I'm going to take the time to translate this from Bush to English: "I like to look at pictures of my property. I need to maintain plausible deniability." Of course, as any of number of my former students have ably demonstrated, it is entirely possible to claim that you haven't read the email even when you have. You can even claim not to have received the email, as the following dramatization will, um, dramatize:In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: “I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?”
According to CNBC’s unofficial transcript, he replied: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.” He added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”
CIA Director George Tenant: I want to discuss the daily security brief I e-mailed yesterday. George, what do you make of this entry entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within U.S."?
Bush: It was good.
Tenant: Umm, okay -- the brief was good? What do you feel was good about it?
Bush: I didn't actually read it. I, uh, never got the e-mail.
Tenant: Okay. Didn't we agree that it would be useful to cover some of these briefs in our sessions?
Bush: I've been real busy, so...
Tenant: Okay. I understand -- there are a lot of satellite pictures of the ranch to look at, I know -- but this IS a matter of the nation's security...
Bush: My computer's broken. The printer doesn't work.
Tenant: Okay, but there's at least seven computers within thirty seconds of the Oval Office, and...
Bush: Car trouble.
Tenant: Mr. President, you live and work in the same building.
Bush: My grandmother's real sick, she could go any minute, and so I've really needed to be with my family...
Still, I think the president offers a good suggestion for what we Americans can do with our leisure time and our satellite technology. Here's your assignment: using the Google, find pictures of places that remind you of where you want President Bush to be sometimes.
I'll start. I like to imagine George W. Bush at the Jones Island Milorganite Facility, the great socialist program that turns the waste of our townspeople into fertilizers for farms, gardens, and the occaisonal pipe bomb. Like me, you may enjoy imagining our president and his cronies stuck neck-deep in a great vat of Milwaukee offal....
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