March 2006 Archives

I am a resident of Louisiana. And guess what -- you are too.

How so, you ask?

Simple: more than four years after 9/11, the Bush administration response to Hurricane Katrina shows that we are STILL unprotected from potential disaster and we're STILL unprepared to respond to an emergency.

Remember when Bush vowed to rebuild New Orleans "higher and better?" Well, like I keep telling you: don't watch what he says, watch what he does.

And now that the TV lights and cameras are gone from Jackson Square, the buck has been passed AGAIN.

Two months before the beginning of hurricane season, we're getting the real story:

The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region.

[...]

"This monumental miscalculation is an outrage," said Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). "This means that, just two months before hurricane season, the Corps of Engineers informs us they cannot ensure even the minimum safety of southeastern Louisiana. This is totally unacceptable."

[...]

State and local leaders said the U.S. government had broken a trust and appeared to backing away from commitments to rebuild. Louisiana officials also questioned why federal engineers are just now announcing that the task would cost $6 billion more.

"Every time we turn around, there's a new obstacle," said Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.). "The estimates were done for rebuilding the levees, and a number was given to the administration and to the Congress. Now all of a sudden they say they made a $6 billion mistake?"

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said the announcement confirmed his warnings since November that Washington is "stonewalling" and seeking "way too little money" for levee repairs.

This confirms, again, what we've come to believe about the Republican Congress and the Republican White House: that they are passionately devoted to destroying the Federal safety net, every chance they get.

I can't begin to tell you how upsetting this is.

And the excuses? They don't even pass the laugh test:

In the conference call yesterday, [Federal rebuilding coordinator Donald] Powell reiterated the promise that the levees will be at least as strong as they were designed to be before Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29.

These are weasel-words. Complete gobbledegook. The levees are either going to stop the water or they're not.

"If a hurricane such as Katrina hit the area, there would not be catastrophic flooding," he said. But, he said, there might be some "manageable" flooding.

Make you deal, Mr. Powell -- you come down and live in New Orleans from June 1 to November 30. At the end of that time, you tell me what you consider to be "manageable flooding," OK?

Powell said that science, "not any bureaucracy, politics nor any member of the political branches," determined the cost revisions. Bush "is concerned with the well-being of the area's residents," he said, but "he wants to make sure we make the right rebuilding decisions, not just for the residents but for the American taxpayers."

Mr. Powell, your concern would be a lot more reassuring if it weren't totally covered in crap.

Most taxpayers would appreciate being reminded how important Louisiana is to the national economy:

• 11 percent of the US petroleum
  
• 19 percent of natural gas reserves
  
• THE primary source of the nation's crude oil
  
• Second in produciton of the nation's natural gas
  
• Second in total energy production
  
• Second largest refiner of petroleum for consumer use
  
• Provides 26 percent of all seafood landed in the US
  
• Provides 40 percent of all seafood consumed in the US
  
• ...and on and on.

Not only that: New Orleans is one of the world's busiest waterways -- thousands of vessels move through the port annually. Millions of tons of steel imports come through the port every year. It is the top port for imported natural rubber. It is the premier coffee-handling port. New Orleans is the home of major shipbuilding facilities, a naval base, and the nation's Marine reserve HQ. More than 700 thousand cruise passengers pass through New Orleans per year.

And (oh the irony) it is the home of the world's first World Trade Center.

New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana is a vital part of the region and a vital part of this country. OUR country.

For Powell (and Bush) to just wave it off in such a high-handed manner speaks volumes about their commitment to protecting and cherishing everything this country stands for.

But, that said, are you really surprised?

Call your Congressman, call your Senators and demand that the Republican Congress fully fund the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Better yet, do everything you can to throw the Republican bums out and replace them with a Congressional majority that actually cares about protecting our country in the event of a major disaster.

Come on! Don't just sit there -- one of these days (God forbid) a disaster will strike your town or state and you'll be hearing a lot of soothing crap from Bush, and you'll wish someone would shut him up and actually, you know, DO something.

Find your Congressman's phone number
Find your Senators' phone numbers

"...and the Nazi Party...completely shut out."

Samantha Bee has the complete report.

"A sad day in Israel...for the Nazi Party."

WTF??

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese's weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

"The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, `To my critics, I say, `Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means "(expletive) you."

Bwhahahahaha! You're kidding me, right?

I always appreciated Scalia's style and spunk, even though I disagree with nearly everything he believes in. And/But now he's right up there with Paulie Walnuts!

UPDATE: Peter Smith, the photog who caught Scalia's, erm, exuberant gesture, has been fired.

Frank Mankiewicz remembers his friend, the late Lyn Nofziger, and recounts a not-often-told historical nugget:

We came together, I recall ruefully, in 1967, when he was the press secretary for Ronald Reagan, the newly elected governor of California, and I had the same job for the newly elected Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York. Don Hewitt of CBS News, later to achieve great renown as the inventor and executive producer of "60 Minutes," had an idea that a debate between Reagan and Kennedy would be a wonderful way to display CBS's new and then-revolutionary technical wonder -- the satellite.

As Hewitt explained it, RFK in Washington and Reagan in California would answer questions, live, from students around the world -- some in London, some in the Middle East and others in Asia. Nofziger, who knew his boss better than I knew mine, thought it was a wonderful idea and embraced it eagerly. I saw no downside, and thought RFK would virtually destroy this "B-movie actor" who had somehow stumbled into the governorship of California.

The debate, to Lyn's eternal delight, was a disaster for our side. Reagan, a master of on-camera speaking developed through years of introducing the "General Electric Theater," was in command from the beginning.

When the first question came in from London, about Vietnam, I sensed we were in trouble. Kennedy, predictably, thought about his answer, mentioned that there were difficult questions involved. He came down on the right side, to be sure, but only after a lengthy explanation and a good deal of thought, during none of which did he make eye contact with the camera.

Gov. Reagan, well coached by Lyn, stepped into the camera and, making instant eye contact, answered clearly and quickly that, "We have always been a generous people, and we seek only to share the benefits of democracy and a healthy economy."

As the questions continued from students in India and elsewhere in Asia, it only got worse. And indeed, whenever a brisk discussion occurred later within RFK's staff over the wisdom or non-wisdom of a particular activity, he would often stop the discussion, and turn to me with the question, "Aren't you the fellow who urged me to debate Ronald Reagan?"

I see this as a cautionary tale, to be remembered by anyone who thinks they know what people want from a political figure.

From The Note:

The New York Times Rick Berke reports "Republican sources close to the White House say Mr. Card's replacement by Mr. Bolten is just the beginning. In the coming days, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will be fired, and replaced by former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, a Democrat.

[OK, 1-2-3...spit-take!]

In addition, Mr. Bush will further reach out to the opposition by replacing his Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt with California Congressman Henry A. Waxman, a long-time critic."

[bwhahahahaha!]

The Washington Post's Ed Walsh has this: "White House aides say that on Thursday, Bush has invited the congressional leadership of both parties to a Rose Garden event at which he will announce a budget summit to commence on April 1 at the officers club at Andrews Air Force Base at which 'everything will be on the table' to reduce the deficit, according to sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the announcement.

[April 1? Hmm.]

Asked if 'everything' included possible tax increases, one Administration official said, 'Bush gets it now. He knows in his heart that taxes must be raised -- it's just a question of how much.'"

Right -- the rest of the article reads like The Note's April Fool's joke, including an item claiming that Mike McCurry will become the new press secretary.

P.S. Come to think of it, maybe someone just put some acid in The Note's morning coffee?

