Bush Does Read... Over Your Shoulder

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mcentee/bush-does-read-over-yo_b_46113.html

Gerald McEntee
Bio: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/bio.php?nick=gerald-mcentee&name=Gerald%20McEntee

Bush Does Read... Over Your Shoulder
READ MORE: George W. Bush, George Christian, Iraq

One of the most salient criticisms of George W. Bush--the president who once said that he doesn't read newspapers because his advisers offer a more objective account of reality--is that he lives in a bubble.

Weary of scientists, academics and intellectuals since his days as an Ivy League legacy admission struggling to pull a "C" average, Bush has filled the West Wing with a compliant clique of sycophants eager to reinforce his simplistic world view.

Because the president values loyalty above all else, and rewards only those who tell him what he wants to hear, he is able to cling to certain preposterous fallacies: The Iraq War is winnable. The surge is working. Tax cuts for the rich will create a rising tide that lifts all boats. Global warming is tree-hugging fiction.

Clearly, listening to the likes of Cheney, Rove and Gonzales has sent Bush on a one-way trip to Delusionville.

Perhaps the president would be better advised to start keeping the counsel of the one person in the White House who still has the trust and respect of the American people.

I'm talking about Laura Bush.

We know she reads newspapers. Books, too. And on one issue particularly close to her heart, I am willing to bet the First Lady has some interesting insights that the president would be well-served to heed: how to treat library professionals with the respect they deserve.

I wonder what the president's wife--a former public librarian in Houston and school librarian in Austin--thinks about an administration that treats her contemporaries with such disrespect that they can be criminally prosecuted for speaking up about it.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Connecticut librarian George Christian, who told the senators about the kinds of Orwellian abuses that are being perpetrated by the Justice Department against librarians and their patrons.

When the USA Patriot Act was first introduced in Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft mocked librarians as "hysterical" for voicing their concerns about potential violations of reader confidentiality. But as it turns out, they had every reason to worry.

FULL article at link.

Gerald W. McEntee is the International President of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the most aggressive and politically active organizing unions in the AFL-CIO. I am a very proud member of AFSCME!

[az chela]

1. If laura is so damn smart why does she goes along with bush

and his maniac buddies who care nothing about all the corrupt things they do and all the people they have murdered?
She is nothing but a condescending stupid bitch who cares about noone except the bush supporters.
Have you seen her at any funerals of our troops??NO but she shows up in Virgina where all of bushs base are.She is a hypocrit like george