

On the other hand (and in contradiction to what I just wrote above), sacrificing a leisure activity like golf as a means of solidarity with a mother who just lost her child seems... inappropriate. Not quite demeaning, but just... inappropriate as a demonstration of sacrifice.

I totally understand your being of two minds on it. But I'm not going to criticize him for this. No one would have commented if he did continue to play golf and, obviously, I don't think he achieves any type of solidarity, but I do think his knowledge that it would at least, send a wrong message is commendable. (even if its only window dressing).

 

[Paulie]

Nevermind that he's been away on vacation for half his presidency.

He gave up golf. As if since 9/11 especially, the president of the United States of America has had ANY time to be shooting rounds of golf.

 

[jillian]

Nevermind that he's been away on vacation for half his presidency.

He gave up golf. As if since 9/11 especially, the president of the United States of America has had ANY time to be shooting rounds of golf.

Yes he has been on vacation more than any other president. I don't think it's half, though.

Just out of curiosity, how do you think 9/11 changed the actual job of the president, or this president, in particular?

 

[Yurt]

good for bush, unnecessary, but good for him....not sure why anyone is complaining that our COC takes vacations, i want the guy in the best shape, mind, body that he can be. if it takes getting out of coockoo washington, so be it....and honestly, do you think he is "unavailable" the whole time and can't still be commander in chief?

 

[jillian]

good for bush, unnecessary, but good for him....not sure why anyone is complaining that our COC takes vacations, i want the guy in the best shape, mind, body that he can be. if it takes getting out of coockoo washington, so be it....and honestly, do you think he is "unavailable" the whole time and can't still be commander in chief?

I don't mind him not working either. The less he works, the less damage he can do.

 

[jillian]

I am of two minds. On the one hand, choosing to sacrifice something is comendable. I have always respected that Catholics generally sacrifice something during Lent. Even if it is small it has meaning.

On the other hand (and in contradiction to what I just wrote above), sacrificing a leisure activity like golf as a means of solidarity with a mother who just lost her child seems... inappropriate. Not quite demeaning, but just... inappropriate as a demonstration of sacrifice.

Another perspective on the golf issue and food for thought:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a President would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he'd just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties how he expressed his empathy to the families of the dead in Iraq by giving up golf.


The President has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration of a public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.

And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and Mr. McCain lurk.


Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could, quote, "eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came yesterday during an interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo.


The question was phrased as follows:

"If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?"The President replied:


"Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.


"The biggest issue we face is, it's bigger than Iraq, it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.'


Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes 'cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives'?

They are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day... with war crimes.

Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives?

'This ideological struggle,' Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.

It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else's, and Americans like you, Sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect America" is a brand name.


But wait, there's more.

You also said "Iraq is the place where al Qaeda and other extremists have made their stand and they will be defeated."


They made no "stand" in Iraq, Sir , you allowed them to assemble there!

As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of 'they'll greet us as liberators.'

And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American Vice-Royalty enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country, by hiding behind your skirts, Sir.

Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!


It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.

"Do you feel," asked an ordinary American, "that you were misled on Iraq?"


"I feel like -- I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, "mislead" is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional -- I don't think so, I think there was a -- not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was."


Flawed.

You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.

You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, fast.

You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."

You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.

And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense.

The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, Sir, is your fiasco.

You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this Presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency an edifice you might as claim was built from Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction because there will be just as many of those inside your Presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq.


Of course if there is one over-riding theme to this president's administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind.

And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.


"And so you feel that you didn't have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?"


"No, no," replied the President. "I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction…"


People?

What people?

The insane informant "Curveball?"

The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi?

The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?


"I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein.


"And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes."


Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat.

When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply re-submitted it, with phrases amounting to "See, I done proved it," virtually written in the margins in crayon.

You defied patriotic Americans to say "The Emperor Has No Clothes" only with the stakes (as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it) being a "mushroom cloud over an American city."

And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and, last night, Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, Sir, that for members of Congress "the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes" - while you greet the political heat and try to run and hide from your presidency, and your legacy, 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect, dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, "I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction."


Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last re-opening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.


"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?


"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history.

"It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died, to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."


Golf, Sir?

Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?

Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf…

Do you think, Sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency?

In your own words "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can?

4,000 Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf!


Golf.

Not "gulf" -- golf.

And still it gets worse.

Because it proves that the President's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a stick with a ball, was not even his own damned idea.


"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"


"I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."


Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself?

The great Bushian sacrifice, an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, four thousand of their brothers and sisters lose their lives, you lose golf and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?

If it's even true.

Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time,coincidence no doubt,the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the UN and interrupted your round of golf, was on August 19th, 2003.

Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as October 13th of that year, nearly two months later.

---

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six-and-a-half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people.

But the war in Iraq is not about you.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain succeeds you.

The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game!

And, Sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt Thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

When somebody asks you, Sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at...

When somebody asks you, Sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation…

When somebody asks you, Sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.

