Can Your Ratings Be a Negative Number?

Many people are shocked at the latest poll showing that Bush's approval rating has dropped 8 more points to 34%. I must say I am completely astonished...how is it that a third of the people in this country can STILL think this man is doing a good job? Can that many people be so out of touch? Or is it just that the greedy, tax-cut-loving republicans will support Satan as long as their tax rates are kept low? Bush's next target is the 23% approval rating of the last totally corrupt republican president, Tricky Dicky, in 1974 just before he resigned in disgrace. It's a tough target to beat, but I'm confident he'll make it following the passage of his and Cheney's articles of impeachment by the new Congress after the November Democratic landslide.

South Dakota Chickens

What's the matter with the brave right wingers controlling the South Dakota legislature. Sure, they showed their bravado by passing a new law criminalizing abortion, but then they kowtowed to compromise by putting in an exception for when the mother's life is in danger. What cowards! Who do they think they are, playing God by deciding who should die in that situation? If they truly believe that the fetus is a person at conception, then who are they to decide whether a pregnant woman in imminent fear of death without a termination of her pregnancy should have any rights? After all, who says it's "her" pregnancy? Obviously, these crusaders for the fetus have decided that they are the ones to decide what happens to every fetus. Yup, they love the fetus...they believe in doing everything they can to protect a fetus UNTIL it is born. Then, the fact that children are born into poverty without access to decent medical care is not their problem. If a kid's parent decide to have children before they have saved enough money from their minimum wage jobs to create a decent trust fund for their offspring, well, that's just bad planning on their part...they didn't take advantage of all the wonderful tax cuts the republicans have provided. Now, that abortion is on the way out, they have turned their sights on the morning after pill. Just because a woman is raped or a victim of incest, apparently that gives her no rights over those of a potential fetus. The next step will be to make birth control pills illegal. Without these coming "reforms" from the republicans, we will have a situation where women might think about having sex outside of marriage, or even God forbid, for their own pleasure instead as part of their "wifely duties"!

But Officer, I Only Had One Beer With Dinner

Now that Deadeye Dick has come forward four days after shooting his friend in the head, we are all supposed to fall in line and buy his new found openness. I'm not saying the vice president of the United States was drunk when he shot his friend in the head. I'm just saying that his actions after he shot his friend in the head make perfect sense if he did. Cheney now admits to having "one beer with lunch" the day he shot his friend in the head. Many a police officer has heard this story when stopping a car weaving down the road. I'm sure it would be the first time a bunch of Texas bigwigs were drunk when they were driven by luxury automobiles to a spot where they could pour out of the cars and shoot a group of farm raised animals for their enjoyment. When the police showed up at the ranch to speak to Deadeye, they were told to come back the next morning. Try that next time you shoot your friend in the head, and see what the cops do.

Hey Dick...Yikes, Duck!

Maybe the gun nuts have the right idea after all. If all the right wing nut jobs agree to pen themselves in to those "shooting ranches" in Texas and take pot shots at each other, I say give them all the guns they want, including those automatic weapons the NRA recently made sure are available again. As you've probably heard (but not from the White House as they were obviously trying to keep this secret...from force of habit, I guess) Dick Cheney shot Harry M. Whittington, a 78-year-old attorney from Austin, who is a longtime supporter of President Bush and longtime friend of Karl Rove. This happened in Texas (where else!) at one of these "ranches" where rich old "sportsmen" gather to shoot animals that have been herded towards their guns by real outdoorsmen. Apparently, this gives these guys a feeling of being real hunters. I would imagine if they miss the animals herded towards them, then they probably get to shoot one of the birds still in its pen. Whittington was shot by Cheney after the two men got out of the car they were riding in to shoot some birds...ah, the thrill of the hunt!

All Duh News...

