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He’d never attack Iran would he?

Of course he would.

Congress needs to pass something like the Boland Amendment that any military attack on Iraq errr…Iran (updated) requires the explicit approval of Congress. Then when he does it anyway, impeach him.

No, I’m not kidding. Any Democrat who doesn’t stand up for this sort of thing ought to be defeated in the primaries. It’s hard to imagine how devastating such an attack would have on the world and would destroy the United States’ chance to recover from this miserable Presidency.

I remember watching WWL-TV and the following interview with Ray Nagin:

Mayor Nagin appears on WWLTV to provide viewers with a “status report” on the city:

“My heart is heavy. I don’t have any good news to really share. Other than at some point in time the federal government will be coming in here in mass. But, the city is in a state of devastation. Eighty percent of it is under water, as much as 20 feet in some places. There’s an incredible amount of water in the city. Residents are on roofs and trapped in attics, awaiting rescue. Fire, Police, and National Guard personnel are out rescuing those trapped right now. Both airports are under water.

Twin spans in New Orleans East are totally destroyed. Three huge boats have run aground. An oil tanker has run aground and is leaking oil. There is a serious [floodwall-levee] break at 17th Street Canal,” and the water continues to rise.

Houses have been picked up off their foundation and moved. The Yacht Club has burned; it’s totally destroyed. A barge has hit one of the main structures of High Rise (a bridge/span) and we’re not sure that the High Rise is structurally sound.

All of Slidell is under water. Most of Metaraie is under water. “The list just goes on and on.” There are gas leaks throughout the city. It’s not a pretty picture. On the somewhat good news side, many people have survived. Uptown is pretty dry. The French Quarter and Central Business District is dry, but they also have buildings that look like a bazooka was shot through. There is no clear path in or out of the city, whether east or west. I-10 West is still full of water.…

The water system has been contaminated except for the Central Business District and Algiers. We have no electricity and they expect electricity to be out about 4-6 weeks. “And the list goes on and on.” Nagin reports that flooding is worst in New Orleans East and in the Lower 9th Ward, but it’s “coming from everywhere.”

Nagin is basing his information on a briefing he received, apparently from Marty Evans, President of the Red Cross. Nagin states that he is reading from a briefing provided by a FEMA official (later identified as Marty Bahamonde). “The FEMA guy here is saying that 80 percent of New Orleans is under water and a significant portion of Metaraie and Kenner—everything north of I-10 is under water.” Nagin also reports that St. Bernard is in even worse shape: “There is total devastation in St. Bernard alone.”

But Michael Chertoff didn’t know the levee was breached until late the next morning. He’s still running Homeland Security. Why?

More from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department’s headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

“FYI from FEMA,” said an e-mail message from the agency’s public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires.”

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.

White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet,” he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.

The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an “all hands on deck” alarm, the investigators have found.

The only way to solve this is for Congress to enforce it’s own subpoenas. 
This is truly a stunning level of arrogance and overreach.That said, expect to see the a very busy Sergeant at Arms frogmarching people before Congress for a trial.   The founders had one other tool for when the Executive tried to evade the law: Impeachment.

 Mark Kirk

“I think we should look to winding up the mission.” [Chicago Daily Herald, 3/19/07]

“If the report comes back bad we need to make changes, we need to adjust the strategy, absolutely.” [Chicago Daily Herald, 7/11/07]

You see, Concerned Kirk is concerned, but not enough to actually do something to stop this war.  He voted against the proposal to redeploy troops by April 8th.

The Trib editorializes that there hasn’t been enough progress citing some military progress that is actually quite dubious.

Iraqi leaders were supposed to seize this moment of reduced violence to forge a united Iraq. Instead they’re as divided as ever. Judging from this report and political conditions on the ground in Iraq, American soldiers are buying time for Iraqi leaders to do absolutely nothing.There was a flicker of progress a few days ago, for instance, a potential deal on divvying up oil profits, one of the most important benchmarks demanded of the Iraqis by Congress and the president.

