I'm swearing off the "Bush is an idiot" meme

[MrScorpio]

He's shown himself to be too much of an utterly devious sociopath to be considered stupid.




I will keep "incompetent" in my repertoire, however.

[jobycom]

1. Remember Al Gore's comment?

Something like "He's a rare combination of devious and incompetent."

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. Unfortunately, that's not a rare combo. nt

[jobycom]

7. OMG! You just disagreed with Al Gore!

:rofl:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

10. Hey, it was bound to happen sometime!

:rofl:

[bdamomma]

8. and defiant too.

he is in his own sick world. He is our modern day dictator, and the only way to end this reign of terror is Impeachment.

[Virginia Dare]

2. Drug-addled fool..

delusional moron. Devious sociopath. He's all of those. He's not a smart enough sociopath to have made it without his parents' money and influence though.

[Lars39]

4. They've achieved almost all their goals,though.

[tomg]

5. I myself switched to "quite mad" some time ago.

I do like sociopath a lot, but do you really want to be pinned down to one mental illness when he seems to be so many rolled into one?

[islandmkl]

6. it's the ventriloquist....

not the dummy...

[Clark2008]

29. Correct.

The ventriloquist - Cheney - is not dumb, but the puppet - Bush - is quite le idiote.

[bdamomma]

9. I have kept this article

read it and save it, this is what we are dealing with, there must be some way of neutering this pathetic man.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/interviews/2006/3314justin_frank.html

a snip of the article interviewing Dr. Justin Franks on this filthy man.

"I've never seen anybody so distort external reality the way Bush does. What he does not like, he just closes his eyes to. He's sort of like an ostrich, who puts his head in the sand, only he puts his head in the Crawford desert sand".

[shanti]

14. yes

a very good analysis! thanks for posting it. :hi:

[margotb822]

27. Don't forget this article

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

[Mountainman]

11. I have aways thought that people give bush way to much credit.

I believe he makes no presidential decisions but is a puppet. Other people behind the scenes pull the strings. He is told what to say and what to do.

[bdamomma]

18. I always see Cheney behind ALL of their diabolical plan

[Mountainman]

28. I agree, they set him up long ago as the master puppeteer. Picking him to find a vice president was

bull shit. The plan from the start was to put him in the number two spot and an idiot in the number one spot. Bush fit the bill just fine.

[ThoughtCriminal]

12. And them there are the people who think

he's God's gift to America. That's really a new category of stupid so special, it probably needs a new word.

[Dr.Phool]

13. To the contrary, I think he's brilliant.

People are much more forgiving, when they think they're dealing with an incompetent boob. If people thought that he did all this with malice and forethought (which I believe he did), they'd be storming the White House with pitchforks and torches.

Thousands drown in New Orleans, and people say this incompetent idiot can't do anything right. What if he knew exactly what he was doing? One repuke let the cat out of the bag and said, "We've been trying to get rid of those projects for years, and now God did it for us". Oops.

Al Gore said in "The Assault on Reason", that Bush is not an idiot, but rather a hard right-wing ideologue.

Sun-Tzu, in the ancient "Art of War", said that if you are competent, make them(your enemies) believe you are incompetent. If you are weak, make them believe you are strong.

Dumb like a fox, with that down home phony, corn pone charm.

Read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine". We're not getting shocked into fascism, but heading there through a gradual shock.

[hootinholler]

19. I've been there right with you since about 2003.

Katrina was confirmation. All those smirks that seemed just a little off? In the poker world, they are called tells.

-Hoot

[Dr.Phool]

23. And I'm a pretty good poker player.

[Echo In Light]

15. Neither he nor his handlers are stupid. "Incompetence" has been the establishment friendly criticism

All along. Not exactly flattering, but was likely settled upon, given the magnitude of the crimes and atrocities, as it sounds much safer than "fascist, mass murdering crime syndicate."

[Buzz Clik]

16. But has plenty of holes in his intellect. He would be crappy at "devious" without talented help.

[lurky]

17. Yeah,

people played right into his hands by pushing that meme. It made him more sympathetic to average voters when "elite" liberals called him dumb. It also inoculated him from blame for a lot of the more sinister behavior of the administration, since "He couldn't possibly be smart enough to have been behind them".

[Echo In Light]

21. Can't tell you how many OCTers have claimed "he's too dumb to pull off 9/11"

As if he personally was the man behind the curtain all along. Not so...

[L. Coyote]

20. He came off as delusional today, and seemed very dangerous-minded.

Bush's delusional mental state is the greatest threat to global stability there is today!

You cannot make proper decisions if you believe a bunch of lies.

[bdamomma]

22. if we can see the threat he poses, do you think others like

the Congress can see it too, and they do not want to say anything to push him over the cliff, and even do more damage to this country and the American people.

So are they classified as "cowards" of not holding this man "unfit' to hold office. But Cheney poses a bigger threat.

[Echo In Light]

24. Seems to me they've done plenty to aid the cause of the National $ecurity State ruse

[Javaman]

25. I just call him moron*. I haven't uttered his* real name it over 12 years. nt

[natrat]

26. people invest too much in personalizing it

sure bush is a dick, but more importantly there is an army of thousands right behind him that are very competent and very evil

[Jennicut]

30. Shrub is not an idiot. He is far from it. It is all an act.

Rather, he drew people in with that "all shucks" good old boy routine from Texas. He is far from a simpleton. Everything he has done has been deliberate. The deliberate chipping away of personal freedoms for the sake of "security and anti-terrorism". Tax breaks for the wealthy, corporate welfare, contract bids for Cheney's old company and other corrupt corps. An energy bill written by the main players in the energy industries. The filling of posts at the EPA and other protective services with yesmen and yeswomen. The firing of U.S. attorneys. The smearing of Democrats and others who speak out against Shrub and his corrupt cronies. Putting cronies in charge of important agencies that actually have to help the public now and then like FEMA. The needless invasion of Iraq and the 3 trillion dollar war. The disregard of the views of any army brass who did not agree with Srub's views that the war would be quick and easy and now with the surge being so "sucessful". All of it was done deliberately. I am reading Al Gore's book Assault on Reason right now as well and he warns against thinking of Bush as a simple stereotype. He has been very very dangerous to the United States and shockingly corrupt and unfeeling. He is easliy one of the worst presidents ever. He is incompetant only because he just did not care enough about ordinary people. Read the book Dead Certain by Robert Draper. Bush is the eternal optimist but dangerously so. Nothing in his administration is thought out well. From No Child Left Behind to the Social Security private accounts proposal the man is a wreaking machine. Nothing in done with enough thought or care put into it so that everything he touches turns to a lump of coal. He also seems to deliberately pursue strategies/ideas that hurt the little people and then has a hard time sympathizing with the people in Katrina, with Cindy Sheehan, with anyone who dares go against what he thinks. He is the Decider and dwells very little on what he has done to wreck ruin and destroy this country. He is not stupid. He is a manipulative liar and corrupt snakeoil salesman.

[totodeinhere]

32. You are right.

I almost wish he were more of an idiot. The perhaps he wouldn't have done so much damage.

[SammyWinstonJack]

31. He's not an idiot and he's not incompetent, at least not in the traditional sense, that is.

He is however, a sick SOB. Sick and Greedy.