Newsbreaks for Thursday

Audio version is here.

The President spoke to the press today, and it was vintage Bush. All the elements were there:
[ __ bogus sincerity]
[ __ defiant condescension]
[ __ refusal to acknowledge reality]
[ __ fake-folksy self-congratulation]

He started off by mentioning the death of Lady Bird Johnson.
[ x bogus sincerity]

He told people angry over his pardon of “Scooter” Libby that “it was time to move on.”
[ x defiant condescension]

He called any future withdrawal from Iraq “a disaster.”
[ x refusal to acknowledge reality]

And he finished by saying, “if you ever come down and visit the old, tired me down there in Crawford, I will be able to say I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics.”
[ x fake-folksy self-congratulation]

During the speech, Bush told the press that we’ve entered a new stage in Iraq, something called “Phase IV.” According to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, this is “Depression.”

But he’s not depressed—that’s our job. He’s defiant. He acts like Iraq is something he inherited from those idiots in the first Bush Administration. Our President is definitely the kind of guy who gets mad at YOU when he loses his keys.

Privately, a lot of people in Washington are saying that Mr. Bush is drinking again. My question is, “How could you tell?”