El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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The bridge must've missed Prince and Kirby Puckett*

KARE-TV shows off the caring caringness of the Carer-in-Chief:

Bush asked Federal Highway Administrator J. Richard Capka and Transportation Secretary Mary Peters to go to Minneapolis, where she will announce a $5 million grant to help pay for rerouting traffic patterns around the disaster.

Bush called Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at 7:45 a.m. CDT Thursday to offer encouragement. "He said the governor was in the president's prayers and offered any support that we can provide," Snow said. Bush also called Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak to offer his condolences and prayers for the losses, and he acknowledged the economic cost of losing a main transportation artery.

Bush then called Peters as she flew to the scene. "He stressed the importance of projecting hope and optimism and offering any help," Snow said...

The president has offered comfort to victims several times in recent months. In March, Bush he visited survivors of tornadoes that ripped through Alabama and Georgia. In April, he offered words of hope at Virginia Tech after a gunman killed 32 people and committed suicide. In May, Bush went to Kansas after a tornado wiped out the tiny town of Greensburg.

Bush must just have a big old bag of hope** that he can dip into every time there's a disaster on the news. Can anyone imagine George Washington sending out his press secretary to detail such angst before a breathless nation? How about Jefferson? FDR? Even Carter? Well, maybe Carter.

My suspicion is that the Democrat accusation that Bush didn't care about the victims of Katrina really cut the man and now he's overcompensating by trotting out the play-by-play so we can all share in the caring caringness (and the spending spendingness) of the shallowness of our modern politics, exemplified by the modern president as a big old red hen with all of us chicks tucked safely beneath her wings. If the Dems want to complain that Bush doesn't care, and if that lack of caring is going to resonate with voters, then by Barney's puckered fetish he's going to care us so hard we'll still be sore in the morning.

It's not to say Bush doesn't or shouldn't care, but it is rather unbecoming of a free nation that our leaders feel it necessary to share with us the minute details of their caring caringness and their hopeful hopefulness every time something bad happens. It's almost as if they really think we're a nation of children who cannot deal with any measure of discomfort.

I wonder where they could have gotten that idea.

UPDATE: Tony Snow gives us the Oxymoronic Quote of the Day:

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability.

"This doesn't mean there was a risk of failure***, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions****," he said.

* "George Bush doesn't care about black people." - Kanye West
* "The only black people in Minnesota are Prince and Kirby Puckett." - Chris Rock

** Not to mention tax money

*** Which is why it didn't fall down.

**** And it's someone else's fault that it did.

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