Wow

From the Associated Press:

Nearly four out of five Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, believe civil war will break out in Iraq — the bloody hot spot upon which Bush has staked his presidency. Nearly 70 percent of people say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a 6-point jump since February.

"Obviously, it's the winter of our discontent," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

Republican Party leaders said the survey explains why GOP lawmakers are rushing to distance themselves from Bush on a range of issues — port security, immigration, spending, warrantless eavesdropping and trade, for example.

The positioning is most intense among Republicans facing election in November and those considering 2008 presidential campaigns.

"You're in the position of this cycle now that is difficult anyway. In second term off-year elections, there gets to be a familiarity factor," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a potential presidential candidate.

"People have seen and heard (Bush's) ideas long enough and that enters into their thinking. People are kind of, `Well, I wonder what other people can do,'" he said.

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

Add this to the GOP headache: "Two-thirds of the public disapproves of how the GOP-led Congress is handling its job and a surprising 53 percent of Republicans give Congress poor marks."

The Democrats have been handed a great opportunity here, and I am absolutely certain they will blow it.

I Feel Safer Already

First, we had the 24-year-old Bible-Beater with no science background -- and, as it turned out, no degree from Texas A&M despite his claim to the contrary -- appointed by BushCo as a public-affairs officer in NASA. That particular individual resigned in disgrace last month.

Now we have this:

The Bush administration has appointed 28-year-old former White House staffer Doug Hoelscher as the executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Committees.

In his new position, Hoelscher will gather expert advice “on behalf of the president and the Homeland Security secretary” from 20 other advisory boards covering “key areas of homeland security, including threats to infrastructure and preventing terrorist attacks that use weapons of mass destruction.”

His experience?

Hoelscher has no management experience, a review of his professional credentials shows. He came to government in 2001 as a low-level White House staffer, arranging presidential travel, according to news reports. He earned $30,000 a year, salary documents show.

When I read about stuff like this, I wonder just how hard it would have been for me to get one of those choice positions in the Bush Administration.

First, I would have had to pretend that I was a Bible-beating, fundamental extremist religious nutjob. That probably would have been pretty easy -- just say the word "Ja-hEE-sus" all the time and act like a freaking idiot, and you're there. The hard part would have been pretending that I actually thought Bush was the greatest person in the world. I would have had to go around saying stuff like this:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

That would have been tough.

Gallup Has More Bad News For Bush

This is good:

The Feb. 28 to March 1 poll finds 38% of Americans approving and 60% disapproving of Bush's job as president, within a point of his lowest approval rating and tied for his highest disapproval rating.

When Americans were asked a follow-up of whether they strongly approve or disapprove of Bush, more than twice as many Americans say they strongly disapprove (44%) as say they strongly approve (20%) of Bush. The strong disapproval rating is the highest Gallup has measured for Bush by a percentage point, and is the highest for any president since Richard Nixon during the Watergate era.

Nixon is the only other president to register strong disapproval ratings above 40% in Gallup Polls. Nixon had a 48% strong disapproval rating in February 1974, and a 46% rating days before he resigned from office in August 1974. Gallup first asked about strength of approval during the Lyndon Johnson administration, and has asked it periodically for every president since.

This article from the Washington Post helps explain why Bush's support in the G.O.P. is so soft:

If the ancient political wisdom is correct that a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to, the Bush White House pleaded guilty yesterday at the Cato Institute to some extraordinary allegations.

"We did ask a few members of the Bush economic team to come," explained David Boaz, the think tank's executive vice president, as he moderated a discussion between two prominent conservatives about President Bush. "We didn 't get that."

Now why would the administration pass up such an invitation?

Well, it could have been because of the first speaker, former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," Bartlett called the administration "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It might also have had something to do with speaker No. 2, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Author of the forthcoming "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back," Sullivan called Bush "reckless" and "a socialist," and accused him of betraying "almost every principle conservatism has ever stood for."

Nor was moderator Boaz a voice of moderation. He blamed Bush for "a 48 percent increase in spending in just six years," a "federalization of public schools" and "the biggest entitlement since LBJ."

Republicans are faced with a big problem in the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections. It is pretty much impossible at this point for any GOP member of Congress who is up for reelection to continue his or her support for Bush and his programs, given that Bush is the most unpopular president in a generation. Some candidates may have to adopt the approach of Bartlett and Sullivan and take the position that Bush has betrayed true conservative sensibilities. This will be a difficult approach to take, given that all of these Republicans are no doubt on the record giving their full support to Bush and his policies during the past several years.

