Q: What is “George, have you finished your homework?”

A: One question you never heard at Bush Family Home.

So why does this story from the WaPo...

Despite Setback, Bush Optimistic on Iraqi Charter
President Lauds 'Heroic Efforts' of Negotiators as Some Critics Fault U.S. Emphasis on Deadlines
By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 16, 2005; A10
The failure to draft a new Iraqi constitution by yesterday's deadline represents another blow to President Bush's attempts to show progress that would pave the way for U.S. troop withdrawals, some analysts said yesterday, but U.S. officials called it a temporary setback and hailed Iraqi leaders for staying at the negotiating table.
…

...summon -- almost unbidden -- visions of GW’s wasted and wastrel youth?

Hmmm. Well...

1. Screwing around until the last minute.
2. Blowing off the “hard questions”.
3. Blowing off the deadline.
4. Getting the Dean’s Office to break the rules just for me.
5. Finally knocking together three pages copied out of the Tocqueville Cliff Notes to shut the professor up.
6. Being praised by Poppy for even doing that much.

Shit, sure sound’s like Furious George’s Salad Days at Yale to me. And how does this story always end?

7. Whatever I do, however badly I shit this up, Poppy’ll cut a fat check to bump that “F” up to a nice, resume-friendly, “B+”.

Let’s se how they match up, shall we?

The story continues…

…

Bush, who last week expressed confidence that the deadline would be met, issued a statement applauding "the heroic efforts of Iraqi negotiators" as they continued to talk.

That’d be Step 6.

At a news conference, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the decision to extend the deadline by seven days a victory for rule of law and predicted the Iraqis would reach agreement by Monday.

That’d be Step 4.

The delay may not have much lasting significance if it leads to a document with broader support across sectarian lines. Negotiators have been divided over delicate questions such as women's rights in an Islamic society and the degree of regional control that Shiite and Kurdish sections would enjoy. U.S. officials noted that representatives of the Sunni minority remain involved, deeming that critical to defusing popular support for the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

Step 2.

…
Some analysts saw the missed deadline as a sign that the Bush administration has lost control over the situation. "They really have let the process drift for a long time," said Flynt L. Leverett, a former Bush national security aide now at the Brookings Institution. "Now they can't cajole or exhort people to reach closure, and it furthers the impression of fecklessness and that they don't have a strategy."

There’s your Steps 1 and 3. And, might I add, you just can’t use “feckless” often enough to suit me. So kudos to you, Mr. Flynt L. Leverett, both for your word-use and your obscure-pornstar/pulp-secret-agent name.

…
The time frame forced the constitutional committee to work off the Transitional Administrative Law written during the initial U.S. occupation by U.S. and U.N. experts, rather than start from scratch. But the transition law left several key questions to be addressed among Iraq's disparate communities, which in the end could not resolve their differences on two points.

Step 4 and 2.

U.S. officials worked feverishly in recent days to prod the Iraqis to reach agreement by yesterday, even if it meant deferring resolution of the toughest issues.

Step 2…and, I might add, in fiery letters about Forty Feet High.

After meeting with his foreign policy team last week, Bush said he was "operating on the assumption" that the deadline would be met, and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was dispatched to all five Sunday talk shows with a similar message.
"The Iraqis tell me that they can finish it and they will finish it tomorrow," he said on ABC.

OK, that’s just a lie. And since baldface lying about everything has been a leitmotif of this entire Administration, it’s would be unfair to confine it to a single, Failure Milestone.

But some specialists said the administration is fixated on artificial deadlines at the expense of addressing substantive issues. "There's no doubt the administration has the ability to force an agreement in the next seven days," but if it is one that does not resolve the underlying issues "that's a much, much bigger failure than failing to meet a deadline," said Judith Kipper, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.

And that would be your Step 2. Yet again.

"There's a bit of a message to the administration: 'Don't rush this. . . . We need to do this right, not fast,' " said Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who advised the U.S.-led occupation authority on constitutional issues. The bid to meet the deadline, he added, was driven by the political imperative of bringing troops home as soon as possible. "It's shameful," he said. "It's constitutional malpractice."

And round it out with Step 4, with ruffle and flourishes.



Any organization acts organically based on the behavior it sees at the top.

In the last few days, Bush’s callous and despicable behavior down at Camp Casey has reminded the world yet again how pitiless and flatly-affected he is and always has been. A weak and hollow man who looks so painfully coached and scripted when it comes to expressing anything like compassion or empathy for those who his lies and folly has damaged or destroyed that one half expects him to fall into the habits of his Old Man, and read his stage directions out-loud:

“And so I say to Insert Country Here, that I have nothing but the greatest (Get One A’ Them Good, Ten-Dollar-Word from Turdblossom for ‘Care About’) this Insert Bitch’s Name Here and her brave Hey, Who’re We Honoring Today?, who made the supreme sacrifice so that blahblahblah (Note to Self: Are We Still Pretending Iraq Had Shit-All To Do With 9/11? I can never remember.)

Take no questions.

Turn.

Flip Off Press.

Go ‘clear’ some more ‘brush’.”

Sure it’s easy to dwell on the fact that GW is full-blown attachment-disordered and a borderline sociopath, and forget his other primary trait: that he's a lazy, whiny, “Can’t Someone Else Do It?”, Presidenting is Hard Work, AWOL-Vacationing, “…it's also important for me to go on with my life.", jerk.

So he’s got that going for him.