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presidential conference on fox news

hilarious
!

there already talking about it in the COR two pages long now.

but what i said was..

did anybody notice how he only vaguely answered each question, the ranted on the same subject for five minutes after each question?? instead of answering the questions directly he averted to ranting on n on on freedom and how the iraqki people wont be abandoned, blah bla blah war on terror..

As I posted in the other thread:

OK, talk about a "burning bush"!!!
WTF was that???

Everything that came out of Bush's mouth tonight sounded like a highschooler going into an oral exam without studying for it...
That was a whole lot of bla bla bla but I really got the feeling he didn't know what he was talking about!!

He didn't actually answer any of the questions that he was asked and he brought up the same points 3 or 4 times....

And calling Powell and Rumsfeld secretary of state

I sat there watching and I seriously had tears running down my face from laughing so loud.....

Whenever i see Bush on TV, i cant help but see a monkey. I think its because of that picture that been circulating the internet that has messed me up. Typically political BS ramble, avoid the question or discreetly answer something related.

For those of you too busy to watch it, here is a good summary

quote:

Originally posted by surferfb For those of you too busy to watch it, here is a good summary

Didn't get to see it, thanks for that. It includes a link to the transcript as well for anyone who's curious.

Bush + Cheney won't appear separately for interviews with the 9/11 investigative committee? What's up with that? Sounds like they're afraid their stories will get mixed up....but that's just me.

Sounds like you guys have never heard a politician answer questions before. Bill Clinton anyone?

quote:

Originally posted by mndeg hilarious !

Hehe Fox News is always good for a chuckle.

I wish I had seen it, but I'm hearing secondhand accounts of his press conference on Imus in the Moring.



One thing you might not know is that many of the reporters he called on had pre-planned softball questions. They had a seating chart so Bush would know where they were.

quote:

Originally posted by NeoPhono Sounds like you guys have never heard a politician answer questions before. Bill Clinton anyone?

At least he could think on his feet.



I'm upset with Bill Clinton for some of the things he did, but nobody ever died from his lies.

quote:

Originally posted by DaveSZ Hehe Fox News is always good for a chuckle. I'm upset with Bill Clinton for some of the things he did, but nobody ever died from his lies.

werd

Saw some of it, what a joke.. was not worth my time.

quote:

Originally posted by NeoPhono Sounds like you guys have never heard a politician answer questions before. Bill Clinton anyone?

Are you seriously comparing Clinton's press conferences to Bush's?

Don't get me wrong, Clinton dodged questions as good as the rest of them, but his persona and masterful speech skills puts a great deal of shame on Bush Jr. any day of the week.

Not to mention the fact that Clinton had something like 4x's more press conferences in his 1st 3 years in office than Bush Jr. has (and they weren't "staged" either). Why is that, I wonder?

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Are you seriously comparing Clinton's press conferences to Bush's?

What I am simply stating is that politicians tend to avoid direct answers at all costs. My Clinton reference was actually toward his infamous "definition of is" fiasco. I will agree that Bush is nowhere near the speech-giver that his father or even Clinton was, but to single him out because he "vaguely answered questions" is ignoring the rest of the politicians throughout the world. I believe if you go back and read some of Clinton's press conference transcripts you will see the substance behind his answers is no greater than Bush's. It is simply the emotion, interest (at least percieved) and speaking skills that are in contrast.

quote:

Originally posted by DaveSZ I'm upset with Bill Clinton for some of the things he did, but nobody ever died because of his lies.

Vince Foster anyone?

quote:

Originally posted by NeoPhono What I am simply stating is that politicians tend to avoid direct answers at all costs. My Clinton reference was actually toward his infamous "definition of is" fiasco. I will agree that Bush is nowhere near the speech-giver that his father or even Clinton was, but to single him out because he "vaguely answered questions" is ignoring the rest of the politicians throughout the world. I believe if you go back and read some of Clinton's press conference transcripts you will see the substance behind his answers is no greater than Bush's. It is simply the emotion, interest (at least percieved) and speaking skills that are in contrast.

Agreed. Pretty much what I was sayin'.

quote:

Vince Foster anyone?

Are you a conspiracy theorist? I thought all the conspiracy theorists were liberals?

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Are you a conspiracy theorist? I thought all the conspiracy theorists were liberals?

Are there honest-to-god conspiracies out there? Probably. Do I care about any of them? No.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do believe a lot of "stuff" happens behind the scenes that we will never be fully aware of. But in the end, it seems a rather fruitless pursuit of "truth" that in the long run probably doesn't matter all that much, especially when we're talking about what happened in the past.

