President Lebowski

While I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, it's new to me, and I thought I might share the observation with those of you who haven't noticed it yet.

One of the great running gags in the Coen brothers film, The Big Lebowski, is Jeff Lebowski's habit of incorrectly repeating what he hears other people say at a later time and in a totally different context.

For example, in the beginning of the film Jeff, a.k.a. "The Dude" is watching the smarter President Bush delivering his "line in the sand" speech prior to the first Gulf War. "This aggression cannot stand. This will not stand!" says the elder Bush.

Later in the film, The Dude tries to repeat the President: "I do mind. The Dude minds. This will not stand, you know, this will not stand, man."

Well now, thanks to the recent AP tape, we have an example of Our Fearless Leader doing much the same thing. Prior to Hurricane Katrina making landfall, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield says:

"I don't think anybody can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not."

Four days later, the President lied about it, of course, as usual, and Josh Marshall busted him on it way back in September. But what I find most interesting is that thanks to this tape, we can see that the lie appears to incorporate part of the warning itself!

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

We'll let the Freepers argue amongst themselves about what kind of lie it is, deception, evasion, omission, et cetera. I just thought you might like to see one more tragicomic facet of the Worst Presidency Ever.

Has anyone else spotted similar indiscretions on the President's part? It would be interesting to collect a lot of them.

remember that the dude abides

There is another observation to be made, one which might be important later. The reason why this tape is emerging only now is because the White House claimed there was no tape when Congress asked for a transcript of it. (This particular recording was made off-location in realtime by filming a TV screen.)

However, if you look at the shot of the President attending the meeting, you can clearly see a guy videotaping. He's not videotaping the President himself, but rather the screen which the President is watching.

I see two interesting possibilities here. The first is that the White House was illegally witholding the tapes from Congress, including the videotape made in the presence of the President. That could be Article of Impeachment number LXXXIII, I suppose.

The second possibility is that the tape we are now seeing is in fact the tape made by the guy sitting behind the President himself. (That would contradict the story that the AP obtained this tape from a FEMA recording made in Atlanta.) That would suggest that someone well placed inside the White House released it.

I think it was a guy named Karl Rove who wound up in charge of the Katrina recovery effort....

"I think it was a guy named Karl Rove who wound up in charge of the Katrina recovery effort...."

But wasn't Mr. Rove in the hospital with gallstones during this time? Which explains why * was wandering around the country eating cake -- nobody was telling * he needed a change in the photo-ops shooting script. Nobody was writing sound bytes for Faux.