"New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem" anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror," he's saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week."
---Bill Maher

"Here now a list of requirements for Dick Cheney's `downtime suite'...Cheney wants bottled water, decaffeinated coffee. He wants his lights on. He wants the temperature at 68 degrees, the TV's must be tuned to Fox news. I was thinking, 'My God, I wish they would have put this much preparation into the Iraq War.'"
---David Letterman

"We're now down to the final four. Not college basketball. The number of people who still think President Bush is doing a good job."
---Jay Leno

"Ummm...well, uh...I wasn't prepared for that one."
---Cobra II co-author Michael Gordon, responding to Jon Stewart's question, "After the fall of Baghdad, what did [Bush and the neocons] get right?" on The Daily Show

"The President's mother, Barbara Bush, donated tax-deductible money to the Katrina Relief after the flood. And now we find out that it was with specific instructions that the money be spent for educational software owned by her son Neil. Because who can forget those tragic images of the poor black people on rooftops in New Orleans holding up signs that said, 'Send Educational Software'?"
---Bill Maher

(HT to Bill in Portland Main)

Glenn Greenwald paraphrases Sen. Levin:

If the President broke the law, then the duty of the Senate is to "modify the law in order to make it legal" because, after all, the President broke the law for the "right reasons."

As Daniel Webster warned: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions."

Arnold Vinick understands that simple concept as well:

VINICK: Well, I trust my brother, my four children, my nine grandchildren and my dog. I suspect that's more than you trust. Now isn't it?

JOSH: Yeah

VINICK: The founding fathers didn't set up a government based on trust. They could've designed a government based on trust and our ability to govern fairly but they knew that power corrupts. So they invented checks and balances. That was genius. The founding fathers did not want me to trust you and they did not want you to trust me. Every White House forgets about checks and balances, you guys are no different.

McCain is set to deliver the commencement message at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in May.

Here's the McCain we remember (and voted for), c. Feb. 2000:

...Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and a few Washington leaders of the pro-life movement call me an unacceptable presidential candidate. They distort my pro- life positions and smear the reputations of my supporters.

Why? Because I don't pander to them, because I don't ascribe to their failed philosophy that money is our message.

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.

So, does this means he'll be hanging out with Farrakhan and Sharpton now, too? Didn't think so.

The next time a Democrat tells you s/he could vote for McCain, please set them straight -- McCain is a lost cause.

Well, that was the headline in the Washington Times, at any rate. It seemed designed to stoke the resentment of many in the Republican Congress.

Here's the thing: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has gone on record saying that he would not consider any legislation adopting a "guest worker program" without a majority of the majority voting for it. Got that? A majority of Republicans in the Senate would have to be for the legislation.

Well, he's facing an uphill battle, for sure: the Senate Judiciary committee voted 12-6 in favor of the reform bill...meaning that 4 of the 10 Republicans joined all 8 Democrats...meaning that a majority of the majority was against the bill.

It's enough to make Sen. McCain's head explode -- apparently, the Senator and Charlie Gibson of ABC sparred over whether the bill really did amount to "amnesty." Talk about a wedge issue!

The Note:

While the guest worker program made it out of committee, many hurdles remain... Hurdle number one is making it onto the Senate floor. Hurdle number two is coming to an agreement with a House of Representatives diametrically opposed to a guest worker program. Hurdle number three will be the White House. It remains unclear if President Bush will support the comprehensive immigration act as passed out of committee today.

Yeah, whatever. Don't watch what he says, watch what he does.

And how about them 40,000 students marching in protest on the highways? I understand that was organized by the kids via MySpace.com. Heh.

I'll ask the question again, because I haven't yet been able to get an answer from the frothing nativists among us:Other than crossing the border illegally, is there an epidemic of lawlessness by Hispanic aliens that I'm not aware of?

It seems to me that the majority of "illegals" would want to maintain, shall we say, a low profile. Or, as Bob Dylan once said, "To live outside the law you must be honest."

P.S. I'm an immigrant. IJS.

John Dickerson:

Press-bashing only highlights the administration's insufficient response to the underlying problem. When the basement is flooded, no one wants to hear complaints about not getting credit for the shiny new roof.

It also does the administration no good when its allies challenge the professionalism of reporters in Iraq. Sixty-seven international journalists have died there along with 24 translators, drivers, and other support personnel -- more than died in 20 years of fighting in Vietnam.

The complaints also turn genuine media efforts to show the positive side of the war into farce when reality intrudes. In the middle of taping an NBC piece about a new school opening, a bomb went off, and as Bob Dole praised Fox for showing the positive side of Iraq this week, the other half of the network's split screen showed a burning truck.

I admit that the 500 thousand people that showed up to demonstrate in Los Angeles caught me by surprise.

I also admit I haven't followed this debate closely until now.

That said, here's my question: Other than crossing the border illegally, is there an epidemic of lawlessness by Hispanic aliens that I'm not aware of?

[Click image to watch video.]

Lara Logan:

...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them? You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on?

Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack. Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.

I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

Great for the team and great for the region. Go Tigers!

P.S. The women's team also wins, advancing to the Elite Eight.

According to Sunstein, warrantless wiretapping is nothing compared to being dead.

P.S. I'll bet there are a lot of unsuspecting Americans who would be shocked to hear that Cass Sunstein thinks that they are this far from being liquidated.

This just in: In the tug-of-war between Jack Murtha and the Republican party, Murtha has been declared the winner.

Here's your tip-off: Last week, the House included $1.3 million in a defense funding bill for something called the Iraq Study Group:

"The purpose of the [Iraq] study group is to come up with a compromise between an administration policy that no one believes in and just walking away," says Edward Luttwak, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1 of 4 think tanks supporting the effort. "The study-group process will be mysterious, but the outcome is predictable: They're going to come to the conclusion that the US should disengage, but not abandon Iraq."

Translation: Murtha was right.

Not only that, look at how may heavyweights it took to counterbalance Murtha:

• Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, chair
  
• Former SecState James Baker III, co-chair
  
• Former CIA director Robert Gates
  
• Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
  
• Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming
  
• Former CoS Leon Panetta
  
• Vernon Jordan
  
• Former SecState William Perry
  
• Former Sen. Charles Robb
  
• ...and one Republican to be named later.

Here's your clue that the group will do nothing much except provide Bush with an election year fig-leaf: if they figure out how to "end" the war, then Bush no longer has the title of "wartime President." And if he doesn't have that any more, that means he has to give up all the extra powers he claims the constitution gives him during wartime.

There's always another side to every story.

Medium Lobster:

Were it not for the New York Times, the American people would never have been menaced by this rogue information. Oh, terrorists would still be aware the U.S. was trying to wiretap them, but they wouldn't know it was trying to wiretap them illegally.

Now that information has fallen into enemy hands, and it could be used to orchestrate the most dangerous attacks on the American government the United States has ever known: censure, Congressional hearings, or even an independent investigation -- all of which could prove devastating in the Global War Against the President's Approval Ratings.

And make no mistake, my friends: that is exactly the war we must fight when we confront the teeming terrorist hordes. For how can America's troops maintain their fighting spirit when their Commander-in-Chief is polling in the mid-thirties?

Because he's still at it:

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers...

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it "a piece of legislation that’s vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a "signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would "impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

Bush wrote: "The executive branch shall construe the provisions... that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch... in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information... "

I don't want to hear any Democrat tell me censure is too extreme, or censure is inappropriate, or censure is politically unwise, or anything like that.

Fact is, censure is too mild a rebuke for Bush. He needs to be impeached. That's the proper time for the investigation that everyone wants. And if he's convicted, we'll all be better off without him.

P.S. And that goes for Cheney and the horse he rode in on.

EJ Dionne:

...when [the Republicans'] own government fails, they turn around and use their incompetence to argue that government can never work anyway, so you might as well keep electing conservatives to have less government. It's an ideological Catch-22. Even their failures prove they are right.

And people keep voting for them, which is all that matters in the end.

(HT to shep)

...even though Miss Julie graduated from Duke and was rooting for Coach K and the Blue Devils.

"The beauty is that I win either way," says my beautiful bride.

P.S. And make no mistake, Glen "Big Baby" Davis is going to be a star.

[Click image to watch video.]

I don't agree with much of anything that the Family Research Council advocates. I don't much care for its Executive Director Tony Perkins. I think they stand for a dangerous confluence of religion and government.

