• mydude@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me; “dozens of young White House staffers” freshly hired were abruptly told to quit, were suspended from their jobs, or otherwise punished “due to past marijuana use.”

    • circasurvivor@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The phrase, which is from Texas, but also maybe Tennessee, is actually, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I love that W moment, because you can see on his face the realization of where that quote was going. Like it occured to him after he started speaking that he was saying “fool me” too much, and also that he was taking blame for the second part. So, he tried to abort mission and eject from the quote, but it was too late and he knew it.

        “Fool me once, shame on… (wait, I just said I got fooled. That’s no good. At least I’m saying it’s not my fault.) shame on you. (How does the rest of it go?) Fool me… (Fuck, I just said I got fooled again. Shit shit shit, the end of this quote is “shame on me” but that’s the opposite of the image I want. How can I… let’s just go with…) you can’t get fooled again. (Heh, nailed it.)

        I really miss the days when he was the stupidest President in living memory.

        • circasurvivor@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          The way he physically leans over the podium in the video to emphasize “you can’t get fooled again,” is probably my favorite W moment. That, or, “…now watch this drive!”

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I mean, no, GWB sucked on balance. Whether he was a patsy or not, he was the occupant of the oval office when we were attacked, when we responded by attacking the wrong countries, when our regulatory bodies were captured by the businesses they were supposed to govern, when our budget surplus was used to line the pockets of the wealthy, when the housing market and the banking industries were set up to collapse, when xenophobia and bigotry were permitted to rage like a wildfire, through all of it, he was a bad President. You can’t blame him personally for all of it, nor would I say he did everything wrong (his work in Africa to fight HIV comes to mind as a success). But he was not a genius, a patriot, or honest, even in comparison to Donald Trump. Trump only had four years, and surrounded himself with incompetent criminals. Dick Cheney made himself and his friends rich(er) through defense contracts during the 8 years he was in office, making far more than Trump managed to stuff into his pockets with his tiny fingers.