One of the favorite G.O.P. terms from the last election cycle was "flip-flopper." Kerry was constantly accused of being one of those. The Democrats should be able to use this phrase repeatedly and to great effect in the run-up to the mid-terms against any GOP candidate who attempts to distance himself from Bush. The Republican candidates who decide to support Bush can be attacked at will for supporting a failed presidency, and the ones who pull their support for Bush can be attacked as flip-floppers who are merely trying to ride the political winds.

It should be a good show.

Toles

South Dakota's Double Secret Exception To Abortion Ban

From Think Progress:

[R]eporters evidently missed the comments of South Dakota State Rep. Roger Hunt (R), the main sponsor of the legislation, who said he carved “a little gray area” into the bill to allow for abortions in cases of rape or incest. TIME reports:

In other words, a woman presenting herself to an emergency room immediately after a rape, Hunt says, would be able to use emergency contraception; the trick is that she has to do within the first few days after the assault, before any test can determine whether she was pregnant in the first place. The lawmakers concluded that it’s OK for a rape victim to have an abortion, so long as she doesn’t know for certain that she’s doing it.

Additionally, as Digby pointed out, State Rep. Bill Napoli (R) said on PBS Newshour that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. Napoli outlined one such scenario:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Therefore, according to lawmakers in South Dakota, you can have an abortion after rape or incest…but only if you are a virgin, religious, brutally sodomized, and not entirely sure whether the rapist or family member actually impregnated you.

Well, I'm sure glad they cleared all that up.

Trent Lott: Global Warming Will Keep The Heating Bill Down For Poor Folks

Way to go, Trent:

With a bipartisan alliance that included Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed and moderate Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine arguing passionately in favor of badly-needed emergency funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Lott took to the microphone to give his take on providing warm homes to the elderly and disabled.

"What is it we are not going to give people for free? Is there any limit? Is there any limit to the amount of money?" asked Lott, adding snidely "I thought we were having global warming."

Nice.

Karma

Katherine Harris is paying a price for her past misdeeds (via Political Wire):

"Already trying to avoid the media," Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) "is now canceling campaign stops in Southwest Florida as questions swirl about her ties to a Washington, D.C., defense contractor at the center of an ongoing national bribery scandal," the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports.

"It's another sign that Harris' struggling campaign is now in full crisis mode. Political consultants say that shying away from the public right now is also a bad strategy."

Murtha On Face The Nation

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) said this today on Face the Nation with regard to the Iraq Debacle (via Think Progress):

MURTHA: The public is way ahead of what’s going on in Washington. They no longer believe it. The troops themselves, 70 percent of the troops said we want to come home within a year. The only solution to this is to redeploy. Let me tell you, the only people who want us in Iraq is Iran and al-Qaeda. I’ve talked to a top-level commander the other day, it was about two weeks ago, and he said China wants us there also. Why? Because we’re depleting our resources, our troop resources and our fiscal resources.

SCHIEFFER: Now, Congressman, when you say al-Qaeda wants us there, why would al-Qaeda want us there?

MURTHA: Because we’re depleting our resources. A very small proportion of what’s going on in Iraq — they’ve diverted their attention away from the war on terrorism. The war on terrorism is worldwide. In Iraq, it’s a civil war. We have diverted ourselves away from that war on terrorism.

Is Chertoff Being Handed His Hat?

From John Gizzi at Human Events OnLine (via Political Wire):

In the aftermath of the public revelation of the presidential "teleconference" and mounting criticism of the performance of Michael Chertoff, Administration sources told HUMAN EVENTS today that the secretary of Homeland Security has "only a few days left" in the Bush Cabinet.

As one source acquainted with the former federal prosecutor and U.S. appellate judge said under promise of anonymity, "They will give [Chertoff] a little time so it won't hurt his reputation too much, but he's probably got only a few days left."

A senior administration official is refuting Gizzi's sources, but there it is.

Bush Lied -- But You'll Never Hear It From The Corporate Media

From Media Matters:

On March 2, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today reported on newly released video footage and transcripts documenting how, on the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, President Bush was warned -- and expressed concern -- over the possibility that the levees in New Orleans would be breached by the storm. But none of the reports mentioned that these new accounts of government deliberations before the storm further contradict the claim Bush made on ABC's Good Morning America several days after the storm hit that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," which was debunked even at the time.

By contrast, a March 2 Associated Press report noted that, contrary to Bush's claim that the levee breaches were completely unexpected, "the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility -- and Bush was worried too." A March 2 Los Angeles Times article also suggested that the new footage conflicts with Bush's claim that the levee breaches were unanticipated.