But on one thing we seem to agree: the death sentence handed down on that Christian convert in Afghanistan is not only wrong, but our endorsement of that regime is shameful.

Perkins:

[The Afghani] constitiution and the wording of giving deference to Sharia law is very similar to what is in the Iraqi constitution....The resolve of the American people will not long stand if they know that they are giving their sons and daughters to die for just changing the names of regimes.

I've said it a thousand times: If the mullahs sit on the Supreme Court in judgement of the Iraqi and/or Afghani consititutions, then freedom is most definitely NOT on the march.

We've spent our blood and our treasure creating two regimes that are inimical to everything we stand for and everything in our American tradition.

And that a guy like Tony Perkins has finally woken up and taken notice of what Bush has done, well, you know we've reached a tipping point in this whole shameful episode in our history.

Update: Pachacutec Tivo'd the interview and relates that MSNBC left out Perkins' slip-of-the-tongue: he actually said "our sons and dollars" which is pretty damn funny.]

Bush got a standing O the other day when he said that the media was at fault for relentlessly presenting the bad news from Iraq at the expense of the good news.

No surprise there: it was just another cheap shot, another easy applause line from the Buck-Passer-In-Chief.

The irony is that is that it's actually worse in Iraq than even the media is letting on. My sense is that the media actually has been bending over backwards (or perhaps bending over forwards) to make nice with the administration. My sense is that they might be getting tired of being the White House punching bag.

[Click image to watch video.]

Jack Cafferty:

...if somebody came into New York City and blew up St. Patrick's Cathedral and in the resulting days they were finding 50 and 60 dead bodies a day on the streets of New York, you suppose the news media would cover it? You're damn right they would.

This is nonsense, 'it's the media's fault and the news isn't good in Iraq.' The news isn't good in Iraq. There's violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn't turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it's our fault? I beg to differ.

After watching Bush trudge through the latest round of speeches, a "town hall meeting" and a White House press conference, it's easy to see that (as Howard Kurtz puts it) people have tuned the guy out.

Can you blame them?

On one hand, Bush is like a used car salesman who, when you return with a lemon, doesn't try to fix the car. Instead, he tells you it really isn't a lemon, even though the wheels are falling off. You might try to convince him to hire a new mechanic, but he'll just go on and on -- "trust me!" -- about how well the car really runs.

[Note: I've forgotten who originally made this observation, but a HT to them.]

Speaking of going on and on, Digby nails Bush dead-to-rights:

Listening to George W. Bush's speeches for the last five years, particularly after 9/11, is like having someone sing "It's a small world after all" over and over and over again. It was bad the first time. Now it makes you want to stab your ears with a letter opener.

The press, forced to listen more often than anyone else, seems to have reached its limit as well.

The end result? Oliphant paints a picture that is worth 10 thousand words. [Click the image to see a larger version.]

By the way, John Aravosis points out an interesting wrinkle in that last press conference: Bush is subtly blaming the military for losing the war in Iraq.

First, here's Bush:

"I'm going to make up my mind based upon the advice of the United States military that's in Iraq," said Bush, who spoke with U.S. commanders in Iraq earlier from the White House via videoconference.

"I'll be making up my mind about the troop levels based upon recommendations of those who are on the ground."

Now, here's Aravosis' observation:

I have a feeling General Pace and the military brass aren't at all pleased with how Iraq is going, with the fact that Donald Rumsfeld is their Secretary of Defense, or with the fact that George Bush is their commander in chief. I suspect the military brass isn't at all responsible for our troops numbers in Iraq, for our strategy, or even for the fact that we're staying.

I think George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld ignored the advice of the military throughout this entire war, and the military is having to implement a pretty crappy plan for victory that was shoved down its throat.

Sounds like Vietnam Redux.

[Click image to watch the video.]

Watch the whole clip:TDS has patched together years of Bush's speechifyng on Iraq into one seamless clip that is as hilarious as it is scary.

[Click the image to watch the video]

Russ Feingold on the Daily Show Wednesday evening:

Stewart played a clip from a recent news conference of House Majority Leader John Boehner, in which the Ohio Republican said of Feingold, "Sometimes you begin to wonder if he's more interested in the safety and security of the terrorists as opposed to the American people."

After the audience groaned, Stewart asked, "How long have you been working with the terrorists, and are they nicer than they seem?"

"Oh no, they're a bad bunch," Feingold said, laughing.

Feingold conceded that a member of his own family questioned the proposal.

"My daughter called me up and said, 'Dad, what are you doing? This thing hasn't been done since the 1830s,' so it takes some explaining," Feingold said.

"That's what I like about you, senator," Stewart said. "You're kicking it old-school."

It wasn't all fun and games:

"I was taught that it was the Congress that makes the laws, and the president's supposed to sign them, and he's supposed to enforce them," said Feingold, who received an enthusiastic response from the audience. "He's not just supposed to make them up."

[...]

"This feels like some attempt at accountability," Stewart told Feingold, D-Wis., at the end of the senator's appearance on the Comedy Central show Wednesday night. "And that's what I really like about it."

"And so I appreciate that, and I thank you for it," Stewart added. "And I hope that your colleagues let you still eat at the lunch table."

From The Late Show with David Letterman:

10. Trying to fix up Condi Rice with his daughter

9. Turns out when you shoot somebody, if you're not vice president, you gotta do time

8. Bush leaves at two every day and then it's margaritas and Fritos

7. Set the solitare high score on his office computer

6. Wants to see if he can help Bush get his approval rating under ten

5. Too hard to give up Vice Presidential Discount at D.C. area Sam Goody stores

4. Wants to stay on the job until every country in the world hates us

3. Extra-zappy White House defibrillators

2. Undisclosed location has foosball and whores

And the #1 Reason "Dick" Cheney Won't Resign...

1. Why quit when things are going so well?

(HT to Bill in Portland Maine)

Reuters:

Asked about full troop withdrawal from Iraq, Bush told a news conference: "That of course is an objective and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

Oh, man. Major, major bummer.

And, not only that -- I think the Iraqi people are going to take this pretty hard.

IJS.

P.S. After the latest round of Iraq War speeches, Rasmussen (favorite pollster of Republicans) has Bush's "approval-disapproval" numbers at 41%-57%, near the all-time low for that poll. Not only that: the "strongly approve-strongly disapprove" is an appalling 21%-43%.

I don't see the above sound bite having much positive affect on these numbers.

Recently, I got into a discussion with someone on another blog about how Presidents get one sentence in the history books. When I suggested that Bush's sentence would include the words, "distorted intelligence," the commenter suggested that the sentence, instead, would be: "Freed more people than Lincoln." That the commenter would be making a Civil War/Bush/Iraq reference in this way was as revealing as it was mind-boggling.

But I digress.

I have just gotten done reading Doris Goodwin's Lincoln book, Team of Rivals. I'm not sure if any of you would enjoy the book -- it is, after all, almost 800 pages long and anyway, does the world need another Lincoln biography?

Actually on that last point, it is more a collective biography of Lincoln and the other 3 major political personalities of that age that Lincoln chose to be in his Cabinet: Senator William Seward, Governor Salmon Chase, and elder statesman Edward Bates.

Goodwin:

Taken together, the lives of these four men give us a picture of the path taken by ambitious young men in the North who came of age in the early decades of the nineteenth century. All four studied law, became distinguished orators, entered politics, and opposed the spread of slavery. Their upward climb was one followed by many thousands who left the small towns of their birth to seek opportunity and the adventure in the rapidly growing cities of a dynamic, expanding America.

Just as a hologram is created through the interference of light from separate sources, so the lives and impressions of those who companioned Lincoln give us a clearer and more dimensional picture of the president himself. Lincoln's barren childhood, his lack of schooling, his realtionships with male friends, his complicated marriage, the nature of his ambition, and his ruminations about death can be anlyzed more clearly when he is placed side by side with his three contemporaries.