Then it fell apart. On Wednesday, just a day before the release of the White House report, Kurdish leaders, who had earlier backed the law, gave it a shove over the cliff. So much for political reconciliation.

That’s not the only political failure, just the most publicized. The government has also failed to pass a vital law easing restrictions on some former Baath party members. And it has failed to establish a provincial elections law so that local elections can be held.

This is a civil war.  The solution is that someone wins by force or a political solution is created.  For a political solution to work everyone has to get something they want.  The question no one seems to want to ask this administration is what is it that we have that the Shiites want in Iraq that they cannot get through winning a civil war?

Nothing and we are arming them.  The solution will happen with us there or not there and we don’t have a political solution we can offer that gives the Shiites anything they want.  We are useless other than to speed along the Shiite victory with American troops.  The President is horribly confused if he thinks the problem is that another Afghanistan  Pakistan. The Shiites and the traditional Sunnis don’t like Al Qaeda in Iraq and they will kill them There is no Mullah Omar there.

He’s busy anyway.  In Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is regrouping.   How about a surge there?

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I’m sure the usual suspects will dismiss this as they have every other effort of this administration to tamper with science in the bureaucracy, but it’s becoming clear this administration is the worst in modern times.  It has no respect for the rule of law, it has no respect for reality, and it has no integrity.
Carmona is the American dream

A phrase that should never come out of anyone’s mouth who supports this move

When is that accountability moment coming?

Charles’ tracking put’s the Bush Approval Trend at 28.9 percent.  A new low.

Excellent analysis

The question remains one of how long the current slide can continue. Historically, presidential approval has rarely fallen into the 20s. While some polls are still giving readings in the 30s, the trend remains sharply downward. However, we are now approaching historic lows. An approval trend of about 29% implies we should see a range of polls between 24% and 34% if the trend stabilizes at its current level. Further decline would predict at least some individual polls that threaten to reach the all time low of President Truman at 22%. Given President Bush’s remaining substantial support among Republicans (CBS puts Republican approval in the current poll at 66%, but with Independent support slipping to 18%.) , a loss of that loyal support would seem necessary for a fall to such historic low levels. (Truman had much less support from Democrats than Bush has enjoyed from Republicans.)

Such a bottoming out would seem to require an open breach with Congressional Republicans, as a signal to rank and file that support of the President is no longer expected. With the immigration bill off the table, pressure for a break on that score is actually less now than last week. Iraq looms as the greater challenge, though that requires a shift of position from Congressional Republicans who have staunchly supported the war and criticized Democrats for supporting withdrawal. The double trick will be for Republican Congressional leaders to offer a face saving rationale for a change in Iraq policy while at the same time criticizing their party’s president for a failed policy. We’ve seen some efforts along this line last week. But will the floodgates open or can the President retain the support of his party on the most important issue of his presidency? If he loses that support, we will probably have to rescale the y-axis of our plots.

Bush Republican support is still at 66 percent which I find amazing given all that his administration has gone through.

Bush to Kermit Ruffins:

I want to thank our Chef, Paul Prudhomme, from New Orleans, Louisiana — one of the great chefs in America. Thanks for coming, Paul. (Applause.) I thank Tony Snow and his bunch of, well, mediocre musicians — (laughter) — no, great musicians. Beats Workin, thanks for coming. (Applause.) Kermit, come up here. Kermit, we’re proud to have you.

MR. RUFFINS: Well, thanks for having us.

THE PRESIDENT: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers, right out of New Orleans, Louisiana. (Applause.)

MR. RUFFINS: Thank you. Thanks for having us. We’re glad to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Proud you’re here. Thanks for coming. You all enjoy yourself. Make sure you pick up all the trash after it’s over. (Laughter.)

God bless you, and may God bless America. Thanks for coming. (Applause.)

I get that he’s trying to make fun of Snow (who apparently has some excellent taste in music if he brought in Kermit), but it comes off as being kind of cruel to the musicians.  No great overarching message here or deep insight into anyone’s character, just odd.

