“I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden. “But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” - GWB
He’s hearing voices?
GWB yesterday:
I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.
Makes you wonder what the voices are telling him to do, doesn’t it?
And whether he’d stop hearing them if he took his meds more regularly?
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Frankly, Mark, this post is offensive to people with mental disabilities.
This post is offensive to Decider-Americans too.
The voices are coming from that apparatus under his jacket.
In less than a week (or nearly) we've had two remarkable video clips of the President: last week's clownish display of cluelessness when asked who controls the contractors in Iraq and yesterday's "I'm the decider" tantrum. It's an simultaneously revealing and disturbing juxtaposition. No wonder they kept him in a bubble during the campaign.
Mark,
Can you give me any plausible way to read the above post other than as a puerile cheap shot?
C'mon, man, you're better than this.
I believe that the most important thing we learned at the press briefing in the rose garden is when the President said the he read the front page of the newspaper.
yes this explains a lot…he does think that God is speaking to him…but so do many serial killers…he has quite a record, over 2300 of our soldiers, countless thousands of Iraqis and now he's taking names in Iran…
It is a little scary - I mean, those born-agains really think that they will win at Armageddon and it will make all their little dreams come true…
Cover up his lies at http://www.pixelonbush.com — take a stand and leave him a message…
Well, it's a little joke is all. I recommend cutting MK a bit of slack re: the cheap shot charge.
Re: insulting the disabled… Jeez, this is a complicated issue. I think I'd recommend some slack there, too… Easy for me to say, I guess.
Though Nietzshe: "A joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling."
This guy just gets more frightening as time passes. "… I'm the decider …"
My sons sounded like that when they were 3 and 4 years old. I've heard other kids in that age that say similar things, like, "You're not the boss of me!" Even if translate the Bushism into more adult english, "I'm the decision-maker …" it still sounds petulant and childish.
How long until November?
BC
Decider-in-Chief: “If it feels good, do it.”
First of all, let’s get this out of the way:
“I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden. “But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. A…
He's hearing voices alright. He's insane and delusional. This is what happens to people who quit drinking and are on a dry-drunk, besides becoming a schizophrenic. He hears voices, but he insists he's "the decider".
Geeze, people, be real. I know you'd really prefer to think that he's hearing voice of people who aren't there, but given his usual awkward constructions, (Is English really his first language?) he undoubtedly just means what any ordinary person would read it to mean: That while he's aware of what people are saying about the subject, it's HIS call.
Well, I'm a disabled person (not mentally, thank heaven) and I don't think there's a thing wrong (or puerile for the verbally-gifted) with MK's remark. I don't know where people get the idea that mentally-impaired people are going have a hissy upon hearing a remark such as MK's. People are too busy these days using their brain cells (however many they may have) for mulling over data of more substantive import. Frankly, I took MK's input as a bit of a pun which I think is how he meant it.