Finality

SUN CITY CENTER, Florida (AP) -- President Bush has heard pleas for an extension of the deadline to sign up for new Medicare drug coverage from lawmakers, seniors advocacy groups and finally two women in his audience Tuesday. He's rejected them all.

"Deadlines are important," the president said at a retirement community, less than a week before the last day for most seniors and the disabled to enroll in the program without facing higher prices. "Deadlines help people understand there's finality and people need to get after it."

Y'know, I have a feeling that the seniors most in need of Medicare drug coverage understand the concept of 'finality' pretty well, and certainly better than a relative youngster with his own doctor on-call.

Speaking of deadlines, Mr. Bush, how are you doing with that whole 'functioning Iraqi government' thing? And remind me again when those increased revenues from cutting taxes are supposed to be here?

Talk about needing to 'get after it.'

It seems like W. was at his most sensitive on this visit to Florida:

He stopped by Broward Community College, where government officials set up tents and tables with laptops to help dozens of seniors there choose among the myriad plan options available.

Bush visited with some waiting in a courtyard where Frank Sinatra's "Young At Heart" played on the loudspeakers, then he went indoors where people were looking over the laptops. He walked around giving handshakes and hugs to those who rose for his entrance, and greeted a man who remained sitting in a wheelchair with, "You look mighty comfortable."

'Mighty comfortable'? Is that a Texas thing? Where I come from, that wouldn't be considered a polite thing to say to a person in a wheelchair. (Maybe you had to be there, though I'm guessing the reporter who was found it a bit odd, or we wouldn't be reading about it.)

Two and a half more years.