Welcome to Nixonville USA Mister President...

Bush's approval rating has dipped below thirty percent in the latest AP poll.
This is somewhere near to the mark set by Tricky Dick when he finally resigned and fled Washington just one step ahead of the constable's.
And yet for all that, Bush goes on with the ugly obstinate focus of a toddler insisting the World and the Baker Commission are wrong and he is right.
Meanwhile his old pals, the Saudis are happily raising funds for every suicide bomber in Iraq.

Yup Humble Elias has said it before, "win ugly, govern ugly" to which we can now add the codicil "lose ugly".
That is if you can call what Bush does "governance"...Mostly this entails nothing than gaseous asserting of utopian fantasies along with the unsubtle snarl of threats both personal and political.
It worked for a while, even got him re-elected (in the narrow sense of the term) but there is a big country out there that can be threatened or beguiled with fairy tales for only so long before other forces begin to assert themselves.

As I said yesterday, one is tempted to just change the channel and forget the whole catastrophe if it wasn't costing the nation in blood, tears, treasure and prestige.

Ah well, "Bush fatigue" cuts it both ways I guess.

Classic Joanie Vennochi today,

After we are done bombing Iraq into the stone age, after the GOP's preatorian class spend a merry three years calling the democrats faggots, cowards and traitors, after that maverick John McCain stood by and did nothing as those little tiny Purple Heart band aids were passed around at the '04 Republican Convention...now today we are supposed to find common ground with the very praetorian class that put took the USA right off a cliff.
Honestly, as a liberal and democrat if it wasn't costing the lives both US soldiers and innocent Iraqis and if was exacting a toll in treasure and prestige I'd be tempting to just walk away and tell the whole wretched Praetorian class to fix their own damn mishaugas.
Nothing but the worst sort of uplifting utopianisn brought this stupid adventure down on us, from the wowsers and mystics who bullied congress into approving the invasion to the thousands of starry eyed libertarian fanatics who swarmed the Green Zone after the war intent on tranforming Iraq into Ayn Rand's own earthly paradise.
Now today...we've got to find "common ground" with Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and that jewbaiting scoundrel James Baker?
Pardon me if I'm just a bit skeptical if even now, the other side is willing to negotiate in good faith.

Oh yeah...and Joanie gets off another inexplicable snark at the expense of John Kerry quote:
Kerry issued a press release that, in essence, said, "I told you so." The report, he said, "underscores what many of us have long been arguing: there is no military solution to our deep problems in Iraq": and he noted that the report calls for "a step for which I have been a strong advocate for over two years: a major diplomatic initiative bringing together others in the region."

Pride of authorship is not leadership. Who's going to lead us to the common ground?

in other words, Joani now realizes that JK was right about Iraq pretty much all along but she too spiteful to ever admit it.

As for a leader to take us to tha sacred plot, common ground?
Well all I can say is this, who wants to reach consensus with a bunch of crooks, thieves and cultists?

We are NotWinning the War

so sez incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Praetorian-speak is a weirdly limited language when it gets away from it's usual lexicon of threats and utopian fantasies.
Gates can't admit defeat or even say the word withdrawl, but he can clumsy execute a bad linguistic fandango around the concepts.
This is akin to the cherished habit of the Japanese Army in World War II which forbade the use of the hated word "retreat" when cutting orders. Thus soldiers of Hirohito (like Bush he was once revered as the "Son of the Sun")could be ordered to "turn around and advance" or some such twaddle as that.
So it would seem that GOP establishment has sent Gates in to settle Bush and Cheney down and prep the admin for some sort of pullout.
Such are the frayed flags of praetorian triumphalism, such is empire.

Twilight of the Neocons

First Rumsfeld, now UN Ambassador John Bolton has resigned.
It has indeed been a bad fortnight for the GOP's special cadre of uplifters and revolutionaries.
Who is next?
Cheney maybe?
Imagine what sort of useless hack Bush would nominate to serve out the remainder of the Vice President's term of office...Dan Quayle, Pete Dupont, the ashes of Meldrim Thompson?
The key there is to find someone even less popular and even more inane (if possible) than Bush himself. But as the President's approval ratings continue to spiral downwards his options could boil down to Galeazzo Ciano or perhaps Isabel Peron.
Ah but these boy-os were men of destiny but two years ago, they'd had their
Diebold Certified "accountability moment" and strutted around the nation sick with pride and bloated with ill gotten power.
Now look at them, sweating like stoolies at police headquarters and desperate for a way out.
This is all gratifying to watch if the country wasn't in such desperate straits.

Channel Zero has a good one on the whole Michael Richards' Affair

so I'll link to some entertainment blogging for once I guess.

Give Jeff Jacoby some credit...

even as the scurvy likes of Donald Rumsfeld are looking for a exit on Iraq, Jeff is still waving his cavalry sword in the air calling for more regiments to sent to Baghdad.
Jacoby has shown a commendable lack of imagination all down the line from those heady days when Bush strutted across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln like Peron on the balcony of the Casa Rosada.
However, even as he calls for more troops, more patrols, more search-n-destroy Jacoby betrays a certain lack of steadfastness.
Now as the shades of national dissolution fall 'round Iraq, Jeff could earn some consistency points by coming out for conscription in the USA, but alas even the Globe's Laughing Young Senescence quivers before that decision.
At this point though, more troops in Iraq means dropping recruitment standards, extending tours, rounding up stray National Guardsmen, arming the cooks a whole host of dubious measures designed to stave off the inevitable draft.
"There are no more men to be had" to quote Marshal Ney (I think it was Ney at least).
Humble Elias has a simple notion, if Jacoby McCain et al think sending more troops is the answer, then they ought to explain honestly where the men are gonna come from.

I just love when

I am right....

Back on June 23rd 2006 I had this to say about the whole matter...

Kerry Healey had better watch her mouth...
She now proposes to go screaming into the streets to demonstrate her freeper bona-fides as an anti-illegal immigration zealot.
Fine, she had to tack to the right at some point, it is entirely predictable that she'd do it in respect of an issue properly vetted by the Washington DC Praetorian Class.
But...Remember this me hearties...

It is IMPOSSIBLE to be truly rich in Massachusetts and NOT have hired an illegal immigrant to do something somewheres for your well-heeled ass. It might've been the crew that built your pre-gubernatorial palace by the sea on the North Shore or the crew that comes along and does the yardwork once a week. Sooner or later, someone without green-card one, has done the heavy lifting for you.

Oh Ghod this is truly truly lovely, sure it is Romney and not Healey thus the full weight of the prophecy is not felt, but then again the Viceroy wants to be President and this will make a wonderful attack ad.
Yesterday, Mitt was the next big thing on the right and today???

HAW HAW!