Today's news brings almost nothing that was not already apparent to anyone with half a brain. Among the "revelations" that would bring a response of "Duh, really" are: that the Bush administration cherry picked intelligence info to justify a rush to war with Iraq. Paul Pillar, aformer CIA official for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, writes in the Foreign Affairs journal that the White House used the intelligence to justify a decision it had already reached. Really, I'm shocked! We also find out that Michael "Heck of a job" Brown contacted Bush officials at his ranch a day earlier than previously revealed and they did nothing. "Brown testified Friday that he notified top White House and Homeland Security officials on the day that Hurricane Katrina roared ashore that "we were realizing our worst nightmare" and that New Orleans was seriously flooding. He dismissed as "just baloney" and "a little disingenuous" claims by agency officials that they didn't know about the severity of the damage until the next day." Once again I'm shocked that an administration tempered by the quick actions of a "leader" that reads a childrens book for seven minutes AFTER his country has been attacked, would stay on vacation for another day and ignore a Democratic city that was being flooded and whose people were dying. Finally, we learn that Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby testified that his "superiors" authorized him to leak classified information to reporters. Gee, I wonder who that superior was? It certainly would be out of character for Cheney to violate the law to attack an innocent person for base political reasons. Come on, media, please give us some "news" !

What's Hypocrisy Daddy?

My ten year old was doing his vocabulary homework the other night and asked me for the definition of one of his assigned words, hypocrisy. After a little thought, here's what I came up with. A bunch of right wing republicans are trying to justify Bush's crimes of directing illegal wiretapping by talking about the theory of the unitary executive, which proposes that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President. That crackpot theory effectively elevates the president to the level of King in that he is not limited by the actions of the legislative or judicial branches. Here's the definition of hypocrisy...take those same republicans and take them back in time to 1992 as Clinton is assuming office and ask them their opinion on the unitary executive. And to have even more fun ask them for their same opinion if the other Clinton was ever elected president!

A SOU Free Evening

So, I was at a meeting late last and didn't get home till 8:00. My kids appealed to my sense of guilt for being away all evening and asked if they could stay up till 9:00 and watch TV with me. What to do? Do I subject them to the spectacle of watching the speech reader for the soulless republican party recite the usual list of lies? Is it right to take the chance of having them see Cheney or Hastert die on camera of a heart attack as they try to heave their massive bulks out of their chairs a dozen times to applaud? Oh, look kids, there's a Dirty Jobs special on the Discovery Channel. I'm sure we enjoyed ourselves more (and learned more) than the poor people who subjected themselves to watching the so-called State of the Union. It's so much easier to watch or read the analysis after the litany of lies is broadcast. I'll ignore the first half of the speech that rehashed the same old lies about Iraq. And don't get me started on the hypocrisy of the Abramhoff party talking about the need to tighten ethical standards in politics! When the history of state of the union speeches is written years from now and they are rated from high to low, it will be noted that the blatant lies told in 2003 to justify an unjust war was the worst example of any use of this platform for setting policy. Close behind this will be the speech in 2006 that attempted to justify illegal spying on American citizens. So, what did we find out? We're addicted to oil! How insightful, coming from the spokesman for the pushers! Big Oil has run this administration's energy policy even since Cheney held his secret meeting with Ken Lay and all the Big Oil execs in the first weeks after their "win" in 2000. And what was their response this past year as we were suffering from massive increases in gasoline and natural gas prices? Why, a massive transfer of billions of our tax money to Big Oil under the guise of "encouraging exploration for new supplies". Gee, I'm not the smartest guy around but I think if I was running a large oil company and prices are at an all time high, I would probably want to make sure that the company is spending a few of the record billions of bucks in profits to ensure that I have a ready supply to sell. But that's just me, maybe if you're from Texas, you don't stick a shovel in the ground without a massive tax break. Glad I didn't waste my time watching last night's speech or any of Bush's readings of other people's words and ideas. Gee, by missing last year's speech I didn't hear about all the wonderful things that we're going to be done to reform Social Security this year. I'm sure anything Bush read last night will look just as irrelevant a year from now as Social Security reform looks today.