Bush Speaks: The Empire Has No Clothes

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." -- senior Bush advisor quoted by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine.

Finally, someone asked the president about the object on his back during Debate 1. And Bush lied straight-faced. This is from Dan Froomkin's account at washingtonpost.com of Charles Gibson's Good Morning America interview with Bush aired today:

"Brandishing a copy of the photo, he asked: "Final question. What the hell was that on your back, in the first debate?"

Bush chuckled.

Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "

Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "

Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Gibson: "It was the shirt?"

Bush: "Yeah, absolutely."

Gibson: "There was no sound system, there was no electrical signal? There was --"

Bush: "How does an electrical -- please explain to me how it works so maybe if I were ever to debate again I could figure it out. I guess the assumption was that if I was straying off course they would, kind of like a hunting dog, they would punch a buzzer and I would jerk back into place. I -- it's just absurd.""

Charles Gibson and ABC deserve credit for asking the president, but failed abjectly at following up on his brazen lies. The object under the president's jacket is obviously solid. There isn't any bad tailoring, at any price in the "reality-based" world, that could create a shirt with a convex rectangular bulge, much less one that would jut through a jacket.

Not to mention that he would have had to have worn the same shirt to all three debates. (Presidential tailor Georges de Paris must have threatened to file suit now, rather than to make any more, so the White House has fallen back on blaming the shirt.)

IsBushWired also hears that ABC News has interviewed several White House staff members who've confirmed that Bush uses a low-frequency transceiver during meetings with foreign dignitaries. Hope that ABC plans to run its story in time for voters to consider this information.

Postscript: We've since watched the interview and are struck by how quickly the president responded with a rehearsed joke. Clearly Rove et al talked to him about how to reply. The truth evidently wasn't an option. But as the Good Morning America interview ended, the camera drew back, and Laura Bush had disappeared from her spot on the couch next to the president. Someone in the White House is still capable of shame.

CBS Bloodied, Bowed

Meanwhile, CBSNews.com has groveled to the White House by printing a nonbylined story composed by AP's surely all-time-dumbest, or most slavish, reporter. The story's accompanied by a post-debate shot of the president that seems to show no bulge. We need not remind readers that photos, unlike the single video feed which everyone shared, can be touched up. But in any case, Bush's cheatpiece was most clearly outlined when he hunched over the podium, stretching the back of his jacket over the device and the cord snaking up his right shoulder.

Refresh your memory of the protuberance by looking again at the jpegs reproduced below in our archived post, "What's the Frequency, Karl?" These are stills that we took unaltered from the Fox pool video feed. Or check out cryptome.org's 28 time-stamped screen captures from the video.

Oh, and BushBulge.com has found
another photograph of a bulge-bearing Bush on the White House web site, lighting a menorah last December. Enjoy it before it's scrubbed.