Passing All the Bucks

Amazing though it may seem to anyone paying attention, President Bush, in an interview on Air Force One last Friday, stated that he and his administration should not be held accountable for mistakes or misjudgements made in the planning of the Iraq war or its continuation to the present because "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I am very grateful." Some kind of logic, isn't it? In the same interview he said he would not press the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the U.S., knowing full well that this is the issue that really won him the election.

I suppose this is an example of him spending the famous political capital he says he earned back in November. Of course, we all know he nearly lost the election because of his and his administration's repeated gaffes in Iraq, and won only because various fundamentalist christian organizations turned out voters to support his call for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gay marrriage back in July during the campaign. I'll never forget that day either. I happened to be walking through the house on my way to mail a letter, and caught him on T.V. in the White House announcing his support for the amendment. It was a very short address. When he finished speaking, various reporters raised their hands and shouted questions as he turned around and left the room without acknowledging any of them. On the C-Span mic one reporter was heard to say, "Is he coming back?" Of course, he didn't. It was as if Karl Rove had sent him out to do his dirty work for the first time, and like a schoolboy made to write on the blackboard, he could not look anyone in the eye that day. Well, maybe he did come back last Friday to answer the question once and for all.

This day's news will thus begin our regular attempt to act as one small outlet putting into plain English obvious facts and conclusions about the administration which anyone paying attention must know to be true, but which cannot be reported in the mainstream media because they come off as some kind of skewed partisan analysis on account of the administration's blatant and brilliant twisting of fact. By now it has become old cliche to say that we have fully entered the world of Orwell's doublethink and Newspeak here in the U.S., but that doesn't mean we should let it continue to happen. Here's one such outlet not afraid to belabor the point. And that is precisely the point. If you are paying attention, it will no longer be enough to continue paying attention, you'll have to start belaboring all such obvious points along with the rest of us belaboring points of truth to combat the opposite. Perhaps then the emporer's garments will begin to reveal themselves as the nothings that they already are.

Let it be said now, Zebrameat is, and always will be, a non-partisan publication devoted to criticism of whichever party happens to be in power.