"On Thursday and Friday, I will discuss a key element of ensuring health care security for our nation's seniors. The Medicare modernization bill I signed into law in 2003 created a new prescription drug benefit, so our seniors could have more choices and receive the affordable modern health care they deserve."
Africa Week
It's also Africa Week at the White House, starting with this morning's Oval Office meeting with the presidents of Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia and Niger.
Jim VandeHei and Nell Henderson write in The Washington Post: "President Bush is intensifying efforts to help Africans suffering from war, famine and AIDS by agreeing to erase billions of dollars in international debt, dispatching two key White House officials to the region, and planning to announce more direct aid for Africa as early as next month, administration officials said.
"Under pressure from world leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to do more, Bush has signed off on a deal with the British to forgive billions of dollars African nations owe to international organizations such as the World Bank, the officials said yesterday. .....
"In anticipation of the G8 meetings, Bush sent Michael J. Gerson and Kristen Silverberg, two of his top domestic policy advisers, to Africa for 10 days to review his AIDS initiative and other humanitarian efforts."
William Douglas writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers about Bush's Africa record.
And here is a Message by the President to the People of Africa, for broadcast on Voice of America.
Cheney on Dean
The Associated Press reports: "Howard Dean is 'over the top,' Vice President Dick Cheney says, calling the Democrats' chairman 'not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party.'
".'I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell,' Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's 'Hannity & Colmes.'."
Cheney on War
From his speech in Tampa at the closing ceremonies for Special Forces Week:
"Looking across this room, I see the diversity of our planet, but an identity of interests. None of us wants to turn over the future of mankind to tiny groups of fanatics committing indiscriminate murder and plotting large-scale horror."
At Ford's Theater
Juan-Carlos Rodriguez writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush thanked U.S. service members and their families at a pretaped Fourth of July celebration Sunday night at Ford's Theatre."
Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder Newspapers writes in his pool report that Laura Bush was a center of attention.
".'I like to joke that I'm a desperate housewife, but this is one night a year when George is happy to stay up late and spend a night on the town,' Laura Bush told the audience."
And the president offered show host Jeff Foxworthy a job. "Listen," he said, "if you're ever looking for work, Laura's looking for some new material."
Foxworthy said he was thrilled to perform before "the leader of the free world and her husband."
On the Couch
Washington Post's Names & Faces column on Saturday notes: "Yesterday's White House pool report noted that South Korean television sound men rattled President Bush during a joint news conference with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun in the Oval Office.
"During the conference, several members of Bush's Cabinet stood behind the press corps, which left a couch near Bush empty. The quick-thinking sound men, seizing the opportunity for a good angle, laid on the couch to the president's left and extended their boom mikes -- 'apparently upsetting Bush's sense of decorum,' the report said."
Here is a Reuters photo. Here's the transcript. And there's nobody on the couch in the official White House photos.
Old College Ties
Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times: "It's a long way from sharing a one-bedroom garage apartment as hard-partying bachelors in Houston to welcoming prime ministers to the Oval Office. But that's what Donald B. Ensenat and George W. Bush have done ever since the president made his old pal, 'Enzo,' the nation's chief of protocol. .....
"Mr. Ensenat declined to be interviewed for this article, citing busyness. He is one of the official sociable faces of the administration, but he rarely speaks to reporters. (He has, however, spilled a few stories. As he told The Washington Post in 2000 of his time with Mr. Bush in Houston: 'It's not like we were living in a commune and smoking dope all day long. But I guess we were living the 60's life in our own way, drifting through life, doing what we felt like doing, thinking only about where we were going to have our fun next.')"
Cavuto Redux
On his CNN show on Sunday, Howard Kurtz asked Washington Post political editor John Harris about Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto's interview with Bush last week. (See Thursday's column.)
"KURTZ: Talking about the Social Security plan was hurt because Michael Jackson is getting all this coverage and runaway bride, et cetera. Would you regard that interview as being a little bit on the soft side?
"HARRIS: Yeah. I thought it was a little bit of slurp, slurp, to be honest. You know, I don't know, certainly probably if you and I did the interview, we would have come up with different questions.
"KURTZ: Maybe you and I wouldn't have gotten the interview.
"HARRIS: I think there's something to that."
Kurtz and his panel also discussed Hillary Clinton's charge that reporters are wimping out in covering the Bush White House and the delayed coverage of the Downing Street Memo.
Rove on Reagan
The Associated Press reports: "Karl Rove said critics are wrong to portray the president as a good-natured bumpkin.
"George W. Bush's top political adviser wasn't talking about his boss. He meant the late President Ronald Reagan, who like the current White House tenant was mocked by some comics and critics as being intellectually shallow.
".'Reagan was a man of ideas' who had 'a first-rate mind,' Rove said during a guest lecture Saturday at the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
".'He was a great communicator because he had great ideas to communicate' and was right in his view that communism would fail, said Rove."
Kevin Clerici writes in the Ventura County Star: "The day's biggest laughs arrived when Rove was asked about his thoughts on Democratic New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, and he launched into an uncanny and pinpoint impression of Clinton's husband and former president Bill Clinton.
"The shenanigans didn't surprise former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who introduced Rove.
".'He's often depicted as an evil genius and a manipulator, a charge he dismisses with a wry smile,' said Wilson, who also described Rove as a keen intellect, student of history and prankster."
Bush Bulge Watch
The folks over at isbushwired.com would like you to take a look at this clip from Bush's April 28 press conference, when Bush looks down, pauses in the middle of a sentence, mutters, "in a minute," then resumes his answer.
Just who is he talking to?
