Huckabee's heroes

The more strongly Mike Huckabee comes on in the polls, the more the disturbing trends behind his rise come to light. For example, his low-budget surge in Iowa is being fueled by his popularity amongst the right-wing home-schooling set:

While early attention focused on Romney and other better-known and better-funded opponents, home-schoolers rallied to Huckabee's cause, attracted by his faith, his politics and his decision to appoint a home-school proponent to the Arkansas board of education.

If people want to home school their kids, that's fine by me. But home schoolers have absolutely no place in setting policies for public education. With more and more focus on setting educational standards, putting hard-core Christianists on the policy boards of schools that they won't let their kids go to because they teach evolution seems to me like a trojan horse destined to introduce all sorts of backwards ideas into public education. Don't believe me?

"Even though the media makes it seem that we are a homogenous group of Bible-thumpers and flat-Earthers, there is a variety of opinion," Roe said.

Sure, some of them thump, others bang, a few lightly tap, and a small handful are content to merely wave it around. More disturbing, though, is that flat-Earthers are included in the "variety of opinion" that characterizes home schoolers, along with those who believe that everything revolves around the Earth and some who think that the Earth is really just the shell of a giant turtle swimming in a vast ocean.

These are the people helping to propel Huckabee towards center-stage. And unlike Bush, whose Rovian tactics cynically manipulated these people into voting for the dolt before dropping them like a hot potato to pursue more plutocratic policies, Huckabee seems to be one of them. I take some solace in knowing that the flat-Earth crowd and their fellow travelers make up a minority of the electorate - albeit a well-organized minority, but I'm a little bit fearful about those who would fall for Huckabee's version of economic populism and his "nice guy" persona.

The CEO we deserve

I've really got to hand it to George Bush. He promised to run this country like a corporate CEO, and bygod, it's the one statement that's crossed his lips that has actually been true. Like with this - faced with a lemon of a product (his foreign policy) that the world hates, rather than try to work out the kinks, he goes out and hires him a new PR flack to come up with a better ad campaign.

The only question I have: how does one fail upwards after being preznit?

Jonah's holding

Mama's little Goldberg has gotten hold of some powerful pills if this statement is any indication:

Me: I think history will be kinder to Bush than all of the smug prophecies and assurances that he's the "worst president ever" suggest. But, I'd be surprised if he's ranked alongside Reagan.

I'll leave alone the assertion that Reagan was a "great" president, and I'll probably just have to suck it up and admit that the dominant historical narrative for the foreseeable will be that Reagan "won" the Cold War (again, a dubious proposition). Given all that, Bush won't even come close to being alongside Reagan. Sorry, Jonah. Bush isn't the worst president ever (that spot will be retained by current basement dweller James Buchanan - Bush only precipitated a civil war in somebody else's country). I mean, can we name a success for the Bush presidency, besides winning an election (yes, just one election)? He managed to turn universal goodwill into international disdain over the course of a dozen months after 9/11. His War on Terror has actually caused terrorism to increase in the intervening six years. NCLB? Failure. Social Security reform? Failure. Civil liberties? Thoroughly trashed. Government corruption? Endemic. His poll numbers are downright Nixonian. He's leaving the GOP in disarray. His fiscal policies have turned surpluses into deficits.

Seriously, I can't think of one thing that the Bush Administration can legitimately claim as a success, other than orchestrating a string of electoral and political wins. Not one thing.

Now, to be fair to Jonah, who is, after all, high as a kite, I don't think history will be much crueler to Bush than his contemporary critics. We all know he is the dauphin king, a dolt who failed upwards to greatness. No, history will be much crueler to the rest of us for letting him get away with the damage he's caused.

Priorities

Our preznit arrives on the scene of an impending economic crisis:

President Bush sought to calm nervous investors, while the Federal Reserve plowed $3.75 billion into the financial system on Tuesday, the latest efforts to stanch a spreading credit crisis that has unhinged Wall Street.

Wall Street? It's cool. We've got your back.

As for you poor schleps who are about to lose your homes because of predatory lending practices, you can go right ahead and fuck yourselves.

Haven't we seen this movie before?

So, it's August, and something's about to go terribly awry. Do you know where your president is?

Worries about the deepening housing slump and an intensifying credit crunch consumed an increasingly anxious Wall Street last week, but President Bush barely broke stride.

Bush went mountain biking and cleared a trail on his ranch here as the stock market gyrated Thursday. When asked whether the president was concerned, Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, responded with confidence: "As President Bush has said, the U.S. economy is fundamentally sound, and so we expect to see continued economic growth."

If history is any indication, we are completely fucked.

Petulant president pisses on poor children

What a load of horseshit:

President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance.

The president said he objects on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has proposed $5 billion in increased funding and has threatened to veto the Senate compromise and a more costly expansion being contemplated in the House.

"Objects on philosophical grounds," my ass. Bush will expand public spending when it serves to enrich his cronies or allows him to play toy soldier in the Situation Room, but expend some scratch to provide poor kids with some health care? He's got to pretend to have principles.

The sociologist in me always wants to warn that there are structural tendencies which compel political leaders to act in certain ways, but the folks in the Bush administration are downright evil.