This advice, Mr. Bush…

Shut the... hell up!

Good night, and good luck.

http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/14/1022861.aspx

 

[Ravi]

All those balls un-hit. Big of ya, Dubya.

 

[rayboyusmc]

I know the righties hate Keith, but I thought this one hit the Bush right on the head.

Wow! you give up your son, daughter, wife, husband, fill in the blank _________, _________ and he gives up golf.

That would make most of our past "War Presidents" hang their heads in embarassment.

I don't think he will even qualify for the "worst" president award. He is somewhere below this.

 

[CharlestonChad]

Whether you like or dislike President Bush, this is a weird form of sacrifice.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html

The rest of the story actually has real news about Iraqi intelligence and attempts to bring down gas prices, but this is what caught my eye.

So brave, oh so brave. He's a true American hero I tell ya.

 

[midcan5]

Unreal. Golf!

Olbermann: Bush interview unforgiveable

May 14: Countdown’s Keith Olbermann gives a Special Comment on President Bush’s recent Politico interview. Pres. Bush suggested that electing a Democrat as president means “another attack on the United States.” He also shows his empathy for the death of U.S. soldiers… by giving up golf.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24635229#24635229



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNn1raVikw[/ame]

 

[Paulie]

Yes he has been on vacation more than any other president. I don't think it's half, though.

Just out of curiosity, how do you think 9/11 changed the actual job of the president, or this president, in particular?

Of course "half" was more a joke than anything else..

How did 9/11 change the job? How about perpetual war, for starters, via the "War on Terror"? The perpetual war that Bush and Cheney have promised the world.

9/11 changed "everything", right? I can't down a president for taking time away, but to expect the citizenry to give any kind of praise to the sitting president for quitting GOLF, is a bit offensive, that's all.

Especially being that he's 7.5 years into his two terms. Where was this decision when it mattered MOST, like after we were attacked, or when we decided to commit our entire country to a never ending invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation?

That he's decided NOW to quit golf, when he's only got a few more months of relevancy, is ridiculous. Paper and internet bandwidth were wasted even publishing this story to begin with.

 

[rayboyusmc]

I also want to know what his handicap was. (Besides his mental one.) If he is a crappy golfer, he isn't giving up much.

Now if he was a scratch golfer, than that would a real sacrifice.

 

[jillian]

Of course "half" was more a joke than anything else..

How did 9/11 change the job? How about perpetual war, for starters, via the "War on Terror"? The perpetual war that Bush and Cheney have promised the world.

9/11 changed "everything", right? I can't down a president for taking time away, but to expect the citizenry to give any kind of praise to the sitting president for quitting GOLF, is a bit offensive, that's all.

Especially being that he's 7.5 years into his two terms. Where was this decision when it mattered MOST, like after we were attacked, or when we decided to commit our entire country to a never ending invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation?

That he's decided NOW to quit golf, when he's only got a few more months of relevancy, is ridiculous. Paper and internet bandwidth were wasted even publishing this story to begin with.

There isn't any such thing as a "war on terror". You can't wage war on a battle tactic. If we waged a war on fascism in WWII, we'd sill be fighting it. The War on Terror no more exists than the nominal "war on drugs" or "war on poverty".

As for the rest, you know you won't get any argument from me on most of it. I think they're total screw up's. Now lets see if the country rejects Bush Lite.

 

[Paulie]

There isn't any such thing as a "war on terror". You can't wage war on a battle tactic. If we waged a war on fascism in WWII, we'd sill be fighting it. The War on Terror no more exists than the nominal "war on drugs" or "war on poverty".

As for the rest, you know you won't get any argument from me on most of it. I think they're total screw up's. Now lets see if the country rejects Bush Lite.

And you certainly won't get any argument from ME about your view on the WOT. But you and I recognizing it doesn't change the fact that MOST people probably DON'T. Most think we're warring against radical Islam anywhere in the world. And can you blame them? It's pretty much the storyline that the MSM has fed us.

We're told that this "war" may never end in our lifetimes. I'm pretty sure even Bush has suggested as much. If that's so, then why didn't he quit golf 7 years ago?

 

[Ravi]

Now if he'd stopped cutting brush, THAT would have been impressive.

 

[Paulie]

Now if he'd stopped cutting brush, THAT would have been impressive.

I guess.

 

[jillian]

And you certainly won't get any argument from ME about your view on the WOT. But you and I recognizing it doesn't change the fact that MOST people probably DON'T. Most think we're warring against radical Islam anywhere in the world. And can you blame them? It's pretty much the storyline that the MSM has fed us.

We're told that this "war" may never end in our lifetimes. I'm pretty sure even Bush has suggested as much. If that's so, then why didn't he quit golf 7 years ago?

It's not the MSM which has fed us the concept of the endless war against radical islam. that would be the white house, but it gets debunked regularly by the MSM if you actually watch the political shows.