I was especially struck by one passage she includes, relating what Leo Tolstoy had written about Lincoln:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief "living far away from civilized life in the mountains."

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, "But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock...His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man."

"I looked at them," Tolstoy recalled, "and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend." He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s "home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength." When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with "a wonderful Arabian horse."

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend's house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. "I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend," recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man's hand trembled as he took it. "He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears."

Tolstoy went on to observe, "This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

"Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country -- bigger than all the Presidents together.

"We are still too near to his greatness," Tolstoy concluded, "but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

"His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us."

I know there are some who revile Lincoln's memory even today (a startling number of them living in the North), suggesting that he ruled with an iron fist, disregarding the Constitutional protections of habeus corpus and instituting an income tax and paper money. Others would compare the current President favorably with the sixteenth President. I'd say those are, at best, incomplete observations and, at worst, ingnorant.

Lincoln was a warrior, he was poet, he was a politician, "he was a hero, he spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock," and he was, as Tolstoy suggests, "bigger than all the Presidents together."

As Goodwin puts it, "Lincoln has unequalled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion."

From Wikipedia.com:

Godwin's Law states that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. [Furthermore,] There is a tradition that once such a comparison is made, the thread in which the comment was posted is over and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

Cunning Realist:

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld... equated the reluctance of America's allies to get involved with the appeasement of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian, 8/21/02

"Like Hitler in his bunker, this violent extremist [Zarqawi], failing to advance his political objectives, now appears committed to destroying everything and everyone around him," Rumsfeld said.

AP, 5/26/05

"Adolf Hitler wrote things and people didn’t believe it. Here you have a person ... that’s acquiring nuclear weapons, seems to be on a path to do that saying those things."

Donald Rumsfeld on Iran President Ahmadinejad, Fox News, 1/18/06

Rumsfeld...likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years.

WaPo, 2/3/06

"I mean, we've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," Rumsfeld added. "He's a person who was elected legally -- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally ..."

AP, 2/3/06

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is warning that Western countries must increase their defense budgets in order to prevent the rise of a "global extremist Islamic empire" that could be as deadly as Hitler's Third Reich.

Newsmax, 2/6/06

"Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."

Donald Rumsfeld, WaPo, 3/19/06

Zbigniew Brzezinski was having none of it:

"You know, that is really absolutely crazy to anyone who knows history. When we occupied Germany in '45, there was no alternative to our presence. There was no resistance. The Germans were totally crushed. There was no resistance. And a great many Germans realized that they had to go back to the democracy that they had before Hitler came to power. And many people don't know that Germany was a thriving democracy for decades before Hitler came to power," the man who served as national security adviser under President Carter said of Rumsfeld's rant.

"The situation in Iraq is totally different. And for Secretary Rumsfeld to be talking this way suggests either he doesn't know history or he's simply demagoguing."

Right -- liar or a dope.

And, in one of those instances that has become all too common, someone who should know is speaking truth to power:

Writing in Sunday's New York Times with regard to Rumsfeld, [Paul D. Eaton, the retired Army major general who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004] argued that, "He has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq."

Rumsfeld "offered" to "resign" a couple of times during the Abu Ghraib fiasco, but Bush turned him down.

It's only a matter of time before he gets a Medal of Freedom.

P.S. I don't know about you but I feel just absolutely fatigued even thinking about the collossal ineptitude of Bush and his Cabinet. Which is probably what they're counting on.

IJS.

WHEN was your first visit to this blog?

My first visit was today.
My first visit was sometime in 2006.
My first visit was sometime in 2005.
My first visit was sometime in 2004 (or before).

Thanks!

P.S. Please scroll down -- there are new posts below this one.

Michelle Goldberg:

Kevin Phillips' grim new book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, puts the country's degeneration into historical perspective, and that perspective is not conducive to optimism.

The title is a bit misleading, because only the middle section of the book, which is divided into thirds, deals with the religious right. The first part, "Oil and American Supremacy," is about America's prospects as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, and the last third, "Borrowed Prosperity," is about America's unsustainable debt.

Phillips' argument is that imperial overstretch, dependence on obsolete energy technologies, intolerant and irrational religious fervor, and crushing debt have led to the fall of previous great powers, and will likely lead to the fall of this one...

"Conservative true believers will scoff: the United States is sue generis, they say, a unique and chosen nation," writes Phillips. "What did or did not happen to Rome, imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Britain is irrelevant.

The catch here, alas, is that these nations also thought they were unique and that God was on their side. The revelation that He was apparently not added a further debilitating note to the later stages of each national decline."

[Note: I always liked Lincoln's re-formulation of this idea -- that we should spend more time trying to be on God's side.]

I generally resist declarations that this is the end of days. My feeling is that people who say this are instead reflecting on the end of their days -- the passing of their youth, the onset of their middle- or old-age, the loss of their power and influence, and so forth.

But Kevin Phillips is no hack and, furthermore, he was there at the beginning:

His 1969 book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," both predicted and celebrated Republican hegemony. As chief elections and voting patterns analyst for the 1968 Nixon campaign, he is often credited for the Southern strategy that led to the realignment of the Republican Party toward Sun Belt social conservatives. Today's governing Republican coalition is partly his Frankenstein.

That gives him some street cred. We should think twice before dismissing him and his thesis.

Speaking of which...of the three factors -- technology, religion and economics -- I believe we'll have the hardest time with religion because it eventually could eclipse the supremecy of the US Constitution. Not only that: it has put us on a path to reject the world of science and observable fact and replace it with the virtues of faith and personal conviction.

As if to illustrate this point, Goldberg quotes an historian who said, of Philip II of Spain, "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence."

Sound familiar?

That said, I'm afraid the solution to this is much, much, bigger than just finding a charismatic Democrat with a spine to overthrow all those crazy Republicans.

Last night I dreamt I met Charlie Chaplin and H.G. Wells at Disney World...

...and I wasn't carrying my cameraphone.

The End.

Glenn Greenwald:

• Powerline, April 25, 2003:
  ...the war against Saddam Hussein may actually have been the "hard part" and that there are many good reasons for optimism about what lies ahead...

• Brendan Miniter, Assistant Editor, Wall St. Journal's Opinion Journal.com, March 31, 2003
  U.S. forces apparently found chemical weapons yesterday.

• Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online, April 25, 2003
  The omnipresence of the United States, twenty years of failure inside Iran, and the attractions of American popular culture will insidiously undermine the medieval reign of the mullahs faster than it can do harm to the foundations of democracy in Baghdad...

  ...we probably so far have spent no more $30 billion on the military operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom -- not the "hundreds of billions" forecast by alarmists who sometimes slipped into "trillions."

• Powerline, April 26, 2003
  They can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly.

• Charles Krauthammer, April 19, 2003
  The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington.

  Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, April 11, 2003:
  Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen's cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn't rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was...

  Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a "quagmire" were wrong -- again! --

  ... and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American "liberators" were proven wrong -- again -- as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating...

  It's probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.

  Nah.

• George W. Bush, May 1, 2003:
  ...my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

From the Post:

For years, the Bush White House and its allies on Capitol Hill seemed like one of the most unified teams Washington had ever seen, passing most of Bush's agenda with little dissent.

Privately, however, many lawmakers felt underappreciated, ignored and sometimes bullied by what they regarded as a White House intent on running government with little input from them.

Often it was to pass items -- an expanded federal role in education under the No Child Left Behind law and an expensive prescription drug benefit under Medicare -- that left conservatives deeply uneasy.

They felt deeply uneasy? Right.

Where were these people 2-3-4-5 years ago? I'll tell you where -- rubber-stamping everything in sight. Now they feel bad? I have no sympathy.

Throw them out of office. They're totally useless.

From Reuters:

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."

How about you? What one-word description would you use?

Well, I wouldn't use "manly." My god, check out the pink socks.