The decider

I suppose I should be heartened that Bushco is doing something to try to avert the disaster in Darfur, despite being somewhat cynical about the whole sanctions business, with reason. But something towards the end of Bush's prepared comments really rubbed me the wrong way:

The people of Darfur are crying out for help, and they deserve it.

I've long ago accepted that most popular media sources will present news as a narrative where there are good people and bad people, people who deserve our sympathies and those who've earned our enmity. The decision about what color hat a person wears is made by a small number of people, usually in their own interest, unless a determined collective effort by the general public forces the elites to pay attention, as may be the case with Darfur.

It's a fucking travesty that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cabal are the people making the decisions of who is worthy of the Imperial Benevolence of the United States. And it's even worse to know that they probably really believe that they're imposing a pax Americana.

But he's the Decider.

For fuck's sake

By the look of it, the crack where I'll be moving is dy-no-mite:

Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.

No, he's not. Having a "diverse" cabinet merely masks an administration that has persistently pursued goals and utilized methods that are racist and misogynistic. The Iraq war was never about freeing the Iraqi people. The Bush years were emphatically not a period of misunderstood and mismanaged idealism. In one way or another, it has been about feeding a private elite from the public trough, like Reaganism on steroids.

Sorry, but Bush is all conservative. And I don't really want any of what you're smoking.

What digby sez

True dat:

Just as the nation wanted a "fun" president, George W. Bush also surrounded himself with guys he'd like to have a beer with --- and naturally those guys are halfwits just like he is. I guess we should be thankful that he wasn't allowed to put Gonzales or Miers on the Supreme Court.

Be very, very afraid

Glenn Greenwald has the low-down on a luncheon between Bush and his neocon Rasputins:

[T]he more unpopular the President becomes as a result, the more of a failure these policies are, the more strongly they tell him to ignore all of that, that none of it matters, that his God and history will conclude that he did The Right Thing, provided that he continues steadfastly to pursue their agenda. And the President believes that. That is why nothing will stop him in pursuing the path he created years ago when, in January, 2002, he became convinced to name not only Iraq, but also Iran, as standing members of the "Axis of Evil" (even though our relations with Iran were rapidly improving at the time) and cited the 9/11 attacks in order to all but vow war on those countries, despite their having nothing to do with those attacks. The President's "lessons" at the feet of neoconservatives continue, and he is as faithful a student as ever.

Read the whole piece. The delusions of this group of "scholars" are matched only by the willingness of George W. Bush to believe them.

Soak the rich

digby has struck the populist chord with me tonight. For the last six years, the GOP and its wealthy benefactors have thrown the nastiest orgy since the good lord rained fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and now they want to know who is going to clean the santorum off of the suede.

So let's tax the ever-living shit out of them. Really. Tax the holy hell out of the richest .1%'s income. We'll worry about the wealth later. Let's start here. And much higher rates for the wealthiest 10% as well.

Oh, and since so many of them were so gung-ho about the Bush wars when Chicken Little was a hero for those couple of years, since so many acted as enablers to this gang of paranoid delusionists, let's draft their children.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

According to the Guardian, advisors to the current military command in Baghdad are giving the United States one more Friedman to get it right in Iraq:

An elite team of officers advising US commander General David Petraeus in Baghdad has concluded the US has six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The obvious question that comes to my mind is, "What does 'win the war' actually mean?" Seeing as how are rationale for invading Iraq in the first place changes with the weather, I'm hard-pressed to visualize what "victory" might look like.

More damning, however:

Their biggest headache was insufficient numbers of troops on the ground despite the increase ordered by Mr Bush, the former official said. "We don't have the numbers for the counter-insurgency job even with the surge. The word 'surge' is a misnomer. Strategically, tactically, it's not a surge," an American officer said.

According to the US military's revised counter-insurgency field manual, FM 3-24, authored by Gen Petraeus, the optimum "troop-to-task" ratio for Baghdad requires 120,000 US and allied troops in the city alone. Current totals, even including often unreliable Iraqi units, fall short of that number. The deficit is even greater in conflict areas outside Baghdad.

"Additional troops are essential if we are to win," said Lt-Col John Nagel, another Petraeus confidant and co-author of the manual, in an address at the US Naval Institute in San Diego last month. One soldier for every 50 civilians in the most intense conflict areas was key to successful counter-insurgency work. Compounding the manpower problems is an apparently insurmountable shortage of civilian volunteers from the Pentagon, state department and treasury. They are needed to staff the additional provincial reconstruction teams and other aid projects promised by Mr Bush.

Let's remember: this is coming from the "commanders on the ground" on whose recommendations Bush is supposedly basing his strategy. I find it hard to believe that Bush was unaware that 20,000 additional troops would be an inadequate number before announcing the plan. In other words, more blood, more money, same result.

Criminal incompetence.

Just in case you haven't run across it anywhere else yet

I can think of someone who should utilize his mental health benefits

To answer dave's question, the Bush health care plan is a crock of shit. Note the following:

President Bush will propose a deep tax break for Americans who purchase their own medical insurance and would finance it with an unprecedented tax on a portion of high-priced health-care plans that workers receive from their employers, according to the White House.