Can you imagine how low Bush's approval numbers would be if the Corporate Media actually did some real reporting for a change?

Here Is Some Must-See Katrina-Related Video

What surprised me about this video isn't that Bush comes off looking like an idiot -- what else is new -- but that Brownie comes off actually looking competent.

Thanks for the link, JB.

UPDATE: The above-referenced video appears to have set off a bit of a shit-storm:

The public release of confidential video shot during high-level government briefings about Hurricane Katrina touched off a new partisan skirmish Thursday.

As some Democrats called for a new probe into the federal response to the massive August storm, the White House issued a point-by-point press release defending the Bush administration's actions during Katrina.

The Associated Press obtained the government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans, who have witnessed months of post-disaster fingerpointing and political recriminations, their own inside glimpse into the government’s fateful final Katrina preparations. Video from Aug. 28 showed President Bush appearing confident and his homeland security chief appearing relaxed.

But warnings of the coming destruction — breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues — were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved.

“My gut tells me ... this is a bad one and a big one,” then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

Abortion

Danimal put up an interesting post over at his blog dealing with the abortion issue. He asked his readers to chime in on this question: "Will women have a federal constitutional right to an abortion five years from now?" He got some pretty good responses.

I'm thinking that a woman's right to choose might be limited over the next few years but that there will be no federal ban. Although Justice Kennedy's real position on abortion is unclear, I doubt he'd support an outright ban, meaning that Bush will need to appoint one more ScAlito-type justice to make his dream of banning abortion become reality. Plus, I'm not entirely convinced that Chief Justice Roberts would vote for a ban, even though his vote on the Oregon Death With Dignity Act makes it appear that he would.

Plus, the folks who will really be pushing for a ban are the members of the radical religious right, and I think the political dominance of these extremists is coming to an end, much like the days of the neoconservatives are coming to an end. I'm thinking that the Terri Schiavo debacle will ultimately be viewed as the Religious Right's Iraq. Even though the Corporate Media kept insisting that the country was "split" on the Schiavo deal, the truth was that 80% of the country thought the fundamentalists were off their rockers on that one, and the extremists may never recover from that politically. Schiavo demonstrated just how disconnected the religious right is from reality.

And I'm getting the feeling that America is finally beginning to emerge from its Dark Age after coming perilously close to turning into a fascist theocratic state; and it may not ultimately matter who is on the Supreme Court because I don't think you can discount the power generated from such a changing political mood.

Two years ago, I thought that this country was heading into some pretty dark times politically. Tom DeLay was at the height of his power back then; and when he made his claim that he was going to ensure that the GOP would be the dominant party for decades to come, I thought he just might succeed at achieving that, particularly given that the Democrats seemed incapable of effectively challenging DeLay's malevolent "thousand-year reich"-type vision.

But despite the Democrats' ineffectiveness, the American people appear to be coming around. Bush's approval rating is at 34%; and even though the corporate media is doing their best to help Bush, he has a 30% approval rating on his handling of Iraq. Remarkably, most Americans now say that Bush does not care much about people like themselves. And the once-powerful Tom DeLay appears to be on the brink of joining Newt Gingrich in the dust bin of disgraced GOP leaders.

Americans appear to be waking up. Whether this process of waking up will spill over into areas such as the abortion debate is yet to be seen, but I am hopeful.

My question is this: Are most Americans merely one terror attack away from going back to sleep again? Here's hoping we'll never find out.

What Will Scooter's Defense Be?

Memory loss.

From The Daily Nightly via Talking Points Memo:

Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team confirms the news.

Schacter, who has been at Harvard since 1991 and who has a 29-page resume, is the author of "The Seven Sins of Memory" and "Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past." His books offer explanations for the "vulnerability of memory." Schacter writes that if we are distracted as an event unfolds, "we may later have great difficulty remembering the details of what happened." Time, of course, often weakens our memory. And, he writes, it is easy to "unwittingly create mistaken -- though strongly held -- beliefs about the past."

Libby's lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be "central themes" of Libby's defense. Libby's lawyers write: "...any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory."

Libby's lawyers say that, during Libby's hectic days handling sensitive national-security matters, "it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status."

Libby has been charged with lying to investigators about his role in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's role as a CIA operative. His trial is scheduled to begin in January 2007.

Scooter should send a copy of one of Schacter's books to each of his friends so that they don't forget to contribute to his defense fund.