Sorry, that was a long winded explaination to my simple response of "kinda, but not really."

omg

quote:

Q: You have said we'd be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil would pay for the war and that we'd find WMD in Iraq. Why were you so wrong on all of these counts? A: September 11th. Threat. Saddam, threat. Intelligence told me so. I told UN to act but they didn't so I did. Saddam could have made WMD. Danger. Oil? It wasn't destroyed and its flowing. Iraqi's are happy...the silent majority supports us...Iraqi's are happy.

its like standup comedy

more!

quote:

Q: You never admit mistakes (WMD, postwar planning, 9/11). Should people be unhappy about that? Did you screw up? A: No war footing. Osama hated us. We didn't know what was coming. I wonder where the WMD are. Saddam, threat. World, better. Iraqi's are happy.

im not trying to be funny or anything.. but i actually fell asleep while watching him respond to questions. From what I remember.. he didnt even answer any... just said the same thing in different ways to each reporter

quote:

Originally posted by Cyrus King im not trying to be funny or anything.. but i actually fell asleep while watching him respond to questions. From what I remember.. he didnt even answer any... just said the same thing in different ways to each reporter

A lot of times yes, however a lot of the questions were pretty ridiculous too. I can't believe I had to miss American Idol for that shit.

A synopsis of a few of his most idiotic statements:


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...h_no_mistakes_4

quote:

Originally posted by DaveSZ A synopsis of a few of his most idiotic statements: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...h_no_mistakes_4

Some commentary from another blog...

quote:

On the Prez's Press Conference: As usual, he was good when he was good... and he was bumbling when he was bumbling. I liked his words of resolve on Iraq and the greater conflict, but he loses me when he stammers around and hems and haws his way through digressive answers that at times just plain get off course. The most disturbing trend of the evening was this push from several reporters to get Bush to either apologize to the families of the victims of 9/11, or to accept responsibility for the mistakes in foreign policy that allowed 9/11 operatives to plan and execute the attack while here in America. The President looked goofy and uncomfortable at times while avoiding the press, but he was right not to give in to this ridiculous line of questioning. Good presidents don't apologize... they lead. Keep this in mind: There can only be 100% of anything, including blame in any given situation. In order to lay blame at the feet of more than one entity for the events of 9/11 then you have to subtract some of that 100% from Al-Qaeda and transfer it to Bush or the FBI, or whatever... and I'm not willing to do that. Al-Qaeda is 100& percent responsible for the attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon simply because those attacks were perpetrated by that organization. Therefore, they must shoulder 100% of the blame for their actions. End of story. The reason we have a 9/11 commission is to find out what weaknesses were exploited by the enemy so that we can shore up our defenses for the future. Their purpose shouldn't be to find individuals in our own government who can share some of the blame with Osama Bin-Laden and his gang of geo-thugs. I thought that the prosecutorial cross-examination of Condoleeza Rice last week by partisan dim-wits possessing half her intellect was the height of absurdity, until I saw the goons from the press bullying the president to give a teary-eyed mea culpa to the nation. Once again the press proves that they are just a little dumber than your average politician.

I caught a reply of this conference on Fox News, and I can't really add much to what's been said. It was a fairly dull and unenlightening affair, and I think we can all say with a bit more certainty that Bush lacks tact and struggles severely when forced to deviate from prepared remarks. However there is one thing I want to add:

quote:

did anybody notice how he only vaguely answered each question, the ranted on the same subject for five minutes after each question?? instead of answering the questions directly he averted to ranting on n on on freedom and how the iraqki people wont be abandoned, blah bla blah war on terror..

That was one of the things I noticed as well. Many of you may remember >this< topic from a while back, where I showed how members of the Bush admin (especially Bush and/or Rove) were quite adept at co-opting specific "meritorious" principles and agendas (like democracy, freedom, liberty and so on) by saturating their speeches with references to these concepts. I invoked the phrase "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it" to demonstrate that if you can strategically align yourself (and your actions) with such benevolent principles by constantly affirming your commitment to them (by, as I say, literally "saturating" speeches with such references) then people may begin to see you as a great defender or believer in these principles, regardless of what your actions may suggest to the contrary.

