First Door on the Left

Bush’s approval ratings slide to new low

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush’s approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said.

In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush’s performance, 60 percent said they disapprove and 8 percent said they do not know.

Doesn’t really matter, though, because as Scott pointed out in a comment to a previous post… Mr. Bush does not make decisions based upon polls. Nevermind that 60% of us disapprove of the decisions he is making, and it is our country he is running, the blockhead is going to go right on doing things his way.

“Stay the course” will be the concession cry of Republicans everywhere in November of 2006 and 2008.

Where was this John Kerry in 2004?

The Real John Kerry Finally Stands Up

John Kerry came to national attention not because he was a war hero but because he was a dissenter. In 1971, he appeared on “The Dick Cavett Show,” testified before Congress, and electrified anti-war rallies with his message that the war was wrong. His phrase, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” was used for years to define his commitment and eloquence.

On Saturday in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, Kerry stood tall and proud and came to terms with what seemed so right in the 1970s and so wrong in 2004. He gave a speech about the American tradition of dissent and his own and others’ disagreement with Bush administration policies on both Vietnam and Iraq.

John Kerry ran against and lost to the worst president in the history of the United States. Now, he is making lots of noise about running again in 2008. It’s going to take a lot of convincing before I’ll be able to support him again. (Unless, of course, the Republicans go with somebody really stupid like McCain, Guiliana or Frist.)

Kerry

The new rules for taking leaks are published here.

In the event that you are too tired, lazy or just plain fed up to follow the link… I’ll republish them here:

Leaks to settle scores, make a point, rally the base or undermine the opposition are good and fully excusable. Classification and declassification are binary traits and, at the whim of our elected leaders may be turned off and on like a light switch. Occurence of the declassification is irrelevant to the leak itself as it’s covered under executive privilege.

Leaks that expose malevolent, illegal or corrupt behavior of the administration or its policies are bad, need to be pursued ad infinitum and mandatory minimums assigned to the traitors.

All the way from Australia…

Tide turns on Dubya’s wreck

SYDNEY, NSW, is a long way from Washington DC but, even at this distance, it is clear that the Bush Administration is falling to pieces.

In recent weeks, scanning the political coverage in the mainstream US media and sampling the blogs has been to watch a flood tide ebbing to reveal a rotting, skeletal hulk. It is the George W. Bush ship of fools, stuck in the mud for the world to see in all its mendacity, its incompetence, its faith-based stupidity.

It is possible, at this late stage, that even Bush himself has begun to realise something is wrong. That oddly simian face is ashen, the eyes leaden. The voice is shrill and its tone defensive.

“I’m the decider and I decide what’s best,” he squawked to reporters in the White House rose garden the other day, as the screws turned tighter on his disastrous Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Can you imagine Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Kennedy blurting something like that?

As always, click on the headline to continue reading.

In New Orleans, Dean Criticizes G.O.P. on Lack of Aid

NEW ORLEANS, April 22 — Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, offered a broad attack on the Republican Party on Saturday, saying the White House has “cut and run” in its approach to rebuilding this hurricane-ravaged region.

“Our current Republican government will be judged by how they treated Americans on our Gulf Coast, and how that government has mistreated our American community,” Mr. Dean said. “The Republicans have cut and run when it comes to rebuilding the Gulf Coast.”

Mr. Dean said Democrats attending the party’s spring meeting here had been dispatched across the area over the past three days, helping with cleanup and charity missions.

“Here in the Gulf Coast and around the country, we have seen our American community coming together as Americans, as we have in our responses this weekend,” he said. “That’s what we do as Americans: We band together, and we don’t leave anybody behind.”

There is nothing remarkable in that story so far. It is common knowledge that the Bush administration has completely botched the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

What is remarkable is the Republican response to Dr. Dean’s statement…

Tracey Schmitt, a spokesman for the Republican Party, responded to Mr. Dean’s remarks, saying: “The Democrats’ blame game rings hollow with Americans who prefer solutions over partisan attacks. While Howard Dean and his party remain committed to exploiting a great tragedy, this president remains committed to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, expanding our growing economy and winning the war on terror.”

Yep, it is without doubt that it is Howard Dean and his party who remain committed to exploiting a great tragedy…

The words Republican and hypocrite are becoming more synonymous by the day.

And so it starts. Under Fire, Top Democrat Is Leaving Ethics Panel. We can expect more of more of this kind of smear campaigning as the November elections draw nearer and the Republicans become more and more desperate.

Mr. Mollohan has been a congressman since 1982, but is facing a very serious challenge this fall. Only yesterday Vice President Dick Cheney visited his district to raise money for the campaign against him.

On Thursday, a leading West Virginia newspaper, The Charleston Daily Mail, ran an editorial calling on Mr. Mollohan to quit the ethics panel, joining The Washington Post and The New York Times, among several other papers. And in taped telephone calls over the last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee urged tens of thousands of registered voters in four districts, including Mr. Mollohan’s, to call him and tell him to do so.

This is the way they campaign, you see. Remember the Swift Boat Liars of 2004? They cannot convince you that they themselves have done anything good, so their only hope is to convince you that the other guys did something bad.

Let us not forget with whom this all started, however. The real poster-boy of bribery and corruption…

Tom DeLay

via The New York Post…

I say give the man a break. He’s had at least four heart attacks. Besides, being VP, especially George W. Bush’s VP, is extremely hard work. If anybody deserves a nappie every now and then, it’s Dick Cheney!

Update: Condi also caught a few winks.

This is the lowest I’ve seen yet, and it comes from (of all places) Fox News…

Bush Approval at New Low

More Americans disapprove than approve of how George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Congress are doing their jobs, while a majority approves of Condoleezza Rice. President Bush’s approval hits a record low of 33 percent this week, clearly damaged by sinking support among Republicans…

President Bush’s job approval rating slipped this week and stands at a new low of 33 percent approve, down from 36 percent two weeks ago and 39 percent in mid-March. A year ago this time, 47 percent approved and two years ago 50 percent approved (April 2004).

Approval among Republicans is below 70 percent for the first time of Bush’s presidency. Two-thirds (66 percent) approve of Bush’s job performance today, down almost 20 percentage points from this time last year when 84 percent of Republicans approved. Among Democrats, 11 percent approve today, while 14 percent approved last April.

33 percent. It kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

No wonder George W. Bush is such a big fan of China…

China carried out 80 percent of the world’s executions last year, the report said. Nearly 70 crimes carry the death penalty in that country, including nonviolent crimes such as tax fraud and embezzlement, the report said. (source)

The Worst President in History

The Worst President in History?

One of America’s leading historians assesses George W. Bush

George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty — and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression’s onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a “failure.” Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration’s “pursuit of disastrous policies.” In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton — a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

As we always say around here… click on the headline to read the whole thing.