{"id":414,"date":"2005-12-20T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2005-12-20T14:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=414"},"modified":"2005-12-20T07:46:11","modified_gmt":"2005-12-20T14:46:11","slug":"pieces-of-paper-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2005\/12\/20\/pieces-of-paper-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Pieces of Paper Everywhere."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"003933\"><\/a>The problem with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolhillblue.com\/artman\/publish\/article_7779.shtml\">Capitol Hill Blue article<\/a> which found George W Bush saying, <\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.  It\u2019s just a goddamned piece of paper!&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>beyond it being a bit too obvious a scion to Bush-opponents, was its similarity to the most bizarre moment of Bush&#8217;s Social Security Reform Tour, where he observes that there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2005\/04\/20050405-4.html\">pieces of paper in filing cabinets<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><i>The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They&#8217;re stacked in a filing cabinet. Imagine &#8212; the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet. <\/i><\/p>\n<p>But somewhere along the line I just have to ponder some things about &#8220;Capitol Hill Blue&#8221;.  Previously we had the story of just how absurdly narrow the &#8220;Bush Bubble&#8221; was&#8230; an early parody of the recent Newsweek &#8220;Bush In a Bubble&#8221; story that conforms to what I think of the man and his administration.  Shortly after the &#8220;Capitol Hill Blue&#8221; story, the story comes out in the Washington Times (if I&#8217;m remembering correctly) that Bush is only associating with five people &#8212; Condelleza Rice, Barbara Bush, three other women in his circle that I can&#8217;t remember.  The story falls in line with the Capitol Hill Blue story.  Maybe the rumours are just boomeranging around&#8230; I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Now stare back at the supposed Bush line that <i>It\u2019s just a goddamned piece of paper!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>That appears to be his attitude with regards to his wire-tapping of American citizens in the name of security.  How does Bush defend himself?  By claiming that he has <i>&#8220;Legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.&#8221;<\/i>  He is just making stuff up now.  And why not?  They&#8217;re just pieces of paper &#8212; that Constitution, and that Congressional Resolution!<\/p>\n<p>(&#8220;Total Information Awareness&#8221; is in effect.)<\/p>\n<p>For their part, Capitol Hill Blue has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolhillblue.com\/artman\/publish\/article_7787.shtml\">this<\/a> to say about their reliability.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t buy the &#8220;if you piss off both sides, you&#8217;re doing your job&#8221; line.  You can easily skewer this in your mind to claim Independence when there is none.  Bill O&#8217;Reilly reads his mail &#8212; a couple shouting about his right-wing bias, and then a couple clamouring about his left-wing bias (who are those people?), and then, with deep satisfaction in his voice, a letter saying how &#8220;Fair and Balanced and unencumbered by any ideology&#8221; O&#8217;Reilly is.  It&#8217;s a game you can too easily slant to the direction you want.<\/p>\n<p>Never mind.  Assume that Capitol Hill Blues is Garbage, parroting out the worst fears the American populace have about the Administration in Power.  There remains truth in what they say&#8230; and they do it with more courage than the New York Times, which has been sitting on their &#8220;Survelliance&#8221; story for over a yearbecause the Bush Administration told them to (stopping the election of John Kerry, I may add).  And now Bush is shocked&#8230; shocked&#8230; SHOCKED&#8230; that the New York Times printed such a story.  SHOCKED, I tell you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; because he believes in Original Intent.  And originally, a lot of the Founding Fathers had problems with the Constitution&#8230; you see?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The problem with the Capitol Hill Blue article which found George W Bush saying, &#8220;Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It\u2019s just a goddamned piece of paper!&#8221; beyond it being a bit too obvious a scion to Bush-opponents, was its similarity to the most bizarre moment of Bush&#8217;s Social Security Reform Tour, where he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}