Rah, rah, rah
I’m a bit behind on my blog-reading, but I have to put a link in to The Bait and Switch President, one of those rare blogs that is very hard to stop reading:
We just finished listening to the President’s speech announcing his new strategy in Iraq. But, hard as we tried, we heard little new or strategic. We heard his heritage as a cheeleader, not as a player. [...]
Criticism of the war and calls for a timetable hurt the troops (This is the loudest of his cheerleader cries. He thinks you support the players by supporting the coach’s mistaken strategy. Someone who actually had fought in a war might understand the gravity of our troops’ sacrifices and might listen to alternative views).
It’s also great to see the media finally taking serious notice of our administration’s incompetence by discussing the possibility of impeachment in more than an offhand way. Recently Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) itemized 13 potentials causes for impeachment and the MSNBC site is running an impeachment poll. As of today, 86% of the 183,000 voters in the poll favor impeachment. You can add your vote here.
For those favoring more conservative journals, Barron’s ran this piece:
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
What I don’t understand is why we are seeing a recent upturn in Bush’s approval ratings, which had heading into the high 30-percentile earlier in the year (and is now back into the 40′s). How is it that Bush can pull this off? A few statements acknowledging “mistakes” (and yet not laying any plan for dealing them) can’t possibly explain it. Perhaps it’s irrational end-of-year euphoria?
