SECTION SIX
sm
COLUMN
FIFTY-SEVEN, MARCH 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
WORDS
OF WISDOM FROM DUMB DUMBYA
MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO
(DUMB DUMBYA AND ANCESTORS: WHO'S COPYING WHO?)
"Natural gas is
hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product
that we can find in our neighborhoods."—Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000
"I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the
legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the
difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute
them."—Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000
"The great thing about America is everybody should vote."—Austin,
Texas, Dec. 8, 2000
"Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want
anybody who can find work to be able to find work."—60 Minutes II, Dec.
5, 2000
"I knew it might put him in an awkward position that we had a discussion
before finality has finally happened in this presidential
race."—Describing a phone call to Sen. John Breaux. Crawford, Texas, Dec.
2, 2000
"They misunderestimated me."—Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
some kind of federal program."—St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000
"They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the
people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't
matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the
right thing is hearing the voices of people who work."—Portland, Ore.,
Oct. 31, 2000
"Anyway, after we go out and work our hearts out, after you go out and help
us turn out the vote, after we've convinced the good Americans to vote, and
while they're at it, pull that old George W. lever, if I'm the one, when I put
my hand on the Bible, when I put my hand on the Bible, that day when they swear
us in, when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not—to uphold the laws
of the land."—Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 27, 2000
"That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century
that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This
is the first chapter of the 21st century. "—On the Lewinsky scandal,
Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important.
It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the
dark dungeons of the Internet."—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."—LaCrosse,
Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
"If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going
to have gag orders."
"Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to know
it."
"Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is—I'm not sure 80 percent of
the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the
president."
"I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling,
which is illiterate children."—Second presidential debate, Oct. 11, 2000
(Thanks to Leonard
Williams.)
"It's going to require numerous IRA agents."—On Gore's tax plan,
Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000
"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer
questions. I can't answer your question."—In response to a question about
whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first debate.
Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000
"I know the human
being and fish can coexist peacefully."—Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
"I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy."—Redwood, Calif.,
Sept. 27, 2000
"One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise
above that which is expected."—Los Angeles, Sept. 27, 2000
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of
our imports come from overseas."—Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000
"A tax cut is
really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness."—The
Edge With Paula Zahn, Sept. 18, 2000
"The woman who knew that I had dyslexia—I never interviewed
her."—Orange, Calif., Sept. 15, 2000
"The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of
their own money."—Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000
"I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our
views on prescription drugs."—Orlando, Fla., Sept. 12, 2000
"That's Washington. That's the place where you find people getting ready to
jump out of the foxholes before the first shot is fired."—Westland,
Mich., Sept. 8, 2000
"We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called
America will be the pacemakers."—Houston, Texas, Sept. 6, 2000
"We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf
of Americans."—Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000
"The point is, this is a way to help inoculate me about what has come and
is coming."--on his anti-Gore ad, in an interview with the New York Times,
Sept. 2, 2000
"As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools,
and I have met those standards."--CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000
"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it,
that's trustworthiness."--Ibid.
"We cannot let
terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies
hostile.''—Ibid.
"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who
brings people together."—Bartlett, Tenn., Aug. 18, 2000 (Thanks to Tarja
Black.)
"I want you to know that farmers are not going to be secondary thoughts to
a Bush administration. They will be in the forethought of our
thinking."—Salinas, Calif., Aug. 10, 2000
"You might want to comment on that, Honorable."--To New Jersey's
secretary of state, the Hon. DeForest Soaries Jr., as quoted by Dana Milbank in
the Washington Post, July 15, 2000
"States should have the right to enact reasonable laws and restrictions
particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could
live."—Cleveland, June 29, 2000 (Thanks to Douglas Basford.)
"The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I
have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked
at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in
the state of Texas." All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000 (Thanks to
Andy Nouraee.)
"I'm gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I've read—I understand
reality. If you're asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I
do."—On abortion, Hardball, MSNBC; May 31, 2000
"Actually,
I—this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking
about—when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all
of us are talking about me."—Ibid.