(HT to digby)

By a margin of 46% - 44% the public favors censure of Bush. Yow!

...and that's with ONE Senator -- Feingold -- touting it. Imagine what it would be if more Democrats were united behind the motion.

P.S. The poll also asked about impeachment. Get this: by a margin of 49% - 42% the public is against impeachment. But here's the interesting part: Independents favor impeachment 47% - 40%.

Again, that is with a Republican-led Congress in place. Imagine what the margin would be if the Democrats were in the majority and united on this.

Bush reaches a new low for job approval in the Pew Research Poll:

The president's ratings for handling of several specific issues, particularly terrorism, have also declined sharply. Just 42% now approve of Bush's job in handling terrorist threats, an 11-point drop since February. In January 2005, as Bush was starting his second term, 62% approved of his handling of terrorist threats.

How dare they say that about our Commander-in-Chief during wartime? Traitors!

Bush's personal image also has weakened noticeably, which is reflected in people's one-word descriptions of the president. Honesty had been the single trait most closely associated with Bush, but in the current survey "incompetent" is the descriptor used most frequently...

And yet Democrats are shy about standing up to the Republicans. I don't get it.

In a related story, Gallup shows Democrats with a 16% advantage over Republicans on a generic Congressional ballot, the "largest lead Democrats have enjoyed among registered voters in a midterm election since 1982." If this is how it looks in November, John Conyers might finally become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

P.S. That comes with a real nice perk -- subpoena power. IJS.

(HT to georgia10)

Here's the speech I'd give if I were running for Congress this fall:

My fellow Americans, our national leaders once motivated us into greatness by promoting the power of our hopes and dreams. Now we are bullied into submission by the weight and force of our nightmares.

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But we've forgotten that in an age when a President's approval ratings can be bumped up by raising the terror alert level from yellow to orange.

The fact is, Republican leaders never miss an opportunity to scare you into giving them what they want. According to them, the only thing keeping you from certain death is George W. Bush. And the only way to protect George W. Bush is to trash the Constitution and crown him King.

But of course that is wrong. That dishonors our American tradition.

The fact is we've faced far worse than al-Qaeda. For example, our founding fathers themselves faced certain death by the British troops who already occupied our cities during the Revolution. Yet they found the resolve to write a Constitution that preserved and protected our liberty while, at the same time, empowered our young nation to fight and protect itself against the madness of another King George.

They could have taken the easy way out. But Benjamin Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

He believed in a strong America AND a free America.

Patrick Henry was even more emphatic. Do you remember what he said? "Give me liberty or give me death."

His strength was matched by his love of liberty.

We believed then, and I belive now, in a strong America AND a free America. We can and must have both.

Throughout our history, we have faced many deadly threats. During the Cold War we faced the Soviet Union who had the power to destroy us 1000 times over. But we pulled together and won that battle. And we didn't have to hand unlimited power to the President to do it.

We believed then, and I believe now, in a strong America AND a free America.

It can be done. We've done it. But now the Republicans tell us those days are over. Now the Republican Congress tells us we must make a choice -- we can be strong OR we can be free. The Republican Congress tells us that we cannot have both.

They tell us that the threat of terrorism is so grave, so shockingly deadly that we must give absolute power to George W. Bush because he, and only he, can protect us.

But it turns out old Ben Franklin was right. If you give up liberty for security, you won't get either one.

Want proof? Look around you. We've given the Republicans a blank check. And what did they buy with it? You can see how much security we have. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina showed that, after 4 years, we are no better prepared for another emergency than we were on Sept. 12, 2001. We've also seen that his warrantless wiretapping is not only illegal, but ineffective. He has failed to protect us AND he has failed to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And the Republican Congress has rubber stamped every bit of that, right on down the line.

Under the Republicans we have given up precious liberties in return for security and now we have less of both.

My fellow Americans, the radical wing of the Republican party -- those who want to further dismantle the safety net, those who want to shrink government so small that we'll all be on our own -- that small minority of extremists has taken over the agenda of a party that was once great but has now surrendered its proud tradition to a gang of bullies. Their ideas infect the Republican party from the top of the ticket on down to the bottom.

My fellow Americans, if you continue to do what you've always done, you'll continue to get what you've always gotten from this Republican party -- corruption, cronyism, and corner-cutting.

Are you willing to let them continue to divide us? (NO!)
Are you willing to give up liberty for security? (NO!)
Are you willing to go back to the days of King George? (NO!)

You deserve a change. You deserve to be motivated by your hopes and dreams, not bullied into submission by the force and weight of your nightmares. We are a brave people, we are a strong people and we know that we can be strong while preserving liberty and justice for all.

Don't let the Republicans divide us. Don't let the Republicans force you into a false choice. We believe in a strong America AND a free America.

Join with me to bring those days back. Join with me on November 2 to bring the Democratic party back to power. We believe in a strong American AND a free America.

Thank you and God Bless America.

P.S. Well, it's a first draft anyway.

The following Democratic senators have come out for censuring the president:

Daniel Akaka
Max Baucus
Byron Dorgan
Dick Durbin
Dianne Feinstein
Daniel Inouye
Jim Jeffords
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Herb Kohl
Mary Landrieu
Carl Levin
Joe Lieberman
Blanche Lincoln
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Jack Reed
Harry Reid
Jay Rockefeller
Chuck Schumer
Ron Wyden

Put me down as a member of the Russ Feingold Fan Club. For his fiery response to bed-wetting, security-craving, Bush apologists ("Give me liberty or give me death"); for his principled stand against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act; for his introduction of a censure resolution of Bush; for saying what is on everyone's mind.

The Democrat response? Crickets chirping.

Feingold:

I'm amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president's numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide...

Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they'll say we'd better just focus on domestic issues...

[Democrats shouldn't] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you're helping the terrorists.

Bottom line: Feingold is speaking from the heart -- something other Democrats can't (or won't) do, much to their detriment. People can spot a phony and it ain't Feingold -- it's the other Democrats.

Not only that: The law is on Feingold's side. The polls are on Feingold's side. The people are on Feingold's side.

It is a dire situation when normally sensible moderates say this kind of stuff:

The problem is: until Feingold presented his proposal Bush was under fire from attack dogs from the GOP's base.

What?? Are you suggesting that he should have waited until "the attack dogs" were loving Bush? The fact is, this situation defies political calculation but the Democrats haven't figured that out. They are suffering from paralysis by analysis.

Feingold has decided to cut through all the crap and dithering and calculating and cowering. He went down into his core, decided what he thought was right and what was wrong and made a choice and spoke out and used his constitutional authority to make something happen, shake things up.

It's more than I can say about ANY of the other Senate Democrats and most all of the House Democrats (with the possible exception of Jack Murtha).

Put me down as a member of his fan club.

P.S. It's a measure of how scared the Republicans are that they are falling back on their hackneyed formulas. Guys like Frist, Cheney and especially Senator Allard, are accusing Feingold of "siding with terrorists" by introducing his censure resolution.

Now, judging by the polls, that dog won't hunt. But the problem is, the people have no one in Congress who is willing to stand up to right-wing hacks like Allard -- other than Feingold. No one is willing to say the Emperor has no clothes -- except Feingold.

Glenn Greenwald:

Russ Feingold is definitely the most unpopular person in Washington right about now, which is an enormous compliment.

From here, it looks like Senate Democrats won't vote for censure "until an investigation is completed" on Bush's warrentless NSA wiretaps. Since there is no clue when that might happen, or if it will ever happen, we're dead in the water.

Are Democrats holding their breath and waiting for the midterm elections to be over? Are Republicans waiting for the same thing?

You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking that this country has come off the rails. The usual coalitions have broken apart. The electorate is disgusted. Congress is paralyzed. Bush is clueless. Everyone is fighting each other. No one is in charge.

Krugman:

if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as [Andrew] Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.

I forgot who pointed it out, but the brilliance of Karl Rove is that he pinpoints a weakness in his candidate, then accuses his opponent of that same weakness, attacking and defeating him over it.

