Fox was the only network to cover Bush's return to Texas

According to the Huffington Post

Fox News was the only major national TV outlet that carried a live telecast of former President Bush's homecoming speech to cheering supporters in Midland, Texas.

Maybe payback time for all the support that the Bush presidency gave to the network

Quite what is the Mirror implying?

Under the headline

Gun nut kills eight after Bush speech

A crazed gunman shot eight people dead before killing himself in a crowded shopping mall last night - an hour after President Bush gave a speech nearby

Was the thought of another year of Bush too much? Perhaps an instance of where the headline isn't quite appropriate for the story

Brain dead or Brainless

The resignation of Bush's right hand man Karl Rove has unleashed some good headline in the papers this morning.

Perhaps none better than the Indy which taking a leaf out of an old spitting image portrayal of President Reagan says

Bush's brain goes missing as Karl Rove retires

The paper leaving us in no doubt its views

"Karl Rove RESIGNS!!! Karl Rove Resigns - Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead [breaking news - no irony] Short and Sweet: Rove resigns!"
The bloggers were at it early yesterday morning, as the online bush telegraph breathlessly passed on the news that the man the Democrats love to hate, the tousle-haired and bespectacled Andy Warhol lookalike, Karl Rove, had announced his departure from the Bush White House.

It is not just the Indy though

End of ‘Bush’s brain’ will bring down the curtain on lame-duck President says the Times

And the Guardian reminds us

Mr Rove found himself under siege for much of this year, facing investigation over a CIA outing scandal and a separate row over the sacking of eight US attorneys.
The Democrats may continue to pursue him after he leaves office at the end of the month. "There is a cloud over this White House, and a gathering storm," said Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the judiciary committee. "A similar cloud envelopes Mr Rove, even as he leaves the White House."

I didn't know you cared

I have just been reading Nick Robinson's blog as he followed Gordon Brown to the States.Nick has aquired a rather love hate realtionship with Dubya after his last visit when he asked the President whether he might be in denial over the latest outbreak of insurgent violence in Iraq.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2007/07/still_guessing.html

This time Nick relates their latest encounter

"He said to me clearly remembering our last encounter...."You still hanging around.....At the end of today's meeting he looked at me sweating in the swampy conditions and said" next time you should cover your bald head.I made the fatal error of answering a quip with a quip"I didn't know you cared" to which the President said as quick as a flash "I don't

Perhaps some congratulations to Rebecca Wade at the Sun this morning who got an exclusive interview with George Bush who muses on the special relationship with Tony Blair.

Amongst the Gems

"Mr Bush said Mr Blair is blessed with a world-class ability to communicate. He went on: “Tony’s great skill, and I wish I had it, is that he’s very articulate.
“I wish I was a better speaker. This guy can really . . . he can talk."

And

"I’ve heard he’s been called Bush’s poodle. He’s bigger than that. This is just background noise, a distraction from big things.
We’re working together to achieve global peace in the face of enormous danger.
This kind of thing is just silly ridicule and that’s how I treat it.
Somehow our relationship has been seen as Bush saying to Blair ‘Jump’ and Blair saying, ‘How high?’ But that’s just not the way it works. It’s a relationship where we say we’re both going to jump together."

Bush's Misinformation?

I could n’t sleep last night and sat listening to Radio 5 live at about 3.30.

I chanced upon an interview which sought to place the rush to invade Iraq firmly at the door of the press who were according to the interviewee, guilty of not providing checks and balance for the arguments.

Fully awake,I used the listen again service to make sure that I was n’t dreaming.

First of all we are talking about the American Press.The interview was with Frank Rich of the New Yorker magazine.

There are two sides to the story.First of all the Bush administration ,according to Rich ,had the express purpose of selling misinformation to the Press.An unnamed source,possibly Karl Rove,was briefing journalists in 2002 that the administration intended to set the reality and the press' job was simply to report it.

The press though is not blameless.Rich describes that "much of the damning truth was publicity available but widely ignored."

The Press were swept along by what he terms "jingoistic post 9/11 euphoria".They were afraid of challenging an administration that was at that time so popular.They thus,failed,apart from a "few pockets of resistance "to resume scepticism.

This atmosphere continues today.Cnn has dedicated more coverage to Anna Nichol Smith than Bush's state of the union address when he announced the Baghdad surge.