Keeping this in mind, while Bush is undeniably slow-witted and linguistically inept, he has been trained well in these techniques (and much of the credit for this must, of course, go to Karl Rove). In his speech, for instance, despite it being short and relatively light on rhetoric (for this administration at least) he managed to use the words "free" or "freedom" 17 times, in all but two cases referring specifically to the "freedom" of Iraqi state (the other two referred to "middle-eastern freedom" and "global freedom" more generally). With the word "free" brandished so liberally, and the words "Iraq" and "freedom" never far apart it's obvious that Bush and/or Rove is trying to ingrain a certain belief into the mind of the viewers, not through logic but through almost subliminal repetition - "forget the WMD, forget the deaths, forget the national chaos: Iraq is free. The Iraq people have freedom. Saddam is gone. The Iraqis are free. Freedom in Iraq. We liberated them from Saddam. They are free."

Nonetheless, it's when Bush is left to fend for himself in question time that the quality of the training becomes apparent. What this basic vocabulary list does is give Bush a position to fall back on when he lacks the nuance (or pre-requisite knowledge?) to properly address a question posed to him by a reporter. If in doubt, just throw one of these concepts, whether they're relevant or not. Don't answer the question, vaguely defer to something emotionally laden, but ill-defined to the point of meaninglessness. The ambiguity of the term "freedom" means that it can be employed in a different way in a variety of different contexts. It can be used over and over again, giving the impression of grandeur and substance where there is none. Several quotes, for instance, appear to have been rote-learned to give a certain emotional (yet decidely vague) impact to what he was saying (go have a read of what he was saying and note what percentage you'd heard him - or anyone else in the administration say - before, almost word-for-word).

However, it's worth nothing that the lexicon appears to have shifted. While the words free and freedom were still being exploited to an almost comical degree (and additional 33 times in question time - making 50 times all up) the other favourite words of previous speeches - "democracy" and "liberty/liberation" - appeared just once and twice respectively. As the election looms ever closer there seems to be a much greater emphasis on terms like "threat/threats" (employed 23 times - not once was it used in conjunction with the term "prevention"), "danger/dangerous" (employed 8 times), and "terror/terrorism/terrorists" (employed 32 times - always generally, rarely referencing a specific event or person). On the other side of this, he also used the terms "security/security" (employed 26 times, excluding references to the UNSC and the Homeland Security Department) and "protect/protection" (employed 9 times). I think it's clear that this sort of rhetorical shift (away from a commitment to "liberty" and "democracy", towards the claim that the US in constant - yet unspecified - danger) is a reaction to the failure of the US to bring order (let alone "democracy") to Iraq, and the notion that in the face of turmoil - real or imagined - a population is always likely to stick with the status-quo. If you can't convince people to vote for you on the merits of your policies, at least make sure they're too scared to vote for anyone else:

quote:

With a defiant "We are not afraid" stance, President George W. Bush has dismissed the natural response to terrorism while tacitly making fear the basis of his politics. [...] Using the battle cry of a "war on terrorism" and stubbornly insisting that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," the Bush administration is not about to surrender the tactical advantages of an anxious public being told repeatedly that it is trapped in a war with no end-point.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion...oints-headlines

As I said before, I believe this is only the start. As the election draws near we will hear more about the "terrorists" (not named specifically - only invoked as a general threat) who "threaten" (in what way we will never be told) our "freedom" (whatever "freedom" means) and against whom we must be "protected" (in what way we will not be told specifically) by employing the "security" (specific policies will not be mentioned) that only George Bush and his friends can provide. Now while this "culture of fear" is nothing new, it does mark something of a shift from the quiet, rhetorical optimism (about the spread of liberty, democracy, stability, freedom and so forth) that started to permeate the language of the administration leading up to and following the Iraq war. If Iraq doesn't get better, though, and American troops continue to be brought home in body bags, then expect this rhetorical shift to become even more pronounced, and expect a campaign heavy on the rhetoric of fear, low on the ennunciation of specific security policies. So long as people fail to see the difference between the two, however, this has a good chance of being successful.

But I guess we shall see. :-/

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka A lot of times yes, however a lot of the questions were pretty ridiculous too. I can't believe I had to miss American Idol for that shit.

If it was Clinton talking it could have been over in time for 24 to be aired.

quote:

Originally posted by Dopey If it was Clinton talking it could have been over in time for 24 to be aired.

Word. Now I have to choose between Jack Bauer and Tony Soprano on Sunday!