No WMD In Iraq? Blame It On God

This is pretty funny:

[S]ome of the president's allies are still out there, arguing creatively that the WMD are real and may still be found. Last week, it was Fox News military analyst Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force Lt. Gen., who insisted that Russian Special Forces entered Iraq before the invasion and moved the WMD to Syria.

Oddly enough, as The New Republic reported, around the same time, another White House ally had an even more imaginative idea about the missing weapons.

Bill Tierney, who served as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the late '90s, told National Review Online this week that he would look to God to direct him to possible WMD sites. "God is my intel," Tierney told NRO. His belief in the existence of a uranium-enrichment plant near Tarmiyah was supported, he said, by the fact that a friend had seen it in a dream.

Indeed, Tierney is quite the theorist. He also said that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 anthrax attacks. In time, Tierney believes, all of his ideas will be vindicated.

It Gets Uglier

It looks like the Katrina Catastrophe, the "Uranium From Africa" Prevarication, the Tora Bora Mishap, PlameGate, the Terri Schiavo Blunder, the Jack Abramoff Scandal, the Iraq Misadventure, the Medicare Disaster, the Dubai Debacle, and the host of other BushCo malfeasances are finally starting to take their toll on Bush's poll numbers:

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement. * * *

Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

Unfortunately for Bush, the two things that are really hurting him right now -- the Dubai Port Deal and the Civil War in Iraq -- will probably remain big stories for quite a while.

William F. Buckley On Iraq: "It Didn't Work"

Last week it was Francis Fukuyama and Bill O'Reilly. And now it is William F. Buckley who has admitted failure in Iraq:

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

It's time to get out of there. Unfortunately, Bush has staked his entire presidency on his Iraq policy, so I'm not expecting an American withdrawal anytime soon.

Dems Now Competitive On National Security Thanks To BushCo's Port Deal

From Rasmussen Reports:

From a political perspective, President Bush's national security credentials have clearly been tarnished due to the outcry over this issue. For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President.

The preference for the opposition party is small, but the fact that Democrats are even competitive on the national security front is startling. In Election 2002, the President guided his party to regain control of the Senate based almost exclusively on the national security issue. On Election Day that year, just 23% rated the economy as good or excellent, but the President's Party still emerged victorious.

In Election 2004, national security was again the decisive issue as the President won re-election. Voters consistently expressed a preference for George W. Bush over John Kerry when it came to issues surrounding the War on Terror.

That 41% number for Bush is indeed startling. Is this just merely a short-term slide based on the outcry over the Port Debacle, or are Americans finally abandoning their "Only Bush Can Protect Us From The Terrorists" delusion and finally coming to the realization that Bush is himself a threat to national security? If the latter is true, then Bush and the Republicans are in big trouble, because the national security issue has been their bread and butter for the past few years.

Sad But Inevitable

From The Christian Science Monitor:

An attack Wednesday that destroyed the soaring gold dome of one of ShiiteIslam's holiest shrines is being interpreted by most Shiites here as a direct attack on their faith - and has sharply raised sectarian tensions.

It's unclear if any people were killed in the massive explosion in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. But the destruction of the shrine may be the most emotionally charged of attacks on Shiite targets thus far in the war, and could set back already hamstrung efforts to form a government of Shiite and Sunni unity.

As citizens deserted the streets of Baghdad in the wake of the attack, many said they feared this could be a seminal moment in Iraq's low-intensity civil war.

"The war could really be on now,'' says Abu Hassan, a Shiite street peddler who declined to give his full name. "This is something greater and more symbolic than attacks on people. This is a strike at who we are."

UPDATE: You know things are bad in Iraq when even Bill O'Reilly wants us to get the hell out, which is an interesting flip-flop given that just last November on NBC's Today, O'Reilly "called those advocating immediate withdrawal from Iraq 'pinheads' and compared them to Hitler appeasers."

It Begins

From Reuters:

South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure. The law, which would punish doctors who perform the operation with a five-year prison term and a $5,000 fine, awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Michael Rounds and people on both sides of the issue say he is unlikely to veto it.

Enough Is Enough

Even Tom DeLay is opposing Bush's port sale:

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay said Wednesday that President Bush is making a big mistake backing a sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

The former Republican majority leader said the administration's approval of the deal is "pretty outrageous." DeLay made the remarks during a campaign event with Houston real estate executives.

Who's next? Is Laura Bush herself going to come out against this port deal?

This latest ploy to give the GOP members of Congress who are running for reelection a chance to distance themselves from our unpopular president is starting to get pretty obvious, Karl. Stick to attacking war veterans instead -- you are much better at that.