I clean houses for a living. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of this, only mentioning it because, when you're in a customer's home, you have to play by their rules. If they have the TV on, you can't shut it off. If every TV in the house is on, you leave them all on. If they're all tuned to the same thing, you can't change the channel. And if the thing they're all tuned to is W's press conference, you're forced to listen.
Ordinarily, whenever Bush says or does something that is incredibly stupid and/or a crime against humanity--which is to say, every hour of every day--I find out about it after the fact. His press conferences or speeches I can't watch live, because I have high blood pressure, and it's not like he stops talking in the middle of these things to let people with my condition (or sentient beings in general) go for a walk, scream incoherently or just take a few deep breaths in order to calm down. So I'll read about them later. (I usually go with The New York Times. Despite its reputation as being somehow "liberal," it is if anything excessively deferential to the administration, as the whole Judith Miller fiasco proved. In any event, the Times generally tells me what as said without a lot of interpretation either way, and I can read it in tiny increments, allowing my blood pressure time to settle.)
Anyway, the Decider-In-Chief, just back from his utterly meaningless but PR-riffic trip to Iraq, was doing his usual thing, a question would be asked and he generally sidestepped it, repeating endless variations of "When the Iraqis step up, we will step down," and after a while it just kind of became white noise in the background and I was able to go on about my business.
The someone asked why he hadn't even notified the Iraqi government--the people in whom he claims to have such faith--about his visit until five minutes before he got there. Safety concerns, of course: "I'm a high-profile target," he said. "Iraq is a dangerous place."
No shit? Did you just figure that out? Because you know what, Mr. President? Our troops are getting killed on a damn near daily basis there. You know why? Because any American in that country is a high-profile target. Yeah, you're the president, but on a human level, can you honestly say you deserve a higher level of protection than they get? Because they've got jack shit for protection, with vehicles and body armor in desperate need of upgrades, which your government can't afford because you think tax breaks for rich people are more important than protecting the lives of our soldiers. When the Iraqis step up, we'll step down? When the hell are you going to step up, you worthless fucking douchebag?
But, again, I was in a customer's home, so I couldn't actually explode with rage, much less kick in the TV screen. Breathing deeply and checking my pulse rate seemed to do the trick. Like the entire nation under Bush, I just sort of endured.