You can see his disciples have learned well -- e.g., Ken Mehlman "indicts" the Democrats for having no leadership.

This actually makes a guy like Joe Scarborough look like a statesman when he says this the same day:

The lack of leadership in Washington, D.C., is sickening. If you look at what Republicans did--promised to do in 1994, when they took control of Congress, and see, how they've been acting over the past three or four years, the biggest debt and deficit ever. They are irresponsible and reckless on so many levels. I'm embarrassed right now to be a Republican. It's a disgrace because of the lack of leadership.

Nice. Except where was Joe 2 or three years ago when it was obvious that Bush didn't know what he was doing? Never mind, you already know the answer.

And, I hate to say it, but regarding Tim McGraw and Faith Hill -- where were they when their fans were burning Dixie Chicks CDs not so long ago?

The fact is, when Democrats said it 2-3 years ago they were branded "shrill" and "shrieking" "Bush-haters." Republican/shrink/pundit Charles Krauthammer even invented "Bush derangement syndrome" to explain it.

Hunter:

If George W. Bush is an idiot now, then he was an idiot then, too. He didn't change, and neither did his stream of uber-conservative advisors, and neither did any of his conscience-scratching new critics. To only see it now doesn't restore their lost credibility. It only shows how thorougly in the tank they were, and how eager they are to extricate themselves now. It shows that the so-called tenets of conservatism are, in truth, a mere millimeter deep. Or maybe it just shows that incompetence and conservatism go so hand-in-hand as to be indistinguishable from each other.

I'm just saying.

Smirking Republicans are getting a lot of mileage out of comments by George Clooney over at Huffington Post.

Specifically this passage:

Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bull----. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled." It makes me want to shout, "F--- you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic."

This makes Clooney sound like some sort of self-hating, whack-job, Fox Democrat like Joe Leiberman or Susan Estrich.

What they've conveniently left off was the sentence immediately preceding that paragraph: "The fear of being criticized can be paralyzing. " Does that excuse the actions of the Democrats? No. But their dubious record pales in comparison to the horrific actions of George W. Bush.

Whatever happens in the war, it will be Bush's legacy.

Here's the concluding paragraph of Clooney's piece:

Bottom line: it's not merely our right to question our government, it's our duty. Whatever the consequences. We can't demand freedom of speech then turn around and say, But please don't say bad things about us. You gotta be a grown up and take your hits.

I am a liberal. Fire away.

Fear can paralyze you. It is one of the most corrosive elements you will encounter in your lifetime. It can paralyze an entire nation.

Once upon a time, we were motivated to greatness by the power of our dreams. Now, too many of us are kept passive and cowering by an appeal to our worst nightmares.

Fact is, we (as a nation) have faced far worse than al-Qaeda. The Soviet Union had the ability to destroy the entire Earth 1000 times over and yet we faced them down. And our leaders didn't trash the Constitution in order to do it. Why do we think that our leaders must trash it now to "protect" us? Because too many of us are afraid.

We'd do well (Democrats and Republicans) to remember what Roosevelt said: "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."

I'm confident that one day we'll all wake up, drink a Bloody Mary and wonder, "What the f--- was that all about?"

I just hope it won't be too late.

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has announced that he will introduce a resolution in the U.S. Senate on Monday to censure the President of the United States.

While New Orleans was drowning on Monday, August 29, 2005, George W. Bush visited John ("Mr. Birthday Cake") McCain to celebrate his birthday.

The End.

(HT to Georgia 10)

P.S. Here's 20 questions for anyone who believes that abortion is murder.

(HT to Jessica)

Turns out Katrina is the issue that turns the reddest part of red-state America against the Republicans:

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw -- two stars who usually stay out of politics -- blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort, with Hill calling the slow progress in Louisiana and Mississippi "embarrassing" and "humiliating."

[...]

McGraw specifically criticized President Bush. "There's no reason why someone can't go down there who's supposed to be the leader of the free world ... and say, 'I'm giving you a job to do and I'm not leaving here until it's done. And you're held accountable, and you're held accountable, and you're held accountable.

"'This is what I've given you to do, and if it's not done by the time I get back on my plane, then you're fired and someone else will be in your place. '"

[...]

Hill, who grew up in Jackson, Miss., echoed those sentiments. So overwhelmed, she uncharacteristically unleashed an epithet, calling the situation, "Bull- - - -"

"It is a huge, huge problem and it's embarrassing," she said.

[...]

"I fear for our country if we can't handle our people [during] a natural disaster. And I can't stand to see it. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out point A to point B. . . . And they can't even skip from point A to point B.

"It's just screwed up."

I'll say it again: only Democrats have credibility on this issue because only Democrats believe that government (no matter what its failures in the past and in times to come), can be a place where people come together and where no one gets left behind -- no one gets left behind.

Surely all Democrats can come together and agree that our government is an instrument of the people and so is an instrument of good.

Republicans certainly don't believe that. And that is finally dawning on America.

According to the State Department, the Bush administration and the Defense Department increasingly are using the term "the long war" to refer to what we used to call "the global war on terror."

Steven Colbert riffs on this and it is laugh-out-loud funny.

Fred Kaplan reports on Rumsfeld's excellent adventure before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

In brief: Rumsfeld digs himself deeper with every public statement and the Senators don't seem to care or even notice how bad it's getting over in Iraq.

Bwahahahahaha!

You know, this is exactly the kind of deal Bush would have gotten away with about 3 years ago...when his approval ratings were in the high sixties.

And he might yet pull it off. After all, Halliburton is an American company. And it's not like it hasn't already "demonstrated" that it can "handle" government "contracts" related to "security" and the "war on terror."

Riiiiiiiiight. Say it again: Halliburton....then cue the crickets.

P.S. If this deal goes through, and you don't like it -- Cheney'll just shoot you in the face.

Here's a practical application of the emotions swirling around the ports deal:

The shot of the gritty Baltimore waterfront pulls back to reveal a youthful, serious Senate candidate intoning: "President Bush wants to sell this port -- and five others -- to the United Arab Emirates, a country that had diplomatic ties with the Taliban, the home of two 9/11 hijackers, whose banks wired money to the terrorists."

Can you guess who's talking?

Wait for it...

"I'm running for the Senate," Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) had been saying all week on televisions throughout his home state, "because we shouldn't outsource our national security to anyone."

Oh, snap!

The message may be simple, but it mirrors the views of the vast majority of Americans whose visceral sentiments on the port issue are driving Congress toward a confrontation with the White House.

For Republicans -- even those reluctant to cross the president -- the only viable response to Ford's conclusion is "I agree," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

I have to admit, I'm surprised at the seeming ferocity of the Republican backlash on this issue. That said, it'll be interesting to see if Ford can make any hay out of this.

Apparently, some think it will be a carbon-copy of the Harriet Miers debacle.

From The Note:

It is a mortal lock. Mark it down and give us Krauthammer Credit when it happens: a few more futile rounds of trying to come up with a deal that will save face, satisfy "legitimate" security concerns, and set things right, and then the company will withdraw the deal.

The President will, Scott McClellan will tell us all, have not backed down.

Until then, mark us down as impatient.

Could be. The Note (for better or worse) is nothing if not plugged into the beltway mentality.

Bottom line: the ports are no safer even if Dubai Port World Inc. takes over. Democrats should be hammering this point home regardless of what happens next. As we know, the Republicans haven't done jack to improve port security on their watch.

P.S. Include me in the group of people who believe most (if not all) of the "conflict" between the Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House is carefully calculated.

It makes sense -- Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet. No one in their right mind would want to go down in the same flush.

So the solution is to "threaten" a veto on the ports deal and to let the Republicans "pitch a fit" in response. That way, the GOP Congressmen can go home and campaign on how independent they are of that idiot in the Oval Office -- and hope it's enough to save face (and save their majority in the midterm elections).

Towns direct state's congressman to file articles over Iraq, spying.

