Was it a Good Speech?

[Jack_Dawson]

I just stepped off a plane. I missed it! Seriously I know we all hate shrub but when other peeps write his speeches they are usually tolerable. How was this one?

[jjmalonejr]

1. He sounded like a liberal Democrat.

It was creepy.

His base will freak.

[Jack_Dawson]

5. Why will his base freak?

I need specifics. Fill me in.

[Jawja]

10. Yes,

Joe Scarborough described it as a program (I am paraphrasing) that Lyndon Johnson would have loved.

[Momof1]

2. no

But I do think he is now a liberal that spends 200 billion dollars, with hardly any oversight. :rofl:

[valerief]

3. He's spending TONS of money

Of course, we know where all will go.

[skooooo]

9. up his nose?

[Zynx]

4. He's a....COMMUNIST!

Ahhh!

[Jack_Dawson]

7. What are Freepers saying?

I don't understand their site.

[despairing optimist]

6. His tone was cold and mechanical, reading too fast and obviously nervous

Not a convincing, sincere, warm, moving performance at all. We needed a healer, not a robot. Teleprompter must have been on high speed.

Maybe a chameleon really was climbing up his leg.

He dropped a hint: more owners than renters, ownership society again. Not a surprise. The master plan for the new New Orleans. Oh, if only Albert Speer were available as the master architect!

Worker recovery accounts: oh well, can't push them through on Social Security so might as well try this tack. Stir in entrepreneurship, rinse and repeat.

New Orleans redesigned by al-Bushda. Be very afraid.

[yella_dawg]

8. Think Glenda on Wizard of Oz

Was it a Good Speech, or a Bad Speech?


That image will be stuck in my mind for days now.

[joemurphy]

11. For a Bush speech it sounded good when he was giving it.

But it just raised lots of questions...It'll cost billions and Bush just talked about tax incentives for entrepreneurs, money funneled out through Homeland Security, etc. It sounded like, as Joe Scarborough said: "the WPA on steroids".

Bush said nothing about raising taxes to pay for it. Even Gergen was saying that this would totally bust the country unless tax measures were imposed...Freepers hated the speech because they see it as meaning higher taxes and doles to Democratic local and state government and blacks. Democrats hate it because it sounds insincere and impractical.

All in all, EVERBODY is panning it because it raises more questions than offering solutions.

[Jack_Dawson]

12. Is Hannity panning it?

Just wondering. :shrug:

[joemurphy]

17. Dunno. Howard Fineman did, Jay Carney did, Gergen did,

Scarborough did, Tucker Carlson did, and the Freepers are having shit-fits.

[Jack_Dawson]

18. What'd Fineman say?

Fineman is usually blowing Bush so I find this interesting.

[joemurphy]

21. Yeah, I agree with you...its like he's had an epiphany.

He was talking about the lack of anyone to coordinate the plan -- no czar, no explanation how it would be administered efficiently, groused about Bush's expectations being too rosy, groused about the money just being doled out to state and local and Homeland Security people that had been incompetent in the past. He said Bush was out of touch and sinking in the polls and the speech wasn't going to get him out of his box. It was like all the commentators were transformed into monitor lizards in a feeding frenzy. Bush seems like toast.

[Jack_Dawson]

27. Just saw Fineman on "Countdown"

and either Mr. Rove gave him a call, or his opinion was never that radical to begin with...

Sucks.

[txindy]

28. A very accurate summary. It's very telling that ALL sides hated this. nt

[idiosyncratic]

13. At one time he said, ". . . hear a friendly face."

or maybe it was ". . . see a friendly voice."

Huh?!

He was also trying very hard to stop smirking and control his facial expression, but it didn't work . . .

[Jack_Dawson]

15. LOL n/t

[Generator]

14. He said everything you could possibly want to hear

Except immediate withdrawl from Iraq. An independent commission to investigate the REAL failures-including, himself, Cheney and Rumsfeld over 9/11 and then a REAL investigation over the failures of FEMA, Chertoff, and why I myself appoint worthless cronies and am unable to accept responsiblity. NOW that's a fantasy. Like his speech.

