{"id":6763,"date":"2006-03-03T14:38:23","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T19:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6763"},"modified":"2006-03-03T14:38:23","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T19:38:23","slug":"another-week-in-bushville-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/another-week-in-bushville-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Another week in Bushville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long time readers know that I sometimes<\/a> find it helpful to take a moment, particularly on Fridays, to take stock of the week that was and consider what we’ve learned about the president and his administration over the last seven days. This week seemed particularly revealing.<\/p>\n

* The White House was warned repeatedly<\/a> two years ago about the growing insurgency in Iraq, but senior officials “simply weren’t ready to pay attention to analysis that didn’t conform to their own optimistic scenarios.”<\/p>\n

* The president was warned repeatedly<\/a> before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm posed a catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but Bush confidently assured soon-to-be-battered state officials, “We are fully prepared<\/a>.” They weren’t.<\/p>\n

* When Bush negotiates to let a country expand its nuclear arsenal, he’s willing to overlook<\/a> the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and<\/i> is willing to give away the store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* There were far more concerns about Dubai Ports World and its management of U.S. ports than the administration let on<\/a>, and the “face-saving deal” for the contract isn’t quite what it seems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Bush is really unpopular<\/a> with the country.<\/p>\n

* Bush is increasingly unpopular with congressional Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* U.S. troops in Iraq have little use<\/a> for the White House’s vision and\/or rhetoric about the war.<\/p>\n

* Halliburton can win no-bid contracts, make excessive and\/or unjustified charges, but get paid anyway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Governors from both parties and across the country believe Bush is weakening the National Guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* The White House opposes independent scrutiny<\/a> of its warrantless-search program, though its reasoning doesn’t make much sense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* If you’re an oil company, the administration will let you do more drilling on public land and<\/i> won’t check to see if you’re paying required royalties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* If you’re a mining company, the administration doesn’t much care about your safety violations and, most of the time, won’t even collect fines<\/a> that are imposed.<\/p>\n

* The administration can’t quite figure out how to make its Medicare expansion program work, but in the meantime, its cracking down<\/a> on seniors who import prescription medication from Canada.<\/p>\n

It’s just a typical week in Bushville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long time readers know that I sometimes find it helpful to take a moment, particularly on Fridays, to take stock of the week that was and consider what we’ve learned about the president and his administration over the last seven days. This week seemed particularly revealing. * The White House was warned repeatedly two years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}