P.S. Scroll to the bottom of the article and rate it "5 stars." Then vote accordingly in the online poll.

Lastly, do the same thing over at the Yahoo! News version of the story -- rate it 5 stars. (Yahoo does not have a poll attached to this story.)

Read the advance copy of the article to appear in the next issue of Vanity Fair.

Excerpts:

"Every appropriation we wanted [from Sen. Burns's committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used [Abramoff's restaurant] Signatures as their cafeteria. I mean, it's a little difficult for him to run from that record..."

[...]

"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying."

[...]

"Mr. Abramoff flatters himself," Mark Salter, McCain's administrative assistant, tells Margolick. "Senator McCain was unaware of his existence until he read initial press accounts of Abramoff's abuses, and had never laid eyes on him until he appeared before the committee."

[...]

Abramoff says, "As best I can remember, when I met with him, he didn't have his eyes shut. I'm surprised that Senator McCain has joined the chorus of amnesiacs."

[...]

President Bush, who claims not to remember having his picture taken with Abramoff. According to Abramoff, at one time, the president joked with Abramoff about his weight lifting past: "What are you benching, buff guy?"

[...]

Ken Mehlman, who recently claimed he didn't really know Abramoff. According to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, Mehlman exchanged e-mail with Abramoff, and did him political favors (such as preventing Clinton administration alumnus Allen Stayman from keeping a State Department job), had Sabbath dinner at Abramoff's house, and offered to pick up Abramoff's tab at Signatures, Abramoff's own restaurant.

[...]

Newt Gingrich, whose spokesman Rick Tyler tells Margolick that "Before [Abramoff's] picture appeared on TV and in the newspapers, Newt wouldn't have known him if he fell across him. He hadn't seen him in 10 years." A rankled Abramoff says "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife." Abramoff shows Margolick numerous photographs: "Here's Newt. Newt. Newt. Newt. More Newt. Newt with Grover [Norquist, the Washington conservative Republican Über-strategist and longtime Abramoff friend] this time. But Newt never met me. Ollie North. Newt. Can't be Newt ... he never met me. Oh, Newt! What's he doing there? Must be a Newt look-alike.... Newt again! It's sick! I thought he never met me!"

(HT to kos)

Instead of standing for oversight AND investigation -- both within their Constitutional responsibility and authority -- the panel chose "oversight" and NOT investigation.

Glenn Greenwald:

What the legislation does, on its face, is replace FISA judges with Republican Senators in approving the government's eavesdropping activities. Whereas the country agreed to a framework 30 years ago which allowed the government to eavesdrop on Americans only if the Government persuaded a FISA judge that such eavesdropping was warranted, this proposed legislation eliminates that requirement and allows warrantless eavesdropping as long as 4 Republican Senators [on the subcommittee] agree with the White House that such actions are warranted.

So much for an "independent judiciary."

The Administration has told Congress to its face that it has the power to ignore Congressional laws with regard to eavesdropping and that it is free to defy Congressional law mandating briefings on these types of intelligence activities.

So, Congress' response is to pass another law to replace the one the White House violated, and to require some more briefing.

Isn't that too absurd even for the Congress?

At the very least, would it be possible for the media to explain to the public what has happened here?

Good luck with that.

Here's the thing: As long as Republicans are in the majority in Congress, this sort of thing will continue to happen. So the real fight is not whether the Intelligence Committee will do the right thing; the real fight is whether a rubber-stamp
Republican Congress will remain in the majority.

Howard Dean:

"I am not ready to say we will take back the House and Senate,'' Dean said in an interview. "But we will take back the House and probably the Senate if we run a national campaign.'' If Democrats do gain control, he said, Republicans should expect to be investigated: "If we get subpoena power'' in congressional committees, "the corruption will come out on America's TV screens, and that scares the daylights out of the Republicans.'' he said.

Harsh? You bet. But it's the truth.

Glenn, again:

Americans are tired of Republican rule and have abandoned the President. Restoring some balance back to our government and ending the increasingly corrupt, unchecked one-party rule of our country will be, in my view, more than enough for Democrats to at least take over the House. By itself, that will ensure that the landscape shifts dramatically and that the Administration will be called to account for their multiple acts of law-breaking -- or, as George Bush is fond of saying in another context, it will ensure that "they are brought to justice."

Just look out, because the Republicans won't go down without a fight -- and we already know that their campaign will be based on "fears, queers, and smears."

Bet on it.

If mainstream America remembers Gordon Parks at all, it remembers him as the director of Shaft. But Parks had a long and distinguished career in a number of other fields before he got to Hollywood.

Michael Wilmington:

Parks, who died Tuesday in his New York City home at the age of 93, was a true Renaissance man who had an astonishing array of gifts and talents. He excelled in many areas and lived an improbably full, inspiring and productive life.

That is an understatement: if Parks' life were grafted onto a character in a novel, we wouldn't believe it -- he'd be too large for life. But that was Gordon Parks for you.

Above all, he was a photographer, one of the legends of his profession. He was the first African-American staff photographer for Life magazine, and later became the first black to direct a major Hollywood movie.

Parks' perfect eye and sensitivity to light and dark revealed themselves in many other fields as well. He was a novelist, poet, journalist, composer of both film scores and classical music (including the 1989 ballet "Martin," about Martin Luther King Jr.) and even, for a while, a semi-pro basketball player.

All his great gifts however, especially his genius for photography and writing, came together in his work in film.

Parks once said, "I've known both misery and happiness. I've lived in so many different skins. It is not possible for one skin to claim me."

He was a giant and a huge influence on me. Rest in peace, Mr. Parks.

P.S. If you get a chance, read Parks' The Learning Tree and/or Choice of Weapons. The first is a novel (based on his own childhood) and the second is an autobiography.

Oddly enough, number 3 on the list is one that I wrote nearly a year ago -- and it gets some page-views even now.

1. Here are a couple of tough issues that you need to consider
   February, 2006

2. Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts
   December, 2005

3. Marbury vs. Madison
   April, 2005

4. Face Recognition Software: I look like Fidel!
   January, 2006

5. Movie trailer mash-ups
   February, 2006

6. Mixed bag
   January, 2006

7. What Terrorists Do (and how Karl Rove & Chris Matthews are helping)
   January, 2006

8. Krewe du Vieux says 'C'est Levee'
   February, 2006

9. The "Pragmatist" of Hamas
   February, 2006

10. I favor the separation of Church and War
    February, 2006

    
    

Keith Olberman:

Buck O'Neil [is] a living link to the great stars who were prevented from reaching the Major Leagues because of the color barrier that would not fall until 1947. Himself Jackie Robinson's teammate with the legendary Kansas City Monarchs, later their manager. Even now, at the age of 94, one of the great ambassadors of any sport. And yesterday, baseball might as well have told Buck O'Neil to get lost.

Yesterday was the day the game elected to its Hall of Fame, 17 heroes of the era of the "Negro Leagues." The last such election scheduled. Ever. And Buck O'Neil was not elected.

No question about it: O'Neil is one of the greatest players that professional baseball has ever seen, white or black:

[He was a] first baseman on four pennant winners and manager of five more in the old Negro Leagues, the first man of color to be a coach in the major leagues...

If you saw Ken Burns documentary Baseball , you know what I'm talking about.

At 94, Buck O'Neil is our last living link to an age that will pass away forever when he is gone. It was the least they could do to honor him during his lifetime.

I've written about how I favor separation of church and state. I've also written about how I favor separation of church and military.

Now it looks like I'm going to have to jump ugly about the separation of military and state.

Some excerpts from Josh Marshall:

...the RNC was apparently working with the White House to send active duty members of the military in uniform to speak on behalf of the president's policies at Republican political events. That's against the law and military regulations. And for good reason since that's a quick ride to making the military -- or factions or individuals in the military -- tools of one or the other political party...