After reading this on vacation:

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”

Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”

“This went on,” he said of the pro-independence efforts, “until George Bush weighed in and told Rumsfeld to cease and desist [and] told him multiple times to re-establish military-to-military relations with China.”

Routine military ties had been suspended in early 2001 after China forced a U.S. reconnaissance plane down on Hainan Island off Vietnam.

Perhaps I was short below.

There is an important element to the story I’m missing.  A view that hasn’t been taken into consideration.  There are vital reasons to block inspection of cattle for E. Coli.  After all, what about the E. Coli?  Don’t they have 4th Amendment Rights Against Unreasonable Search and Seizure?  The cattle too? Aren’t they covered by ADA since it’s an illness?  Don’t they have a right to be slaughtered and eaten?

Rick has a contest going to outdo the story.  His first entry is pretty good

Forget Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, the administration is carrying out assault on parody:

Via Chicago’s own Rick Perlstein we find that the USDA is fighting to stop a company from testing all of its beef for E. Coli:

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.

There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.

The best line is this one:

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry

I have about a billion snarky things to say, but really the straight story is the funniest.

However, while I fix the technical stuff and get life back to normal, Charles Franklin has ended classes and produced a fine piece of work on the prevalence of the name Monica since the Lewinsky scandal.

Also, while everyone has been getting hyped by plummeting Bush poll numbers, up until the last few days, there hasn’t been much movement.  You can have your Pony now with the blue (more stable) estimator at 32.2% and red (more sensitive) at 31.2%.

As Charles says though:

The bottom line: The model is not yet unambiguously insisting on a new downturn in approval. And it would be well to remember that we’ve seen this kind of a dip more than once this spring, only to quickly see a return to the recent equilibrium. So before declaring that decline is a certainty, we should remember that such a prediction has been wrong recently.

He also gives some good discussion on why immigration is unlikely to hit Bush any harder since last year it didn’t have much of an effect.  For Bush to go any lower he’ll need to significant losses in his base–so far he’s hanging around 70% approval amongst Republicans as Charles pointed out in comments.

I can imagine some scenarios where Bush loses more support as Republican candidates run against him as the election nears, but I think he’s hit the floor for now. That’s entirely speculation, but I just don’t see how the political environment leads to a true crack-up of the Republican base.  I can also imagine a scenario where Bush’s approval stays the same throughout the election and Republican Presidential candidates who abandon Bush lose significant primary support thus creating the situation where the guy (and they are all old aging white guys) who wins has to figure out how to attract people other than the base while not distancing themselves from Bush.  I’m thinking the best illustration of that would be the medieval stretching machines used for torture.

This story could simply have the board/agency and person resigning cut and pasted for any number of situations in the Bush administration:

At the same time, Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.

To point out each scandal and how totally and completely this administration has turned the federal government into a giant fucking AMWAY

After receiving the Reading First contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. According to his critics, the company was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier, a figure Best disputes.

“At the time of the sale, the company that bought the program justified this to their stockholders on the basis that this program had done extremely well under Reading First and was very politically connected,” said Robert Slavin, a leading educator at Johns Hopkins University and critic of the Reading First program.

Slavin, the brother of an ABC News executive, says a program he developed was rejected by the Department of Education despite its record of success.

Best, of Dallas, denied his connections to President Bush helped him win any of the federal reading program contracts.

“I have gotten no help from anyone in the administration, and I’ve given more money to Democrats than Republicans,” Best told ABCNews.com.

But congressional investigators say Reading First contracts were awarded by the administration based on politics and financial ties, not merit.

“They designed it for their friends and cronies, and they ended up not designing the best program for America’s schoolchildren,” said Congressman George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

In a report earlier this year, the inspector general for the Department of Education found repeated instances of conflict of interest in the Reading First program.

And it resulted in more phonics instruction than instead of balanced literacy.  Bad for taxpayers, bad for policy, good for Bushies.