In other words...

The last time Bush had a press conference, one of Al Franken's staffers noticed that the Prez likes to say "in other words" between two sentences, where the two sentences say exactly the same thing. Does that make sense? Check it, this is from last night's press conference:

-And Congress has ensured that their benefits will rise faster than the rate of inflation. In other words, there's a lot of us getting ready to retire who will be living longer and receiving greater benefits than the previous generation. -He's been serving our country for, I think, 20 years. He has been confirmed by the United States Senate four times. In other words, he's been up before the Senate before and they've analyzed his talents and his capabilities and they've confirmed him. -You can manage your assets. You can go from bonds and stocks to only bonds as you get older. In other words, we're giving people flexibility to own their own asset. -One of the questions I like to ask is, are they able to recruit. In other words, you hear -- you see these killers will target recruiting stations, and I've always wondered whether or not that has had an effect on the ability for the Iraqis to draw their fellow citizens into the armed forces. -The other question that -- one of the other issues that is important is the equipping issue, and the equipment is now moving quite well. In other words, troops are becoming equipped. -And my message to the Prime Minister and our message throughout government to the Iraqis is, keep stability; don't disrupt the training that has gone on -- don't politicize your military -- in other words, have them there to help secure the people. -And then I said we'd get them out, and we've done that. In other words, the withdrawals that I said would happen, have happened. -And when Kim Jong-il would make a move that would scare people, everybody would say, America, go fix it. I felt it -- it didn't work. In other words, the bilateral approach didn't work. The man said he was going to do something and he didn't do it, for starters. -In 2027, for those listening, we'll be obligated to pay $200 billion more dollars a year than we take in, in order to make sure the baby boomers get the benefits they've been promised. In other words, this is a serious problem, and the American people expect us to put our politics aside and get it done. -There's a budget agreement, and I'm grateful for that. In other words, we are making progress. -If you're a small business owner and you have to pay higher gas prices and you're -- likely you may not hire a new worker. In other words, higher gas prices, as I have said, is like a tax on the -- on the small business job creators. -That's why as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act we had money available for remedial education. In other words, we said we're going to measure, and when we detect someone who needs extra help, that person will get extra help. -One other point on Social Security that people have got to understand is that it's -- the system of today is not fair for a person whose spouse has died early. In other words, if you're a two-working family like families are here in America, and -- two people working in your family, and the spouse dies early -- before 62, for example -- all of the money that the spouse has put into the system is held there, and then when the other spouse retires, he or she gets to choose the benefits from his or her own work, or the other spouse's benefits, which is ever higher but not both. See what I'm saying?

Oy. Dubya makes me absolutely dizzy sometimes.