This is exactly what appears to have happened yesterday at a political event with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO). This article in the Fort Collins Coloradoan shows a picture of Musgrave doing just that with the caption: "Marilyn Musgrave introduces Marine Sergeant Brandon Forsyth on Friday during the Larimer County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner."

Josh goes on to point out that this is not a technicality nor is it a blog gotcha:

The existence of this ban and the enforcement of it are hugely important both to good order and discipline within the military and to preserving our democratic republic. The military can't be made into an arm of one or the other political party. Nor can the executive be allowed to enlist members of the armed forces, either individually or en masse, willingly or not, as soldiers in his domestic political battles.

This has been happening for a while -- look at where Bush goes when he needs a bump in the polls: to the nearest military academy or military base.

But the Musgrave incident is pretty blatant.

That said, it seems like the White House is swimming against the tide:

• There are a significant number of military veterans who are running for Congress this year -- as Democrats.

• The Swift-boating of John Kerry, Jack Murtha, John McCain, Max Clelland, et. al., shows what the Republicans really think of military veterans.

• Two words: Pat Tillman.

• A recent Zogby survey shows that more and more military families are opposed to Bush's war policies.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Some are calling it the "Rapist Rights Bill," not that it's the only thing wrong with the legislation, to say the least.

(HT to Steve Gilliard)

Monday: Will powerful House Republican Bill Thomas retire? [Update: Thomas did announce his retirement.] If so, will there ultimately be so many House Republican retirements that the party has trouble holding the majority?

Tuesday: Will Tom DeLay win the Republican nomination in his district outright, or will he face a run-off?

Wednesday: Bush comes to my part of the country, making another trip to inspect Katrina damage and recovery. Previously, the House Katrina Commission blasted this White House, saying we were still unprepared (four years after 9/11) for another disaster. Will Bush's visit give him a bump in the polls, or will Republicans be viewed as the do-nothing party?

Thursday: Potential Republican presidential candidates gather in Memphis to address the party faithful (and the traditional media). A straw poll will follow. Let the 2008 games begin! Who comes out on top -- McCain or Allen? And who, if anyone, distances himself from the Bush-Cheney record?

(HT to The Note)

It used to be that deciding when (or when not) to get pregnant was considered a revolutionary act. Take a pill? Outrageous!

Same goes for when to end a pregnancy. Get an abortion? Outrageous!

That said, now we're about to see the mainstreaming of a technology that can virtually guarantee the gender of your baby. Outrageous? You tell me.

Where is this going and how do you feel about going there?

P.S. Surveys show that if choosing a baby's sex were as easy as taking a pill, fully 18 percent of adults would be willing to try it. And, back in the real world, about 75 percent of the customers of this technology have chosen to have girls.

Does any of that information change your opinion?

• I won a bet that Jon Stewart would let fly with a "shot in the face" joke at some point in the telecast. He did and I got extra points when he mentioned Bjork and her infamous swan-gown.

• George Clooney's reactions from his seat during any number of references to him from the stage.

• The attack ads (especially the one touting Reese Witherspoon) narrated by Steven Colbert.

• Three 6 Mafia voluntarily doing a clean version of their song, then winning the award, then thanking Oscar's executive producer Gil Cates in their ecstatic acceptance speeches, and...

• Queen Latifah wondering "how is it that I wasn't in that number?"

• Reese Witherspoon quoting June Carter Cash: "I'm just trying to matter."

• Jon Stewart: saying that Hollywood was "a moral black hole, where innocence is obliterated in an endless orgy of sexual gratification and greed." (cue the crickets) "I don't really have a joke here. I just thought you should know a lot of people are sayin' that."

• George Clooney, saying he was proud to be part of the "out-of-touch" Hollywood community.

Oscar trivia:

• Last night was the first time in 49 years and only the third time ever that all six major award categories went to six different movies -- Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor/Supp. Actor, Best Actress/Supp. Actress.

• It was at least the second time a Spielberg film was multiple-nominated and came away with nothing.

• Kong and Geisha got more as many Oscars than as Brokeback and as many as Crash.

• Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) won Best Screenplay for the second year in a row.

Oscar lowlights:

• Bill Conti playing music throughout all the acceptance speeches. Was he watching another show?

• Whatever that was on Charlize Theron's shoulder. It looked like a dead parrot -- wrapped in silk organza.

• The remarks from the Academy president, for being a collossal bore and getting -- or losing -- additional points for insisting a little bit too strongly that movies are best watched in a theater, "with strangers."

How about you?

P.S. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: the burning car on stage.

I've been away for about a week, reading only USA Today while I was gone. When I got back and touched base with the usual blogs, I was struck by the intensity of feeling that accompanied certain stories, most notably the release of the Presidential briefing video that preceded Hurricane Katrina's landfall. You've probably seen it so I won't go back over it. What struck me was that it seemed to renew an old story: that Bush was not engaged, or out of touch at the beginning of the crisis.

This is news?

Not only that: lots of discussion about how low Bush's approval ratings have gone south again (mid-30's in some polls). There was even some discussion about Cheney's approval ratings (18% in the CBS poll, prompting Jon Stewart to observe that Cheney can't even rally all the dentists who recommend gum with sugar).

Ho-hum.

Here's the thing: Bush isn't running for anything, so approval ratings really mean nothing at this point.

And yet...

...it matters. It matters because he is the leader of the Republican party which is going to put its Congressional majority on the line in November.

The issue is a simple one, and the less the nuance the better, at least for the Democrats. It goes like this:

"If you are happy with the direction of the country, if you are pleased with where we are today, vote for the Republican candidate for Congress in your local district. If, however, you think we're on the wrong track, if you are wondering where we're going and what this handbasket is for, then vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress in your local district."

Actually, it's even simpler than that:

"In brief -- if you keep voting like you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. So if you want to make a change, you have to change the way you vote."

I'll probably have more about this another time, but for now, that's how I see it.

Although this short film wasn't nominated for an Oscar, it has to win some sort of award for the shortest, funniest, film of the year. Make sure you don't have a mouthful of coffee when you watch this. (requires Quicktime)

(HT to Xeni)

Surveys show that people who (say they) attend church services regularly usually vote Republican. People who don't, vote Democratic.

So does that mean Democrats can't talk about spirituality? And if they don't, will they continue to lose elections in a nation more and more being forced into a quasi-theocratic mold?

In Bill Moyers' On America, the author talks about aging and how the most successful and happy older people maintain "a capacity for wonder, surprise, and joy -- especially the joy of the present experience."

He talks about his last televised conversation with Joseph Campbell, the longtime teacher of comparative mythology at Sarah Lawrence College, and how Campbell talked about the "guiding idea of his work: to find the commonality of themes in world myths, pointing to a constant requirement in the human psyche for a centering in terms of deep principles."

"You're talking about a search for the meaning of life," I [Moyers] said.

"No, no, no," he answered. "I'm talking about the experience of being alive!" He explained: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is the experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

World (or national myths), deep principles, and the rapture of being alive -- being connected to something bigger than ourselves. America has just such a tradition and it isn't about religion. Democrats would do well to think about that some more.

Lots of talk about what the Democrats should propose as their manifesto or mission statement for the midterm elections. Of course everyone believes they should come up with the equivalent of "The Contract On For America."

I thought of this again when I was re-reading Bill Moyers' On America. In it, he writes about another time when the public spirited journalism of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World recommended this short platform for politicians back in 1883:

1. Tax Luxuries
   
2. Tax Inheritances
   
3. Tax Large Incomes
   
4. Tax Monopolies
   
5. Tax the Privileged Corporation
   
6. A Tariff for Revenue
   
7. Reform the Civil Service
   
8. Punish Corrupt Officers
   
9. Punish Vote Buying
   
10. Punish Employers Who Coerce their Employees in Elections

A couple of things are apparent after reading this. One, how little things seem to have changed in 125 years. Two, how the bullet-points really define legislative initiatives. And three, how an independent press used to be able to be a watchdog against bad government.

A person can dream can't he?