The initiative, which the president briefly previewed in his radio address yesterday, has a dual purpose: It would create a financial incentive for the estimated 46 million to 48 million Americans who lack health insurance to buy it. And it would rein in the soaring cost of health insurance by encouraging workers in high-priced plans to seek more modest coverage.

While it's tempting to focus on the "financial incentive" to buy health insurance for the uninsured - an incentive which would be of dubious consequence for many of the reasons dave points out - the real pernicious part of this plan is how these tax incentives would be financed.

First, the Bush plan makes the assumption that health care premium costs are driven by workers who want "high-priced [health] plans" (read: plans which allow them regular access to quality health care). This assumption is flat-out wrong. Premium cost increases are not driven by consumer demand for better coverage any more than they are by medical malpractice lawsuits. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: health care premium increases are driven by swollen administrative costs, which are increasing at roughly three times the rate of actual medical expenditures. (Ironically, an out-of-control, inefficient administrative apparatus is always the canard tossed out against universal health care).

More significantly, the plan literally robs Peter to pay for Paul. The money to subsidize the uninsured will come from new taxes on the health care plans of employees in "high-priced" plans. So, middle-class professionals and workers who have collectively negotiated a great health care plan can expect to see their benefits taxed. I think there is an intentionally placed trojan horse here for organized labor. Imagine your next health care negotiations with the boss telling you that they're slashing your benefits in order to save your members from paying higher taxes. Nightmarish.

Fortunately, there's hope the idea may be DOA in committee:

Still, some leading Democrats are skeptical of the plan. "It is good that the president is finally talking about health care," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate committee that oversees health-care matters. "I question, however, why the president thinks the way to solve this problem is through the tax code."

Let's hope the Bush plan never sees the light of day, because it - much like everything else this administration has produced - is a huge, stinking turd.

Hedging bets

Let the equivocating begin!

Top U.S. defense officials told a Senate panel today that President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq to quell the country's violence can succeed only if the Iraqi government makes good on its military, political and economic commitments, and they held out the prospect that such an outcome could lead to U.S. troop withdrawals later in the year.

So if Bush's escalation fails, it's everyone's fault but his. Or worse.

A parallel

Something occurred to me reading this statement:

Mr Bush and his most senior staff embarked on a huge public relations exercise to sell the plan to send an extra 20,000 troops to Iraq, aware of formidable opposition in Congress which already promises an embarrassing vote next week rejecting the new strategy.

The last time a massive PR blitz came in the face of public opposition and Congressional skepticism was in early 2005 with Bush's Social Security privatization scheme. IIRC, Bush's stock fell as he waged that campaign. Now, facing into an even stronger headwind, might we see the 30 percent barrier cracked?

Georgie plays with his Christmas toys

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. Dick Cheney George W. Bush is asserting himself as Commander in Chief:

When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against.

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. "It's important to trust the judgment of the military when they're making military plans," he told The Washington Post in an interview last month. "I'm a strict adherer to the command structure."

I'm fairly certain none of us are surprised that Bush's vaunted "commanders-on-the-ground" schtick was anything but bullshit, given the disdain he'd shown for the professionals within the intelligence bureaucracies during the run-up to the war. But the picture of the petulant dauphin lashing out after being told, in no uncertain terms, that his behavior was unacceptable and must be changed is disturbing:

But over the past two months, as the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated and U.S. public support for the war has dropped, Bush has pushed back against his top military advisers and the commanders in Iraq: He has fashioned a plan to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground. As Bush plans it, the military will soon be "surging" in Iraq two months after an election that many Democrats interpreted as a mandate to begin withdrawing troops.

In this context, in what other way are we to interpret Bush's plans for escalating the war than as a giant "Fuck you!" to the American people? And additionally, shouldn't we be more than a little worried about the article's assertion that Bush himself "fashioned a plan?"

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq.

Why do I get the bad, bad feeling that we're picking sides in Baghdad's civil war?

What matters

The last two paragraphs in a piece on Saddam's execution from the Guardian:

The funeral came as it was reported that the US death toll in Iraq since the invasion had reached 3,000. The US military had disclosed yesterday that an American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday, the 2,999th death since the invasion in 2003. But the website www.icasualties.org, yesterday also listed the death of Specialist Dustin Donica, 22, on December 28 as previously unreported, bringing the total to 3,000.

George Bush is expected to face renewed domestic political pressure following the latest milestone. Although the 3,000 figure is symbolically important for Americans, Iraqis suffer that rate of casualties on a monthly basis.

Don't pull out!

via digby

Priceless (but so not work-safe!):

Toy soldiers

I don't like these rumblings coming from the White House:

"The president is pleased with the progress being made" in the [Iraq] strategy review, White House spokesman Blain K. Rethmeier said. Rethmeier declined to discuss details of the briefing at Camp David or which options appear to be more likely to be adopted. "The president is leaving all options on the table on the way forward. [emphasis mine]"

Oh my. When all options are on the table, George W. Bush has a horrifying tendency to choose - and stick with - the worst option of the bunch. And all indicators point to another disastrous decision.