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade I caught a reply of this conference on Fox News, and I can't really add much to what's been said. It was a fairly dull and unenlightening affair, and I think we can all say with a bit more certainty that Bush lacks tact and struggles severely when forced to deviate from prepared remarks. However there is one thing I want to add: That was one of the things I noticed as well. Many of you may remember >this< topic from a while back, where I showed how members of the Bush admin (especially Bush and/or Rove) were quite adept at co-opting specific "meritorious" principles and agendas (like democracy, freedom, liberty and so on) by saturating their speeches with references to these concepts. I invoked the phrase "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it" to demonstrate that if you can strategically align yourself (and your actions) with such benevolent principles by constantly affirming your commitment to them (by, as I say, literally "saturating" speeches with such references) then people may begin to see you as a great defender or believer in these principles, regardless of what your actions may suggest to the contrary. Keeping this in mind, while Bush is undeniably slow-witted and linguistically inept, he has been trained well in these techniques (and much of the credit for this must, of course, go to Karl Rove). In his speech, for instance, despite it being short and relatively light on rhetoric (for this administration at least) he managed to use the words "free" or "freedom" 17 times, in all but two cases referring specifically to the "freedom" of Iraqi state (the other two referred to "middle-eastern freedom" and "global freedom" more generally). With the word "free" brandished so liberally, and the words "Iraq" and "freedom" never far apart it's obvious that Bush and/or Rove is trying to ingrain a certain belief into the mind of the viewers, not through logic but through almost subliminal repetition - "forget the WMD, forget the deaths, forget the national chaos: Iraq is free. The Iraq people have freedom. Saddam is gone. The Iraqis are free. Freedom in Iraq. We liberated them from Saddam. They are free." Nonetheless, it's when Bush is left to fend for himself in question time that the quality of the training becomes apparent. What this basic vocabulary list does is give Bush a position to fall back on when he lacks the nuance (or pre-requisite knowledge?) to properly address a question posed to him by a reporter. If in doubt, just throw one of these concepts, whether they're relevant or not. Don't answer the question, vaguely defer to something emotionally laden, but ill-defined to the point of meaninglessness. The ambiguity of the term "freedom" means that it can be employed in a different way in a variety of different contexts. It can be used over and over again, giving the impression of grandeur and substance where there is none. Several quotes, for instance, appear to have been rote-learned to give a certain emotional (yet decidely vague) impact to what he was saying (go have a read of what he was saying and note what percentage you'd heard him - or anyone else in the administration say - before, almost word-for-word). However, it's worth nothing that the lexicon appears to have shifted. While the words free and freedom were still being exploited to an almost comical degree (and additional 33 times in question time - making 50 times all up) the other favourite words of previous speeches - "democracy" and "liberty/liberation" - appeared just once and twice respectively. As the election looms ever closer there seems to be a much greater emphasis on terms like "threat/threats" (employed 23 times - not once was it used in conjunction with the term "prevention"), "danger/dangerous" (employed 8 times), and "terror/terrorism/terrorists" (employed 32 times - always generally, rarely referencing a specific event or person). On the other side of this, he also used the terms "security/security" (employed 26 times, excluding references to the UNSC and the Homeland Security Department) and "protect/protection" (employed 9 times). I think it's clear that this sort of rhetorical shift (away from a commitment to "liberty" and "democracy", towards the claim that the US in constant - yet unspecified - danger) is a reaction to the failure of the US to bring order (let alone "democracy") to Iraq, and the notion that in the face of turmoil - real or imagined - a population is always likely to stick with the status-quo. If you can't convince people to vote for you on the merits of your policies, at least make sure they're too scared to vote for anyone else: http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion...oints-headlines As I said before, I believe this is only the start. As the election draws near we will hear more about the "terrorists" (not named specifically - only invoked as a general threat) who "threaten" (in what way we will never be told) our "freedom" (whatever "freedom" means) and against whom we must be "protected" (in what way we will not be told specifically) by employing the "security" (specific policies will not be mentioned) that only George Bush and his friends can provide. Now while this "culture of fear" is nothing new, it does mark something of a shift from the quiet, rhetorical optimism (about the spread of liberty, democracy, stability, freedom and so forth) that started to permeate the language of the administration leading up to and following the Iraq war. If Iraq doesn't get better, though, and American troops continue to be brought home in body bags, then expect this rhetorical shift to become even more pronounced, and expect a campaign heavy on the rhetoric of fear, low on the ennunciation of specific security policies. So long as people fail to see the difference between the two, however, this has a good chance of being successful. But I guess we shall see. :-/

Very astute analysis of linguistics, Renegade.

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