not much of a reader

At one of today's press conferences, a reporter asked Bush the extent to which he'd consider the Baker-Hamilton report and its recomendations. From NPR:

"Some reports are issued and just gather dust," he said. "And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and our guest read it. The prime minister read -- read a report prepared by a commission. And this is important."

What? Does the fact that Bush READ the report instead of having his sycophantic staff give him the digested version prove anything? I suppose so. I suspect Tony Blair's people bristled at the "me and Tony read this one, folks, because it's important, see?" Comforting that our Commander-in-Chief is that guy who reads the first thirty pages of The Godfather each summer at the beach.

In related news, how disheartening is it to watch the media *suddenly* grant tacit persmission to criticize the Iraq situation? I mean, I'm glad that this shift in sentiment might mean that the U.S. starts to pull out of Iraq, thereby saving lives. But frustrating that just a few short months ago, such criticism still meant one was anti-American. This is especially true for the spineless Democrats (John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich are among the few exceptions) in congress, who campaigned last time around on their support of Bush's handling of Iraq and campaigned this time around on how Bush had completely screwed things up. Sigh.