[Cleita]

16. I was pretty good. It told the proletariat what they wanted to hear.

I'm not talking about the victims because I doubt if they have any electronic means of hearing it, but it promised the riches of Sheba to the victims, which is supposed to make everyone happy that something is going to be done. Then he got into reimbursing the church charities for what they did and the armies of compassion. This is gonna be a nice big rich taxpayer's giveaway to the churches. I don't know what really is going to reach the victims if they don't repent and behave.

[Solly Mack]

19. Basically, Halliburton will make a fortune and that will somehow trickle

down to the victims of Katrina

but please donate to faith based groups who need the money to help the victims

Ownership society!!!!

That's about it in a nutshell

[crispini]

20. It's a win - win.

If he actually does what he says he's going to do, without lining the pockets of his rich buddy fat cats, I'll be happy.

If he actually does what he's going to do WITH lining the pockets of his rich buddy fat cats, I'll say "I told you so."

If he does none of it, I won't be surprised.

And #1 and #2 both piss the hell out of his base, so that's nice too.

[B Calm]

22. It was his greatest speech yet. I think every town in the US should

re-name streets in his honor!

[Raksha]

23. Yeah, he has a good speechwriter.

It would have been a good speech if someone other than Dubya was delivering it, preferably a Democrat but basically ANYONE except this pathological liar who had to be briefed on the NO situation via custom-made DVD. He sounded like he wants to go down in history as the second FDR, but he just doesn't have the credibility to pull it off.

[lindac07]

24. You know.....

When I was a kid, a long, long, long time ago and I screwed something up bad, my parents would make me do it over and when I complained, they would say, "Well, if you did it right the first time, you wouldn't be in the mess you're in". This is Bush's "do over". he won't get this right either.

[nonconformist]

26. Welcome to DU!! nt

[ObaMania]

25. You are all being sarcastic, right?

It was the absolute worst thing I ever heard in my life. At one point he seemed like a groveling televangelist and at another, an infomercial giving out 800#'s.

He didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear and he was anything but sincere in his delivery.

He is a piece of shit and there's no way in hell (IMO) he's gonna redeem himself with this speech nd all the assistance he's (hah!) offering.

Also, what was up with that fucking shirt? You think they jacked it back to create bulk in the back to hide the receiver?

[Lisa]

29. a lot of mixed messages from the tone and staging

Some color commentary for you, Jack.

First, he came swaggering across the lawn in a blue shirt (no jacket) with the top button undone, as if he were just dropping by on the way back from helping fix the levees, or something. I guess they were going for "informal", but then they had him standing at a lectern with a dramatically-lit building front behind him. And his blue shirt kind of blended in with the lit facade, so the overall impression was of this luminous blue wall with Bush's face floating around.

He was enunciating the hard words in the speech, and trying not to smirk. I haven't had a chance to analyze all the stuff (he went on for more than 20 minutes) but there were some bits that jumped out ... he said he wanted more federal control of disaster responses, but then he added something about how the rebuilding ought to be done by the private sector. (After hearing about Halliburton getting involved earlier, my hackles went up.) And he also said that the faith-based charities were getting reimbursed for their work. (My folks would always tell me that when one donates money, one is supposed to give it freely, but if tax dollars are involved, there are a lot of people who would be wondering about accountability, and who decides which groups get the funding, and whether non-religious relief groups would be considered as well.)

He went on about it being the biggest rebuilding effort the world had ever seen, all due to private enterprise, and I had to stifle the urge to yell at the TV, "when the developers were left to their own devices, they put up all those beachfront condos and casinos that got hammered!"

I think it was the usual tug-of-war between Karen Hughes and Michael Gerson -- direct simple language vs. highflown often-religious imagery. I've heard that she always goes through the draft, crossing stuff out, and Gerson tries to put it back in.

There was a part near the end where Bush acted like a PBS commentator, talking about the sociology of the jazz funeral ... it sounded kind of put-on to me. He isn't known for being a music lover, and to have him giving a serious dissertation about New Orleans culture was a bit incongruous. I can believe his stories about visiting the city to have "too much fun", but I suspect that the only time he ever witnessed a jazz funeral was from a prone position in the gutter, as they stepped over him on the way to the burial.