"This is a world that is much more uncertain than the past. In the past we
were certain, we were certain it was us versus the Russians in the past. We were
certain, and therefore we had huge nuclear arsenals aimed at each other to keep
the peace. That's what we were certain of. ... You see, even though it's an
uncertain world, we're certain of some things. We're certain that even though
the 'evil empire' may have passed, evil still remains. We're certain there are
people that can't stand what America stands for. ... We're certain there are
madmen in this world, and there's terror, and there's missiles and I'm certain
of this, too: I'm certain to maintain the peace, we better have a military of
high morale, and I'm certain that under this administration, morale in the
military is dangerously low."—Albuquerque, N.M., the Washington Post, May
31, 2000
"I think we agree, the past is over."—On his meeting with John
McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."--Reuters,
May 5, 2000 (Thanks to Allison Fansler.)
GOV. BUSH: Because the picture on the newspaper. It just seems so un-American to
me, the picture of the guy storming the house with a scared little boy there. I
talked to my little brother, Jeb—I haven't told this to many people. But he's
the governor of—I shouldn't call him my little brother--my brother, Jeb, the
great governor of Texas. JIM LEHRER: Florida. GOV. BUSH: Florida. The state of
the Florida.—The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, April 27, 2000
"I hope we get to the bottom of the answer. It's what I'm interested to
know."—On what happened in negotiations between the Justice Department
and Elián González's Miami relatives, as quoted by the Associated Press, April
26, 2000
"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until
we get an objective analysis."—CNBC, April 15, 2000
"I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to
California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to
California."—In Los Angeles as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, April 8,
2000
"Reading is the
basics for all learning."—Announcing his 'Reading First' initiative in
Reston, Va., March 28, 2000
"I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those
college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I
happened to go to the university."—Today, Feb. 23, 2000
"I understand
small business growth. I was one."—New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
"The senator has
got to understand if he's going to have—he can't have it both ways. He can't
take the high horse and then claim the low road."—To reporters in
Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000
"If you're sick
and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join
this campaign."—Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system that simply
suckles kids through?"—Explaining the need for educational accountability
in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"I think we need
not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock
down the tollbooth."—Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New
York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
"The most
important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."—Pella,
Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000
"Will the highways
on the Internet become more few?"—Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
"This is
Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for
president. You gotta preserve."—Speaking during "Perseverance
Month" at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
"I know how hard
it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber
of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
"What I am against
is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon
whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't
know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions,
but that's my position.''—Quoted by Molly Ivins, the San Francisco Chronicle,
Jan. 21, 2000 (Thanks to Toni L. Gould.)
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who
they were," he said. "It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them
was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're
there."—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
"The
administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's
best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see
service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the
house."—Des Moines Register debate, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2000
"This is still a
dangerous world. It's a world of
madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."—At a South Carolina
oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan. 14, 2000
"We must all hear
the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked
yourself."—ibid.
"Rarely is the
question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
"Gov. Bush will
not stand for the subsidation of failure."—ibid.
"There needs to be debates, like we're going through. There needs to be
town-hall meetings. There needs to be travel. This is a huge
country."—Larry King Live, Dec. 16, 1999
"I read the
newspaper."—In answer to a question about his reading habits, New
Hampshire Republican Debate, Dec. 2, 1999
"I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to
be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock
is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike. ... I believe we ought to say
there is a different alternative than the culture that is proposed by people
like Miss Wolf in society. ... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but
it hasn't worked."—Meet the Press, Nov. 21, 1999
"The important
question is, How many hands have I shaked?"—Answering a question about
why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire, in the New York Times, Oct. 23,
1999
"I don't remember
debates. I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it. Maybe we did, but I
don't remember."—On discussions of the Vietnam War when he was an
undergraduate at Yale, Washington Post, July 27, 1999
"The only thing I
know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who
came to Texas."—To a Slovak journalist as quoted by Knight Ridder News
Service, June 22, 1999. Bush's meeting was with Janez Drnovsek, the prime
minister of Slovenia.
"If the East
Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement."—Quoted by
Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, June 16, 1999
"Keep good
relations with the Grecians."—Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999
The Complete
Bushisms Updated frequently.
Compiled by Jacob Weisberg Excerpts - entire article at: <http://www.aflcio.org/paywatch/ceopay.htm>
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